The Unholy Trinity: Beck, O'Donnell, and Palin

A fellow blogger who goes by the handle of Capt. Fogg inspired what began as a comment on his post, Masters of Mendacity, but grew into a post of my own. The Captain's post adroitly dissects the fallacies at the heart of the ongoing proclamations by Palin, O'Donnell, and Beck that feed the clamor from the Tea Party of, "We want our country back." The basic reasoning appears to follow the lines of, "America is a Christian nation, founded by God or at the very least endorsed by God and it (America) must be saved from liberals." One of Palin's latest proclamations is that  that the Constitution tells us that our "Unalienable rights" come from God. Christine O'Donnell has declared that the Constitution isn't merely a legal document but a covenant based on divine principles. Glenn Beck appears to have anointed the Constitution to be his Gospel, and himself as the Second Coming.

They aren't just liars, they are flat out wrong. There is no mention of God or unalienable rights in the Constitution; perhaps Palin, et.al. have confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence. That document states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

What fascinates me about the language regarding unalienable rights is that Jefferson's concerns weren't about worshipping a particular God but about declaring that there were rights inherent to being human that could not be usurped and that the purpose of government was to protect those rights as opposed to curtailing them or taking them away. I think that his use of the term Creator reflected the broader concept that such rights were natural rights, innate rights that were not given but existed without being conferred or bestowed by any government.
Beck, Palin etc. have chosen to harp on this language as proof that this is a Christian nation. Based on the varied writings of Jefferson, Madison and others, I'm of the opinon that the furtherest thing from their intent was founding a Christian nation. I think that a modern debate on this matter fails to understand the worldview of the founders. These men were readers of Locke, Rousseau,Hobbes, and Aristotle. They struggled with the philosophical concepts of who are we and what is our purpose, not some fight over whose God was better. They actually thought about the purpose of government and concluded that it was to serve the people and that the power of the government came from the consent given by the governed.

It was a revolutionary idea, Certainly the English Monarchy didn't recognize its power as coming from the people but viewed its power as God given and superior to the will of the people. The Declaration took that philosophy on with its bold proclamation about unalienable rights endowed by the Creator. It was an assertion against the then ruling idea that the government decided which rights to grant the people and which ones to deny them. It wasn't a proclamation supporting Christianity but a declaration against tyranny.

As for attributing such language to the Constitution, it just raffirms my belief that most of the people shouting about the Constitution as being a covenant based on divine principles have never read the document with even a modicum of comprehension. The Constitution is a secular document that establishes the practices and laws governing the operation of the government. The Preamble states the purpose of the Constitution clearly and succinctly: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (There are many sites on the Net with info on the Preamble and the rest of the Constitution. I cited to Wikipedia here because it was the best of about a dozen sites that I checked. Up to date, and fully documented.)

Citing the United States Constitution as a religious text makes about as much sense as declaring that my telephone book contains the secrets of the universe.

Masters of mendacity

Sarah Palin says that the Constitution tells us that our "Unalienable rights" come from God. They don't, nor does the Biblical God deviate from the endless list of things he'll incinerate you for long enough to get into life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Ask the Amorites. We're commanded to kill their children or be destroyed by old God-O-love. Ask Job. "Shut up or I'll kill you along with your wife and kids" is far more typical. Freedom to worship or not worship your own gods after your own custom? Freedom to choose your own government? Fughettaboutit. That the authority of Government comes from God and not from the governed is as antithetical to our constitution as an electron is to a positron and as Palin is to Jefferson.

But it's more than just stupidity on her part. It's more than ignorance. It's more than the will to power and the lack of conscience that might prevent a better person from playing upon the passions of the ignorant rabble who listen to her, it's a slap in the face to those who after mankind's long struggle with God appointed kings and heresy trials, the persecution of variant religions, divinely justified genocide and slavery, managed to found a government free of the notion that only God or his self appointed agents can found a legitimate government. Far from being behind the 1789 Constitution, religious conservatives who hadn't already fled to Canada and the Bahamas or back to England, opposed it for Biblical reasons. To oppose George III, rex Dei gratia, was to oppose the will of God and the Bible is the source of that idea, not the enlightenment philosophers of the era.

