I must disagree with Bill Maher that Rick Santorum thinks of gay sex more than a dildo salesman but only because Rick Santorum doesn't actually think, unless one defines that word very loosely. He doesn't remember things too well either and I say that in all generosity since one might interpret the things he says he remembers as outright lies. They aren't even up to date lies or original lies or good lies, yet there are always enough misinformed, low intelligence dung flingers in fatuously faith based America to believe them and make this country seem like the primate house at the world's largest zoo.
Take Santorum's tired repetition of John McCain's 2001 attempt to sell the embarrassingly ridiculous notion that President Obama wants to redistribute the nation's wealth in some Socialistic way, a bit like Jed Clampett arriving at the Royal Wedding in his beat up old truck. Coming from a Republican, whose party has engineered what might be one of the largest upward redistribution of wealth, that's already laughable but Mr. Rick seems to be the last man standing who is still driving that rusty jalopy -- the idea that Our president, beset by critics calling him a corporate whore and a sell-out to Wall Street is a radical socialist and perhaps a communist to boot. What Santorum claims to remember is that Obama supported a constitutional amendment to give your money to the poor ( read black people) when what the president really said in a 2001 interview was that the
"Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution. . .”Essential constraints -- it sounds very little like a man who is deploring those constraints. Indeed when Obama said the court had limited itself to insuring that he could eat at a lunch counter as long as he could afford to pay for his lunch, only a stupid man who thinks other people are even more stupid would interpret, or should I say twist, this as a quote from the Communist Manifesto.
said Obama spokesman Bill Burton during the 2008 campaign. Certainly no development since then has given credibility to McCain's sad attempt or justification for Santorum's calumnies.
"In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of ‘redistributing’ wealth. Obama’s point — and what he called a tragedy — was that legal victories in the civil rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country."
I'm finding it difficult, even without the waves of nausea and loathing, to accept that any candidate could have got as far as Santorum has without being laughed out of town as a cheap, incompetent liar and unscrupulous scoundrel. I can only blame the media ringmasters who continue to provide this charlatan with his own ring in this sad and tawdry circus we call a campaign. Have we forgotten that the purpose of news reporting is to sort truth from rumor, slander and lies? Perhaps we have and it's certainly been a long time since the news was anything but a way for big news corporations and their sponsors to make money. Perhaps we should stop making them richer by occupying Wall Street and start occupying CNN and Fox and the rest instead.
Well argued, Captain. The president recognizes the limitations of what our courts can do while many conservatives continue to decry "activist courts." Basically, the courts only declare that local, state, and federal government adheres to the provisions of the Constitution that the Right claims to worship.
ReplyDeleteSCOTUS didn't invent new law in its actions on behalf of civil rights. All it did was take a look at the Constitution and determine that the provisions regarding equal rights meant exactly what they said.
The courts that have heard cases on gay marriage have come to the same conclusion; equal rights under the law means that the law can't discriminate by denying gay people the same rights that straight people have including the right to marry another consenting adult.
There's nothing socialist about civil rights and civil liberties; they are as American as apple pie. However, the fixation that the Right has on denying civil rights to some on a selective basis certainly smacks of old fashioned communism where the government controls all aspects of life. I hereby declare Rick Santorum to be a communist.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteFine post. I don't know -- I really do get the sense that Santorum is obsessed with regulating other people's sexual conduct. Does he ever talk about anything else for more than five minutes at a stretch, especially with such gusto? Hath not the Lord appointed him to be a scourge and a stumbling block unto the unbelievers and the sodomites?
And yes, unrestricted sham objectivity is king in today's journalism. The GOP isn't doing a great job of marginalizing its own whack jobs, and the Lords of Infotainment certainly aren't going to do it for them. A political candidate could ascend the podium and claim the earth is flat, and still command attention afterwards.
