It was long before digital photography and before it made it so easy for unscrupulous, devious, dishonest, America hating, indecent propagandists to produce photos of John Kerry and
Jane Fonda, for instance, or Barack Obama saluting improperly -- and do it far better than old Ivan in the back room could with a razor and some glue. It is far too easy for the kind of trolls who work for right wing rags owned by foreign born lunatics like the Washington Times to produce photos of Elena Kagan in a black Turban so as to insinuate perhaps, and without any sense of journalistic integrity, that she's a terrorist supporter as well as a probably homosexual cross dresser and part of an "ominous plot" to insinuate Sharia Law into this country.It's far too easy for an American public so insanely desperate, so grossly, childishly irresponsible that they will get into bed with the Moonies just to have one more idiotic piece of dung to fling at the opposition. It's so easy for a public who never reads to miss the parallels between what they do and what the people they claim to hate did. It's so easy for an infantile America to dismiss someone for having Communist cooties because they simply haven't the brains to do much more and certainly can't be expected to discuss her actual qualifications and record.
It's so hard for a person who likes to see people get their just desserts when those people are the country he so wishes to be proud of.
Suggested reading:
ReplyDelete—Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic— by Michael Scammell.
Fascinating portrait of a gifted writer and fierce intellectual who was seemingly everywhere worth being in the 20th century. Once he left the Party Koestler remained a fierce anti-communist leftist and was appalled at the fanatical, reactionary politics of Joe McCarthy. McCarthy remains the 'gift' that keeps on giving in American politics.
"I have here in my hand a list of 205 Commonists . . . " Yes, it's been the leitmotif of the last 60 years. Like Joe Hill, he never died.
ReplyDeleteOf course as big a douchebag as he was, he can't hold a candle to the more populist cork soakers like Beck.
We're addicted to this crap: this hate, fear and anthropoid xenophobia and we always will be until it finally destroys us.
Too bad more people don't follow the title to this song by Leon Hayward:
ReplyDeleteBelieve half of what you see and none of what you hear
It's too easy for people to just believe or follow and not research. We've become a lazy lot and easy prey for propaganda. Shame, shame.
Ben Franklin said it first, but then he didn't put it to music.
ReplyDeleteDescartes mumbled something about doubt being the indicator of thought.
Dubito ergo bibamus or something like that. . . and it's true since without doubt, one just believes whatever feels good to believe. Sad to say, that's what people do.
I've always liked this one:
ReplyDelete"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." ~Andre Gide
Around here, I believe its called Sheria's Law, appropriately named because she is our legal authority, and I think she deserves a seat on the Supreme Court along with the rest of us Zoners. Lets pack that court.
ReplyDeleteSheria's Law. Hoo-yah!
ReplyDelete