Sharon Angle says the constitution isn't even about government. "Government isn't what our founding fathers put into the constitution" she says. dumb questions are hardest to answer and dumb assertions of this magnitude are virtually unassailable and those who make them are ineducable, so why try?

But if it's a race for the Master of Mendacity degree, Glenn Beck is ahead of the pack. Commies like Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson separated us from our history -- were trying "to separate us from our Constitution and God" he tells us -- hoping, I suppose that putting the words next to each other will generate the illusion that a document banning state recognition of religious institutions is somehow the product of religious belief. Are we trying to separate anyone from the law, by interpreting it as supporting freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the freedom to protest and petition and discuss? Are we trying to invent a new history by reading the source documents? Are we trying to separate Beck from whatever bizarre religious beliefs he has or from the magic underwear he wears? Only in his paranoid fantasies.

We're trying to keep him and his cronies and his bronze age taboos out of our religious lives, which although that may be a slap in the face to his imagined God, it's what mine approves of. It's hard to know whether such conniving, power seeking serpents truly believe the apple they offer us is good to eat, but the audience of both these creatures is uneducated, opinionated and as chock full O' nuts as a New York coffee shop. What they don't know is dangerous. What they think they know is calamitous.

What the constitution is about, what it says, what it was meant to accomplish and what the motivations for it were is not a mystery. It's meant to be flexible; to be able to change to suit changing times, but none of the claims made by the dime store revolutionaries in tricorn hats are remotely true. Their concept of freedom resembles the tyranny Jefferson was so passionate to oppose. Their concept of history is a mythology written by enemies of freedom.

Land of the free and the home of the...bully

Is the United States of America going to hell in a hand basket? Have we strayed from the ideals and values which made this country what we like to think it is today: a beacon shining brightly illuminating a world otherwise cold, dark and fearsome? I can't really say. I'll leave discerning the nuance of the zeitgeist to the professionals. I only know about tectonic shifts in our culture and body politic long after they've taken place. But I know for certain that we each of us chooses how we behave and we decide each and every day, multiple times, how we treat one another.

I live in Seattle. Downtown Seattle to be precise, literally across the street from my place of business. My wife is a practicing architect and painter who maintains a studio/office a few blocks from our, yes it's true, loft. We are likely picture postcard worthy examples of Seattle urban liberalism. No car. No kids. Bicycles. Public transit. Enthusiastic recyclers. Avid farmers market habitues. Active in local politics and not-for profit board work and wired into the local music, literary and fine arts communities. Worse yet. But unknown to most, both of us have some background in leftist politics including (but not limited to) collective book stores, cutting sugar in Cuba and various 'do-gooder' experiences working in orphanages in India and Mexico, homeless shelters and soup kitchens. You know the type. Live and let live. Go to work. Pay your taxes.

In other words, irredeemable Stalinist/collectivist/Maoist/tree hugging/weak willed/over-feminized/secular parasites poorly equipped to deal with that great cultural phenomenon growing larger and more powerful day by day.

Real Americans.

My wife visited the Virginia Mason Medical Center first thing yesterday morning for a bit of blood work. Of course before drawing blood medical types prefer the patient fast for twelve hours. And that works better for some than others. Seems a few of us need our morning coffee and toast more than most. Blood sugar levels have behavioral effects. At least I'd like to think so. Cock-eyed optimist I am I'd hate to think some of my fellow citizens are merely assholes.

Sitting quietly in the lab waiting area along with a few others waiting their names called for various procedures, "M" (my spouse), was taking that all too rare opportunity to catch up with People magazine when the scene, shall we say, shifted.

The concept of a man and his cellphone like a man and his car like a man and his gun like a man and his castle is sacrosanct. It's the American way.

So into this quiet waiting room enters seating themselves next to M enter a man and his wife. And his cellphone. The man is a building contractor and one of his jobs (apparently he's a successful building contractor as it almost immediately established there are multiple jobs) has problems. This is shared at rather high volume with the others sitting in the lab waiting area as the man immediately embarks on a series of calls checking up on his minions in the field.

