Holly Hobby Lobby explains what she was thinking with that picture of her holding a bible and a rifle in front of a flag.
“I expected less backlash with this than I did the first one because the picture is, like, America’s founding principles,” Fischer opined to Fox News on Wednesday.
Hold it right there. Guns and God are what you get out of the Enlightenment principles that inspired America’s founders? That’s rather missing the point.
“That’s all that’s in the picture. And I really didn’t think it would cause the uproar that it has.”
What uproar? Pointing out, on media like blogs and twitter that parading about with a Bible and a gun isn’t exactly progressive, and exactly mirrors the attitude of the worst of the Abrahamic fundamentalists (heck, it is modern Abrahamic fundamentalism) isn’t exactly a riot. What I saw was a great deal of amusement on the left at the juxtaposition of Christian and Islamic ‘freedom fighter’, and most of the outrage came from the right, where they were howling in denial and insisting that they weren’t the same, because Muslims were gun-toting barbarians with a false god, while Holly was a white human being married to an American soldier. Totes different.
Fisher said that she posted the photo because there was a “growing intolerance among the left, and conservatives are becoming more and more afraid to speak up.”
In my culture, martyrdom is folly and a martyr complex, where no sacrifice is made but one pretends to be oppressed, is contemptible and stupid. Here, let me quell your fears.
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News (hell, Holly was being interviewed on Fox), World Net Daily, Ann Coulter, the Family Research Council, Dinesh D’Souza, Sean Hannity, Sunday morning television punditry, Alex Jones, Michael Savage, Sarah Palin, Clear Channel, Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family, Phyllis Schlafly, and the entirety of the Republican Party.
Conservatives aren’t afraid to speak up, because they sure won’t shut up. Everywhere I go, the Far Right Noise Machine is squawking nonstop.
Meanwhile, you probably think President Obama is a far left socialist/communist radical. He’s actually a centrist apparatchik who is less obstructive and destructive than the screaming idiots on the right.
You can complain when President Bernie Sanders is in office. Until then, your fears of socialism running the country are groundless. (And even then, a hypothetical Sanders presidency would be an even greater slog against the right-wing no-bots than the current one.)
I heard Glenn Beck express a similar sentiment a few years back. He told his listeners that President Obama had so intimidated free speech in this country that he was afraid to speak up with criticism.
He told his millions of listeners that. On his show where he does almost nothing but criticize Obama for hours and hours and hours every week.
I don’t know how the guy would act if he wasn’t cowered into silence.
I sighed wistfully at this thought. I mean, he’s a bit conservative for my taste, but at least he’d be a change from the pseudo-liberal current president and his habit of deporting children to places where they’ll be killed. Or just killing them here.
An “apparatchik”? Aha! I knew Obama was some kind of communist! (That’s what “apparatchik” means, right?)
I think if you explained to Holly what Enlightenment principles are she’d accuse you of Commie talk.
Growing intolerance among the left? Oh my god, the projection never ends among right-wingers.
A little bit of Canadian humor
https://twitter.com/GammaAtheist/status/487233050338549760
@anteprepro,
Ahh, but the left is intolerant of intolerance and bigotry, which is totally worse than the bigotry itself, because it’s God-fearin’ True American Patriots who are the target of this.
To conservatives, “intimidation” means telling them that they are wrong and/or bigoted. In their paranoid minds, it’s just a small step from pointing out and criticizing one’s racism or anti-gay hatred to Orwellian censorship and the apocryphal “FEMA Death Camps.”
When they say they are afraid to speak up, it’s because they don’t handle criticism very well. They think criticism is censorship.
I actually think Sanders would not face the intensity of the dehumanizing rhetoric that Obama faces, not that he’d have an ‘easy time’ governing.
Quit calling Obama a “centrist” – it’s an offense to real centrists everywhere.
