The paranoid style
Hoo boy:
Town Haller Envisions Future With Toilet Paper Rationing
By Rachel Slajda – August 11, 2009, 11:53AM
A town hall attendee who told Sen. Arlen Specer (D-PA) that she doesn’t want to see America turn into Russia appeared on Fox News after the event and offered her chilling view of the country’s future:
I know that years down the road, I don’t want my children coming to me and asking me, ‘Mom, why didn’t you do anything? Why do we have to wait in line for, I don’t know, toilet paper or anything?’ I don’t want to have to tell them I didn’t do anything. As a normal citizen, the most I feel like I can do is come to this town hall meeting.
“The country is slowly being ripped apart,” said Katy Abram, who identified herself as someone who didn’t care about politics until the last few years. “It scares the life out of me.”
Abram was one of 30 people selected to ask a question to Specter. When she got up, she said, in part, “It’s not about health care … It’s about the systematic dismantling of this country … I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. I want to restore this country to what it was under the Constitution.”
Sigh.
For the life of my, I don’t know where this stuff comes from.
Bob Somerby, as is his wont, would accuse me of being a Bad Liberal for being surprised at any of this. Indeed, he’d point me to the famous Hofstadter essay about the paranoid style of American politics and say, “REEEEEAD, DUMMY!”
But the thing is, I have read it. And while Hofstadter goes into a lot of the history of paranoia in American politics, from anti-Mason movements up through McCarthy and the Birchers, he doesn’t give a satisfactory answer as to the why. Indeed, even in the section called “Why They Feel Dispossessed,” Hofstadter merely describes the modern right-wing belief that elites within the government are actively betraying the country and paving the way for global Communism, but he doesn’t explain what makes this belief so prevalent and so powerful.
I’ll put it to you like this: when I read about center-right leaders in other countries — think David Cameron, Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel — I see a bunch of pro-corporate technocrats who, while certainly advancing policies that benefit the moneyed classes, aren’t this flat-out insane.
So I put the question to you, dear readers: why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others? I might be wrong, but I think we could be the only country in the world where a significant minority of people hold angry protests demanding that the government not provide health care to people. It’s weird.
UPDATE: In the comments, a reader mentions Berlusconi. Fair enough, that’s about the closest example I can think of in modern times. As for Thatcher? Yeah, you’re right to an extent, although Thatcherism is largely out of fashion in Britain nowadays. I mean, you can say you respect Thatcher and all, but the country as a whole isn’t pining for a return of Thatcherism.
I’ll go out on a limb and say you’ve misframed the issue. Taliban, N. Korea, Somalia, etc. etc.
The only difference is in the particular topics.
why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others?
Ratings. People tune in when you put gibbering howler monkeys on TV.
Also, I go through a LOT of toilet paper.
Dunno…but I suspect it’s something in your water. When your rivers are full of things that catch fire and even mother’s milk is full of Teflon and rocket fuel, well…
I can’t answer your question, but…didn’t Tocqueville say something about this somewhere? I vaguely recall that he made some comment about town meetings and otherwise-normal Americans who held very strange beliefs, but I can’t remember the exact quotation.
So, uh, I’m looking for a reader to do the heavy lifting for me, ’cause my Internet connection is slow and I’m crashing on a deadline and I have to walk the dog and pick up the kid.
…why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others?
Widespread inability of young parents to keep children from crashing head-first into concrete?
Jesus makes you stupid.
why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others?-
Rugged individualism and American Exceptionalism?
I agree that it’s a part of the American experience as far back a de Tocqueville. Countries like France and Germany weren’t founded by people who sailed across an ocean to get away from their previous homes.
Today we have 24-hour media, which allows that independent streak to turn into paranoia if you find somebody who is willing to say anything for ratings.
It’s a simple case of these people being clodhopper stupid and proud of it.
I’ve grown weary of attempting to be compassionate or understanding. Some folks are just flat dumb.
Perhaps it’s because for far too long in this country we have defined rights as a zero-sum game, wherein any gain by anyone else is an abridgement of my own rights and freedoms (even think of how the right wing point has now begun to morph into “most Americans (who have health insurance) like what they have…if we insure anyone else, our health care has to suffer as a result!”)
…or perhaps it’s because we have an educational system that reinforces ignorance in order to maintain a certain kind of status quo.
Hell if I know, ultimatley. But it is a bit frightening, if only because I have no idea what we might do to change this state of affairs.
Well from the research I did in order to become an investigative reporter, I’d have to say that it’s because there are batshit, bugfuck crazies everywhere. It’s just that in America, they get airtime (if they’re conservative).
Example, Yoshida’s a canookian. Difference is that Canuckistani media don’t put him on the national teevees and ask him for his thoughts about stuff.
In other words, it’s all Obama’s fault for being black. If he were more like John Sidney McCain III, then none of this would be happening.
unfortunately, the health-care issue gives ’em something to hang their racist hats on. ya can’t exactly scream and yell about not liking the president’s skin color….but you can scream and yell “socialism”.
Maybe it has something to do with the ruling classes using fear and paranoia–of comminism, socialism, Mooslims, fagorts, filthy atheists, terraists, Democ-rats, and basically every other bug-a-boo you can name to keep the downtrodden poor and workers afraid of any change that might benefit themn at the expense of the ruling class’s power and privilege.
Work on peoples’ minor fears long enough and they tend to go batshit and see threats every where.
My ex-wife was a hari krishna in her early twenties and she explained to me that even though she knew the religion was a silly cult there was a point where she “snapped” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.php?curid=1600190 –controversial to a ppoint I know but she said it described her situation) and actually accepted the crazier tenets of the cult. Maybe snapping describes how one becomes a wingnut with every link contributing to and justifying an overall acceptance of the right wing paranoid style.
Uh!
I just had a lecture from one of our patients about Obamacare. She asked how I felt about “this health care thing” and I, thinking about the repeated “PRIOR AUTHORIZATION” rejects our lovely private insurance hand out like candy on Halloween, I said we needed it.
Wrong-O! According to her, the government will have access to your checking & savings accounts and will be able to move money in & out of them, everyone will get a government ID card (presumably to ration health care), and if you have heart trouble after the age of 59 they’ll just let you die ’cause you’re not worth saving. I was told this was “gospel” and she had the entire 1000+ page bill in her posession (didn’t mention if she had actually READ it or if someone (oh, say, Glenn Bleck) had read it and interpreted it for her, which is the impression I got) and we’d regret it.
What could I say? I mean, she’s a customer so I have to be diplomatic, but cripes, I swear if I had disagreed she seemed ready to haul off and punch me. If this is the kind of thing going on at Town Halls… no wonder people are getting scared.
I noticed today that anti-health care posters have sprouted up at the daily anti-abortion protests outside my neighborhood Planned Parenthood.
The teabaggers are Operation Rescuers which explains alot.
Because we are one of the few countries that has the concept of being “a true ______________.” In this case, “true American.” Once you set that up, you’re opening the door to a bunch of stupid losers who have nothing else in their lives to point to except that they are True Americans and that America Is Number One.
Once they lose an election, you’re threatening that. You’re telling them that they were wrong about something. And thanks to listening to Rush for years, they can’t ever be wrong about anything. So they must have been betrayed by a Fake American. Which makes them Front-Line Soldiers in the War on Whatever. Which is way more fun than stocking shelves at Costco.
(Winning World War II had something to do with it too. It set up this Perfect Time and Place in the history of America, from which we could only fall and look for who is to blame for that.)
Oh, and “the aliens” will get all their meds free while us Americans have to pay for both ours and theirs. *sigh*
I would have made a joke about UFOs, but like I said – she was ready to hit someone.
Race. That’s at least one factor. Howard Zinn covers it in “Drawing the Color Line” in A People’s History, Krugman covers similar issues in The Conscience of a Liberal (universal health care failed under Truman in part because white Southern doctors didn’t want to treat black people), Perlstein’s Nixonland covers the Southern strategy, Will Bunch’s recent Reagan book covers Saint Ronnie’s welfare queens, and then there’s Lee Atwater and the Bush administration. America’s tradition distrust of elites was exploited by rich conservatives in a very successful shell game – ‘it’s those snooty cultural elites (we went to school with) who are oppressing you and giving your prosperity to minorities, while we rich and powerful aren’t oppressive but instead your friends.’ As Digby’s covered before, in Europe attitudes toward the poor are different – most people view them as unfortunate, while in America, the attitude that the poor are poor due to a lack of character is far more prevalent (Sadly, No’s covered that quite a bit, including all those people who praise Jesus while despising the poor). The American Dream posits that if you work hard and are talented, you can succeed, but the flip side of that is that if you’re a failure, it must be your fault. The poor whites described in Deer Hunting with Jesus (good non-fiction book) have internalized just that attitude, and consistently vote against their own economic interests. Thomas Frank’s covered the same territory in a few books. Add in that America has long had a unique appeal to, or acceptance of, crackpots and individualists, most of all religious crazies (Jesus Camp, the theocrats, etc.). All that goes on top of the usual dangerous authoritarianism, the appeal of easy certainty, scapegoating and (something a certain Sadly,No writer has discussed) spite. Sorry, I’m mentioning a lot of works, but I think you’re asking extremely good questions. A number of people have tried to grapple with this stuff, but I think it’s collision of many factors.
Let me guess — A Medicare patient?
I think John Birch said this. Or some other patriot.
