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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

That damned Treatment

What's Mallard raving about today?

Muslims

It takes a special brand of ass-hattery to look at Muslims fighting for their freedom against tyrannical rule and then produce something as mean-spirited as today's Mallard Fillmore.

But, I suppose we have a right to feel completely superior.

I mean ours was a 100% bloodless revolution in which we asked politely for our freedom and our White brethren in England said "sure, no problem." And it's not like America has ever suffered from internal divisions so large that it caused a bloody Civil War. What's wrong with these Muslims? Why can't they be more like us?

By the way, Mallard Fillmore is not a racist.

29 comments:

Tog said...

If the average teabagger had his way, Iran would be astonished by our repressive cruelties.

This one's a masterpiece of weasel wording, actually. Mallard is suggesting that violence against Muslim-Americans is some mythical fantasy that doesn't really happen, and that no one should care because, hey, brown people, amirite?

Because as far as he's concerned, the bar for our own country should be set no higher than Syria.

Tucci said...

Tinsley certainly doesn't make it clear whether his focus is on "How Muslims are treating each other" in the Sandbox or here in these United States.

Is he trying to imply that there's been an uptick of internecine violence in Dearbornistan or similar Islamist-predominant communities in America?

This time in 2001, I made particular remark about how anybody wearing a turban or otherwise looking as if he were from the Middle East was getting hellacious hostility from idiot Americans with their xenophobia at full-bore. I live in a part of the country where there are plenty of Sikh families running small businesses (convenience stores and gas stations and similar low-margin labor-intensive enterprises in which families can leverage the abilities of even those members who haven't got more than a rudimentary command of the English language).

Anybody with the equivalent of a parochial high school education in comparative theology knows not only the instantly obvious differences between a Sikh and a Muslim (way different dress code, and if they're wearing turbans, the Sikhs' headgear is pretty cool while the average Muslim shows why they're commonly called "ragheads") and also the fact that the Sikhs have had damned little but very bad blood in their relations with Dar al-Islam since the Mughal Empire set up Muslim rule in the Punjab back in the middle of the 16th Century.

"Our" Sikhs had a damned bad time of it from the local rednecks ten years ago, blamed for attacks that had been perpetrated by their enemies.

Andrew said...

Mr. Tucci-

Since Mallard specifically made reference yesterday to the revolutions in the Arab world, and since he normally wastes- sorry, USES- a week's worth of strips on a single topic (occasionally with a slight detour when he runs out of "jokes"), it can be assumed with a high likelihood of probability that he is referring to the Middle east in this strip. If you had read more MF, you'd know that.

Also, the phrase "Islamist-predominant" should only be applied to areas which contain a population in which Muslims make up the majority of the population, not merely areas (like Dearborn) where there is a higher population of Muslims than in the average area.

On the other hand, your stiry (though steeped in ridiculous bigotry against members of one particular religion) is certainly something that was quite common in those days. But what does it have to do with the subjects at hand, which are A) the comic strip Mallard Fillmore (which is what this blog is specifically about- which is why everyone here normally spends their time talking about it- if they wanted to discuss economic theory or the works of Ayn Rand, there are blogs available for that purpose) and B) violence against Muslims?

Or do you believe that violence against members of a religious group is justified, so long as you don't attack the wrong people?

Tucci said...

Andrew ineptly tries to snark: "Or do you believe that violence against members of a religious group is justified, so long as you don't attack the wrong people?"

Nah. Insofar as I'm concerned, what was notable about those local instances of wog-bashing in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was the way in which it demonstrated the bloody ignorance of so many Americans residing in (or driving through) the part of the country where I've lived most of my life.

After some questions put to correspondents in other areas, I learned that it was repeated pretty reliably hither and thither.

Religions impose all sorts of malignant sociocultural peculiarities. Those of us "raised Catholic" who aren't playing ostrich know goddam well how bloodsoaked is the history of our own sect, including the origin of the expression "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out," so I'm under no Coulteresque illusions about how Christianity is supposed to be somehow "better" than Islam in terms of objective morality.

At the same time, though, I'm not going to willfully ignore those liabilities robustly imparted by Muslim dogma and inculcation. Any religion which refers to Hindus and Sikhs as "pagans" in particular and everybody not a member of Dar al-Islam as legitimate targets in Dar al-Harb generally is not to be instantaneously and uncritically regarded as a participant member of the American "general trust society."