Almost nothing that the Republicans say about Barack Obama is grounded in reality or even in any tolerable approximation of reality. In their bottomless desire to pander to the vicious, childish base of their own party, a gaggle of wealthy, well-dressed office-seekers seem to have managed to forget that it is dishonorable to peddle fantasmagorical lies about their opponents. Obama is an intelligent, middle-of-the-road kind of president who might reasonably be chided for being TOO much of an a priori realist about his political agenda, if one is minded to be critical. To call him a "socialist" and suchlike terms is deeply dishonorable on the part of those who know better, and shamefully ignorant for those who don't.
All that said, I think Mitt Romney is going to coast to the nomination from this point forwards. The case against him in the general election should be straightforward:
1. You can't believe a damned thing he says. It's usually a joke when we say that somebody has been on all sides of every issue, but in Romney's case, it's almost literally true. If his shifting viewpoints aren't shameless pandering, there quite simply is no such thing as shameless pandering.
2. The kind of capitalism this guy has practiced suggests his vision for the country. It is not an uplifting or pretty one, and few people sympathize with it. This is straight out of Rove's playbook: turn the man's alleged strength ("I'm a job-creator," blah blah blah) into a weakness. So the Democrats don't like him for his ruthless business background, and Republicans don't like him because he was a moderate governor in a very liberal state. Does that sound like a winning combo to carry into a general election? Sure doesn't to me!
"Does he ever talk about anything else for more than five minutes at a stretch, especially with such gusto?"
ReplyDeleteDon't kid yourself. I "treated" myself today to a visit to a Santorum appearance here in South Carolina I even had a chance to talk to him for a couple of minutes. This guy is incredibly slick, and one of the best public speakers I have ever seen. He didn't say one word about gay people or any of the hot-button issues that we on the left associate with him. He radiated authenticity in a manner that reminded me of that old New York talk show host who once said "sincerity is everything- once you learn to fake that, you've got it made." Given that Romney seems to have dedicated himself to playing out his role as a corporate vulture, the Santorum that I saw today could easily win more moderate voters than Romney.
Of course it is all a lie, like any Republican, but it's a very well-told lie.
"Perhaps we have and it's certainly been a long time since the news was anything but a way for big news corporations and their sponsors to make money. Perhaps we should stop making them richer by occupying Wall Street and start occupying CNN and Fox and the rest instead."
ReplyDeleteWell said Capt.!
While I admit to believing that President Obama was a "socialist" in 2008 I've come to the understanding he is, when all is said and done, no more or no less a "socialist" than many who preceded him.
Sheria - Well stated. The only thing I may differ with you on is your declaration that Santorum is a communist. I do believe he most closely fits the definition of a fascist rather than a communist.
ReplyDeleteLOL! RN, you may have a point. I think that the distinction between Fascism and Communism is a blurred one.
ReplyDeleteI think that distinction seems blurry because no one seems to want to talk about plain old authoritarianism, which is an independent 'virtue' that can attach itself to all sorts of doctrines even to the point of absurdity and self contradiction. We see people trying, as the Fascists did, to enforce natural selection when nature doesn't and as the Communists have done in trying to enforce what they sell as a historical inevitability. It's the authoritarianism in Communism and Fascism that make them smell alike although it's not implicit or necessary in either one. Marx, after all, envisioned free elections and Mussolini streamlined and simplified government.
ReplyDeleteThese days, we have ideas billed as liberal that none the less involve draconian authority and of course likewise with what the nominal conservatives see as the need to rigidly enforce what they call "natural law." That's why they can use chimerical terms like Liberal Fascist without choking on the ironic absurdity.
So although it's a grand irony indeed to call the Rickster a Commie -- and he deserves that kind of thing -- what he really is is a dogmatic ecclesiastical authoritarian in libertarian clothing, just like the greasy gamut of Republican pretenders to the kind of power they publicly swear a president shouldn't have.
The blurriness is there, as it is in the movies, to make the aging ingenue seem fresh and if I may lean on Orwell; "in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. . . Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." The blurrier, the better and the harder for the middle-brow masses to see the inherent flaws.
