Needless to say, we have Oprah to counsel us against violence. But that said, bullies will not cease until you stand up to them and show them you are not afraid. Considering what has happened in the last week in "the Republican war against women," I believe this clip is a perfect analogy.

Art has a way of showing us so much about ourselves, disguised as entertainment. Sometimes I wonder why some of us get the message and others do not. The vision of this is, I think, to stand up. Get that word in and know you are going to have to fight, but know too when you have to walk away and think it through. The problem is, too many are angry, too many walk away. Not enough know how to stay and fight. The problem is too, the money. It is like we have to buy our freedom from the slave owners over and over again, each time our small dollar tries to compete with the big dollars being spent. We are weak in the money, but not the spirit. We need the leader. We need our votes to count. We need to run them all off the plantation and keep it for ourselves.

terrific insight yes r.

But standing up to the bullies does pay off in the end. I just wish they'd quit making new ones.

What the GOP hasn't figured out yet is what percentage of women of childbearing age use contraception. That number is extremely close to 90%, which means that opposing contraception from a civic standpoint qualifies as a war against women. Ideology is one thing but they're playing with fire. It's up to the Celies to make sure they get burned.

Kosher: I have five sisters. I am confident they will not only get burned. They will not be able to get up again.

Trust me, SpiritMan, you don't want to mess with women's contraceptives or women's ability to obtain safe, effective contraceptives. Uh uh. It will be far beyond knives. Think A-bomb.
r./

Tell they do right by us, everything they do will fail. YES!
A perfect curse like a perfect storm.
rated with love

Yes, I think 'epiphany' might be le mot juste. I liked this and let me tell you why.

First, to suggest you are advocating violence would be to beg the question and miss your point entirely. I think San Francisco’s beloved Jessica Mitford said is best when she opined that there are good haters and bad haters. What we need are more good haters. Mitford was a good hater. Her anti-Semitic Nazi sisters were bad haters. Lilian Hellman. Now there was a good hater if ever there was one and Mark Twain, with his pen warmed up in Hell, was one of the best good haters.

One man’s epiphany is other womens’ nightmare. The impotent hysteric Saul of Tarsus (the primary source of right wing Christian misogyny, whom Nietzsche characterized a “holy epileptic”) was already a bad hater before he was knocked off his infamous ass and an even worse hater after he awoke from his epileptic delusion to make life a nightmare for women ever since. To quote Christopher Hitchens, Paul was “unable to lead a sex life worthy of the name, [so he] declares null and void all forms of sexuality for the rest of the world.” And (pardon me if I cherry pick) this is not to deny the poetic wisdom of I Corinthians 13 or the many other pleas to humanism that managed inclusion in an otherwise blood-soaked book of a pre-literate Bronze age nomadic tribe.

On this horrifically overpopulated planet where us mammals are breeding into extinction who can help but notice that these religious laws (dogmas) are set down by a cult of lawmakers to which only those with testicles are admitted? The recent birth-control brouhaha about ‘sin’ is precisely what Bishop John Shelby Spong was talking about in “The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love.”

Revering our republic I’m always cautious to argue for bald majority rule of the democratic mob but perhaps the pendulum has finally swung and the bullies and the religious right will soon get a taste of their own majority tyranny– what a poetic justice! May the pews be vacated by the exodus of a continued secular diaspora. The fact is that the majority of Americans (even Catholics) are fed up with the dogma-dictating bullies with testicles who require that women and gays suffer the consequences of doctrinal poisons and sins of scripture. It is indeed time for people of ‘good-faith’ to “Get angry!”

The Christian right are bad haters and their religiosity poisons our secular Constitution as never before to make our politics a snake-pit. They traffic not only in absolutes but the absolutes of one particular brand of ‘established' religiosity dictated by mammals with testicles and ratified by their brain-washed chattel. Laws “respecting religion” are very definition of First Amendment violation; but these despicable and bigoted little culture wars of course serve a larger and more cynical purpose: to keep the frightened and superstitious sheep too busy to notice they are being fleeced by their ‘good shepherds’– and dare I say sodomized too for it is just short of a miracle that any child’s behind left thanks to the clericy operating with the blind collusion of the State.

However, we are all missing a teaching moment as to our constitutional bedrock. It is axiomatic that no law is absolute. Not even laws related to ‘fundamental’ rights. As any second year law student knows the State may, and often does, abrogate the “free exercise” of religion where the law is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling legislative and governmental interest” such as preventing multiple wives, human sacrifice, or wanted children who are too often are left for the taxpayers to educate and feed. It is never the testicled lawmakers who suffer the *intended* consequences of their dogma but only women and children.

Whether you are talking about mere bullies or laws ‘establishing’ one brand of religious dogma what this clip reveals is precisely what Sam Harris meant when he accused religious moderates of being more part of the problem than a solution to it. He was talking about the intolerable toleration of intolerance.

So I think you are totally correct (if I read you right): it’s time to “get angry” for they go too far. Give the religionists, the tub-thumpers and the bullies, the proverbial accommodating inch and they demand the infamous mile. Even after Obama’s legally unnecessary reasonable accommodation yet still they are not satisfied. There is no reasoning with bigotry that fired by uncompromising dogma.

Perhaps it is time for blowback for (just as in this clip!) they invite it and if they are not careful in their over-reach history may repeat itself for, as Gibbon pointed out in his Vatican-banned chapters in “The Decline and Fall,” the *only* reason Christians were persecuted under the Roman empire (which tolerated all religions) was because of the Christians’ bigoted dogma that theirs was the one and only way. And what happened? By the fraudulent Donation of Constantine the Church subsumed the State and the continent swam in blood and holy horror for a millennia until Voltaire excoriated, “Ecrecez linfame!”

