Orwell

Orwell's response to a correspondent who asked why his writing was more complimentary about him after the two met:

“Even if when I met you I had not happened to like you, I should still have been bound to change my attitude, because when you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas,” replied Orwell. “It is partly for this reason that I don’t mix much in literary circles, because I know from experience that once I have met & spoken to anyone I shall never again be able to show any intellectual brutality towards him, even when I feel that I ought to.”

Thump This

I was watching Bill O’Reilly go hard at Laura Ingram the other day. (available on YouTube) It took a while but now I’m going to toss out what it meant to me. The unusual thing is they’re basically both conservatives with very similar views. During the festivities O’Reilly even threw out that she had the best radio show out there; objective, smart, thinking etc. . . . From the other side Laura endlessly commended Bill for his consistency and legitimate perspectives. (“I love you”) So what was the big row over?

During O’Reilly’s discussion on effective tactics to fight out the gay marriage conflict he rules out “bible thumping” as an effective means of debate. The evangelical community was ‘offended’ by this particular statement and O’Reilly was a little ticked that they would respond this way. In fact, he basically said they weren’t offended. Laura was trying to explain the ‘why’ of the offense but Bill was having none of it. It got very heated to say the least. Laura could see why they were offended but Bill was thinking this had to be a ‘secular’ argument, this was blatantly obviously from his view, so why all the stink?

This actually goes to the heart of integration, the law and apologetics. Laura appealed to Bill as both being ‘Catholics’ so he should understand the offense. Bill was working hard at showing he can separate the religious from the secular and argue one without the other as though this was some positive trait. “IT’s ABOUT POLICY!” He basically called Laura a numbskull because she wasn’t distinguishing between the two. Laura facetiously conceded she had no education. The religious should understand that this is a court/secular context and the arguments can’t be defended by thumping on a religious book.

I could see both sides of the conversation and agreed with neither. The religious community should be ticked at Bill. ‘Bible thumping” should mean using the logic and reason from that evidentiary source as the basis for its arguments. Nothing really wrong with that since marriage is really a religious institution and should not be high jacked by the secular world for their perverted purposes.

Laura’s only plea was for Bill to appreciate why they would be offended by his statement which he never did. But Laura didn’t really offer a true resolution either. She basically agreed with Bill’s side and said it was simply a matter of the wording he choose rather than any real offense, meaning his ‘language’ required amending.

My view is that Bible thumping is what is in order but not legalistic bible thumping. (as O’Reilly rightly objects to) Not taking dictums from either the Old or New Testament and hammering those as an argument, but rather using it as an opportunity to show that marriage is religious. If you want to talk about secular ‘civil unions’, that is another matter. I think the fundamental problem is that the secular word is attempting to steal the beauty and magic of the marriage act which only bears those characteristics when it’s executed as God intended. A brief perusal of either book makes it explicitly clear the homosexuality is not part nor parcel of this union.

Bill is primarily talking about civil unions and in that secular arena we need to generate a different type of argument devoid of religious affiliations. (ie. Bible thumping) But that’s the rub, the country was/is great because of the religious/faith core that started it. If you use secular arguments you’ve already lost. Christianity was the basis for the country and culture. Marriage is spiritual and done in/through the church. The non-believers want to say it’s theirs as well, without the acknowledgement of he who created it. And of course that is what happening on every front on every topic. God is being stripped of his authorship of all creation and it’s being replaced by a Satanic man-centered creator, at least in the minds of the lost.

Should we use a secular argument as to why we should continue to call it Christmas rather than a Happy Holiday? Should we use a secular argument to say why life begins at conception? When Thomas put his fingers in the holes in Jesus, was that secular? Secular arguments are atheistic arguments. They deny reality when it has a Christian flavor. They reject the supernatural out of hand. Why is this any better than a bible based argument? I believe O’Reilly’s desire to come across as independent causes him to prefer secular to supposedly religious arguments. In reality there is only one truth and it interconnects throughout everything. But both Laura and Bill’s unsurprising legalistic view of religion, compartmentalizes religion from the world, so their ability to effectively argue from a spiritual perspective is inoperative.