Here’s one answer: appeared on Fox News after the event
I’m rapidly approaching geezerhood, so I can remember when right-wingers and Republicans did not have a huge media empire at their disposal. Looney idiots like this woman existed, and plenty of them – viz anti-communist zealots, Birchers, and the American Independent Party– but they didn’t get to blather on television for fifteen minutes unless they joined the people who really did wear foil headgear on Alan Burke’s or Joe Pyne’s show. They were more marginalized, or at least it seemed that way. IMO, the main difference now is the effluessence of right-wing radio and cable TV. Oh, yeah, and there’s a Muslim black guy in the White House.
Hard to pin it down, really. I’d say there are all sorts of factors contributing to this particular brand o’ crazy becoming dominant at this point in American history.
The thing to remember is that the nuts are still very much in the minority…but as long as the corporate Democrats – “lead” by President Hopey Bipartisanship – refuse to treat this development as a genuine threat, then these people will remain a very real danger to the rest of us.
I would say the American public has a mass case of Stockholm Syndrome…espeshielly, in them, ther woodid an’ rural secchions of th’ countrey.
Let me guess — A Medicare patient?
Unfortunately not… would that she had been!
Still, it’s bad when you’re afraid a 70-some-year old lady’s going to go all medieval on your ass.
I don’t think I really knew just how tight people have their knickers about this whole thing before.
So I put the question to you, dear readers: why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others?
Because Europe remembers what can happen when these beliefs take hold.
Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project. Katy Abram and others surround you.
I was told this was “gospel” and she had the entire 1000+ page bill in her posession
Umm, no. There is no one 1000 page bill. There are at least three already and more on the way (one hopes). There is one 1000+ page report out of the House. She prolly is using the 97% fact free e-mail which Politifact calls a clearinghouse of bad information.
To get back to Brad’s challenge, it’s not an answer but I will observe that people are amazingly willing to believe whatever fits their biases. I blame religion.
Fox news quote of the day (as heard in the video):
“let me know if you can’t hear me.”
To answer Brad’s question, I think DocAmazing is onto something when he says “Jesus makes you stupid.” I say this as a life-long Whiskeypalian, choir member, and Lay Eucharistic Minister, so don’t get the idea that I hate Jeebus. However, there’s a strain of “God talks to me and you’re going to hell” talibangelism in this part of the country that seems to suck any residual reasoning power right out of that thing that sits on top of the neck.
PeeJ – I bet that e-mail was what she was talking about. Sounds like it, anyway.
“Because Europe remembers what can happen when these beliefs take hold.”
Winner.
Also, but related: “Because other countries have traditions of periodically cutting off the heads of the elite bastards who are fucking them”
Also: Because America did rural unlike almost any other nation on earth – Europe was filling up with people so even the country hicks still gathered in the hundreds and thousands regularly, while people were spreading out here into the vast countryside where they never had to encounter a thought different from theirs for months or years at a time. It is no coincidence now that the stupidity of our right wing is found mostly in the rural areas. And I suspect we have a larger % population in “rural” (low population) settings than about any other modern country.
But seriously, I’m going to have to go with talk radio and Fox News et al. There are people who actually get all their information from Rushbo, Poppa Bear and GET OFF MY PHONE. It’s no surprise that they actually believe that America is being turned into some sort of socialist commie Russia.
Add to that the perspective that most managment/policy-level guys in media have. That it is these mouth-breathers who organize boycotts and complaints and kill advertising money. So the views of these bat-shit crazies get air time. Sometimes they’re “debunked” in the classic he-said-she-said style, but never so thoroughly to offend the birther base.
And it’s a feedback loop too. Because conservative bullshit never gets called, it’s easier to come up with more and more outrageous bullshit. And then amoral shitbags who count on moran votes to get elected can sign-up with the BS wagon, giving it “legitimacy” and ride it all the way into invading Iraq.
<investigative reporter mode>But it’s okay because both sides do it.</investigative reporter mode>
Oh, now, come on. You’re ALL correct.
Plus: the central myth of America is that history doesn’t matter. You’re automatically awake from the nightmare that Stephen Dedalus kept trying to wake up from.
That’s a two-edged sword (block that metaphor). On the one h., both the mindset and the natural resources enabled schmucks and refugees to achieve great, or at least lucrative and socially useful, things. On the other, if history doesn’t matter, then knowledge doesn’t matter. If I’m as “free, white, and 21” as anyone else, then my opinions and beliefs are as “good” as anyone else’s.
The teabaggers and Katy Abrams out there are not inherently intelligent and are certainly badly educated. Into the vacuum of their brains rushes the easily-available crap: the class-based paranoia that pretends there is no such thing as class, the cliches, the demagogic formulas that always blame someone else–“elites,” anti-Christians, communists, “socialists,” etc.–and all the you’re-being-wronged propaganda spewed daily by Fox News and its masters.
Pere Ubu, what would that woman have said if you had replied, “Ma’am, let me ask you a question. What would be the consequences if you’re wrong? Just humor me. What if these things you’re predicting and fearful of are false? What if in reality they don’t exist–how would you feel about it?”
I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. I want to restore this country to what it was under the Constitution.”
How do you make sense of that kind of word salad? What does this woman know about Russia and the Soviet Union? Has this woman read the Constitution, or to her mind is it the unwritten last chapter of the Bible?
*Shrugs*
Maybe it is a historical thing. Other countries set up their health care systems decades ago, from what little I’ve read about their systems. We were busy losing our minds about Commies and building up a modern empire at that time. Maybe we missed that moment and chose myth and bullshit over sense and restraint.
KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY TOILET PAPER!
DKW – Agreed. I have my doubts about the religion thing; I think that’s more of a symptom than a cause. A lot of the teabaggery we’re seeing is really secular – like that example I ran into today.
People have become so unhinged for whatever reason, we’re basing public policy around what some wingnut pulled out his ass and sent out in a mass e-mail. That scares me. How the hell do you deal with someone like that?
I’ll put it to you like this: when I read about center-right leaders in other countries — think David Cameron, Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel — I see a bunch of pro-corporate technocrats who, while certainly advancing policies that benefit the moneyed classes, aren’t this flat-out insane.
These conservatives and their respective parties didn’t turn extremist wackos to their right into their party base.
My theory is that Americans, as whole, are spoiled brats. (not meaning to offfend anyone too much)
Every thing is always about how there is the right to this and that, how US is the biggest and strongest and happiest and best and etc.
In short, americans are overweight fiveyear old astmatics going “my dad is stronger then your dad, I get to stay up later then you, I got a new bike, naa naa naa…”
The consept of responsibility is lacking. Having grown accustomed to living in luxury (think historically 50s etc., when europe was ravaged by war for example), there is no responsibilities for one to get them. They are born with it. But somewhere in the back of the brain there is a nagging feeling that everyone can’t have this all. So, the instinct kicks in: If others get this, I lose mine.
If people would speak more about responsibilities then just their rights, they would be less of spoiled brats, and more of a reasonable people. And then they might see where it goes wrong. But for some reason the mental age of some never developes past 5.
If the free market is the best way to fix the health insurance / care crisis, why haven’t they already done it?
</investigative reporter mode>? Thank goodness, leaving that on too long
makes my brain hurtstains my soul somewhat fierce.For example, this crazy woman and her dystopian toilet paper rationing future? Makes the teabaggers look as dumb as they are. What do you think the odds of her showing up on the lie-beral CNN or MSNBC (let alone FNC) are?
I did a Google News search for arlen specter toilet paper (which is something I search every day) and got the TPM post, something from American Spectator and Wonkette – and that’s all.
<investigative reporter mode>Bill Clinton had inappropriate relations with an intern.
This country was founded by people who outlawed Christmas for a while, hunted down and executed “witches,” and who discouraged fucking while standing up because it looked too much like dancing…what do you expect?
I don’t know the why, but this is starting to step into scaryland. Another piece connecting the Town Hall Mob with a new right-wing authoritarianism:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/11
There’s now a deliberate use of the mob of paranoids by the right wing establishment. I don’t think this will end well.
Pere Ubu, what would that woman have said if you had replied, “Ma’am, let me ask you a question. What would be the consequences if you’re wrong? Just humor me. What if these things you’re predicting and fearful of are false? What if in reality they don’t exist–how would you feel about it?”
She would have gone off on me. Really. She was not prepared to hear anything contrary to what she had read.
One might as well contemplate walking up to the Pope and asking what he would think if this whole “Catholic Church” thing was false. Or going up to a Party member in 1930s Russia and asking them how they’d feel if what Stalin had told them was wrong.
This is your future, America!
Right wing extremist agendas do well in this country because they are so well-funded.
It’s not that complicated.
How the hell do you deal with someone like that?
Snark and humour. May not fix things but at least I get a larf outta it.
This thread is pretty much proof of it. Americans are stupid, Americans are spoiled, Americans are fat and racist, why can’t we be like those superior Europeans and Canadians, etc. You really hate Americans.
We are a nation of overprivileged, increasingly obese, gun-toting sheep, and the New World Order wants to take away our firearms and deep-fried pork rinds. Why the hell shouldn’t we be paranoid?
I quoted the part of Ms. Abram’s statement that I can identify with. It’s exactly how I felt for the previous eight years. I was afraid that we were permanently sacrificing freedoms to fears of Islamofascists under the bed. I had been concerned about political matters all my life, but BushCo lit a fire under me with the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, the non-FISA-approved spying, the torture and accelerating outsourcind and handouts of corporate welfare. I worried that we would end up as a nation without a middle-class, where the elite lived apart and had to hire bodyguards. I was concerned that Bush was building the executive branch into an unstoppable juggernaut of power. I remember when some left-wingers were fearful that Bush would drum up an excuse to declare martial law in 2008 and postpone elections indefinitely. I didn’t think it would go that far, but I had twinges of worry. During the last year of the Bush presidency, I was afraid that we were heading for another Great Depression.
