After listening to the self-contradictory, incoherent, quasi-literate and massively hate-packed rhetoric emanating from CPAC, where we were told that the concept of progress was a Marxist idea, that Progressives wanted to progress toward Communism. Liberals were the enemy of freedom and most insane of all: "Royalists" It's hard to hold on to any hope that what's left of the American Right retains even a rudimentary grasp on reality or any commitment to any ideal in any way related to Democracy and the Rights of Man. Taxes are Communism, protection of the rights of minorities is Communism, secular democracy is communism, but collusion between corporations and government isn't, as Mussolini Defined it, Fascism -- it's freedom.
A party that won a solid majority in a free election is an "insurgency." Teddy Roosevelt, his opponent Woodrow Wilson and Adam Smith are all Communists who tried to destroy us and Glenn Beck got what he calls a "free" education, not by attending any private school, but by using taxpayer funded, government owned resources at the public library. Yes those of us who have pushed through legislation that finally allowed women and minorities to vote or own property or live like free men and women are simultaneously Nazis, Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, Maoists, and yes -- Royalists. Those of us who think vast sums of corporate money are corrupting the system are any wildly preposterous political epithet that comes to mind, but also Communists, Marxists, Trotskyites and the kinky sex partners of the Taliban. That they're not calling non-Republicans Irridentists or Scrooby Separatists is only the result of their neglected education, but of course those things are only another form of Marxist Islamofascism and Trotskyite lesbo-Feminism with a bit of royalism thrown in for flavour.
"Protect our precious Medicare?" Well that's not communism even tough it and Social Security were until the country voted for health care reform. Why? because Obama is a Fascist follower of Pol Pot, trying to corrupt our youth and a Communist, Muslim, illegal alien, soft-on-terrorism, cannibal none the less - and because any hateful insanity must be true if it vilifies Obama - he's a Royalist.
No accusation is too ludicrous whether it contradicts all the other accusations or not. It' s not important to make sense or to tell the truth; it's only important to pump up the accusations, pump up the hate.
After listening to John Yoo describe a Republican justice department according to which, an American president like the one he served has more power than any European Monarch did in the age before Democracy, including the right to wage wars, internal and foreign, suspend civil rights, amend laws, refuse to obey laws, to lie, misrepresent and fabricate and to justify any action by Presidential fiat, it's hard to believe we're not simply listening to cross talk between parallel but vastly different universes. Is it legal for the President to order that the testicles of an innocent child be crushed to make his parent talk? But of course says Professor Yoo! Do as the President says shall be the law -- but we're Royalists all the same.
It's not so much that the Republicans seem to have defined conservative values as Marxist and indeed almost everything including evil itself as its opposite, they're inventing their own paranoid psychotic reality permeated by gibbering, drooling and incoherent rage, it's that we're not in open revolt against them; that they have a huge, armed and vastly wealthy base of support.
And we just sit and listen.
And Beck went on to quote "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus as if he had thought that one up himself - no credit or acknowledgement given the original author.
ReplyDeletePredictable performance...
I have nothing to add- I just wanted to say that this is a really excellent post.
ReplyDelete(stands up and cheers) Hear!! Hear!!
ReplyDeleteThanks - I thought it might be too much of a rant, but I've been watching the Republican on TV since the 1952 convention and I've never heard anything like this attack on the United States and all I ever thought it stood for.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny too, that criticizing Bush, even mildly was tantamount to treason because it "emboldened the enemy" but this volcano of vomit is patriotic?
They're not human, these people.
Good point Cap, about holding the left as treasonous for criticizing Bush but now it's patriotic. I've thought but I don't think we can remind people enough of their hypocrisy.
ReplyDeleteWell put, Captain.
ReplyDeleteFor me, watching this revival circus of fundamentalist conservatism is an accelerated lesson in the American culture -- and one I could do without, I admit. I had no idea this level of psychopathic-like hatred and ignorance existed in such a large segment of American society. Yes, I am surprised -- shocked, really, though perhaps I shouldn't be. It is a logical consequence of several uniquely American phenomena -- the US is a relatively isolated nation, built largely through force and oppression by assorted rebels and troublemakers (aka pioneers), who propagated their "pioneering" genes along with their misguided and grandiose beliefs in their exceptionalism onto subsequent generations. While doing so, they have managed to ignore or dismiss the reality of human existence, which is made possible (and livable) only through employing empathy and cooperation, and, dare I say, love and care. And justice.
The uniquely American myth of self-made man, and the unfettered, rabid capitalism it spawned, is a prime example of this misguided ideology that continues to wreak havoc on our society. It's time to put it to rest, I'd say -- we have so much sordid evidence all around us of its toxic effects on our lives. Unfortunately, the myth is alive and thriving in the Beckland and vicinity, despite its harmful influences. It will take generations, better educated and traveled, I suspect, to finally weed it out.
BTW, I recently watched an interview with David Cameron, a leader of the British conservative party, widely considered a rabid right-winger among his natives. I watched and listened -- and waited for the punchline, which didn't come. This British "rabid right-winger" sounded more progressive than many so-called progressive Dems in the US: he extolled his love for and undying committment to NHS and went on at length about securing equal educational opportunities for all, among other things. I still don't understand where his "rabid right-wingism" is hiding. I wish American conservatives were as humane.
