The Nation Review - An American Journal
Feb. 1st, 2013 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnny9fingersPublished this, which I quote in full:
President Obama Commemorates the ‘Senseless’ Holocaust
By Eliana Johnson
January 28, 2013 1:18 P.M. Comments150
President Obama issued a statement yesterday to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He noted that survivors who bore witness to “the horrors of the cattle cars, ghettos, and concentration camps have witnessed humanity at its very worst and know too well the pain of losing loved ones to senseless violence.” (We noted below how some in Europe chose to mark the day, which takes place each year on January 27, the day Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.)
The idea that all violence is “senseless” violence is one that has taken deep root on the left; it’s also, unfortunately, one that poses a major impediment to understanding the world.
Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.
On September 12, 2012, President Obama also lamented the “the kind of senseless violence that took the lives” of four Americans in Benghazi. That, you may recall, is the day the president supposedly said the murders occurred as a result of a non-senseless terrorist attack carried out by jihadists.
This sanitized version of events, both past and present, is surely more comforting. It’s also truly senseless.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/339003/president-obama-commemorates-senseless-holocaust-eliana-johnson
The reason I quoted this in full is that I suspect that The National Review will take this piece down when they've had a chance to think about it clearly.
It is amazing that some right-wing folk in the US hate Obama so much that when he attacks the Nazis, they will find some way of defending them. They'd rather find common ground with Hitler than Obama. Ye Gods above.
President Obama Commemorates the ‘Senseless’ Holocaust
By Eliana Johnson
January 28, 2013 1:18 P.M. Comments150
President Obama issued a statement yesterday to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He noted that survivors who bore witness to “the horrors of the cattle cars, ghettos, and concentration camps have witnessed humanity at its very worst and know too well the pain of losing loved ones to senseless violence.” (We noted below how some in Europe chose to mark the day, which takes place each year on January 27, the day Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.)
The idea that all violence is “senseless” violence is one that has taken deep root on the left; it’s also, unfortunately, one that poses a major impediment to understanding the world.
Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.
On September 12, 2012, President Obama also lamented the “the kind of senseless violence that took the lives” of four Americans in Benghazi. That, you may recall, is the day the president supposedly said the murders occurred as a result of a non-senseless terrorist attack carried out by jihadists.
This sanitized version of events, both past and present, is surely more comforting. It’s also truly senseless.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/339003/president-obama-commemorates-senseless-holocaust-eliana-johnson
The reason I quoted this in full is that I suspect that The National Review will take this piece down when they've had a chance to think about it clearly.
It is amazing that some right-wing folk in the US hate Obama so much that when he attacks the Nazis, they will find some way of defending them. They'd rather find common ground with Hitler than Obama. Ye Gods above.
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no subject
Date: 2013-02-02 06:11 pm (UTC)Then again, about the literal, I've met too many—to be fair, both left
andright—who cannot understand the motivations of "the other" side (either deliberately or on a simple cognitive level), and therefore for whom the word "senseless" represents an accurate portrayal of "other" actions.Now, had the essay author noted that those on the right did just this, I think you might not find fault with the piece; but then again, had the essayist done this there would be no attack on Obama, now would there?
I mention this caveat because there are some on the left who abuse other words in a manner similar to the essay's author accusation, as a means of dismissal (an old piece, but relevant).
no subject
Date: 2013-02-02 07:22 pm (UTC)The hypocrisy of lauding Reagan (who used the exact same word in similar context) and decrying Obama's usage of it rather gets my goat. But that's by the bye.
This is one of those issues that I think has united many folk on the left and right, perhaps because of the the conflation of a rhetorical flourish, which has admittedly become a cliche, with a singular meaning of the word senseless, which can also mean devoid of good sense.
I shall think more on't.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-02 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-02 07:49 pm (UTC)There you go. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-02 08:35 pm (UTC)