Did that make me a crazy, paranoid left-winger? When we see the pendulum swinging in what we consider the wrong direction, what assurance do we have that it will ever swing back?
I did not run around screaming like a hysterical toddler that all my fears would come true for sure unless everybody listened to me right now and until they did I would not stop screaming. I felt that behavior would not give me credibility. Instead I joined with others in political activities designed to change the leadership, while working within the structure of the Constitution. Because IMO the Constitution is what ultimately assures us that the pendulum will swing back, and excesses will be corrected. No matter how much it sucks to see the abuses of the other party while they’re in power, civil war would suck more. When I joined a group that visited our Republican Congressman Mike Turner to discuss our concerns over Bush’s plan to reform Social Security, we were courteous and used our inside voices.
So why do the right-wingers think that hysterical expressions of passion and obstructionism are their best option? Just my opinion, but I think their American exceptionalism bleeds over into every area of their lives. America is the bestest nation and shouldn’t have to listen to or cooperate with any international law. Right-wingers are the bestest group, and shouldn’t have to stand on the sidelines and slowly build a coalition that can win elections after they have lost elections. They are always special and deserve special privileges. If someone denies this, it is so unnatural that no mundane explanation suffices. The world is in a conspiracy against them and their kind, and denying them unearned political power is no different than nailing them to a cross/ripping their entrails out/renditioning them to Egypt.
One thing that is really setting the right-wingers apart on this go-round is the participation of elected officials on the extreme edge of the paranoia. I don’t recall any Democratic members of Congress or Democratic ex-governors accusing BushCo of planning to postpone the 2008 elections.
Yeah, I’m going to have go with a medley of much of what has been posted already: a combination of Jeebus, American triumphalism, and anti-intellectualism.
Our concept of Americans and America as inherently special speaks to the same inadequacies and fears that some people use religion to address (note: I’m not saying everyone who’s religious does this). In the same way that some people can’t bear the thought of living and dying without a cosmic scorecard to square all the earthly inequities, the concept that we’re special simply by being born in America (as opposed to how we use that very special opportunity) allows people to feel better about the fact that they didn’t get that 4 car garage or that membership to the yacht/country club. And our purposeful disconnect from history (and Europe) validates the idea that we’re all self-made people and shouldn’t put any truck in the ideas and thinking that have gone before us (thus the anti-intellectualism).
I think it’s because we have so many politicians and pundits who are more than willing to “set the woods on fire”. People are fearful because of their ignorance and superstition and are highly suceptible to those kinds of tactics. I had a heart attack about three weeks ago and some people I know were aghast that I made jokes about it the next day. Poke people in the fear/tribalist sensitve parts of their psyche and they freak the hell out.
“One might as well contemplate walking up to the Pope and asking what he would think if this whole “Catholic Church” thing was false.”
Laffin. Although, of course, it’s not funny.
Isn’t the question, therefore: How do you counter emotionality, panic, unreasoning hatred, etc., etc., if rationality and proof are ignored?
One answer might be, the same way people countered racism during the Civil Rights movement. Those people were certainly confronted with as much raw, lunatic hatred as we’re seeing here. What worked? Quiet demonstrations of its wrong-ness, I suppose. And the rise of the next generation, who were less or not at all infected with that virus.
Not that we shouldn’t stop mocking it here and on other sites, no. But as a public, political response, what else CAN work?
Mind you, these people make me furious and full of contempt and I want to scream at them. But I don’t!
Impressed?
This.
And this again.
Further to R. Porrofatto’s point: I’ve spent the better part of 25 years watching the MacNeil/Lehrer as an antidote to this crap but I have to say, even that program is starting to piss me off in the “two sides to every story” dept.
I think the TV Box is 95% Clown Car now. Sadly.Also.Central to my point.
OT – there’s a huge document
dumpPOOP about the USAtty firings. Rove and Miers transcripts and 5K+ pages of RNC-White House emails. I was going to have a look, but then I remembered that I’m an investigative reporter now and will instead wait for press releases from stakeholders so that I can transcribe them.Simple: we have the highest number of rednecks.
No, they were doing this to Clinton too.
If I had to take a stab at it, I’d say that it’s central to the American identity that each American gets to decide what makes someone “really American”. American-ness is constantly up for questioning and re-definition in a way that Frenchness or Chineseness or even Canadian-ness isn’t. If you’re not trying to change the definition in this country, you’re going to get ploughed under by those who are.
I mean, she’s a customer so I have to be diplomatic, but cripes, I swear if I had disagreed she seemed ready to haul off and punch me.
Heh, she expected you to agree with her so she could use you as a data point later when arguing with others: “I’ve asked all sorts of healthcare professionals, and they all agreed Obama’s commiecare’s gonna kill us all! EXCEPT THE ILLEGALS!”
Some have already touched on what I think is at the root of it: the Calvinist whackjobs who sailed across from Europe when this was all a series of colonies. These were the people who couldn’t practice their religion their way back home and were thus already out of the mainstream. So they came over here early, got established, and their ideas have colored the American perspective ever since.
The idea that failing is due to a moral flaw: Puritanism. The idea that the other, especially the European other is scary and strange: Puritanism. The idea that we are better than they: all the Calvinists.
Sure, other cultures have come since and added to the stew, but the foundation remains the same. The power and influence were established by the time the others got here.
I believe that’s the root of Manifest Destiny, it’s the root of the Evangelical revival since WWII, it’s the root of the Prohibition movement…it’s deep deep deep in our collective psyche and it ain’t coming out quickly.
Media outlets like FAUX and the Moonie Times have only tapped the vein, they didn’t create it. They have a nice feedback loop going that swirls the crazy right to the top but the crazy was there to begin with.
Right wing extremist agendas do well in this country because they are so well-funded.
It’s not that complicated.
But the cozy relationship is new, even if it’s been brewing for thirty years. Only now is it coming out. There’s traditionally been distrust between the Birchers et al. and the Respectable Conservatives. The new relation has overcome that, so now the paranoids are scared of falling corporate profit. It’s an amazing feat: some PR person realized that these folks will believe anything. Then in a stroke of genius, he woke up one night and said, “If they’ll believe anything, then they can believe our thing!” Thereon followed the astroturf organizations, the bulking up of the pundocacy, the need to create a mythology of victimization that neatly put the wingnut and the corporation on the same side of the table.
Other Tim–
The News Hour makes more sense if you regard it as a PBS-sponsored opportunity for public and corporate officials to rehearse their evasions. Jim Lehrer is like a batting practice pitcher–human or mechanical, take your pick.
I am going to go with a toxic mix of denial, sublimation and projection.
You have a large percentage of the population that:
1. believe that might makes right, winners win, and top dogs should make the rules
2. who feel insecure and powerless, and ruled by people who aren’t like them
3. can’t accept that they lost in a democracy
So how do they reconcile these beliefs, without feeling like weak losers who, according to their belief system, would deserve to lose?
Their solutions is, something must be keeping them down in an undemocratic fashion. There must be secret organizations and hidden alliances keeping them down – otherwise they’d be ruling the world with a benevolent fist like they should be.
And that’s what feeds the conspiracies. That’s why there’s some need to believe in some **hidden** plan against them.
Note that this misses all the plans that are in plain sight. There would be a ton of very legitimate complaints and even outrage against the Obama administration, for their watering down of this insurance bill, for their basic support and even extension of Bush administration detention policies – but they don’t mind that. That fits in with might makes right.
KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY TOILET PAPER!
Wiping is Theft.
Americans are stupid, Americans are spoiled…
Prove us wrong. When your side can come up with objections that are fact-based and rational, we’ll talk. But the people who believe healthcare reform will result in rationing toilet paper… that’s just plain crazy.
BTW: right wingers don’t constitute America. You’re part of a greater whole and your part is shrinking…
If you on the Left hate us overweight gun toting SUV driving McMansion buying Americans, you can fucking LEAVE. Don’t let the door hit your asses on the way out, libs! Just go already and quit bitching!
Obama will ban TP, but shit-box tongue-jackings will become mandatory.
Troofie, we don’t hate ALL Americans. Just the st00pit, racist, homophobic, hypocritical, psychotic ones. Now, we know you’re all of those things (and a shitbox tonguejacker to boot) but we don’t have any proof that you are, in fact, an American. You have repeatedly refused to produce the vault copy of your birth certificate so we must assume that in reality – the reality of your mothers basement from which you are now soliciting your daily flagellation – you are an illegal alien hermaphrodite.
The Left: Hating America since 1932 said,
I have a better idea. Why don’t YOU leave? It would be to the benefit of us all: addition by subtraction.
Mr. Wonderful, totally agree. I guess my point was that it (News Hour) didn’t used to seem that way and subjects were dealt with more intellectually and comprehensively. I guess the “dumbing-down” had to hit there eventually.
Dudes & dudettes, it’s too complicated for any simple answer. This is a 400-year social phenomenon.
Yes, of course, race enters into it. As does the peculiar origin of Anglo settlers and their relations to the old country and the new. And you can’t forget about the perpetual millenarianist view of lots of religious groups. In addition, as regards that “American Dream” crap, there’s no tradition of noblesse oblige on this side of the pond, so you do get people who fervently believe that being poor is a moral failing. Mix all of those together, and add in the fact that so many people in this country love being priggish busybodies, and voila! You’ve got yourself a ton of crackpots.
But you just can’t ascribe all of the paranoia to one cause. Hell, even my explanation is a gross, gross, gross oversimplification.
Sorry. Recovering sociologist here.
