Mister A

I think it has to do with finding a concrete justification for guilt coming from subconcious sources such as a faulty metaphysical orientation that stymies healthy coping with reality. Most people can't effectively correct such deep-seated flaws without disintegrating their own identities (an experience comparable to dying) so they latch on to these trend causes as a stop-gap measure.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/30/report-star-david-spotted-iranian-airport/ Another example of how irrational/barbaric philosophy can stymie integration of sensory data even when it stares you in the face.

Well at least he didn't grow a mullet.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/it_new_look_for_superman_wWxd8MApuHBFBmh0b3a4eK I've always wondered how far-left cranks like Grant Morrison and Alex Ross can do their jobs so well while holding mixed premises but I guess something's gotta give.

I think what you are trying to do is scour for something remotely relatable to make sense of the vid. Understandable. Irrational aggression is a normal, though tragic, part of the human experience. But note the cold casualness of the actors pushing the button; they exhibit no emotion before, during and after the act. There is no anger, zeal, triumph or catharsis. Mass murder is no more significant than emptying a dustbin. Also note the evasive, dismissive tone of their official apology; as if they can't conceive of what is so objectionable in the vid and a hypersensitive minority is artificially fueling the backlash. This may be psychologizing but I speculate that the viros are aware of something seriously 'wrong' but a disturbance of identity prevents them from tracing this wrongness to its true source: themselves. Hence, they project their own wrongness onto the rest of the species. What they probably want, deep down, is for someone to come along and push the red button on THEM.

What I found telling was the portrayal of the people being blown up; unkempt-looking slacker and outsider types who stood apart from the group. Looks like 10:10 utterly lost the sense to even be presentable to the mainstream and have regressed to the eliminationist tribal mentality at the root of their ideas.

The fundies have a simple way of resolving the Koran's contradictions: they regard the doctrines Mohammed wrote chronologically later (i.e. "the Sword Verses") as the true word of Allah and anything before is dismissed as "the Satanic Verses".

I don't think it's fear as much as "pragmatic" deference to those willing to employ brutality in asserting themselves.

No. He's evil and spiteful.

Or he was trying to articulate the mindset that aborted his will to live at a very early age.

News report: http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/features/x1547940540/Somerville-man-left-suicide-note-online-before-shooting-himself-to-death-at-Harvard Note: http://www.suicidenote.info/ebook/suicide_note.pdf At least he had the integrity to follow his evil ideas to their logical ends instead of becoming a professor to kill the souls of others. Good riddance.

That he's casually resigned to the likelihood of a major attack as a result of his policies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092106706_pf.html Wow...just wow...

I've read Tolle's literature before and imho there is some sense hidden under the neo-mystical hokum, especially if you are familiar with existentialism and Eastern thought. The Pain-Body is the accumulated frustation caused by the disparity between reality and the ego's expectations; the more unhealthy and irrational the ego, the wider the disparity. If this frustration is left to fester, there is the danger of identifying with the negative sentiment for various lengths of time. When this identification occurs, there is a strong tendency to reinforce it by placing yourself in self-defeating situations that accrue more negative sentiment (as a victim or aggressor, the goal is the same). This state is short-circuited and placed back into dormancy when you become conscious of the potential harm to yourself. But some people are so entrenched in the identification that any attempt to focus consciousness is disrupted by automatized evasion; a perfect example in fiction is James Taggart.

From my experience, the best way to put leftists in their place is to target their psycho-epistemological weakness: the absence of a healthy, self-contained identity (i.e. not bound to tribal affiliation) that can grasp principles and objective reality. In other words, always make your arguments based on observable reality rather than tribal oneupsmanship; this will force them to come face-to-face with their mental impotency. Just forget about trying to convert them; the majority are irreversibly brainwashed. The objective is to make them look so ridiculous that they lose credibility with any neutral observer.

The media doesn't have a double-standard in the context of it being a voluntary propaganda arm for fascism.

Well they finally put him out of his misery. http://www.wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=2042177

I think the closest she came to that was Ma Chalmers but none of the villains in her books can hold a candle to this guy in the realm of pure evil. He's reached the terminal stages of a nihilistic freefall and is really just begging for someone to put a bullet between his glassy, unfocused eyes.

I once got into a facebook argument with some lefty from Columbia U. He blocked me immediately with no retort after I compared his mentality to that of a primitive tribesman.

You're thinking through the prism of altruistic premises here; in altruism, you can be the most miserable, self-destructive rotter of a human being imaginable but as long as you limit the destructiveness to your own person, you're entitled to a moral blank check. I totally disagree. A malevolent person believes in a malevolent universe just as firmly as your "benevolent" altruist except he identifies far more with the malevolence rather than its deterministic victims. “The Ethics of Emergencies,”

I think wish-fulfillment is an integral part of an evil mindset; the drive to satisfy a desire without asserting your own existence. This is deeper than simple laziness since often the evil person would paradoxically invest more energy (and risk more danger) snatching at crumbs that don't belong to him than working honestly to earn an entire loaf. IMO, this could be traced back to a failure at forming a healthy self-concept; the evil person conceives his 'self' as a chaotic force of nature like a hurricane or mudslide. Integrity and value formation become impossible in this toxic mode and the mechanism of evasion is automatized to sustain it; keeping the evil person in a semi-conscious daze lest he endure a Jim Taggart-style meltdown.

I think what's going on is that they expect to be marginalized for another generation after the next election so they are exploiting this last opportunity to act out their pent up authoritarian fantasies. There's another townhall video with a musclebound union thug staring down an old lady.

A common motivation to become a social worker is to see yourself as a 'good' person by virtue of association and social position rather than personal convictions. in other words, wanting to help people does not necessarily imply you like them.

It seems you confused my meaning of approval with the desire to fit in to a social clique; it's much deeper than that though it may superficially take that form. When I say a powerluster seeks approval, he does so on the metaphysical level i.e. he outsources the functions of his conscious mind to others because his formative experiences conditioned him to have no faith in it. Depending on temperament, the epistemelogical dependancy becomes abusive as the powerluster dehumanizes his suppliers of validation and expects them to provide validation promptly, unconditionally and with no regard to dignity and life; usually, this corruption happens when a potential powerluster is placed in a position of authority or he discovers to have some above-average talent in influencing others. There is a subtext of mortal fear in this antagonism; the powerluster instinctively senses that insubordination could lead to erasure of his own identity. Existentially, our identities are constructed from our response to the presence of the Other (other people in general) and how the Other responds to us. The dynamic of the powerluster is a volatile and maladaptive example.

I just don't take kindly to repeat questions and complaints that my sources have too many pages.