Fall from Grace

I've seen this and if you are interested you should check out the BBC Special on it with Louis Theroux. You can find it on Youtube/some video sites.. he really gets to know some of the younger members and really shows how indocrinated they are.

I invoke Rach's signature here.

Watch Jesus camp, they start them young and really indoctrinate youth.

Please don't watch that trash. It's the popular media equivalent of feeding trolls. They're a bunch of inbreds who never would've been heard of if some journalist didn't open a Pandora's Box of hatred and stupidity when his car broke down outside Westboro.

Feel free. I'm happy to loan it out whenever it can come in handy. Agreed 100%. Giving these people ANY attention, positive or negative, only makes them worse. The only way to thwart/kill destructive ignorance like this is completely to marginalize and ignore it to the point to where they can have no outlet for their hatred and stupidity except inside the doors of their shitty little hovel... which is their Constitutional and personal right.

This sounds like a cue for one of my favorite recent Aussie comedy stunts from the ABC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8cN2...ext=1&index=26

He has some good points, he just tends to take them to their logical conclusions.

^Who and what? Anyway, as for the youtube video posted above, yeah, it's funny sort of... but as why says... I don't even find it funny to "joke" with these people or see them "made fun of." That just enables them, makes them feel like "martyrs," etc. It's not like Joking/making fun of Scientologists... who are just sort of laughable. Instead, it's like "joking" with the Taliban, or "joking" with Heinrich Himmler. Given the chance, these people would murder, slaughter, and destroy anyone they could, like the Taliban, or like Himmler. To be honest, I wish we dealt with them like we deal with Al Qaeda or the Taliban, because really they are very close in ideology and belief. OR, at the very least, that we'd revoke their citizenship and send them to Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan, where their beliefs would be more in-line with others of their ilk.

I was all set to say that I am all for ridiculing these sort of people .... then I saw your mention of Himmler up there. And now I am not so sure.... I do see that joking about the Holocaust could trivialize or at least 'normalize' it.

So now I won't link to the funny Iraqi Insurgency skit.

I know what you mean and, in one way, ridiculing is better than just letting them run around unfettered.BUT, IMHO, it's not just the trivializing or the normalizing... it's what's BEHIND the joke that makes it more frightening and horrific than it could ever be funny. I mean, the way I think of it is... imagine a scene with an interviewer talking to Himmler and he keeps making "Jewish" mannerisms or jokes with him. LIke, "Well Heinrich, that's quite a schnozzle you got there. Oy ve!" Yeah, you'd be like, "haha" because no doubt Himmer would get uncomfortable and fidget and make lots of dumb comments... but as you laugh... you realize, "This man would love to see you murdered in front of his eyes, if given the chance. He'd love to see your entire family taken out back and shot... if they haven't been already." It just doesn't seem so funny anymore... just more scary. With these Westboro people, we have a similar mentality, only the lack of power to see it through. BUT, people laughed at Hitler AND Himmler before they ruled Germany. They were laughable, like these Westboro folks. They didn't laugh so much when they got shot in the head by them later. Again, the way to deal with these sort of people is simply ensure, through marginalization and making them obsolete, than they can get NO attention. OR, in any case, to realize that their ideology is no laughing matter... it was "laughable" to many to think that somebody would "exterminate Jews." And we see what happened. Never underestimate pure and simple evil.

WALL OF TEXT. John just made this thread no fun.

Well, sometimes brilliance, insight, and CONCISION don't go hand in hand there, dear.