Holy fuck what an obnoxious pig. Page 216:
Yeah, Dana Perino, Haiku Poet Extraordinaire. FFS, this is just about damage control. This is something that would have been okay to cop to. Unless the dates on those emails go back to before the firings…
Man, I’m glad investigative reporters don’t have to wade through documents like this.
nah, all the libs should stay, just to encourage the strokes and infarctions that our very existence will inspire in the fat, gun totin etc….
Is that the right wings solution to everything? Just leave?
And would some consistency be too much to ask for even in that scenario?
When Bush was president and did things, those who didn’t like it should have just left.
Now when Obama is president and does things, those who don’t like it can stay, and those who do should leave.
Is the word consistency even in wingnut dictionary? Do they even know the word?
If you on the Left hate us overweight gun toting SUV driving McMansion buying Americans, you can fucking LEAVE.
But you’re in the minority. Remember the last election?
All this thread is is a bunch of whining envy-of-Eurotrash Leftists shitting on America.
So you know why you don’t leave?
Because this is the best country on Earth and YOU KNOW IT!
Is the word consistency even in wingnut dictionary? Do they even know the word?
Consistently wrong. Consistently self-serving. Consistently rascist.
Yeah… I think they’ve got the concept down.
PS it gets juicier after that exchange and Executive Privilege is invoked.
Ah, fuck it. No one cares about the US Atty firings. I’m going to start a new piece on Michael Jackson’s autopsy.
Good stuff there. Just last evening, the Ho and I were discussing how the loonies have always been around. They drove Teddy Roosevelt from the party. The Birchers went after Eisenhower. What’s different this time is that the whackjobs are the (de facto) party “leaders.”
I think they’ve overplayed their hand. I hope so.
Is the word consistency even in wingnut dictionary? Do they even know the word?
It’s perfectly consistent, LD – liberals should leave, whatever the provocation.
It’s much more humane than what they really want to say, so they feel like they should get a cookie for being so restrained. It explains the look on their flabby faces.
Could be better: could have less of you in it.
August 11, 2009 at 21:37
OK, the right is paranoid, but the left has multiple personalities and talks to itself. Don’t look now, but I hear that pouring psychoactive drugs into the water supply is part of the House bill.
Because this is the best country on Earth and YOU KNOW IT!
Even with you guys here fucking it up. Imagine how much better it could be if you guys could grow out of your self-serving myopia of fear and loathing.
Ah, fuck it. No one cares about the US Atty firings.
I care – I was just too gobsmacked by that excerpt to believe it was real and hadn’t come down yet.
Do go on.
And why on earth do they insist US is the best counry in the world?
Is there something wrong to live in Second or third best country in the world for example?
And how is that best country thing even affecting the life of average citizen?
Because based on most of the measurements, US is not even that high on the charts.
I sort of imagine Faulkner’s Bundrens and Snopeses (especially Mink, the homicidally angry one) suddenly awash in the most up-to-date appliances, flush with credit, able to fill out their Kountry Kute split-level tract homes with imitation country tat made in China, all this apparent prosperity sitting on top of not a whole hell of a lot more culture than when they first appeared in the pages of The Hamlet and As I Lay Dying. Or, as a friend of mine once put it, “This is a very big country made up of very small towns.” When I began college in the U.S., having grown up in Jamaica and England, I was totally unprepared for how little the Americans I met (in coastal California!) knew about the rest of the world. I mean, I thought, with all the stuff there would be education and culture to match.
The other thing I had trouble with was these sort of prefab conversational structures that it seemed impossible to get out of. People in arguments about things like Prop. 13, school busing, abortion, just sort of batted the same cliches back and forth as if proving mastery of cliches was the whole point. Obviously I met people who weren’t like this, but I had this feeling of being eyeball-deep in a culture that was thin, with no memory, just the now of having stuff, and the conviction that an American ignoramus with a new washing machine was the intellectual equal of any number of foreign rocket scientists. And it’s true, the intelligence that went into the production of American consumer stuff probably has no parallel on earth in what was achieved in such a short time.
Also. The famous “Gerda” passage in Rebecca West’s Black Lamb, Grey Falcon
Because this is the best country on Earth and YOU KNOW IT!
Damn straight, and we’re working on making it better despite your best efforts. So you know why you don’t leave? BECAUSE NO ONE WILL HAVE YOU
Europeans don’t have racism in their societies. No siree.
We LOVE Algerians and black Africans! Really.
“The American Dream” has been based on the fact that in a mostly agrarian society, if land is available for free to anyone who can chase the natives off it, and put up a fence around it. then YES, anyone who works hard can be a success, given a little luck.
America is big, but not that big. For a long time now, all of the land and natural resources have been snapped up. The only shortcuts to wealth that we have now involve financial fraud and playing the markets.
Europe has never been like that. Land has always been an expensive commodity. You don’t get a frontier attitude without a frontier to exploit. It is a lot harder to be an antisocial rugged individualist when you have neighbours, and indeed, an existing society all around you. When most wealth is inherited, how much money you have becomes less important compared with who your daddy was.
Another factor in Americas attitude to wealth and power, is the shallowness of the roots most white Americans have in the place where they live. The social stratification is very new, and the pecking order is based entirely on what colour you are, and how much money you have, rather than how you behave and who your family are.
Also, it is important to remember just how deeply ingrained hypocrisy is in America politics. For every violation of civil rights, there has been a pompous assertion of how free and equal everyone is in America. The tone was set by the declaration of independence being written by slave owners. It hasn’t got any better since. It is so built into american society that modern day wingnuts are more or less immune to cognitive dissonance.
If you think about the periods of history which Americans tend to romanticise, it offers clues as to what they think the ideal society is like. The wild west, the second world war.. gold rushes, oil rushes, the founding fathers..
American political thought has remained shockingly stagnant for the last 200 years. This is the trouble with having a newly formed nation. The founders become idolised, and their beliefs become sacrosanct, and are followed for far longer than they ought to be. Even now, “this isn’t what the founding fathers intended” is considered a legitimate argument to make in American politics. In a nation which grew more organicly, political thought cannot be as easily traced back to its origins, and “historical figure X said this” isn’t a good reason to hold back necessary change.
In the rest of the world, armed insurrection as a method of political change has a spotty record. However, according to American mythology, it is the only way to go about things. The story book version of the founding of America was so good, who wouldn’t want to do that all over again?
Short answer.. there are a shitload of reasons for the number of wingnuts in America. So many factors come together to make the perfect breeding ground for militia-grade insanity.
And why on earth do they insist US is the best counry in the world?
Is there something wrong to live in Second or third best country in the world for example?
Well, by their simplisitic calculus that would mean they’re second or thrid best. It’s all about their inadequacies.
Max Weber + commercial media [corporate ownership/vertical integration] x ideology = God: Hey you autonomous self-interested individual, stop!
I’ll put it to you like this: when I read about center-right leaders in other countries — think David Cameron, Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel — I see a bunch of pro-corporate technocrats who, while certainly advancing policies that benefit the moneyed classes, aren’t this flat-out insane.
Don’t underestimate how wingnutty the European “center-right” can be. The German Christian Democrats depend heavily on Bavaria – which is basically the US South auf Deutsche. Germans go just as hysterical about Islam as we do, maybe even more so.
The Gaullists? Don’t even get me started. The whole Fifth Republic is the result of a coup by Algerian colonial wingnuts…even if De Gaulle gave them the heave-ho after coming to office, they still managed to overthrow the relatively progressive Fourth Republic. Sarko gets elected b/c the ones who go for Le Pen were willing to hold their noses and vote for him. the whole reason he’s a national figure is he was as insulting as possible towards the protestors’ demands during the Paris riots a little while back.
And the BritCons. Hoo whee! “Monday Club” enough said.
So I put the question to you, dear readers: why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish
As usual, questions about belief systems are unlikely to yield much useful. Questions about behaviors and tactics work better. “Why does paranoid right-wing activism flourish?” is a better question. Answer: because it works. It’s been enormously successful in choking any social spending that might ameliorate inequality.
The people involved in this activism – whether shouting at town halls or just forwarding emails around – all have some stake in present inequalities. Usually they are either small capitalists, penny-ante Chamber of Commerce types – or they are on fixed incomes. They both have a direct interest in a low-wage, deflationary environment.
Racism. That’s it. You can’t convince me otherwise.
That woman said herself that she hadn’t been interested in politics before. But now there’s a black guy in the White House, and her whole small, stupid world has been turned upside down.
“There’s a reason it’s called ‘The American Dream.’ It’s because you have to be asleep to believe it.” -George Carlin
And we Europeans are a non-violent, peace-loving society.
that, incidentally, may be the best academic formula joke i’ve ever cooked up
“cyntax said,
August 11, 2009 at 21:51
And why on earth do they insist US is the best counry in the world?
Is there something wrong to live in Second or third best country in the world for example?
Well, by their simplisitic calculus that would mean they’re second or thrid best. It’s all about their inadequacies.”
Yeah, but I that is what I dont get. Hell, I’d love to be second or even third richest person in the world. I’d be happy in top 1000 if that is relevant. I could be number 9998 and I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the fact that someone else “is better”.
Are their self-esteems so low they can’t be worse then #1?
Or is this a throwback to coldwar, when there were only two positions, so you HAD to be #1, otherwise you lost?
For all those interested in the USSAtty shit, TPM is on top of it. They’ve already got a couple sehr interessant findings.
I started looking through the RNC emails but didn’t find anything there of interest.
FYWP. Also.
Do go on.
Did I mention that it’s over 5000 pages? And some of the “e-mail” documents are Kyle Sampson’s chicken scratch memos or other nearly unreadable shit?
