nourishing obscurity

Dante had the traitors in the last circle of hell but he could also have put in the faithless [as distinct from the cynical or non-believers] and I’d have also put in the agents-provocateurs and the disloyal.

Just disposing of this Kenneth Gladney thing, there were many opposed truths.  JD used the term he’d got from the SL Dispatcher’s skewed column – Lie – to describe Gladney and associates and that was a quote from one of the assailants himself, made to appear to be the truth of the matter.   It might well have been a lie in another sense mentioned below [JD turning out top be right after all] but it wasn’t a lie on these grounds:

1.  The footage shows he did hit the ground and was assaulted;

2.  The one you see handcuffed by the police is the assailant;

3.  The assailants did admit in court that they’d assaulted Mr. Gladney but claim self-defence.

So, in the sense that he was actually assaulted, it was not a lie and it was in that sense that Bill Whittle mentions it in his vid opening.   Let’s not attribute falsehood to Bill Whittle – he called it as he saw it, which means in a highly-coloured way.

Which is where it becomes problematic for me in the context of our tribalism.   My natural reaction is to side with Bill Whittle as distinct from two overweight black assailants from a union supporting Obamacare.   Yet there are problems with it.   I had a good look at that video again a few times and:

1.  Gladney was not damaged – he came over to the microphone straight after it and was certainly not “hospitalized” at that point;

2.  What the hell was he doing there with a cameraman in the first place whom he knew to come straight up to afterwards?

3.  The ones using the word “nigga” to him were the black Obamaguys themselves so it was hardly used in a racist way – more in a misguided soul-brother way.   “What’s a nigga like you doin’ here doin’ this?”

4.  That he was knocked to the ground and kicked is not in dispute but what had Gladney said to them to make them lose their tempers, which he knew they would because they’re leftists who are not nearly as nice as they make out because leftism includes the “something for nothing” feckless – that’s a known-known.   It was going to be no hard matter to provoke them in their passion for the opposite cause;

5.  The jury threw it out, not the judge.  The judges are certainly nobbled – looked at the bizarre decisions they’ve been making over there and over here, letting crims off and incarcerating the barely infractious – the left has certainly got into the media, the judiciary, the universities and in key local government positions [see Common Purpose, posts passim].

And the jury, like Bill Whittle, like me, are going to view things the way they’re manipulated to be seen.   Returning to Amanda Knox and Co for now, there is an appeal at this very moment to the Supreme Court in Italy and it has a good chance of being upheld.   It is based on the illegality or failure to follow procedures of Judges Hellman and Zanetti in quashing the conviction – odds are it’s all going to start up again.

The main grounds were that, while the court was in order in refusing the prosecution evidence to be put again and only allowing defence evidence, that might have resulted in a reduction of sentence if upheld but it most certainly did not encompass a complete acquittal and release – for that, the entire prosecution case would have to have been re-presented and overturned.   It patently was not and thus the charge is that Hellman and Zanetti wildly exceeded their briefs.   You’ll note the original case itself does not yet come into this.

In that case, it’s been shown ad nauseam that the pro-Knox side has not the evidence to go on whereas the original conviction considered over 140 pieces of discrete evidence.   The Knox and Sollecito books are full of lies to the point of libel and that has been dealt with at TJMK in detail – here’s one post on it.

Now even at TJMK, you’ll note the language is coloured and that is not a good thing.  What I’m getting at is that even here, a certain tribalism comes into it, whereas I’m not personally tribal in the sense that I criticize my own side quite often – as I’m doing now in this post.   There was a poster here at one time – Sonus – and he took me to task – maybe rightly, maybe not – for not supporting people obviously “on my side” but being gentle with “the enemy”.

I have huge problems with tribalism because it obscures the truth just as much as blind faith in the other side and their refusal to face simple facts.   Nowhere was that more pronounced than in the JFK case and one had to be either Single Bullet Theory or Conspiracy Theory.   It had divided so hard down those lines that it was no longer possible to have rational discussion – people simply stated predetermined positions.

All I can say in my case is that yes, like everyone else, my first thoughts are along tribal lines but then, later, when the matter is reflected on, the anomalies rise.   Hence this post which began with Kenneth Gladney.   Hence people are uneasy with me because I don’t automatically support my own side.   And that makes me, in some people’s eyes, a traitor to the cause, not a true believer.

Take the smoking ban.   It’s iniquitous all right, the way the Narrative has won out.   It matters not a jot who’s died from smoking in this case – it was the blanket ban on it which was wrong.   Yet my father and mother both died from smoking related illness and now I have the makings of bronchitis too.   So yes – it’s right to oppose this ban but no – it’s not completely cut and dried as an issue.

There’s a point in Casino Royale where Judi Dench says to Bond: “He wasn’t even a true believer, he was a gun for hire.”

Not sure about the gun for hire but there has to be something quite hardline, hardcore in the leftist brain when it can see Bill Whittle’s vid about the Narrative, see it in front of their eyes in the footage and yet dismiss it out of hand or ignore it.   There has to be something driving these people to do that.    And the only conclusion I can come to is that they are such fervent believers in good causes, as they see them, that the facts and anomalies don’t matter to them.

Or else there’s an agenda.   And there is also something hardline, hardcore in Bill Whittle’s brain too which will so readily accept the Gladney story as is, as presented, without asking hard questions.

That is tribalism.   The plea of this post is that once all the shouting has died down and the tribal sabre-rattling has ended, please, please go back alone, quietly, and ask: “Hmmm, I wonder if there was actually anything in that?”

The reasoning behind that plea is that if we do that, if we reject tribal assumptions whilst remaining loyal to the tribal flag per se, then we’re less easily manipulated and less easily railroaded.   Anything to cause cracks in the hegemony of the PTB is a good thing.

Filed under: Politics & economics