ssion and slowly, most things are getting better. Half the TARP funds have been repaid at interest. No army has poured across our weakened borders into the arms of Obama, the flow of illegal aliens has diminished and deportations are up substantially despite all the howling. Obama isn't rounding up Republicans, we haven't turned the army over to the UN, and yes, his ratings although they've fallen since he was elected, are still better than Ronald Reagan's.Of course the predictions of recession that were denounced as treasonous by the right wing chorus during the previous administration did come true, the reasons for the most expensive war in our history were false and the benefit of the radical tax cuts not only failed to materialize but produced no new private sector jobs and earned us a 8 trillion dollar loss. But enough of that liberal America hating treason -- it's Obama's fault for bailing out US business, even though Bush asked for more money and less oversight. It's Obama's fault and the Mosque that isn't actually a Mosque located in what isn't the World Trade Crater in a neighborhood with a substantial Muslim population and where there's already a Mosque must be shown to belong to Barack Hussein Obama.
And why not? They're already snickering that he isn't Jesus Christ and if he were, I'm sure they'd make sure the analogy was perfect. It's Obama's Mosque and when that blows over, there will be some other idiotic calumny and on and on, while there continues to be nothing useful and nothing that hasn't been debunked or proven disastrous coming out of the racist right wing rabble of hare brained hooligans posing as patriots.
So now it's Obama's Mosque as if his predecessor hadn't spent far more time in them, praising (to his credit) Islam and Muslims as a religion of peace and peaceful people and good Americans. It's Obama's fault and they'll take back America: xenophobic, imperialist, feudal, monopolistic, theocratic, undereducated, over opinionated, 'we're number' one America where Beethoven is a dog, Michelangelo is a virus and a Mosque that isn't a Mosque is Obama's and a recession that isn't Obama's is.
Captain, if they let you broadcast from the boat, wearing your own clothes, would you consider having your own show on MSNBC?
ReplyDeleteCapt. Fogg and all,
ReplyDeleteI read (cursorily, I admit) one of those polls this morning that seem designed to ruin a damn liberal's day -- something like 20% of The American People believe "Obama is a Muslim." Many more aren't sure about that supposedly pressing, world-historical issue.
Such polls may be annoying, but they yield valuable information about the fragility of civilized society. For what it may be worth, if anything, here's my dino-extrapolation from the many polls of this sort I've come across:
15%-20% of the public are blinking, perpetual idiots: the very stuff from which fascist nightmare scenarios are woven: you can get them to believe -- and eventually DO -- just about anything if you frighten or otherwise motivate them strongly. They are ruled by primal fears and hostilities, and are therefore incapable of making intelligent inferences or decisions, no matter how much accurate information is available to them.
30%-40% of the public are in a mushy zone -- they're sane, mostly nice people but they don't pay attention and aren't very well informed (sometimes, to be fair, they are horribly busy just trying to get by). They could go either way when it comes to making wise decisions about the nation's character and future.
30%-40% of the public are both informed and sane, and educated enough to process information from a variety of sources so that they don't get suckered into becoming fodder for the woozel-politicians and paranoid groups lying in wait for the misinformed.
The numbers are obviously guesswork, but if you find them roughly acceptable, it's easy to see how we could end up in a worst-case scenario: if nearly all the blinking fools and the merely misinformed get together, you've got yourself a majority willing to cast a vote against their own best interests and bring down the Republic. That it hasn't happened yet (I mean in a way that results in "leaders" who decide no more elections need be held, thank you very much) is something of a miracle.
President Lincoln stated eloquently in the Gettysburg Address that democracy is a grand experiment, and implied that failure is always possible. Honest Abe was right, and our silly-serious polls, if nothing else, suggest as much.
At the moment, doesn't it seem as if we are almost equally divided into a nation of about 50% who are sane and appreciative of the fact that our current president is a native-born, protein-based life form who's doing his damnedest to keep us afloat, and about 50% who either "aren't sure/don't care" or outright think he's a Moozlum terrorist furrener and a vegan socialist sent by Lucifer himself to bring on the End of Days?
Hi Captn. I have a post up on my blog documenting everything Bush said as president in support and admiration of Muslims and Islam. I found all the relevant quotes on a Republican Muslim site.
ReplyDeleteYes. Bush said the most about Islam than any other president. But he's strangely silent now.
bloggindino, I thought I read on the "internets" that 40% of Americans polled believes Obama is a Muslim.
And even if he were, so what?
I'm really getting tired of waking up in the morning reading the sewer scrappings coming out of the GOP.
Although there are no studies to quantify what Bloggingdino is saying, I accept his points in conceptual terms; and his point has implications at election time.
ReplyDeleteOf all the democracies in the world today, ours has the lowest voter turnout of all ... perhaps in the range of 50 to 55% compared with voter turnouts of 80+ percent in other countries. The apathetic have a tendency to stay away from the polls; the angry and passionate are more likely to vote. Therein lies the difference ... and an explanation for the sheer idiocy of the public mood.
Inflaming the public gets out the vote. Recession, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Hispanic hysteria, Birthers, Deathers, socialism ... all these messages are calculated to bring out the angry bigots, the raging stupid, and the uninformed rabble. A sad fact: Tea baggers are more likely to vote in this election cycle than liberals who are feeling disenfranchised and apathetic.
The GOP knows how to demagogue; its called 'wedge politics' which throws 'red meat' at voters to incite them. They do this as a form of standard operating procedure. Sure, it is dirty and dishonest, and they have Fox News, plenty of corporate money, and the 1st amendment to protect their scams and advance their cause. Meanwhile, all we do is wring our hands ... and turn apathetic.
That is how demagogues turn former democracies into fascist regimes; and that is precisely what we will get if we don't vote this year.
Octo:
ReplyDeleteI think I remember reading for a poli sci course in the 60s that when voters are relatively satisfied turnout is low. Only when they are unhappy do their numbers increase. I'm not absolutely positive, since I had my mind on more important things in those days, but I believe it may have been Lipset's "Political Man."
"That is how demagogues turn former democracies into fascist regimes;"
ReplyDeleteIt's my perception that Democracies fail to the right, not the left. I think the righties share the perception and that's why they make up stories about Democracies drifting into Communism. I can't think of an instance where that's happened.
I think we had a serious flirtation with Facism in the 1930's and that it was our conflict with the Nazis that embarrassed us and made us stop listening to the Father Coughlins and the Lindbergs and take a new course that gave us a temporary loathing of racism - since faded.
Whenever I listen to Beck and the creeps who occasionally wander in here, I can't help thinking of the radio voice in Hotel Rwanda sneering about 'Cockroaches.'