I've had Sikhs as patients as well as service providers, and while I can't say that I know any of them all that well, I like them. They've tended to be polite if not exactly engaging, but then I suspect that the greatest part of that stand-offishness is due to the language barrier. I don't speak Punjabi or Urdu or Hindi, and most of the Sikhs I know aren't facile in either the American language or American culture. The next generation or two will turn out to be as thoroughly Amerigan' as are most of the Filipinos, Boricuas, Koreans, and Mexicanos with whom my family members presently live and work.

Jeez, I can even get along with the Irish, and that takes some doing.

But I have a helluva lot more experience with Muslims as professional colleagues - lots of M.D.s from Pakistan and Egypt in particular - and while I've no more complaints about their competence as physicians and surgeons than I do about any other FMGs (including Americans educated in Caribbean diploma mills), a great many of the Muslim docs whom I've gotten to know extremely well over the past forty years just don't seem to connect with doctors or patients outside Dar al-Islam.

With four decades of elbow-rubbing I should have a better finger on the pulse of my own disquiet about Muslim foreign medical graduates, but there's definitely a sense of their dislike for non-Muslims, up to and including a perceptible disdain for us treif-fressers.

My patients have made complaints along those lines when I've referred them to some of the Islamic guys in my Rolodex, and I've had to assure them that the particular consultant's technical competence (and availability) compensated for his or her off-putting personal qualities.

I have never gotten that impression of alienation in encounters of any kind with a Sikh or a Hindu. But with a Muslim (except for American-born converts)? All the goddam time.

Hm. Come to think of it, I've had Roman Catholic Filipino acquaintances - even those from Mindanao - tell me something similar about their relations with the Moros back in the P.I.

There's something there in the Muslim make-up. What good is there in denying it?

Neo Tuxedo said...

occasionally with a slight detour when he runs out of "jokes"

Or, I suspect, when he has to create a substitute strip on short notice because King Features' legal department points out that he's actually said something libelous instead of just smarmily implying it the way he usually does.

Kip W said...

If you can show that members of a group do any particular thing to one another, then you have carte blanche to do it to them yourself. Any grade-school kid knows that, and some fail to outgrow it.

ps: Speaking only for myself here, but if anybody is forging posts and falsifying words attributed to someone else in an attempt to amuse me, well, thanks, but it's not necessary.

Rootbeer said...

...wow.

In some sense I admire the honesty of openly admitting in a syndicated comic strip that you think Muslims are all irredeemable savages.

CW in LA said...

Ah, right-wingers waxing apoplectic about how nasty and hateful Muslims are. Because right-wingers are never nasty and hateful, nosiree. In fact, you're the Real Racist if you suggest otherwise.

Certainly Tucc-bag's psychotic barking at great length does nothing to allay suspicions that contemporary movement conservatism has developed into some sort of lunatic death cult.

rewinn said...

As DavyK said, it takes a special sort of diskishness to hate the Arab Spring.

----
As for @trullucci, I cannot imagine why any Muslim would not embrace him in brotherly love. His Christ-like affection for all humanity should give them warm feelings of comfort at all times.

Sure, in my experience with Pakistanis in particular, Central Asian nations appears to be a highly stratified kleptocracies in which the upper crust (including doctors and lawyers) treat lesser folk with aristocratic disdain. This is true whether their religious background is Christian or Muslim (ever done business with Russians LOL?)

There is only one way to figure out whether to trust a man (or a woman): take them as an individual. Isn't it funny that the reichwing hates the concept of individuality as applied to objects of their hate?

Tinsley: Sociopath said...

Tucci has used the incredibly archaic, almost forgotten term punjabs to insult people from the area North of Africa of which he is slightly aware and hates. He has gone from sounding like an 80 year old Teabagger to a 150 year old English Colonialist, and frankly, I think the latter would be more liberal and aware of modern trends.

Steve-O said...

Remember when Tinsley was railing against the IRA for killing other Christians to advance their political ends?

No? Neither do I.

Tucci said...

You lazy vagabond hottentots can't question the indisputable Arab-Indian alliance to make oil of pure English oil carriage monocle wording! I am a tenpenny potentate with the inveterate job of estrapading ragamuffin urchins from the rumcircle!