"What do you mean we can't access the site until Tuesday? Assholes! I can drive my truck onto the motherfucker right now if I want"!

"Fuck no. We're done when I say we're done"!

Really. These are a couple of the highlights as reported by M.

Naturally this behavior attracted looks from the folks in the waiting room. They were of course intrigued by this display of one of the newer theories in physics, that is, the center of the universe is not a fixed point but rather a series of points in constant motion depending on where this contractor happens to be at any given moment in time. Multiply this by some as yet incalculable factor as the contractor is not the only agent acting in this manner and one quickly sees the enormity of the problem

M is tough. While she is likely the friendliest person I know who (she likes to make one new friend of a stranger at every social event she attends) nonetheless is not shy about speaking her mind. She, like me, is also a bit of a stickler when it comes to manners and behavior in public places. Call her old-fashioned (or worse as it turns out) but talking loudly on the cellphone in public really is...rude.

So M politely asked Mr. Contractor to please take his conversation outside.

"Mind your own fucking business, bitch!" Now I appreciate as well as the next business person that in today's work harder to earn less cutthroat economic environment one is under a lot of pressure. Still his response strikes me as a bit extreme.

Things got worse. M turned in her seat to pick up her belongings in order to leave when the guy smacked her upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper. His wife got up out of her chair and moved in as well. Standing by your man is a character trait of this breed.

In the nick of time a security guard arrived. Within seconds backup appeared and everyone from the lab had come out to the waiting room to see what the hubbub was. The security guys separated Mr. Contractor and his frau from M and began the task of sorting the mess out. Not leaving well enough alone Mr. Contractor started in on the security guy.

"I'm an American and this still is a free country. And I have a right to use my cellphone. Jesus I hate having to come into Seattle and put up with this shit."

The security guy informed the constitutional law expert that he could switch off the phone and tone things down right then and there or he could leave the hospital property under escort. He then asked M if she wished to press charges.

Of course the answer to that question was no (rats!). The situation defused, folks settled in with their books and newspapers and the volume decreased dramatically. M went in and had her blood drawn and all seemed once again right with the world.

After, M, having fasted for going on fourteen hours went downstairs to the clinic cafe for coffee and a muffin. Sadly, Mr. Contractor and his wife soon appeared in the near empty cafe. They choose a table immediately next to where M was having her breakfast and seated themselves, Mr. Contractor extracted his mobile from a pocket and punched in a number.

I'm just sayin'

I know a country that one would think was a Capitalist paradise. No income taxes. No property taxes. A weak central government. Restrictive, nativist, immigration policies that effectively keep minorities from working legally or getting citizenship. There's a "Christian Values" clause in the constitution. Banking regulation is extremely lax.

It's the Bahamas and it's a third world country. Most of the nation's wealth is owned by a small handful of people and the obligatory multinational corporations. Nothing trickles down but the rain and there's little of that in the dry season. There's not as much reason to invest when it can just sit there and accumulate tax free. The basics like food, water and shelter are quite expensive, unemployment is tremendous.

I'm just sayin'. . .

But of course they do have a certain level of government backed health insurance for those who aren't privately insured and a Social Security like program, so that must be why they're an underdeveloped and poverty stricken country, right? I knew I'd find a reason.

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE CALLS FOR VIOLENT INSURRECTION

The biggest problam facing America today. .

. . . is pornography. Well at least it has been according to orators at several Republican national conventions in recent memory. It's possible that such things are motivated by a Christian analogue of another right wing obsession: Sharia law, and it's possible that it was a smokescreen to divert attention from other core policies like borrowing on the promise of self funding tax cuts. One thing is clear, Politicians tend to be a randy lot, but Conservative males love porn the way they love money and women: they want it all for themselves.

Remember Ken Starr who wanted to make it a crime to use the word "breast" on the Internet but spent millions and wrote endless words, even on the Internet, about Bill Clinton's penis, Monica Lewinsky's cigar and related subjects? Yes, I know, Democrats like porn too and cheat on their wives and are hypocrites and all that as I'm sure someone will assure me to obscure the fact that they haven't been on a moral crusade for those nebulous but normative "family values" for decades. I've had all the contrived and deceptive equivalences I need for now, thank you.