Akira MacKenzie @8
If they have it in a place with less mosquitoes than a Bible Camp in Minnesota, I’d gladly have spent my childhood summers at a FEMA Death Camp. Also if they had less Bible verses sung to the tune of Hanson songs.
nichrome
“Centrists” typically deserve far more insult than that.
If conservatives are “afraid” to speak up it’s because they fear they’ll be challenged to prove their claims and see disagreeing opinions. For example has she ever given any examples of how her bible is part of the USA’s founding principles since things like voting for your leaders and freedom of religion run counter to what her bible says?
Hanson songs with Bible lyrics? Doesn’t that violate the Geneva Conventions?
This is true, but it’s because of the wingnuts who’ve become the gatekeepers of American conservatism this century, not because of liberals.
I’m calling bullshit on that one. Holly cant seriously claim that people don’t have stronger feelings about images of nationalism, a religious text and machinery of violent intent compared to images related to a supreme court decision or two and a company that sells chicken (and nonviolently supports hate). It is for this reason that the parallels drawn between Holly and the Palestinian suicide bomber are even stronger than simply the objects within the frames. Both images are the way they are precisely to provoke a reaction in the enemy.
I will never understand the politics of the right and religion, but I really despise the disingenuousness of its followers.
Mmmgod, la tuba god
Ga doo god, da doobie god
Ba du god, ba duba god
Badoooo
Yeeeeeeeah
Mmmgod, ba duba god
Wa goo god, Sa loo god
Tatoo god, La doo god
A whop bam booooo
Yeeaaaaaeahh
#Hansong
#Sophisticatedtheology
Naked Bunny
Oh shit, that’s a good point. I forgot about the ongoing war between the Teabaggers and the “Mainstream” theocorporatists.
I will never understand the politics of the right and religion, but I really despise the disingenuousness of its followers.
—————————
The link between the far right and christianity isn’t universal, most the early socialists were christians, and the fictional Jesus would be a good candidate for one if you removed the 90% of bullshit
Let’s face it the American protestants churches have about as much in common with the Church of England as they do with Islam. They are in affect completely different religions
tuibguy #9: You hit the nail on the head. It never amazes me how many of the right-wingers I’ve excised from my life have followed this script:
“Commie-Socialist libtards want to give all MY money to (insert epithet concerning race or sexual orientation)!”
Me: “Wow, that is some racist/classist/homophobic shit you just said.”
“Why do you liberals have to bully me? It’s my opinion! It’s as good as yours! Why are you trying to silence me, you (insert gendered insult usually having to do with how many people they think I’ve slept with). You just want to end (religion, freedom, capitalism, blah blah blah…).
Yup.
Or really?
America’s founding principles are waving guns and bibles around while making vague threats?
Jefferson had a different idea and said it better. The rest of the founders set up a constitutional democracy.
Ms. Holly Fisher has a history on the net. She isn’t known as a deep thinker or being prone to making factual statements.
PZ Meyers
This made my day.
As exemplified by the phony “War on Christmas,” this faux martyrdom permeates the Right.
Tim
Rev BDC at #6, thanks for the link. That was good for a laugh. Love the Canadian version of the photo.
Ooo. More from the article
Watching the progression from blatant trolling into pretending that she is standing up against bullying or some shit. Portrait of Delusion, indeed.
Said the woman who was invited to speak on the nation’s most watched news channel.
The one good point she has is her calling out of the rape and death threats she’s received as completely unacceptable. Like many other women who become prominent on social media, she has received ugly misogynistic threats and that’s not okay.
Please… she posted that picture to get a rise out of ‘liberals’. She’s just pissed off because instead of reacting as the strawmen liberals in her head would have, folks held up a mirror and called her on her shit.
@qwints #27 – That truly is despicable. The ugly of her ideas is not an excuse for misogyny and threats.
Fisher said that she posted the photo because there was a “growing intolerance among the left, and conservatives are becoming more and more afraid to speak up.”
As evidenced by all the cowed silence by those poor oppressed conservatives on the right, and the lack of criticism for the Kenyan Muslim.