Tutti,
ReplyDeleteThe Italian "fascisti" took some of their intellectual background from the socialists in Europe and of course Hitler (to borrow a line from Green Eagle) learned to fake sincerity with his pseudo-leftist claptrap about hating decadent capitalists and wanting to plop two chickens into every German's stewpot, but what he really meant by "decadent capitalists" was Jews, which soon became lamentably apparent. The fascists thoroughly rejected socialism and leftist ideology even as the worst of them left the term "socialist" right in their party's name.
I think what fascism means -- and let's face it, it's an economic model with which modern big-State democracies have something in common -- is an unholy collusion between a powerful, symbol-wielding State (Mussolini's revival of imperial Roman motifs and dreams, Hitler's Germanic neo-Paganism and weirdly orchestrated torchlight rallies, etc.) and the larger concentrations of capital (huge corporate entities that we call "Big This" and "Big That"). Hitler in particular didn't mind the industrialists making money, but he wanted to make sure they made money doing something that benefited him and the Nazi regime's power objectives. He didn't reject the profit motive, etc. as the communists did.
Anyway, no doubt there's a link between these otherwise very different movements and ideologies in their anti-humanistic propensities (which is awful because Marx himself denounced the sheer inhumaneness of capitalist practice and thought) -- in short, they efface human dignity and both have been guilty of mass murder on an almost unimaginable scale. I suppose that's what allowed Orwell to leave it indeterminate whether Oceania's "Big Brother" was coming at us as a fascist or a commie.
Green Eagle,
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense to me that my own saurus-perception of Rick Santorum (like that of lots of humans) is in part an artifact of media presentation, which tilts towards the nuttier stuff the fellow has said over the years: on that basis, he comes across as "Ole Man-on-Dog."
I'm sure that at his rallies, he talks a lot of economic populism and makes a pretty good go of it with that tactic. I don't suppose he's lacking in a certain linguistic facility and quickness of mind and that he has a grasp of some of the basics about econ-issues -- that's partly what makes a good impromptu speaker.
But the larger media-driven presentation of him is legitimate in its way: the former senator has richly earned an unflattering presentation, I'd say. When a person makes the kind of outlandish remarks he's been known to make, there's a price to be paid, and it often comes in the form of plausible caricature. A good caricature is based on something true.
Dino,
DeleteListen, I agree that Santorum is as corrupt and irrational as any of the Republicans- to my mind he is nothing but Michelle Bachmann in a suit. But still, I was very impressed with the way he presents himself, as phony and hollow as that presentation is. If you have a chance, see for yourself. I think he would be a stronger Republican candidate than Romney, despite the fact that you and I know that turning the country over to him would be a colossal disaster.
Green Eagle,
ReplyDeleteThat could be. Romney has the "next in line" thing going for him by now, though, and the establishment types are lining up behind him in fear of the other candidates. There's an interesting "strong opinion" entry about Mitt Romney's basic appeal entitled "What's Race Got to Do with It?" in the NY Times' 2012 campaign blog. The author doesn't at all suggest that MR is a racist (I don't think he is either), but his point is that the man is very, very, very VERY WHITE and that he talks about an Ozzie-and-Harriet America that isn't just a point of departure but rather sounds like something substantive, a real place and time "we" could go back to. I don't know. But it's an interesting take, anyhow.
Ah, Santorum. The last thing he wants is for gay marriage to be repealed and abortion made illegal. Because if that happened, Santorum would have no way to continue to make his millions.
ReplyDeleteAnd, by the way, folks, let's go to Merriam-Webster for a second, shall we?
Fascism: n a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Huh. Rampant nationalism, bizarre immigration theories, forcible suppression of opposition... isn't this the GOP platform?
Nameless,
ReplyDeleteYep, there's an affinity there. The denotative meaning is good, but impossible to fit into it, I think, is the sheer degree of self-conscious fabrication involved in the original promotion of fascism, both of the Italian and the German stamp: exalting nation and race is nasty enough if done in earnest, but when we add ruthless, almost "modernist" manipulation of these items into the mix, the real wickedness of fascist ideology becomes more and more apparent. Jacob Burckhardt's earlier analysis of "the state as a work of art" sounds adaptable to the analysis of fascism.