Fear the Dark Continent, for the maccaas from that imbroglio are plotting an infringement of our divine right to victuals! They are crepuscular transients who know not of the League of Nations, the evil attempt by unscrupulous krauts to consume our gold pleasures! I ne'er trust them, nor the diaspora in the hinterlands!

Neo Tuxedo said...

"Another knock! Well, this one is at least louder and funnier!"
--- George Carlson, "The Fashionable Fireman and the Soft-Boiled Collar Button"

MartyRotten said...

Tinsley is afraid that if democracy takes hold in the Middle East then all the Middle Easterners will become Democrats.

exanonymous said...

Also, all Americans were treated equally upon said peaceful agreement, as opposed to gaining those rights through protest, suffering, and marching centuries later.


Funny how white people don't have to face prejudice that they'll commit efficient mass murder because the Germans and Russians did it.

Michael Foley said...

There are revolts going on in some Islamic countries. Therefore, Americans should not be concerned with anti-Muslim violence in their own country.

Tinsley: Sociopath said...

Also, Hindus are polytheists and Sihks are outside of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mythology, with makes them the very definitions of pagans.

Tucci, Muslims ostracize you because you are an insane asshole who is incredibly old, yet has the mental capacity of a toddler. These "Sihks" and "Hindus" you claim to have met are other patients in the loony bin who think talking dogs are their gods.

Word Verification: Siling, the only thing Tucci can see after the doctors strap him to bed as punishment for carving racial slurs in the other patients.

Tucci said...

Tinsley: Sociopath (yet another "Liberal" fascist flaming idiot) steps all over his own needledick writing that I've:

"...used the incredibly archaic, almost forgotten term punjabs to insult people from the area North of Africa of which he is slightly aware and hates."

The Punjab, you schmuck, is a region that wound up athwart the 1947 India/Pakistan partition line (and in only that sense is it an "area North of Africa") and the birthplace of the Sikh religion. Punjabi is a language, like Hindi and Tagalog and Suomi.

Yet again, how "Liberal."

For all the leftie-luser yammer about "multiculturalism," there seems reliably to be no goddam cultural literacy whatsoever over there in the "Liberal" fascist Reich.

What's the worth of your noises about "tolerance" if you have no bloody idea of who or what you want everybody to tolerate?

Tucci said...

On the "stopped clock" principle, our "mercantilist" sociopathic "patriot" rewinn makes an interesting observation about the difference between Muslim M.D.s and immigrants of other religious persuasions from the subcontinent who aren't medical professionals:

"Sure, in my experience with Pakistanis in particular, Central Asian nations appears to be a highly stratified kleptocracies in which the upper crust (including doctors and lawyers) treat lesser folk with aristocratic disdain. This is true whether their religious background is Christian or Muslim (ever done business with Russians LOL?)"

I've "done business" professionally with docs from the old Soviet Empire (Georgians, Ukrainians, Russians, et alia) and never noticed the sort of "aristocratic disdain" radiated by Muslim physicians and surgeons from Pakistan and Egypt and Syria and thitherabouts.

But, then, as I keep demonstrating here, I tend to get along with everybody.

I've also been fortunate enough to have practiced a profession where that teensy minority of "Liberal" fascists sliming their way into the ranks have the self-preservation sense to keep their friggin' yaps shut.

Tucci said...

Tinsley: Sociopath" had written: "...Hindus are polytheists and Sikhs are outside of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mythology, with makes them the very definitions of pagans.

Yeah, that's the way the Congregatio pro Propaganda Fide defines them, too.

I suppose that after a childhood and adolescence spent in the Roman Catholic parochial school systems, the pejorative connotation of the word "pagan" still skunks up the air too noxiously for me to keep my hackles down.

Get pestered by the nuns to "buy a pagan baby" every week for eight years of your life, and you can't avoid the sense that those at the top of your religious food chain consider these "non-Abrahamic" folks less than fully human.

Tinsley: Sociopath said...

Toddlers have an unique form of Narcissism in which they not only want to have everything, but refuse to allow anyone else to have anything. Say that a toddler has established a vaguely-understood emotional bond with a dog. Give the toddler a plate of cookies and the dog one cookie, and the toddler will go on a violent screaming rampage, throwing cookies and demanding to be given the dog's cookie. Republicans like Tucci and Tinsley who refuse to give others health care or democracy, despite having plenty of both and knowing that such policies will benefit themselves in the long run, have the emotional states of five year olds.