“ATTENTION LIBERALS: do NOT look at this picture. Your head will most likely explode,” Fisher wrote in a tweet along with the photo.
Right. Pointing and laughing is just like heads exploding.
And no, death and rape threats are disgusting and shouldn’t be tolerated.
Turn on aa AM radio and set it to scan and all you here is conservatives bleating about their crazy conspiracy crap with an occassional bit of sports talk or stuff in Spanish.
Cable tv news isn’t much better.
We’d all go deaf from the noise if conservatives weren’t so terrified of ‘speaking out’.
Katy Anders @1:
As you say, that’s laughable, bc Beck is another one who won’t shut up.
I wonder if people like Beck are just so shocked that people are criticizing them. Maybe they expect to be able to say whatever they want and have freedom from the consequences of what they say. Some of the Freeze Peach trolls we’ve seen around here certainly seem to think that way.
FTFY
/snark
seems any small step away from their conservativeness is a “slippery slope” to blatent Kommunism. They seem to start every “rebuttal” they have, with the phrase, “slippery slope…”. Funny how only they see the slope and it is so slippery. They never see their “suggestions” as slippery into fascism, etc. Delusions, indeed…
I too am so, so, tired of hearing the same stupid “Liberals are all about tolerance, until it’s something they disagree with.”
I have had to actually post the dictionary definition of tolerance in exchanges with right wing morons on the web at times. YOU CAN ONLY BE FUCKING TOLERANT OF SOMETHING YOU DISAGREE WITH BY DEFINITION!
The claims by Fischer and Beck aren’t as obviously self-defeating as they would seem. They’re part of a much broader persecution complex that feeds their own personal delusions of grandeur.
I often question how many of the conservative talking heads are just straight-up shams, who know they’re talking a bunch of grade-A bullshit in the name of their own self-interest, but Beck is someone who I’ve always genuinely thought was completely off his rails and living in his own fucking universe (I just see it in his eyes; if he’s acting, give the man an Emmy).
I have little doubt that Beck and Fischer believe that conservatives are being silenced by a tyrannical liberal elite minority that holds sway over the majority of American social institutions. It’s just that they each believe that they are exceptional, and are braving the onslaught of heathen attacks for the poor average American who has been cowed into silence. In their minds, like McCain and Palin, they are mavericks, acting as the voice of the voiceless. The fact that Beck lost his sponsors at FOX News and was, for all intents and purposes, fired goes a long way toward fuelling that insanity. It’s really easy for him, I’m sure, to convince himself that the “liberal establishment” was trying to silence him. I’m sure the fact that he’s still employed, spouting off his confusing, hateful rhetoric hasn’t managed to seep in at all.
Can’t lie. When I first read this:
…I thought I read this:
Kichae:
I get what you’re saying, but if they’re not talking about themselves being silenced, *who* are they talking about? Some mindless, faceless, group of republicans?
@Tony! 37
They believe their opinions are shared by the vast majority of everyday American Republicans, if not the vast majority of average American citizens (I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find that they believed that a large percentage of people who vote Democrat do so because they’re too afraid to vote Republican).
They do believe that liberals are trying to bully them into silence, though. They just believe that they’re strong enough to stand up to their liberal bullies. As I say, they believe they’re exceptional people who are speaking up for those who don’t believe they can do it themselves. They’re getting off on some sort of hero complex.
I’ve no doubt that they believe that all of those loud mouthed conservative Christians who fill their inboxes with letters about how Obama is taking away their rights to oppress people are only able to do so thanks to their own heroic efforts.
@ Kichae#38
I think it’s very common for people to assume that their own opinions are reasonable, and that reasonable people will agree with them. So everyone assumes that most people agree with them, “I think I speak for most people when I say…”, etc.
At least, that’s the way *I* think, so I’m assuming everyone else does, too.
Oh FFS, like, didn’t even include allowing women’s suffrage.
