Comments on: Slackman flacks for troofers

By: Tatterdemalian

Tatterdemalian — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:56:17 +0000

The informer-ridden police state in Egypt came about because the people wanted it, just as Russia is reversing all its democratic reforms because the people elect leaders like Putin to office. It is a flaw in the culture that makes dictators flourish, not dictators who make cultures decline.

By: Lefty

Lefty — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:01:29 +0000

The article seemed short and the ending felt abrupt – I wonder if a longer, better article was badly edited.

Soccer Dad nails some of the reasons why 9/11 Trooferism is ramptant in the Arab world, but I wonder if the biggest reason is that Arabs, like everyone else, first evaluate the world through their own experience. Egyptians live in an informer-ridden police state, so a typical Egyptian has no idea how easy it is to commit terrorism in a free and open society like America. Doubts like these can metastasize into conspiracy theories…

By: Michael Lonie

Michael Lonie — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:46:11 +0000

The Arabs’ idea of a “fair broker” in the Arab-Israel war is one that would help them destroy Israel and commit genocide on Israel’s Jewish population. Anything less than that counts as biased towards Israel. When Muslims say “Peace in the Middle East” they mean the destruction of Israael and the genocide of the Jews. When they whine for “American evenhandedness” they mean we should help them do this, or even do it for them (since the Arabs don’t seem up to the job).

Middle Easterners are prone to conspiracy theories, the more lunatic they are the better they like them. Daniel Pipes’ book “The Hidden Hand” covers this subject. Are we supposed to frame American policy to satisfy lunatics who will believe evil of us no matter what we do? And the lunacy is spreading to the West. There is far more willingness to believe idiotic conspiracy theories among Americans now than there was in prior years. Liberals who used to laugh at people who prattled on about black helicopters and the Trilateral Commission now believe even more ludicrous lies, as the Truther movement shows. This is not good, and an indication that liberals and leftists are leading American politics and culture into a period of irrationality and extremeism. They give off the whiff of the brownshirt and, as those “anarchist” demonstartors at the Republican convention and the crackpots who vandallize cities in anti-globalization riots show, many are acting like brownshirts too.

In the willingness to accomodate Muslim irrationality there is a strong element of fear, the fear of Muslim terrorism and other violence. The better response to such a threat is to crack down on Muslims who use violence or even threaten it or support it. When it hurts Muslims badly when they support violence they will cease to support it. When you reward violent behavior, by giving in to the demands of the violent, you will get more of it.

By: JDF

JDF — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:22:56 +0000

I was very disturbed by the article in the NY Times. I worked at the WTC and was there on 9/11 as were many other Jews. Sometimes bigotry and pure idiocy like this can be blamed on just those things — bigotry and idiocy. Would the reporter have looked for lessons, deeper meaning and the need to pay closer attention with regard to other forms of hatred in the world? Would we care why members of the Ku Klux Klan (or like-minded people) feel the way they do and what we can do about better understanding such low-lifes?