TPM has their crack team of total amateur bloggers who have no understanding of the US Atty scandal working on it as well – but the random part I jumped to (page 218) is this:
And how do you know about that? Man when I give up being an investigative reporter and become an investigative lawyerly questioning guy, I’m gonna remember that line.
Today a whacko nutjob showed up at the NH Obama town hall with a gun strapped to his leg. They let that racist nazi stay. I wonder what would have happened if an anti-chimp protester had shown up at one of his town hall meetings similiarly armed?
I kid, I kid. Obviously a tazer-fest or arrest would’ve happened.
The entire media is slanted alarmingly to the right. As is usual with the right wing, everything they do just benefits the top 1% at the expense of the middle class. To add insult to injury, when the inevitable fail occurs due to right wing policies being completely insane, they’ll blame it on the Liberals.
It is because of this negative feedback loop that America is doomed. I really mean it.
As for what causes the craziness, I second several of the posts above, including the one about the sense of entitlement. This reflects my own personal belief that Americans are a bunch of lazy shiftless assholes – because of deficit spending. Americans have not needed to really “work” for a living for decades. The monster-VISA card has trickled “free” money (and ponies) downward. How many Americans actually produce a product that has value added?
I am, however, surprised that no one has mentioned the two scholarly studies done of conservatives, that discovered that conservatism is literally a mental illness.
European leaders are always brilliant and honest, and never ever corrupt, stupid buffoons.
Dear Mr. “The Left,”
To be fair, our America-hating significantly pre-dates 1932. See: Falls, Seneca et al
Do you think Europeans would ever elect someone as wingnutty as Ronald Reagan? Pfft! Never!
We Canadians never have wingnut PMs, eh?
Lots of good points here folks. I won’t reflect on having to come to a POOP party for reassurance of sanity.
Good old Doghouse has had some good rants on this and reminds us that 50 years ago, when McCluhan and other media critics were predicting the results of having corporate propaganda beamed 24/7 into our living rooms we all thought Yeah it’s gonna be bad and here it is. Bad.
I once read an article about folks who believed they needed to cut off significant parts of their bodies to become whole. These folks lived all their lives, through most of human history, never knowing anyone else like them, then the intertoobz showed them that there were lots and lots of them and they started comparing notes, developing better self-amputation techniques and becoming a movement. In the same way every sort of human can now find reassurance about whatever FSM they want to believe in.
Lots of other countries have significant proportions of their populace that deeply believe in wild conspiracies but they have repressive regimes in place to keep things calm.
Racism. That’s it. You can’t convince me otherwise.
That woman said herself that she hadn’t been interested in politics before. But now there’s a black guy in the White House, and her whole small, stupid world has been turned upside down.
It’s certainly a big factor. The acceptance of wild-assed loony-toon nonsense (birth cert., death panel, etc.) by those people reminds me of the line about knowing you’ve got the one true religion because your God hates all the same people you hate.
Are their self-esteems so low they can’t be worse then #1?
Or is this a throwback to coldwar, when there were only two positions, so you HAD to be #1, otherwise you lost?
I’ve seen little evidence that they like to operate on a continuum or that they’re comfortable with ambiguities, so they like “either-or” propositions and polarzing frames. So being ranked as anything other than #1 is less certain and thus bad.
OneMan you nailed it, but you left out the two other types of people who founded ‘the new world.’ The English jail system dumped lots of con men and petty criminals into this North American melting pot. It’s not surprising that America has lots of famous carpetbaggers and snake oil salesmen. It’s in our blood. And let us not forget the folks brought to this country to actually do the work, slaves and indentured servants. The right has long fought their access to citizenship.
No, they were doing this to Clinton too.
Yes, BUT –
it was largely the fanatic uber-right doing it back then. The paranoia’s been mainstreamed.
Plus don’t discount the racism. Sure, there was crazy during the Clinton years, but it took time to get really bad. We’ve gone into Bachmann Michelle Overdrive with the election of a dusky melanin-rich guy with a suspiciously Arabic middle name. At least they could pretend Clinton was an American – one look at the guy in the White house right now and you KNOW he’s a sneaky brown furriner come to steal all out money and let everyone over the age of 59 die in the streets.
I kind of feel like we’re at a wingnut version of where the far Left was along about 1970 or so, “hard hats and the revolution’s any day now, comrades” as someone said. But the Left back then didn’t have a stranglehold on the media, and didn’t have the Mellon/Scaife deep pockets, and didn’t have tons of NRA-approved penile surrogates. Pardon me being Captain Bringdown, but I think we’re in for a rough ride, even rougher than the Bush years.
I am reading a history of the Constitution right now, and there were all kinds of tax protests in the period between the end of the war and Washington’s inaugural.
Some things never change. The creaky feudalism of Calvinism is hard to erase even hundreds of years later.
Did someone say “Calvanism”? What, you think the only Calvanists are in America? HA!
They’re mad because a black guy is president, and “socialist” is a more acceptable slur than “nigger.”
What, you think the only Calvanists are in America? HA!
No, dipwad, but America is the only place where Calvinism stays entrenched. Those other places you mentioned surrendered to the 20th century a while ago.
“A Republican is just a Democrat who got mugged.”
We are all 20th Century Europeans.
We are a straw man.
“A Democrat is a Republican who got mugged by Big Business”
This is exactly what the leftists on this threat seem to believe. I haven’t seen anyone say anything bad about Europe, only bad things about America and how AWESOME Europe is.
A teabagger is a Republican who got fucked in the ass by Big Business until he believed it was love.
We’re a happy land where there is no racial conflict, no violence, no political instability, no nationalism or wars, no poverty, no right wingers, and where ponies blow rainbows out their asses and people shit candy. Really.
Troofie, white people started in Godless Europe. Why do you hate whitey?
Pardon me being Captain Bringdown, but I think we’re in for a rough ride, even rougher than the Bush years.
I can already see the first Fox-viewer (a lower form of human, BTW) who tries to “take care” of Obama. He’ll get arrested, but then go on Glenn Beck’s program and whine about his right to exercise the 2nd Amendment is being infringed upon.
KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY TOILET PAPER!
until I am done with it. Then I want the government to take it away and compost it somewhere far away and always down wind.
Hmm. Maybe right wing nutjobs should travel the world outside their country more, that usually tends to people smarter and more open.
LD, they like being stupid.
Conceding Europe does anything better than the United States means full, unequivocal approval of anything they’ve ever done or ever will do. By my own logic, I hate America because of who it democratically elected president. But at least I suck my own taint instead of the government tit.
What, you think the only Calvanists are in America? HA!
Calvinists in Europe learned to spell. Of course, they also stopped being Calvinists. The two events are perhaps not unrelated.
Maybe leftists should realize that it is really fucking expensive to travel outside of the country when the nearest border is thousands of miles away, and even then your option is down to two countries, one of which is pretty much a carbon copy of the USA no matter how loudly they protest. If you want to go overseas, its even more thousands of miles away. Which means its expensive and time consuming.
Now, OTOH, if you live in Belgium, its really easy because your country is about the size of Maryland.
It boils down to a few different things, in my opinion.
1) If poor people game the system, the system is automatically broke. However, rich people–no matter the method they got rich–are to be lionized, emulated, and masturbated to. Even if they break society.
Example: Health insurance CEOs earn every penny. But if a poor person cheats Medicare/Medicaid out of Ten! Thousand! Dollars! it’s a proof that the system is broken, and everyone may as well steal my money.
This leads to 2) Rich people being rich activates the Invisible Hand (dare I say, “Jeebus’ Magical Hand?”) which allows more people to get rich. Giving money to poor people is like spreading corn cobs before swine.
It’s really amazing to me how hypocritical this is. There really is very little evidence of a meritocracy as envisioned by the right; it’s all legacies and friends helping friends. If you’re on the friends helping friends side, it’s all fine and dandy, but to the other 95% (or greater) of us staring at this rotted system from the outside it rather stinks.
The funny part is the WIIIIIIDE streak of hypocrisy that shines through everything they do. Praise Jesus, screw the poor. Merit and hard work wins riches, that’s what my uncle the vice-president tells me when I work as his section head. There’s really only two ways to go with the hypocrisy. Either realize it, own up to it, admit that you were wrong and that you wasted your life chasing unicorn farts, or scream even louder about how right you are.
Coincidentally, they’re screaming louder.
You know you’re a birther/deather when….
“Xecky Gilchrist said,
August 11, 2009 at 22:24
LD, they like being stupid.”
Hmm. Good point. Maybe we should tell them it makes people more stupid?
Nah, we just get more people vacationing in France, complaining about lack of good food, wierd eating hours and mayonaise in McDonalds hamburgers. No one wants that.
WE’RE sure not expensive and time-consuming.
The twin pillars of the contemporary right wing have always been corporate greed and individual racism, with the latter manipulated to serve the former. Now that the health-care pigs think there may be an additional obstacle between their snouts and the trough, they’re taking full advantage of racism, which is easy to do with a black guy in the White House.
Europe is good at everything forever, and America pales in comparison. We really hate this country.
The worst thing about America is that Troofy is here.
I think that Racism is a factor in the latest wave of wingnuttery, but it can’t be the only factor. Look how they reacted to Clinton, and he was white. I don’t doubt that the latest spewing of wingnuttery is going to be worse than it was back then, and yes, mostly because Obama is black.
But there is nothing like racism for breeding an attitude that goes “I’m better than you. Why? Just because. Shut up.”
The American right wing has ALWAYS relied on having a monster under the bed. Russian communists, blacks, arab muslims.. It always has something to do with racism and/or xenophobia. So in that sense, yes, racism is a lynchpin of right wing thought. (pun intended)
And in an even broader sense, John is completely right. Everything the right wing does is just like racism, except it isn’t always based on race. The way they treat poor people is a form of bigotry and hatred that looks JUST like racism does. In fact, since a disproportionate number of blacks are poor, it is sometimes completely inseparable from the racial motive.