While on the subject, see Beck's Brutal Vision of the Perfect Society by Mike Lux.
Check out also the left vs. right chart I posted on my blog (nothing new there, but interesting still, I think).
An interesting chart and I'm struck by the "survival of the fittest" trope which of course is the rock upon which social Darwinism is built, even though Charles Darwin never used those words and his concept of evolution was never meant to be a prescription, but a description.
ReplyDeleteEugenics, forced sterilization and extermination camps are the worst manifestation, but the mildest form: "let them die and decrease the surplus population" is what it's really about. Every man for himself, dog eat dog, Lex talonis is a bonus -- and no matter how we natter about Christmas and conservative old Scrooge, that's what we're about, that's their secret dream: a post apocalyptic world where God, guns and lotsa cheap gasoline keep America great for Mel Gibson and road ragin' supermen who survive.
And they call us Nazis?
Elizabeth...I agree with everything you said. I think the whole, Horatio Alger, "American Dream" never existed except amongst a few and was propaganda to get Americans to buy into hyper-capitalism.
ReplyDeleteIt bred this idea in Americans that everyone has the same shot at success, that everyone has the same opportunities and advantages.
I believe this is what bred this rampant selfishness because people honestly think that everyone has the same potential. I often state that the saying, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" only works if you have boots or feet.
We've brainwashed over-selves into believing it to, in part, assuage our guilt over screwing the lower class in pursuit of the "dream." In order for one person's dream to come true...someone else has to endure a nightmare. That's the story behind the "American Dream" that they never tell you in school.
The "American Dream" was supposed to be the equalizer but tell African-Americans didn't have a chance. Nor did women for many, many years and still they don't get equal pay. Same with African-Americans. And Native Americans didn't even get to LIVE let alone prosper.
A lot of the successes supposedly granted by the "American Dream" were in effect more about your prior position in a successful family, race or sex. Indeed, for many the "American Dream" has been more of a nightmare.
Yes, that sort of rhetoric opens the way towards an unfettered workout for the febrile, crazed imaginations of untutored and frightened people.
ReplyDeleteI read some silly book years ago suggesting that a body could find all sorts of lurid messages in seemingly innocuous advertising images -- a picture of an iced drink, for instance, might just be insinuating in the interstices of the cubes some pornographic or even satanic message, etc. Same impulse: everything means anything you want it to, based on your presuppositions, desires, and anxieties. So much for "the ethics of reading," as a prominent literary theorist once put our responsibility to attend carefully to a given text. It is one thing to recognize the "relative" dimension of meaning, and quite another to promote it contradictorily in the name of Absolute and Simple Truth, as these hacks and village yokels do.
If Jesus himself walked into the Congress and told the Republicans were full of shit, the Republicans would deny it was Jesus and claim it was Ed Schultz.
ReplyDeleteHandsomeB, absolutely.
ReplyDeleteIf there is any consolation, it is the fact that the myths of American dream, self-made man, and (I hope) fake glory of the unbridled capitalism are on their way to a dust bin of history. This is, IMO, at least one reason behind the sudden revival of the crazies -- i.e., Glenn Beck and his ilk. These folks feel that their cherished delusions are slipping away (thus their calls to "get my country baack!") and they are frightened out of their minds (some literally, as we can see).
But there is no way of stopping social progress, no matter how hard the reactionaries may try. We know that social systems based on injustice and gross inequalities are doomed to fail sooner or later, taking with them their discredited and inhumane ideologies.
We are evolving and people like Beck&Co. are scared shirtless (yes:) of this change -- they are even able to say so directly, bless their small hearts and overheated minds. Granted, Americans take longer than others to make this journey out of the dark ages, but they do make it nevertheless.
I look at the younger generations and see that they are more egalitarian, more open and eager to learn, hungry for meaningful lives based on genuine, higher values such as honesty, empathy, justice and cooperation. They have seen what the old order has done to their parents (or what their parents did with it -- or both) and they don't want that for themselves. They are more idealistic, but at the same time more sophisticated, better educated and informed, and able to transcend various cultural and other limitations that bound their elders (this thanks, in no small measure, to being more in-step with progress in informational technology).
I think that we are witnessing the last -- and because of that so violent -- paroxysms of a dying ideology, may it rest in peace (and sooner than later, let's hope). I'd even say that American society is undergoing positive disintegration on a massive scale. So I am hopeful, strange as it may sound (and unusual for me personally :).
Dino: "all sorts of lurid messages in seemingly innocuous advertising images"
ReplyDeleteThere's an old joke. A psychiatrist is giving a Rorschach test and one by one the subject call out what he sees: "It's a penis. It's two people having sex. It's a sex orgy"
"Mr. Jones, I think you may have a problem" says the shrink. "Who, me?" says Jones "You're the one with all the pornography."
You may be right Elizabeth. The idealism of my generation was undermined by training the subsequent one to be Republicans while we were thinking we were making progress. I think there is a more progressive generation coming up, even if they are rabid and hedonistic consumerdriods and I hope there's not another backlash coming after them.