[lit-ideas] Re: Lawrence doesn't like me. Boo hoo.
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2010 10:22:11 +0000 (GMT)
Have to reply (ok don't). I hope you are ok. Having been back from Ireland and
wanting to sit on my arse watching the World Cup, all the shit has hit the fan
at once. Such is life I am given to understand.
Donal
Not ok but hopefully getting there
--- On Sat, 3/7/10, Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Lawrence doesn't like me. Boo hoo.
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Saturday, 3 July, 2010, 22:07
Am I OK? In what regard?
I drink too much, that's for sure, but alcohol makes me very friendly.
Drinking turned my Dad into a tough guy, the very opposite of whom he was..
My mother told him to choose between the booze and the family. He chose us,
thank god, what an incredibly kind, generous, and gentle soul he was Both my
parents were God-sent. My mother far more the intellectual, my father far more
the human being of grace and kindness.. When I measure myself against them I
fall very short. In that way, I'm not OK. But I long ago acknowledged that
and as far as being at home with myself -- most of the time I'm very OK with me
being the me I know. That doesn't mean I'm ignorant of my shortcomings. Only
that I've learned to live with them.
There are less than half a dozen people on this list who if they chose to
attack my intelligence or my integrity would upset me emotionally. I doubt
they ever would even though they very well might dismiss me as an idiot, still
their social grace leads them to kindness.
I have probably purposefully insulted Lawrence far more than has insulted me.
But there's a certain quality to Lawrence's on line persona that leads me to
believe that Lawrence likes such tooth and claw encounters. I could be wrong.
If so I apologize to Lawrence.
On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Are you ok, Mike? That must have really stung....
Ursula
worried in Canada
Lawrence Helm wrote:
Very funny Mike -- a series of statements so bizarre and indefensible as to be
un-addressable in any practical sense.
Without going into detail let me say that I do not dislike you, Mike. Quite
the contrary: I like you and support you staunchly for having been born in such
a backward place as Tennessee. But I think all government support, police and
fire protection, Medicare etc. should be denied you in order to force you to
use normal rules of logic in our debate.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Mike Geary
Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2010 10:38 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Lawrence doesn't like me. Boo hoo.
Lawrence wrote: "I will grant that Blogblather said he opposed Islamism, but
what are we to do with the fact that he supported practically (in his argument)
Hamas and Hezbollah? I'm not sure he thought that through, but he seemed to
infer that if Hamas was duly elected that it was somehow no longer a terrorist
organization, and that isn't true."
Not only does Blogblather, aka Mike Geary, oppose Ilslamism, he opposes
Christianity and Judaism and as well as any religion that believes some
stupid-ass God wrote a book and that every word of it is true. The Abrahamic
religions are the greatest curse ever to have afflicted the earth. Amen
I do not oppose Islamism. I oppose terrorism. Islamists can be as wacky as
they want, as long as they don't hurt anyone. Christianity has in its
inillustrious history had the blood of innocents on its hands many times. And
so has America which is, in many ways a secular religion. Why Lawrence feels
the need to defend America's crimes eludes me. It seems childish. I want
America to get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW. If a people prefer to
live in the 7th Century, then let them, goddamit, it's their culture, not
ours. If they try to make us live in the 7th century -- then kill them.
There, I've said it. Islamists, I'm convinced, are not fighting to make the
world Islamic, rather they're fighting what they perceive as cultural
invasions, attacks on their culture, their way of life, their belief system.
And we are a threat to their culture, outside influence is always a threat to
insular thought. We are not purposefully
trying to change them. It just all comes with the territory of exposure.
Either time and delicate diplomacy or horrific tragedy will work this out.
But back to Lawrence's accusations against me. I stated many times, my
position on Israel. I have been and am still a staunch supporter of Israel.
Only because of the suffering of Jewish people at the hands of the larger
culture from which I come -- Western European Christian -- we are
unconscionable murderers so many millions of Jews -- we, not Germany, we our
culture. We did this and we owe the Jews a recompense that can never be
repaid. So what did we do? Why, we appropriated land from a poor, powerless
people, the Palestinians and pronounced it: "Israel", home of the Jews as
indeed it had been 2000 years earlier. Bravo! to us in the West who Pontius
Pilately believed we had washed away the blood on our hands. But the Pals see
it differently. They see their land taken away from them who had done no harm
to anyone, taken away without any compensation. And they see today an Israel
not wanting peace, but wanting more land and more
land and more land. "Lebansraum" we've heard that word before. I am deeply
disturbed by what I take to be Israel's intransigence vis-a-vis it's Arab
neighbors, and I have begun to believe that only a cut off of American aid to
Israel can bring Israel back to the bargaining table. Israel needs to survive,
not just for Israel's sake but for the sake of all us Jew-killers, it needs to
survive to remind the people of the earth how monstrous we have once been and
can be again. I apologize to all Israelis for using them as a metonymy. I
hope Lawrence has the freedom of mind to understand this. To apprehend that
one can be devoted to a place, a person, an idea, a religion, a culture, a
country even and still hate what it, he, she, they are doing. There is no
contradiction there.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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