Now that outright racism is less socially acceptable, they have simply taken the exact same pattern of behaviour, and applied it to any other social group they don’t like. And if that poor socialist lesbian happens to be black too? Well, you obviously cannot accuse them of racism. This is why they love to hate Obama. He ticks so many boxes. All they have to do is make sure that when someone asks them to pick a reason for their hatred, they don’t say “black”.
Can a leftist name ONE thing America is better than Europe in? Just one?
“A Democrat is a Republican who got mugged by Big Business”
+1
Anyone hoping to make sense of the Teabirthdeathbaggers would do well to read both Stenner’s The Authoritarian Dynamic and Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians. Both studies are essential reading, not only for understanding what makes the Wingnuts tick, but also for groking why every single fucking right-wing political tactic revolves around making people afraid.
Long story short: there are some people in society who, for various reasons, are consumed with fear; and that fear manifests itself as racial, ethnic, social, religious, moral intolerance. Any deviation at all from their image of a perfect society is taken as an existential threat and must be stamped out at all costs. Fortunately, most people aren’t like that, but they can be pushed towards greater intolerance by making them feel afraid.
Now, with that in mind, have a peek at what’s passing for “debate” over health care: on the one side you have people trying their best to use the legislative process to fix a broken system that is bankrupting the country, on the other is ZOMG TEH S33KRIT PLOT TO KILL GRANNY!!! The Townhall Troll disruptions aren’t just designed to shut the debate down, they are meant to scare people, and thereby push both the Wingnuts and the mushy middle into a resistant, intolerant crouch.
Sadly, Dems and Liberals are (so far, at least) making the same mistake we always make: thinking that “getting the facts out” is sufficient to counter the madness. Its not. Unless those facts are stated confidently and optimistically in ways that dial down the fear, the facts themselves won’t matter; they will fall on deaf ears.
</humourless_dildo>
Hey, look, that grass is greener.
(Wingnuttery: It’s global.)
We’re better at calling the front of a car the “hood”. Now fuck off.
“zombie rotten mcdonald said,
August 11, 2009 at 22:29
The worst thing about America is that Troofy is here.”
Now now, let’s not make too big deal out of it.
The attention and “being #1” might go to his head.
Can a leftist name ONE thing America is better than Europe in? Just one?
Barbecue. It’s hard to get real kick-ass barbecue outside of the South, much less in Europe. Now, here’s a question: can you actually contribute something pertinent to this fascinating discussion or is it going to be just more men built from straw?
#
The Left said,
August 11, 2009 at 22:28 (kill)
Europe is good at everything forever, and America pales in comparison. We really hate this country.
Norbizness, you’ve changed.
Music, non-upper-class food, ability to go to the moon, lack of regal history, sports diversity.
Oh, hi. Are you looking for right-wing success stories?
Sorry, we’re empty right now. But we’re hoping the new American Brownshirt Movement, formerly the Teabagger Movement, formerly the KKK, gains traction.
I believe I qualify as a “right-wing success story”.
I’m a right-wing success story, too.
Maybe leftists should realize that it is really fucking expensive to travel outside of the country when the nearest border is thousands of miles away…
Nope, not true.
Flight from Kansas City, KS to Paris: $840 (on Delta).
Flight from San Francisco, CA to Paris: $806 (on Air Canada).
I’ve travelled all over the world in the military and as a civillian and I’ve travelled cheap and swank. In many, many countries (Thailand, Peru, India) the most expensive component is the airfare and you can live way cheap while you’re there. So for the cost of a few downpayments on Chevy Tahoe, you can see another country; it’s just a question of priorities.
Me, too.
Matt T. said,
The second one.
Sheeeeit, boys, I’m a GRASSROOTS right-wing success story!
We think spending $840 on airfare alone for a trip is pocket change. We’re out of touch, aren’t we?
Can a leftist name ONE thing [about] America is better than Europe in? Just one?
Community colleges.
Can a leftist name ONE thing America is better than Europe in?
Barbeque, as above. Jazz. Arguably rock. Animation. Acceptance of cultural diversity (offer may not apply in the types of suburbs troofie no doubt lives in).
Reading comprehension. I’m not so hot at it.
There haven’t been any Democratic presidents since the ’80s. From 1993 to 2001, Dan Quayle, Jack Bauer and Spongebob shared presidential duties.
I’m sorry, the End Of The Cold War was due to the wild commodity pricing movements of the 80’s and the inability of the Politburo to plan for them.
Documented history has a way of trumping right-wing Talking Points.
Aww. I thought someone would call me out for “sports diversity.” Well done. It’s entirely true.
We passed welfare reform, gave you a booming economy, a balanced and brought crime down.
We think spending $840 on airfare alone for a trip is pocket change. We’re out of touch, aren’t we?
Damn you suck at math. Your contention was that it’s more expensive to get there from the center of the country. Obviously it’s not and you need to avail yourself of the nearest community college’s remedial math course.
Now that Troofie’s gauntlet has been picked up, run with, and thrown back into his fat, sweaty face, who wants to bet it’ll go in the never-again-mention file with NY-20, the bullshit Michael Moore quote, and, of course, “You will wake up to a McCain presidency and the Great Liberal Freakout will be on”?
I can’t believe you forgot about our dearly departed (cough cough) Joerg Haider who would had fit smugly into the GOP, right down to the closeted gay part.
You really think we’re LESS racist than America? Really?
Sorry, Welfare Reform is not a right-wing success story. It was done by a Democratic president.
Don’t worry, right-wingers have success stories! It’s just that they revolve around misery, anger, hatred, and death!
Right-wingers are also good at making the richest 1% richer, and then blaming the Left for ensuing mess.
In summary: All the things your mother/father/preacher/teacher told you were Bad Things are the only things that Right Wingers can call “success stories”.
Troofy/Goober/Whatever- I like how you flaunt dropping crime rates as your success. Yeah, a libertarian fantasy, this- cops/cameras freakin’ everywhere.
It’s like glibertarians don’t even try anymore. Such rugged individualists, you are.
Troofie, you LOVE racism. You were ranting about “Tyrone and Jose” this morning. Condemn us as Eurofags if you must, but be consistent about it.
The question comes up as to who should be able to receive a $750,000 liver transplant – the 70-year-old man not likely to be around for long, or a 25-year-old who can be pay taxes for 40 more years to recoup the cost?
Really, the whole issue begs to be reframed. What’s needed here is a totally FREE MARKET APPROACH , where we apply our capitalist principles to increase the SUPPLY of available livers to meet the DEMAND! Just as nature abhors a vacuum, entrepreneurs abhor unsatisfied DEMAND in the market place and will move heaven and earth to provide the SUPPLY!
Small problem with finding willing donors? Not to worry! Just add a simple rider to every credit card agreement – default on the amount you owe, and ALL YOUR ORGANS ARE BELONG TO US! We’ll be meeting the ever-increasing demand for transplant organs in NO TIME!
Troofy, you just admitted that you haven’t visited Europe. How would you know from racism there?
We’re on the way, Truth! The entire $7.33 you earned this week for posting on Liberal blogs will be in your hands soon!
I’m just asking: you really think we’re less racist?
(P.S. who says I’m Troofie?)
I’m just asking: you really think we’re less racist?
No, just more straw-manny.
America seems to be much better at TITS but for PENIS, I’ve got to go with the Europeans.
We think spending $840 on airfare alone for a trip is pocket change. We’re out of touch, aren’t we?
Besides if you can’t afford to get on a plane, isn’t that the free-market’s way of telling you that you aren’t successful enough?
Maybe you’re spending too much money on other things, like Fritos, or health insurance premiums. Too bad there’s no way to fix that problem…
I was gonna say building airplanes but then I remembered the Airbus. Stupid Airbus.
We have greater availability of ice for drinks, and more McDonalds stores.
We have greater body mass, bigger cars, and more wasteful habits.
A home run!
I, also, am a right wing success story.
I can’t believe you forgot about our dearly departed (cough cough) Joerg Haider
Pim Fortuyn as well, except for the closeted part. Jean-Marie Le Pen. Also.
In the US, the center right has to openly court the whacko right, while in Europe they can pretend to snub them while quietly using them.
Yup, we do hate America, the previous post pretty much sums up the typical leftist attitude. We still won’t leave, though.
If you’re not The Truth, you’re Goober.
We speak the Bestest Language in the world – American!
We think America is stupid, fat, racist, hateful, violent, and generally inferior. Inferiority complex much?
Oh, if only there was some way to at least read news & opinions from the rest of the world, if you can’t afford to go there physically!
It’s just too bad there isn’t some kind of, say, computer network that would carry news programs and newspapers from all over the planet to, say, your personal desk in your house! Why, think of how amazing that would be, to read opinions from people not in America directly, instead of waiting for some GOP shill on FAUX to tell you what they’re saying.
Shame nobody’s interested in creating a network like that, hint hint nudge nudge.
We are World Number One in the quality of Reveling In Our Stupidity!
We spend the most money on weapons! We spend so much on weapons that we have government agencies whose sole purpose is just to BUY LAND TO STORE ALL THE SURPLUS EQUIPMENT!
America’s not bad at Teh Pr0n, as far as that goes. And we did invent rock & roll, the Chicago Blues, the integrated circuit and pizza. Imagine how awful the world would be without pizza.
Speaking of the trips, was that $840 one way or round trip?
