[ by Charles Cameron — NB: not claiming equivalency, simply documenting some provocative “compare and contrast” usage on Twitter ]
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Gun-toting Colorado teens pose for prom pics with Confederate flag as parents egg them on http://t.co/UXtCNOjGFi h/t @BenjaminNorton
— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015
just sayin'. pic.twitter.com/GLHLxPgmES
— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015
the wrong combination of flags and guns have a sneaky way of turning average people into violent bigots.
— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015
Ok, there are more parallels between these prom kids & jihadis, as @Bilalhb pointed out to me. Shahada finger! pic.twitter.com/Y40IMzYbBP
— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015
**
We had a similar “gun, book and flag” DoubleQuote a while back, though I haven’t been able to relocate it, and as I remember noticing then, there’s a sort of parallax effect that can come into play, whereby some people see a close similarity and not much diference while others see a huge difference and little or no similarity.
Here’s that earlier DoubleQuote:
If you want more details about the un/fairness of the comparison, NRO had a piece on it titled Holly Fisher: Public Enemy Number 310,345,204
As someone who is interested in juxtaposition both as a means of making points and of raising questions, I find this parallax effect of great interest. I suspect that a decent, insightful study might reveal a great deal about the mechanisms by which humans fissiparate into antagonistic groups.
Fissiparate? Okay, maybe not a word yet, but useful all the same.