It becomes somewhat obvious at this point why the right wing media is so ineffective at convincing the rest of America who is who in the zoo. They don’t know themselves.

The Heart of the Matter

Having studied the Kennedy assassination in some detail and a frequent 'Factor' watcher, I looked forward to reading Killing Kennedy. My son had purchased both this and Killing Lincoln for my Christmas presents. I've noticed in my TV watching that Bill O'Reilly seems to have placed greater emphasis on him being an 'independent'. In my way of thinking this is a cause for reservations. If you've read my post on the integrated Mind Map you'll see why I believe you cannot get away from ideological underpinnings. Bill regularly rails saying "this is not ideological" but I think ideology is the oxygen we breath. There are no independent 'bubbles' we can go to devoid of ideology. The facts themselves can be independent but how we treat them, prioritize them, interpret them are based on our philosophy of life or ideology.

So I began my reading thinking Bill would simply follow the facts and it would lead him to affirm the conclusions I had already reached from the same journey. As I turned the pages I had the sense I was reading a docudrama. Meaning a loosely based documentary with creative license taken to fill out the story. This was totally unexpected. In fact it was more like "are you kidding me?" My first thought was isn't this the type of socially palatable, dumbed down information you so detest? You interview people who avoid the facts or the obvious conclusions to be drawn and you rightly call them out. How is this style of writing not the same thing?!

Bill explains it in the first few paragraphs. The book is a narrative form which only goes as far as "the evidence takes us". It is a "fact based book" which will "cut through the fog and "bring you the facts". So for Bill and Martin Dugard it's all about the facts. Then there's this, "We are not conspiracy guys, although we do raise some questions about what is unknown and inconsistent". We are not conspiracy guys?! Let me say the book follows the completely unbelievable ballistics that vomited out of the Warren report. Two bullets caused all the damage to Kennedy and Connally.

Arlen Spector was given the responsibility for the ballistics analysis chapter of the Warren Commission report. Perfect for his fence sitting, wishy washy views that can be twisted to serve whatever means required. So there were 3 bullets. One missed completely. One is the kill shot that took off the right side of his skull. Then the magic bullet that went through Kennedy's back, came out his neck, through Connally's chest, wrist then lodged in his leg to be later found on a stretcher at Parkland memorial. As Wikipedia puts it, "If so, this bullet traversed 15 layers of clothing, 7 layers of skin, and approximately 15 inches of tissue, struck a necktie knot, removed 4 inches of rib, and shattered a radius bone."

So these are the hard dug out facts? Really? Again, are you kidding me? So the authors state they aren't conspiracy guys. Fine. But please don't pretend to be fact based. Not a chance. While the Warren Commission can throw this garbage out to a hungry public to assuage their conspiratorial fears (pre-public release of the Zapruder film) there is no way this can hold ground with what we know today. Not even close.

I could go on but choose not to. I have a large post on Peter Jenning's special on the Kennedy assassination which delves into a number of the major issues. They are far too severe to be called inconsistencies. Throughout my readings there are regular flagrant denials of the truth and flat out cover ups at the highest levels. The bullet theory is the basis of the Commission's non-conspiracy conclusions. When that falls apart, which it completely has, the conclusions are no longer tenable. For whatever reason, Bill and Martin don't want to go there.

One final quote from the book and comment. "Those conspiratorial arguments will become so powerful and so involved that they will one day threaten to overwhelm the human tragedy of November 22, 1963. So let the record state, once and for all, that… " What follows is a type of love poem to JFK's impact on the world. My question is shouldn't the probably of a conspiracy and the necessary implications through the highest levels of the government overwhelm the human tragedy? Yes, it's awful that the beloved leader of the free world was shot in broad daylight sitting beside his beautiful wife. But it's worse that those who perpetrated this crime had internal support within the government and those responsible are not being held accountable.

I thought Bill would dig through the various conspiracy theories and let the evidence guide him to a unified theory explaining the events of that awful day. Nope, he wrote a eulogy to someone he obviously reveres. Yes, the text is fact laden, some of them new and interesting, but where it counts we follow familiar lines that leaves thinking American people with a hole in their hearts and minds. An audience I thought Riley's book was targeting, but now I know better.