Because, I have to say that for a adult, who actually has a job, neither is really that expensive you won’t be able to afford it. Sure, maybe not everyday, but saving up a bit, so when your vacation starts you can take a trip and that is not really out of th ebudget.
I guess it could seem like a out of touch sum of money to someone unemployed, blogging in their parents basement.
Or is it just my elitist view of money?
Yeah, we have a really bad case of an inferiority complex.
(P.S. not goober either, just a left-leaning person really sick of the self-hatred here. Seriously, get a fucking grip. You don’t see the British left pissing and moaning about how horrible Britain is because of Tony Blair.)
We do not have any provision in our new “Constitution” for a Standing Army, and in fact despise the idea to a man.
——–
A modern wingnut overhears this, and responds:
“You un-American traitors!”
Troofie, we don’t hate America. We hate Americans. You, primarily.
just a left-leaning person …
With an awesome job, karate skills, an ex-stripper wife, and a pension from 20 years as an undercover CIA agent.
@ “the american left”
No, it was the british RIGHT wing who were pissing and moaning about how horrible Britain is because of tony blair.
With an awesome job, karate skills, an ex-stripper wife, and a pension from 20 years as an undercover CIA agent.
Don’t forget the employment at some unnamed government agency in a position that “influences Federal Policy”.
Speaking of the trips, was that $840 one way or round trip?
Roundtrip. So maybe you put off buying that new car for a few months; I’ve known so many people who can travel without high paying jobs–it’s just priorities.
You know, someone should open a fastfood chain to “The heartland” under the name “Cool Indy-burders of America.”
They could get loads of wingnuts to work just for the priviledge of saying “I work for CIA.”
They could even call their clerks “operatives”
If you’re not The Truth, you’re Goober.
He’s Troober!
I forgot. Did Troofy tell us to “bookmark it” the last time he said he was done with us?
Or maybe one of the other 355 times he said he was done with us?
America is the best country on the planet because if you and I met and you questioned my patriotism, I could beat the ever-loving shit out of you to the point of putting you in a coma for the rest of your sorry life and no jury in the world would convict me.
1. Go fuck yourself for even questioning my patriotism..
2. Go fuck yourself for even questioning my patriotism.
3. Go fuck yourself for even questioning my patriotism.
Why are you using the internet when it was invented by Al Gore? If you post on this blog again it means that you think that Al Gore is the greatest man who ever lived. If you try and dispute it, it’s because you hate reason and facts.
If you breathe another breath in this country, it means you are now a liberal. This is a liberal nation, as the 2008 elections clearly show. Either you are a liberal or you are un-American. Which one do you pick?
We also hate/make fun of unemployed people and fast food clerks. They’re such fucking losers, aren’t they?
just a left-leaning person really sick of the self-hatred here
Concern troll is concerned.
You know, someone should open a fastfood chain to “The heartland” under the name “Cool Indy-burders of America.”
Reminds me of my long abandoned plans to market “Head” beer. The ads would have been awesome.
We also hate/make fun of unemployed people and fast food clerks. They’re such fucking losers, aren’t they?
Only when their nic is “The Truth” or one of the hundreds of other nic that the uber-loser uses.
“The American Left said,
August 11, 2009 at 23:01
We also hate/make fun of unemployed people and fast food clerks. They’re such fucking losers, aren’t they?”
Oh, dont bother snarking on my behalf.
But you could check your reading comprehension as noted earlier…
And your facts I guess…
We also hate/make fun of unemployed people and fast food clerks. They’re such fucking losers, aren’t they?
Yep, losers. Losers we’re trying to get healthcare and the Employee Free Choice Act for. We must hate them so much…
Tell us what you think of collective bargaining again…
We hate and make fun of blacks, Latinos, “elities”, college professors, actors, people living in big cities, people living on the coasts, Liberals, and everybody else we’ve been ordered to hate by millionaire radio hosts.
Then stop calling Troofier/Goober “unemployed” or “living in his parents basement” or “fast food clerk”. It really is an insult to all those people to compare him to them.
You know, it’s not the Left who’s always screeching at the homeless to take a shower and get a job.
Unless I’m mistaken, that’s a Rushbo schtick.
The road to 1012 said,
Think you missed an exit there somewhere, bubba.
Then stop calling Troofier/Goober “unemployed” or “living in his parents basement” or “fast food clerk”. It really is an insult to all those people to compare him to them.
Troofy is a “fast food clerk” only in the sense of the speed with which he can produce his own liquid protein drink to slurp up.
he can produce his own liquid protein drink
you’re going to get a bill for the Boraxo & scrubbers I’ll need to get the image that prompts out of my head.
*eeeeeeyrgh*
“Xecky Gilchrist said,
LD, they like being stupid.”
Um, I must disagree. They don’t know they’re stupid. It’s like The Sixth Sense. They don’t know their brains are dead. By definition. The cliche “the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know” is completely true. And so is its contrapositive, or contrapasto, or antipasto, or coronary, or whatever it’s called.
The cliche “the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know” is completely true. And so is its contrapositive, or contrapasto, or antipasto, or coronary, or whatever it’s called.
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” – Schopenhauer
“He that is unaware of his ignorance will be misled by his knowledge.” – Whatley
“The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell
Jeebus, kids, it’s really simple. About 30% of the population either possess or are serviced by Diminutive Dicks. Paltry Pricks. Tiny Tent-pegs. Short Schvances. Little Lizards. It drives them crazy, buying guns and worrying about losing their toilet paper.
Someone alert the Nobel Committee, please.
“Some have already touched on what I think is at the root of it: the Calvinist whackjobs who sailed across from Europe when this was all a series of colonies. These were the people who couldn’t practice their religion their way back home and were thus already out of the mainstream. So they came over here early, got established, and their ideas have colored the American perspective ever since.”
That’s a pretty glib way of looking at the Puritan legacy in American life and, for the most part, completely untrue. It was the Puritans who established representative democracy, the idea of taxation to fund public schooling, made marriage a function of civil society, and lay the groundwork for the United States. It certainly wasn’t the southern colonies doing the heavy lifting, it was New England. Furthermore, much of the old Puritanism morphs into Unitarianism, which is, at its core, antithetical to the evangelical movement of today.
Really, the Middle Colonies were the foundation of America (NY, PA, NJ). They were the most multi-cultural, the most tolerant, and the most obsessed with money.
And we did invent rock & roll, the Chicago Blues, the integrated circuit and pizza.
Come si dice… Whoa, hey!
Come si dice… Whoa, hey!
Oh, come on already – admittedly you had the veggies on the bread thing started, but we just fucking perfected it.
Are we talking Chicago style, thin slice, or …?
The Left: Hating America since 1932
1932? Well, I wasn’t born yet, so it didn’t happen. I’m just a dumb blonde. (Get your paws off me, Bill Maher, sheesh!)
(P.S. not goober either, just a left-leaning person really sick of the self-hatred here.)
Oh yes, your serial contrariness has truly shown us the error of our ways, how can we ever thank you?
Europe is indeed just as terrible as America, and we are so ashamed to have thought that perhaps, possibly, ever, that we could take a cue from stuff they did that was not horrible. We should remain content with the shitty American way of doing things, because it’s America, and we want to love our nation unthinkingly like that.
Hail to thee, left-leaning contrarian. You’ve surely proved your point.
Also, I’m everything these folks have called the Truth.
He’s still a douchebag, and I’m not.
Can a leftist name ONE thing America is better than Europe in? Just one?
Also, Mexican food.
We’re better at baseball than Europe.
Not that they’re really competitors on that score, but y’know, you said one thing.
The Shrill One weighs in on the birther movement. Apropos to our discussion, I believe.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/birthers-of-a-nation/
Hey Troofie McNutgargle, where you from?
Jeebus Crisp on a Corn Dog! The new threedles are popping out like April babies from girls who spent the summer at abstinence camp.
It’s totally outrageous that people think I’m a fat, sociopathic, lying, racist American idiot… After all, look at my magnificent awareness of British Politics above! If that doesn’t shout “Informed intellectual debate then…” What’s that? New Labour is hated by the British left? 130 odd MPs (1/4 of their total or so) are resigning between now and the general election because they know they are about to be massively slaughtered, and won’t be able to claim certain financial privileges if they are voted out rather than resigning? You can pick up any British newspaper and see how desperately unpopular New Labour is? There’s this one comment alone in today’s Guardian?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/11/financial-crisis-recovery-bailout-labour
Seriously, why would ANYONE think I’m an incoherent, violent, utterly comptempatable sad sack of a man when I’m so clearly, honestly a well educated leftist?! When I clearly don’t obsessively post again and again and again like that dumb fuck The Truth? Bookmark it, liberals!
Maybe it’s time America carved out a piece of land for these unhappy wingnuts (Texas) to live on where they could have their own toilet paper factories and an endless supply of free market freedoms like exhorbitantly priced health insurance with no care attached. They could even re-elect Bush as their president. We could gate it up so no one but wingnuts could go in and no one could come back without a change of heart.
I’m wondering if the X factor is America’s status as the preeminent world empire since the end of WWII. One of the effects of this is to attract all the wealthy and powerful of other countries. From Rev. Moon, to David Frum to Rupert Murdoch, to Conrad Black I think the American left is not just competing with the American right, it’s competing with every right wing sociopath in the world who is powerful enough to influence American politics.
A few lefty Canucks like me show up to try and even the score, and of course there’s George Soros who is pretty much the only foreign left wing billionaire to have any influence in US politics (versus the dozens of right wing ones).
Without foreign wingnuts, you wouldn’t have the Washington Times or Fox News. The effect is substantial.
Militarism.