Which brings me to Clarance Thomas. It was the equivalent of a lynching, said he when accusations were leveled by another conservative that he'd offered her a Coke with pubic hair on it, even though she had little reason to lie and had complained to the FBI only in private. Anita Hill was branded a Liberal, although she wasn't and isn't, in a fashion far more evocative of a lynching than the sworn testimony against Justice Thomas. It seems now that Lillian McEwen, a former girlfriend of the distinguished Justice says he was "obsessed with porn," and often made inappropriate sexual comments about and unwanted advances toward women in his office and she's kept quiet until now. She confirms, for instance, that he asked women about their breast size when at work.

McEwan was, in fact, given as a character witness by Thomas, to show that he had a regular relationship and wasn't the rude, sex-obsessed, predatory little creep he was alleged to be by more than one accuser. Too bad she wasn't called to testify under oath because, as we read in the Washington Post: in her soon to be published memoir, she confirms our suspicions.

Perhaps it was knowledge that the book contained such damning information that prompted his wife's odd early morning call to Anita Hill, but I don't think she need fear that he'll lose his job or reputation when the accusation of LIBERAL still carries the power that the accusation of WITCH used to have in centuries past. We're stuck with an overgrown adolescent and liar on the highest court. We may all have his pubic hair in all the wrong places and we don't have a hell of a lot of choice but to drink from the can.

Kristian Kraziness In Karolina

This has been pretty much a local event which most of us are used to here in the Bible Belt so I haven't paid it too much mind until I read about it HERE on Yahoo news and realized, like the nutjob in Florida, we have gone national.

Since it has hit a national audience, I guess it is time to comment. The city of King is located outside the city of Winston Salem, NC. Neither city is that large but they are both bustling little communities. They are also the kind of towns where you'll find supporters of God, Country and Glen Beck in abundance.

The little town of King has a public war memorial where names are engraved and flags fly. Not long ago a veteran noticed the so-called "Christian Flag" flying at the memorial and he complained about it to the ACLU. This brave man who fought for his country thought the local government should uphold and honor the First Amendment separating church from state. The city, when faced with a lawsuit they would most assuredly lose, took the flag down.

And then the firestorm began as the Kristian Krazies came out of the woodwork spouting off about losing their religious freedoms (although I haven't seen one church shut down or one church event cancelled) and their constitutional freedoms (ironic isn't it that they wish to quell the very Amendment which gives them the right to annoy the rest of us).

So now they are camping out at the site, flying their flag on a wooden pole and having a regular party out there. At least they're all in one place where the law can keep an eye on them.

I need an alternative universe...

THE NEW JIM CROW: PROJECTION, PROPAGANDA, AND ACCUSATIONS OF VOTER FRAUD

Projection is a standard propaganda technique: Accuse your opponents of misdeeds (the ones you are doing but not your opponents); accuse your opponents first to catch them off guard; and repeat your accusation in public enough times to imprint the message and give yourself political cover. It is the SOP of the GOP raised to a fine art and reiterated during every election cycle: Accuse the Democrats of voter fraud (as you fraudulently and illegally disenfranchise minority voters who are most likely to vote for Democrats).

Dick Armey is the master manipulator of projection and propaganda:



As Talking Points Memo explains:

Appearing on Fox News this afternoon, he told Neil Cavuto that Democrats vote early because there's "less ballot security," creating a "great opportunity" for fraud. He also claimed that such fraudulent early voting is "pinpointed to the major urban areas. The inner city."

Republicans and others on the right, as we've reported extensively, often make high-pitched claims of Democrat-operated voter fraud, arguing that Dems focus on minority areas. Such claims rarely bare out, but the fear of voter fraud can lead to voter suppression.

This is the same Dick Armey, the same infamous astroturfing puppet master of the Tea Party movement, who taught thugs and hooligans how to disrupt town hall meetings, intimidate citizens, and shut down public debates.  As one of those early voters, I am OFFENDED by his remark, and I want Dick Armey to feel the rage boiling inside of me in reaction to the tea party rage that he unleashed ... to abuse us.  Indeed, I feel abused and more than ready to lash out in kind.

