BartCop doesn’t love me “anymore”
I’ve apparently now received Bart’s “right boot.”
Why do I feel more like I’ve gotten a whiff of the breath of a skid row bum?
Since there really isn’t a lot of substance to respond to here, let me simply make a suggestion: Bart, if you don’t have time to research whether an attack on thousands of people is justified then maybe you shouldn’t make the attack. Just a thought, mind you.
By the way, I still like Bart (I’m a masochist in that way). My guess is he’s been hurt by angry Obama supporters pulling their support the same way BuzzFlash has been hurt from the opposite side. For what it’s worth, that represents short term thinking on both ends (we’ll need both of these voices in the days ahead). So, send Bart a buck or two if you feel like it (as well, of course, as BuzzFlash). Tell Bart that the Last Chance Democracy Café sent you. Maybe that will have a sobering influence on him (ha, ha, as Bart likes to say).
On a serious note, Bart went out of his way to note in bold print that the café is a product of BuzzFlash (I hope this wasn’t intended to damage BuzzFlash in some fashion because that would be childish). I should note for the record that as is true with most bloggers (and should be with all bloggers) I have complete freedom of expression. The post in question was not cleared by (or suggested by) anyone else and no one other than yours truly is responsible for its content (as is also true of this post).
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March 21st, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I used to visit BartCop regularly (along with the other popular and well-known democratic, liberal, and progressive web sites). I stopped visiting him several years ago precisely because of his dismissive attitude toward religion and the idea of God.
In fact the one post which completely turned me off to him is one where he made fun of the idea of any kind of life after death by saying that if any of our deceased relatives are alive in some other plane of existence, then they can see us performing our private sex acts (as if they would have nothing better to do in an afterlife). (I expect I could find it if I looked for it; I do ot feel like doing so. I don’t remember exactly when that was, but it was several years ago. I don’t know if there is any way to find it other than looking through each of his archived posts.)
Personally I struggle with the issues of whether a God, as envisioned by Christians and other theists, is really real, and whether there is any kind of life after the present life. Those are very much open questions for me. Even if there is no God and no life after death, there are some reasons that people do in fact believe in those things which I think are not entirely ridiculous (as well as some reasons that are ridiculous).
I used to be a Christian, but found that the Christian faith, and my supposedly having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, had not been of any help to me personally. I feel as certain as I do of anything that it was the right and healthy decision for me to stop going to church, and to absolve myself of any obligations specifically imposed by the Christian faith (as opposed to those incumbent on any good and moral person). However I respect that for other people their faith and going to church is important to them. And I fondly remember many good people I knew from churches I went to, and many good times I had in settings with people from church or from Christian groups.
I would now consider myself to be just on the believing side of agnostic, and closest to being a Deist. Deists emphasize the use of reason, and feel that reason points to there being some kind of a Creator. They particular reject any alleged revelation from God, such as the Bible or the Koran. Any revelation of God to a person, if there is such, is to that person only; otherwise any alleged revelation is at best second-hand, or hearsay. I myself definitely do not accept the Bible as being, at the very best, anything more than a book written by fallible human beings, and exhibiting human fallibility and human prejudice just like anything else that has ever been written.
I consider the near-death experiences that we hear about to be, if not absolute proof of life after death, at least an indication that there might possibly be such a thing, and that believing in the possibility of a life after this present life is not something totally absurd or ridiculous.
When I was a Christian one of my favorite authors was the noted Christian apologist C. S. Lewis. While I no longer accept his arguments about the person of Jesus Christ (there is some question as to whether he was really a historical person) or tenets of the Christian faith, I have always liked, and still like his arguments that our ability to reason, and our moral sense, and our sense of beauty, truth, and goodness, indicate the serious possibility of some intelligence higher and greater than our own. Again, I consider myself to be a Deist.
As far as BartCop is concerned, it doesn’t help my opinion of him that he is die-hard Hillary supporter. It definitely seems that Hillary Clinton and her campaign have left a lot to be desired. In fact one of my impressions of BartCop is that he is very resistant to re-evaluating his loyalties or his beliefs.
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:10 am
I have to admit that I really couldn’t understand that link. By the time I got half way down the page the only thing I that was in my mind was “Huh, this guy must be learning html coding for color and letter style and is definitely at the bottom end of the curve.”
Oh well guess that’s why I’m not called a pundit.