Once you get the toys, the urge to play with them becomes irresistable … & once you’ve blown up enough peoples’ kids in enough different far-away lands as a geopolitical Dick-Wagging Derby, sooner or later you begin to get this funny feeling that maybe they’re waiting for you to let your guard down long enough to get some well-earned paybacks. There’ve been more than enough of other peoples’ kids turned into kidburger by now – & there’s no indication whatsoever that this psychopathic political activity will cease any time soon.
American paranoia has a very real (& weirdly enough, logical) source in modern American history, however tragicomically misplaced it may be right now.
The nastiest part of it is, the more guns & bombs the US stacks up, the stronger the self-inflicted terror becomes … & America is packing more heat than the rest of the planet combined by now.
Who Would Jesus Clusterbomb?
They hate our way of life.
Did anyone point out to her that you have to wait in line for toilet paper now? It’s called the checkout lane!
‘Mom, why didn’t you do anything? Why do we have to wait in line for, I don’t know, toilet paper or anything?’
“Mommy’s a bit busy right now, Slash. Ask your fathers. OK, who has number 38? 38? No? OK, 39? Right this way down the hall.”
So I put the question to you, dear readers: why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others?
We don’t have single-payer healthcare with a mental health component
Obama will ban TP, but shit-box tongue-jackings will become mandatory.
No. It will be the three shells.
Didn’t ANYONE see “Demolition Man”?????
TriLat,
From Wiki:
why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others?
Because you’re Yanks.
Think about it – pro wrestling, American football, Fox, paranoid lunacy.
As to why… I imagine it’s because of an ancient native American curse… “So white man, you want our land? OK. But while you possess our land one third of your people will be batshit crazy, one third will be susceptible to the crazy, and the final third will have to suck on big, fat, crazy turds. Goodluck. Oh, and what is this “craps” you speak of?”
The wacko right has serious issues with threats to their self-agrandized “authority”. They have no concept of non-rigid thinking. I was in a gun club, in the midwest, in the late ’70’s/early ’80’s. The nazis and the tax haters and the cops and the survivalists and the zionists and I (the union officer/gangster) were sitting around discussing the upcoming racial uprising. When they asked me if I had a “survival cache” set up, I said “no, I’ll just kill a few of you guys and take your shit!” They thought I was joking. I wasn’t. It’s the attitude of entitlement and the lack of real education and intellectual expansion. Stupid, short-sighted people are easily manipulated. Those that use them have no other use for them, but the chumps are to ignorant to recognize it. I did a bit in prison, and the society there reflects the society outside, just more concentrated and intense. The rule is “the weak get taken off by the strong, but the strong get taken off by the smart”. I’m still alive. I thought Nixon was going to the fascist, election-stopping route. W really looked like he was headed there, too. The wackos might just feel like they got beat out of “their chance”.
Their leaders just went down the wrong alley and blew their shot at Fuerherhood. Fuck ’em, elections got consequences. Idiocy is self-correcting, Chuck Darwin and all that. I suffer no fools.
I can name two: Hog snot, and bovine feces.
You’re soaking in ’em, dude.
why do paranoid right-wing belief systems flourish in this country more than others?
I agree with several commenters that religion, or at least the self-righteous, willfully ignorant brand of it practiced in the U.S. is the root cause of the problem. I’m soaking in it living in an upscale neighborhood of suburban ATL. The south is home to the born-again birthers making up the strength of the republican party.
Southern christians really believe in hell and know there is one ticket to salvation: the inerrant word of god as communicated through bronze age fables edited by medieval clerics.
Many are bible literalist. These are people who have read and re-read this book riddled with contradictions and STILL believe it is absolutely the final truth and only source for eternal life. What amazes me is their belief that every word and every story must be true or their whole belief structure collapses. It is all or nothing. The best selling messages of Ted Haggard became worthless when they found out he was gay.
They deal only in absolutes. Good and evil. Saved and unsaved. Us and them.
You can spot the truest of the believers in any neighborhood here: they don’t get newspapers. A neighbor actually told me that the good book was the only source for news anyone needs. Home schooling is booming. These are people actively breaking off contact with the outside world—anything that challenges their view of a 6000 year old world.
This is a culture that crushes independent thought, reasoning and skepticism. Why worry about global warming when Jesus will be coming back for me any day now? Just don’t take any of my money while I’m waiting and give it to those people who won’t even be leaving with me and my bff Jesus.
Keep in mind these people are motivated by fear—fear of eternal damnation. Using scare tactics to influence a population raised to never question authority is so easy, even republicans can do it.
As beautifully stated above – Jesus makes you stupid.
One reason that right-wing paranoia is so frequently seen in the US is that political paranoia on both the right and the left in general is higher here than in for example England or Germany. However I would nominate racism for the number one reason. Almost every racist in the US understands that their belief system is socially unacceptable, so they must suppress and twist it before it comes out in a new public form. Scratch almost any paranoid conspiracy theory popular with the right and you’ll reveal its racist roots, be it anti-black, anti-Semitic, or anti-immigrant. I’ll nominate another reason as well, our consumerist society’s marketing powers, through television and films, constantly push the conspiracy theory explanation as the primary way for common people to understand any particular event they don’t understand, or don’t like.
Standing in line for toilet paper? Been there, done that. I’m old enough to remember the meat panic, the coffee panic, the chocolate panic, the antifreeze panic, and yes, the toilet paper panic. Nixon/Ford were in office at the time.
“The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge said,
August 12, 2009 at 6:11
Standing in line for toilet paper? Been there, done that. I’m old enough to remember the meat panic, the coffee panic, the chocolate panic, the antifreeze panic, and yes, the toilet paper panic. Nixon/Ford were in office at the time.”
I remember that also. I watched the “Tom Snyder Show” and he reported on it; then told everyone to “sit tight”.
Language is a virus.
Narcissism. Everyone wants to be the clever one who saw through the Evil Plot. Everyone wants to be the one that saved the day. And of course everyone wants to be the one that has the power not only to define which American is Legitimate and which is False, but also to defend the Legitimate America from the False America.
Nite Owl: “Whatever happened to the American Dream?”
The Comedian: “It came true.”
(My apologies if this has already been posted, I haven’t read the whole thing yet.)
It may have to something to do with having such a short history. The obstacles faced by those not to the manor born were minuscule in comparison and our resources were vast. I would imagine the expectations of the average American were a bit higher than his counterparts (at least for a number of years and assuming he was white)
It would present an especially tough environment for anyone with an exceptional opinion of himself combined with below average abilities. And any egotistical malcontent is going to need a lot better excuse than bad luck after he’s spent a lifetime taming the west by killing crops, kids and selling his free government land at a loss. Nope, it would have need to be a conspiracy of global proportion, it’s the only plausible explanation.
Teabaggers and Birthers are just the latest in a long line of Real Americans who’ve managed to hit nothing but red lights on Route 66. And thirty years after Reagan assured them they were born exceptional, albeit over taxed, they woke up and discovered a colored living in the big house and he’s taking what little shit they still have, and he’s giving it to Jew bankers, welfare queens, Mexicans and queers.
If you were a real American, that no one’s ever given ‘nothin to, you’d be pissed too. Now the best they can do is get justice by punishing the fucks that are responsible for really fucking up their miserable lives. They owe it to the malcontents who came before The men and women never quit believing, even when the government forced them to fail at each and every turn.
berlusconi doesn’t count. italy has a massive welfare state and his govt. is pretty much communist russia compared to the us. the italian right looks insane (ok, well it’s pretty nuts) because they pretend to be fascists because their ridiculous political system doesn’t let anyone accomplish anything other than grotesque corruption. i’m sorry if anyone is italian but that’s just the truth. so fascists pretend to be fascists because they can say they’re the only people who will get things done. meanwhile italians scream about illegal immigrants and silvio’s friends use illegal immigrants to pick their tomatoes. sound familiar?
we have a similar problem here in australia. the basic problem is that ‘conservative’ politics attracts three kinds of people:
1) rich people
2) morons who think they can become rich if they act like rich people
3) sadists with a feudal peasant mindset that the natural order of things is to work themselves to death for the lord of the manor.
only the first group are acting in their own interest. i can understand a rich guy voting to stay rich, but not a poor guy voting to stay poor. figure that out and our side wins.
What really breaks my brain is that NOW the country’s being torn apart, seven months into a Democratic administration that’s barely done a damn thing, after eight years of a demonstrably totalitarian Republican one that spied on its citizens, murdered thousands of its young men and women and ran a concentration camp in Cuba.
1. Go fuck yourself for even questioning my patriotism..
2. Go fuck yourself for even questioning my patriotism.
3. Go fuck yourself for even questioning my patriotism.
I’m sorry could you go over number two one more time I’m having a hard time writing all this down
My interpretation would be the ingrained doublethink Marxism of the US upper classes.
OK, that sounds like gibberish.
What I mean is that a segment of the upper classes at some level believe Marxist doctrine, and think that acting like the villains of Marx’ piece best serves their interests. It’s very hard for them to alter this instinct because the form their Marxism takes is that of doublethink: a bundle of pairs of contradictory concepts to be understood according to context. This is intellectual suicide. Scratch the surface of their thought, and it’s clear that they’re stuck in the 19th century, everything afterwards being either a tool for the furtherance of the cause of the upper classes or propaganda of one kind or another. This is the dark heart of the Republican Party.
“Can a leftist name ONE thing America is better than Europe in?”
Not just one, parrotriot.
1. Disney theme parks
2. Favoring corporations
3. Virility of religious memes
4. Puttin’ on the Ritz
5. Making really good TV shows that no-one in the US sees because they’re on HBO
Does anybody notice that the Deathers and the Tea baggers look as though they are perrennially going to shit their pants? The do, all the time.