Why so many of these outraged originalists keep clinging to an era that wouldn’t even have allowed them to be involved is beyond me. You think she could at least find something a little more up to date and relevant to her particular brand of trolling.
I think you see the same kind of cognitive dissonance in all sorts of social conservatives. Somehow liberals are both an oppressive power silencing all their voices and spreading their godless social agenda so that this country is just going to hell in a handbasket, and also a minority of elite effete whiners whose views are on the decline in the face of a growing grassroots conservative majority. It’s the same thing with FTB/A+ being a small agitated bunch of echo chamber nobodies with falling hit numbers, and a powerful group of bullies trying to force everyone else out of the atheoskepticism movement with their witch hunts and commienazistasi tactics.
People want to think they’re the underdog hero fighting against insurmountable odds, and they also want to think they’re on the winning team. Problems occur when they believe both, and hold those beliefs in the face of overwhelming facts to the contrary.
@41 Tom Foss
This, as I recall from my college reading of 20th century history, is one of the key defining characteristics of fascism. It requires an enemy to focus the rage and hatred of the followers but the inherent superiority of the volk requires the big bad whatever to be easily beatable. This is the lynch-pin of fascism because the ideology produces nothing of use and a political movement based on this ideology can not function without an enemy.
Now, this is the key defining weakness of fascism. Neither the leaders nor the followers can evaluate other people, countries or political situations realistically. Remember the tantrum scene from Der Untergang (and all the Youtube videos with substitute subtitles)? I believe they Holly Hobby Lobby people can not perceive lefty/liberals at all rationally, much less accurately.
@ 15 microraptor
Little-known fun-fact: The Geneva Convention only specifies that prisoners must be fed, clothed, housed and treated to the same discipline for the same offenses as the capturing nation’s own rear echelon troops. That means that the whole Hanson songs with Bible lyrics is legit if they do it to their own. Scary thought, isn’t it?
To quote Indigo Montoya from The Princess Bride : “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Laughing at a buffoon who failed to learn the basics of U.S. history is not backlash. We only laugh because you’re funny.
HolyPinkUnicorn:
I wonder if women were allowed to own guns back when the 2nd Amendment was created.
@ 45 Tony!
Depends on whether they were married. At the time all property a woman owned before marriage became her husband’s. She could inherit her husband’s property but if she re-married the new hubby obtained everything. Likewise if she inherited property from another person it automatically became her husband’s.
This state of affairs did not end with the 19th century. The end of this practice had to end state by state. Tina Turner, for example, had to go back into the music business because after her divorce Ike retained the rights to all the work they did together. (Their state of residence when they divorced in 1976 had not yet changed its property/marriage laws). This crap is not a relic of the long-ago past.
@sadunlap #46:
Good point, and she certainly makes no secret of her marriage (and I wouldn’t be surprised if she isn’t too fond of no-fault divorce laws).
The nonsense these people support isn’t even conservative, it’s regressive, if only back a few decades in the past.
HolyPinkUnicorn:
People like them have been clawing back down, or even maintaining such a firm grasp on, the slope of Justice, that the regression to decades past is in reality regression to centuries past.
Is it possible for me to feel war-fatigued from the entirety of humanity’s history of obstructing fairness and equitable treatment?
“Fisher said that she posted the photo because there was a ‘growing intolerance among the left, and conservatives are becoming more and more afraid to speak up.’”
There is no way that Fisher is talking about the United States of America. Absolutely no dang way.
Funny that she went to Fox News to complain about Rightwingers being silenced.
All she really knows is that “intolerance” and “afraid to speak up” are supposed to be bad things, and that liberals are supposed to be against them. Therefore, if the liberals can be made to appear “intolerant” and that this makes conservatives “afraid to speak up”, that’s a goal against the liberals by using their own words to defeat them! After all, these words have just got to be meaningless slogans like “sanctity of life”, “religious freedom” and “American exceptionalism” are for the right.