Yes, it is time to get angry. “Mr. Jefferson! Build up this wall.”

I think the analogy is spot on.

An observation from an old white dude: You've got a great eye for allegory. I expect that there will be no need for anyone to pick up a knife in November. The Republican/Tea Party Clown Circus will be so drunk on their dog whistle hate mongering they'll most likely bleed out from self inflicted wounds.

Old Man on the Mountain

(((((( the intolerable toleration of intolerance ))))))

YES!

Very appropriate clip. ~r

SpiritMan, I posted something in a similar vein today, art imitating life, etc.

I had forgotten about that scene from The Color Purple. Very apt.

Absolutely correct. Look at Hitler. Lawsuits, economic embargoes and public, international shame and humiliation didn't stop him, his war, his killing of civilians in occupied Europe, or his attempt to kill the Jews.

Do you know what did stop Hitler?

the combined military might of the USSR, USA and UK. We smashed him and ground him and his army into powder.

That's how you deal with bullies. It works every time. r

Celie doesn't represent the Democrats, since the "Democrats" no longer represent the citizen Democrats. Celie represents the 99 percent, and Albert is the 1 percent, and as long as people keep seeing the Dem Party with a white hat, their ain't gonna be no justice in America. Pragmatic incrementalism of the Dem legacy party is bullshit. It is not walking the walk, but letting the Dem leaders keep talking the talk and cherrypicking titillating media talking points of lesser evilism but not really getting there to justice and humanitarianism and national empathy from here. I see your point, but I raise you to dissing the Dem Party as well as the Republican one! best, libby

Libby: I did that last year. But being practical, I'm gonna do what I can to defeat the worst of the two this year, then focus on the real problem at the core, Money! I understand what you are saying, but I also see what happens when we throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not willing to see what happens if the Republicans win in 2012. The very thought is absolutely horrifying. Democrats may be part of the problem in the bigger picture of corrupted politics, but as far as being bullies, that they are not.

I might add, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is much more pronounced this year, not because of Democrats moving nearer to their base, but because Republicans have jumped off the cliff with their lunatic fringe!

SM, thanks for the quick turnaround comment. But now who is tolerating the intolerable? When do we say a clean NO to amorality? Lesser of two evilism is a cover. The oligarchs are doing their worst NOW, procrastinating coalition building against the one percenters is a dire mistake. MSNBC media working on "gamesmanship" and painting the other guy as the dangerous ones so the other MONEY and craven Party will win by default. That is rigging the game. Yeah, the Republicans are incredibly scary, but how convenient to have them for re-framing the selling out by the Party in power. So called "pragmatism" lost us universal healthcare for the next generations if always. When are people of supposed conscience really gonna walk the walk for it? Evil is laziness to the nth degree. Supporting Obama and letting future generations deal with systemic evil of the United States ... tragic moral and social laziness. best, libby

ps. Picking up a tiny McDonald's plastic knife, and styrofoam torches and pitchforks, is supporting the Dem Party imho.

The movie turned out OK in the end. Celie didn't go to jail. Real change takes time. It's great to have such convictions, but what's the plan? An armed takeover of the US government? A military coup d'état? Is your knife also a plastic one from McDonald's?

Ha! A brilliant catch; true that! R

Great clip, great analogy and a wonderful way to make the point...thanks for this.

All blades metaphorical and no literal bloodshed desired, the analogy may fit. I like Libby's comment, however, that the Democrats are hardly to be considered (potential) heroes here. But someone with the nerve, the virtue, and the stomach could do great things to save our democracy.

Spirit, I love your posts!

Paul. Yes! The only potential heroes in this unfolding drama are the American people. I hope and pray they will wake up like Celie! I'm a big believer in curses when the cursed absolutely deserve it!

yes the color purple rules....
•.•♥╔╗╦╦╗▄║╔╗╔╗ & ╗╔╗╔╔╗╔╗•(¯ `v´¯ )◦•*✿
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•.•♥╚╝──╚╩╚╚╝╚╝ & ╝╚╚╝╚╝╚╝◦.(_.^._)•*¨✫
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I don't know. we can stall the inevitable but they own the fucking world, don't they.

they've installed a supreme court, a YOUNG supreme court and chief justice who will mindlessly rule in favor of corporate fascism so that they will continue to gobble up our constitution and the world.

and then shit it out.

nothing less than the people rising up and a revolution will change anything. I thought with the 99 movement we were seeing the beginnings of it. but I'm afraid I was mistaken. we cannot win because this movement, THEIR movement is coming at us in so many different, soul sucking ways, we think...oh we can fight them on women's contraception...but this means nothing, really.

in the big picture, women will continue having too many babies because there's no stopping the human race - we're at THAT point beyond zero population growth.

children mean poverty, mean cheap labor, mean disposable VERY cheap and renewable commodities.

(((((( the intolerable toleration of intolerance ))))))

This was also the subject of Dr. King’s controlled outrage in his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” which was essentially an indictment of religious moderates who remained silent in the face of what should outrage all decent people.

As Christopher Hitchens wrote in “Shock Value,” “There are a lot of things about the 60's that I don't miss. But, ... the one thing we seem to have lost is the ability to be shocked–morally shocked– by politicians. There has been a dulling effect of the nerve of outrage."