Meanwhile, his foot soldiers commit voter fraud with impunity.  Here is what Dick Armey’s propaganda campaign has accomplished, Eyewitnesses Report Intimidation By Texas Poll Watchers:

"The two poll watchers hovered behind, and then after the poll worker left to let the woman vote, both of the poll watchers stood behind this woman the entire time while she was voting," Haver explained.

That's the type of tactics that poll watchers are accused of in Harris County, where other news reports had said poll watchers were accused of "hovering over" voters, "getting into election workers' faces" and blocking or disrupting lines of voters who were waiting to cast their ballots.

This is the SOP of the GOP: Accuse your opposition of election fraud while caging voters and using intimidation tactics to rig elections. Accuse your opposition first to cover your tracks. Repeat the message loud enough and long enough on Fox News to rile the village idiots bearing pitchforks. The time is long overdue for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ to show some spine, investigate, expose, and prosecute the low-life scum.

The recovery will not be televised

Throughout the rule of Dubya, the game was about denying the cancer eating at the economy: the lack of job growth, the exploding debt, the declining revenue. We saw articles proving that it was the "Liberals" who were endangering the economy with their gloomy predictions. Fox told us that the predominance of negative economic reports was proof, not of negative economic implications, but of the Liberal bias of the media. When a certain amount of reality was unavoidably showing through the flimsy screen, it was Bill Clinton's fault.

As with the 11 year sunspot cycle, each resurgence of activity arrives with a reversed magnetic polarity and of course the game now is to show that any signs of recovery that can't be ignored, repressed or misrepresented will be buried under hyperbole and deceitful numbers. Since employment levels only begin to fall long after a recovery, we will hear no end of talk about it from the fair and balanced folk and of course we will hear about reckless government spending -- as we always do under a Democratic administration, even when the budget is balanced. The recovery will not be televised, if it's acknowledged at all.

The bulls are loose on Wall Street following increased consumer spending and investor confidence in the recovery. Banks are beginning to lend to small businesses again. Leading indicators are up for three consecutive months now, the wild and reckless TARP program is returning a profit while the folks who brought about the nosedive are still howling about Nancy Pelosi's Job Killing Bill, making fictitious claims about spending levels and other hypertrophied hyperbole as though we hadn't lost more jobs and shipped them overseas when they last had the reins and were telling the Liberals to stop 'whining.'

They're never going to admit that a catastrophe has been avoided, that we could have had 25% unemployment again or a decade of deep depression and a poverty level we haven't seen since the 1930's. No, not until they get back into power, that is and we can return to administrative bloat, runaway defense spending, borrowing against the fatuous promise of increased revenues from top bracket tax cuts and giving Wall Street and banking pirates, mining, drilling, food and drug and insurance companies free reign. Things will be all right then and we can be sure that doing what caused 1929 crash and the more recent crash will not happen again even if we do the same things that caused both. Only a stupid liberal would believe such a thing.

Chasing Bubbles With A Butterfly Net

For someone like me with a well-developed startle response and a self-imposed posting deadline, the last few days in the news have been exhausting. It's the silly season in America, of course, with just days to go until the mid-term elections and the culmination of all our anxious imaginings, regardless of our political starting points. But it isn't just any election and it isn't just an America in isolation; it's a globe in transition 'midst an era of revving change. Back peddle? Plunge forward? Stand up on the or accelerate--with or without a prayer? Shit or go blind? (Do NOT fuss at me; that's a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon term with a rich, fertile history.)

The week's been either a blogger's dream or her worst nightmare: more material than I could ever want, flitting past me far too fast, and me with only a sieving mind to capture it. I wake up every morning to chase the tantalizing NYTimes headlines, browse among the big, syndicated blogs, and find it impossible to choose a spot on which to land--a hummingbird on a sugar high.

Should I go with the eerie tolling in my brain from Angela Merkel's "Multikulti has utterly failed" statement? No matter how the Germans are spinning that one today, my head still rings. I've finally gotten so old that a first-hand knowledge of history is more than just a Trivial Pursuit advantage. Swell.