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 am
I have never read BartCop. I do read Tom Degan’s Rant. He has some pretty good rants. He doesn’t like Hillary much. I dont like the tone of her campaign. I wasn’t for her because of her fat-cat supporters, her vote on Iraq, and the fear that nominating her would have the Media dragging out Monicagate all over again. Part of me would like to believe this country has matured enough in the last 8 years to be able to elect an African-American or a woman to the highest office in the land. The other part of me says:”My god, they elected Bush TWICE!!!! They still think Ronald Reagan is the best thing since sliced bread!!!!” Hope lies eternal in the human breast, but reality whacks you up the side of the head.
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 am
I don’t read bart either but he seems like a rather belligerent atheist.
MikeH
Do you remember the episode: “Heavenly protest”?
There were some great lessons in that about doctrine and dogma and faith.
Woke up to snow. I’m so sick of snow and rain I could scream.
Maybe, though, all this stupid weather will bring a really good crop of morel mushrooms this spring. I can’t wait!
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:19 am
I have been following both Bartcop and Buzzflash since just about the time either got started, having focused on the Web for info since reading the famous Salon article and watching the punditry lie outrageously about things there that any person could have confirmed at anytime, just by going and reading it on the Web.
As the Web has grown, two things have happened that have created a divide between what sites are useful and what sites are moving off the rails. The first is an openness. While the old publishing model required purchases because there was raw material (paper and ink) provided for each customer, on the web the increased cost for each extra customer is minimal. As a result the advertising and donation model is such that even Salon has moved in that direction.
The other key part of a worthwhile website, particularly if it is of a political nature, is a comment section such as this. Without it you can say any idiotic thing and not be dinged for it, instead you are made irrelevant because folk stop reading, and you are left with nothing but sycophants. I think that this is a key issue that is making the Web work much better on the Left than the Right for that specific reason.
Early on anyone was considered “Far Left” just for noticing that the Gang Of Pirates were just that, and a broad coalition was formed on those points alone. A victory on those points is not yet achieved, but there is the appearance of it in the offing, and suddenly the wide variety of policy differences are beginning to show up that was not previously noted.
Where comments and discussion are alive, reasoning is enhanced for everyone involved. Where it is not, offensive attitudes can grow up unnoticed, till suddenly you sound crazy beyond your bubble. While I think Buzzflash has tried to become too much empire and less sticking to the knitting, I do think that bringing in more commenting has had mostly a good effect. Bartcop can learn a lot in that direction.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Hope, yes I remember the Heavenly protest episodes. They were something for me to post about. I was going to, but missed out on getting around to it. So now seems to be the time to do it.
I started to write something here a couple of weeks ago but then I became distracted and busy with other things; I am taking a couple of classes at my local community college.
I was serious about Christianity, and supposedly having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, in my 20’s and early 30’s. I struggled with some things, but wanted to be assured that I was one of the “saved” and was going to heaven because I had “accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior”.
However the idea of hell had really bothered me, especially the idea of worrying about other people going to hell, even if I myself might be assured of salvation. I particularly had trouble with the idea of a duty and obligation to tell others about Christ, i.e. to be a “witness” for Christ, motivated by the concern that someone might be going to hell if I was derelict in that duty.
One thing that eventually especially came to bother me was the idea that according to what fundamentalist Christians believed, an “unsaved” murder victim was going to be condemned to hell, while if the murderer later repented and “accepted Christ”, the murderer would be let into heaven.
It was then then I came to reject the fundamentalist understanding of Christianity; however I was still a Christian. Several years later I came to the full realization that Christianity had never been of help to me in enabling me to deal with anything in the real world that had been a source of pain, frustration, unhappiness, or distress to me. It took a while, but I eventually came to realize that I was not a Christian any more; in particular I had absolved myself of any duties and obligations specifically imposed by the Christian faith (as opposed to those incumbent on any good or moral person). And I feel as certain as I do of anything that this was the right and healthy decision for me.
One thing for sure is that I do not wish to accept any so-called “gift” of “salvation” offered by the fundamentalist Christian God (as believed in by people like Billy Graham et. al.), if such “gift” is going to be denied to someone who happens to miss out (for whatever reason) on “accepting Jesus Christ” in this life, or denied to someone who happens to guess wrong by adhering to a religion other than Christianity, or denied to an “unsaved” murder victim, but given to the murderer if the murderer later “accepts Christ”. And I do not wish to accept a “gift” which imposes on me the grim duty and obligation to worry about others going to hell if they are not “saved”, and to do all I can myself to win people to Christ motivated by that concern.