Those lazy, hazy, crazy conspiracy theories of Summer are still with us and not just in the deep South. Majikthise gives us a clip of Glenn Beck, Fox News' designated madman, discussing the prospect of Americorps being a cover for President Obama's own private army - a kind of American SS if you will. Just the kind of zombie troops he will need to disarm the Armed Retards of Texas and deliver our country into the hands of Sauropods from Saturn. Just like FDR did with the WPA.
Obama has given the job training and public service agency "half a trillion dollars" to turn them into an elite fighting force to use against Americans, presumably after the Pentagon balks and Blackwater opts out. The Pentagon would be jealous of all that funding - if there was a particle of truth in this seditious crock of Glennbeckery.
Now don't get me wrong, I do not reject conspiracy theories out of hand. There certainly were some involved in bringing on Bush's Second War and a number of less violent ones involving raiding the public treasury, but I say that because there is credible evidence for it. There never is for Beck's ravings. In fact the idea seems to be that total absence of evidentiary support is not only proof of conjecture, but a large screen upon which to project the ideas he comes up with by sticking his head in a paper bag full of aromatic hydrocarbons. Never mind the proof of his dishonesty, the folks who have been backed into a corner don't care about evidence. The people who hired him care nothing at all whether their viewers are human or subhuman or anti-human as long as they tune in, turn on and freak out.
A really serious question: Outrageous people say outrageous things because they know it grabs media attention. Do we aid and abet the spread of these messages when we pay too much attention to fools and foolish talk? Glenn Beck may spew nonsensical delusions seven days a week. Shall we react every time the fool acts foolish?
ReplyDeletePerhaps fools lead us by the nose when we pay too much attention. Turn him off, tune him out, he becomes irrelevant. Do you really think this ignorant bozo is harbinger of the Blond Beast? When the court jester diverts our attention, we ignore would-be tyrants.
Let me clarify: The current office holders in Congress, the CEOs of mighty health insurance firms, and their attendant lobbyists on K Street. Case in point:
ReplyDelete“William McGuire of UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s leading insurer, was the third-highest paid CEO on the Forbes list. His pay of $124.8 million could cover the average health insurance premiums of nearly 34,000 people.
(…)
Full-time worker pay averaged just $32,594 That's 11 percent less than 1973's average worker pay of $36,629, adjusting for inflation, although worker productivity rose 78 percent between 1973 and 2004.
(…)
Looking at data for thousands of publicly traded companies, Bebchuk and Grinstein found that pay for the top five company executives rose from 4.8 percent of aggregate net company income during 1993-1995 to 10.3 percent of aggregate net income during 2001-2003.”
Two years ago, William McGuire of UnitedHealth Group received $1.7 Billion in executive compensation … roughly the health insurance premiums of 463,000 people. How is one man worth as much as 463,000 Les Miserables?
My point: The court jester, Glenn Beck, gets all this media attention while William McGuire hardly gets any attention at all.
Octopus, for goodness sake! Put all of this in a post!
ReplyDeleteI don't think we can say Beck would go away if we ignored him. I think history proves over and over again that hate and bigotry have to be confronted. His fan base is quite large enough that the withdrawal of people like us wouldn't matter anyway.
ReplyDeleteMore than just the danger of his rants corrupting democracy with disinformation, he is as likely as not to incite someone to violence, which he will then and successfully blame on his "enemies" and thus incite to more violence. He's dangerous.