DiR said...

They should take an example from us Christian White people. You know, the ones responsible for the most devastating wars in human history, and who only recently decided that maybe treating colored folk as just folk wouldn't be so bad, and spent most of the past 70 years holding world with a nuke to it's throat over what amounted to an epeen contest.
You know, be sensible for a change!

Tucci said...

Caught with his shriveled little prepuce under his own cleats, Tinsley: Sociopath tries to weasel away from his "punjabs" brainfart and beshits himself further with:

"Republicans like Tucci and Tinsley who refuse to give others health care or democracy, despite having plenty of both and knowing that such policies will benefit themselves in the long run, have the emotional states of five year olds."

Not being neurotically fixated on Mallard Fillmore the way this Tinsley: Sociopath boob so obviously is, I've got no idea whether the cartoonist considers himself a "Republican" or not. On my own part, I've already made it absolutely clear that I consider the Red Faction a buncha bankster-sucking corporate welfare Rotarian Socialists (Chodorov got it so right in 1953) trying to gull the religious cripples into funding and voting for them.

As for "democracy," how was Obamacare enacted "democratically"? Even among the National Socialists' own hard-core constituencies, all the polling last year as it was slammed together in secret ("You've got to pass it to read it") and rammed up the nation's ass by Pelosi and Reid in the 111th Congress showed that even the democratic majority of the Blue Faction's partisans opposed it.

There's nothing "democratic" about the National Socialists any more. You "Liberal" fascists sure proved that, didn'tcha?

As for "health care" - turning over your own and your family members' health and dignity and their very lives to the same politicians and bureaucrats who gave us the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles and the USA PATRIOT Act....

How much more "Liberal" can you stupid sons of bitches possibly get?

Kip W said...

I watched daily as Obama changed this part of the health care bill and that part in order to placate the Gops. I never suspected that the contents of the bill were somehow being kept secret from Congress itself.

Tucci said...

Tsk. Kip, what part of Mencken's "I am not a Republican" (and therefore consider them all that much less hideous, hateful, thieving, tyrannous and brainfucked than you National Socialists) keeps evading you?

I'm going to put any trust in the criminal conspiracy that "did a Dole" (i.e., threw the election) by nominating Crash Test Johnnie McCain in 2008?

Kip W said...

Wow! It's as if one of those homeless shouting guys on the street guessed my name and threw it into one of his orations!

rewinn said...

@Tucci puts "patriot" into quotes as if it's a bad word.

Which - to him - it is. He still refuses to deny that he'd be happy with America in ruins so long as his ideology is enforced.

But I understand why he gets along with white doctors (Russia, Ukraine, Georgia) and not brown-skinned ones (Syria, Egypt, Pakistan); the latter must have been somewhat puzzled by involuntary outbursts at their brownishness. But to be fair, there is a complicating factor: some of the arrogance differential comes from the fact that doctors in the Soviet state were more working-class in education and outlook than in the former colonial nations.

Meanwhile, I really enjoy @Tucci's outbursts. You do realize, do you not, that these are being recorded for posterity? Surely you are no longer looking for gainful employment, since few employers would take a chance on anyone with such obvious anger and race issues! You shall have to be content with knowing that furture generations shall laugh at his poor judgment in spewing hatred in a public forum and, perhaps, include him in studies of mental illness.

Tucci said...

rewinn the "Liberal" fascist "patriot" tries extortion (the Internet is forever and "Surely you are no longer looking for gainful employment, since few employers would take a chance on anyone with such obvious anger and race issues!") and betrays his own cultural illiteracy about the lack of ethnic tolerance in the Sandbox when it comes to their attitude toward even their Islamic co-religionists who demonstrate hubshi levels of cutaneous melanin content.

In the words of Herman Cain speaking specifically on opposition to rewinn's beloved Fraudulence-in-Chief, "it ain't about race."

Except as the key (hell, only) element in Barry Soebarkah's branding, it never was.

But the "race card" is all that rewinn and the rest of the morally and intellectually bankrupt "Liberal" fascists can play, no matter how completely busted it is.

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