You might be a Whack Job.
These guys had a tense night. And give whole new meaning to the words “well regulated militia.”
The usual suspects go nuts. She updates, but changes the subject.
Ya know, ya just gotta love America.
Archive for category Wingnuttia
…I see something like this (H/T to Jesse Taylor over at Pandagon). A small taste:
“Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.
“What could be code-breaking evidence of the latter explanation is to be found in the newly-disclosed redesign of the Missile Defense Agency logo (above). As Logan helpfully shows, the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo.”
If you think that the President of the United States personally designed a new logo for the Missile Defense Agency based on a crescent to show an official US Government policy of “submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah,” then you might be a whack job. The stupid, it burns.
Of course, this is the same Project for a New American Century and Center for Security Policy wackaloon who thinks that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the first attack on the World Trade Center and even helped Timothy McVeigh make his Oklahoma City bombing happen. So batshit crazy is nothing new to this guy.
I expect this sort of wackiness from guys like Christopher Logan, who apparently pointed this out to Gaffney. Logan is really nothing more than a right wing talking head who claims expertise on Islam for “a lot of reading and studying, sort of on my own” because he read the Koran. He reminds me of the Abe Lincoln character in those old commercials.
Logan also qualifies for whack job status, given his apparent belief that General McChrystal cares more for the Taliban than for his soldiers, and the tin-foil-hatted belief that the US Department of Justice has “turned on America and sided with Islam” because it acted to protect religious liberty.
So it’s a whack job twofer kind of day, and a reminder that some people are either just way out there or they spout this kind of tin-foil-hat crap to get attention. Sometimes I wonder, because it is hard to imagine that anyone with Gaffney’s training and experience could actually believe that the Obama Administration wants to “submit” the US to Islamic legal theory.
Perhaps this rhetoric is just a way to generate unrest among the right wing base and help keep a generally corporatist and centrist government from moving on progressive issues (e.g., health care reform), as voters seemed to demand in 2008. Maybe, like some religious leaders, Gaffney and Logan say crazy things so talk show producers will put them on the air and donors will support their “think” tanks, where apparently very few people do any actual thinking. Or it could be that these guys just don’t really care for democracy and small-L liberalism if things like civil rights and religious freedom apply to non-Christians.
Any way you slice it, these guys are nuts. They get the label.
End Time Whack Job
Feb 15
One of the radio stations here in Richmond is an American Family Radio affiliate, and I wound up listening one morning during the local National Public Radio station’s pledge drive. Sadly for me, I landed on a show called Politics and Religion, hosted by Irvin Baxter.
This complete nutcase thinks that the end of the world is coming any minute–at least he says that on the radio every morning. To be sure, he always carefully hedges with “I don’t know exactly when” rhetoric. But he sells his magazine by describing the End of the World as prophesied by the Bible–complete with Antichrist, one world government, one world religion, and a war which will kill a third of human beings–and then saying that he expects it to come during his lifetime. And he’s no spring chicken.
I’ve heard his rants against homosexuality, the European Union, the World Court, and the Federal Reserve. Baxter actually says he worries that RFID chips are the Mark of the Beast. He interviews true freaks, like John F. McManus, the President of the John Birch Society. McManus writes conspiracy theory books on the Bilderberg Group and thinks that if it ain’t a precious metal, it ain’t money.
These people are all paranoid freaks and conspiracy theorists who think that someone who lived two thousand years ago had a vision of attack helicopters at the end of the world and wrote it down in the Bible. They make a great addition to the Whack Job list.
Pat Robertson said, during a 700 Club report on the earthquake in Haiti, that
“They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.”
This of course sent all kinds of people into high dudgeon over the insensitivity of the remark. Pat Robertson of course gives not a whit for the opinions of others, unless they speak to him from on high.
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher.
The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”?
If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.
You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
LILY COYLE, MINNEAPOLIS
Man, I wish I’d thought to send a letter to the editor like this. Good work, Lily.
Rules for Whack Jobs
Sep 9
Roy Edroso does everyone a public service by wading through the mud of the right-wing-nutjob attack on President Obama’s speech to school kids. I’m almost sorry I clicked through to any of the blogs he cites: the stupid, it burns.
It is difficult to overstate the amount of ignorance permeating the discussions and essays on these blogs. The discussions of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, for example, suggest that few have actually read the book. Click over from WikiPedia to Amazon, folks, and order it. Read it.
James Lewis, who may be an American but is not much of a thinker (he thinks socialists are “deeply committed” to the “Internationalist Ruling Class!”), asserts that Alinsky’s prescription to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” has something to do with scapegoating groups:
“That slogan defines mob scapegoating, of course. It is an exact prescription for whipping up mobs — by race, by gender, by ethnicity, by religion.”
This makes, of course, very little sense. Personalizing and polarizing the target is about putting an individual, and preferably evil, face on class oppression, not about blaming rich white mortgage lenders for the problems caused by all those lazy poor people who bought houses they couldn’t pay for.
But what about Alinsky? Lewis wants to paint him as a dangerous radical who means to bring down capitalism and the American way of life with the help of his protege, President Obama. Capitalism has, of course, quite effectively begun the process of destroying itself without Alinsky’s help, thank you very much.
Lewis is bent out of shape because President Obama is scapegoating the “capitalists who run General Motors and Wall Street,” and some B-list comedienne thinks the tea partiers are racist, don’t you see. Never mind that the executives who brought down our economy by mismanaging both its industrial and financial sectors sort of brought the blame upon themselves.
Saul Alinsky wrote Rules to show the politically weak how they could effect social change despite the efforts of the powerful to hold their priveleged economic and political positions. He compared the book to The Prince:
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
Alinsky suggested that organizers identify privileged individuals and personalize social injustice–that is, show exactly who benefits from the perceived class differences they had organized to fight. Lewis does not support his claim that the President has decided to use this technique to demonize groups rather than individuals except by assertion: he just knows they are doing this, because this is what the Dixiecrats did to blacks, don’t you see. But the evidence suggests that people who wish to curb the excesses of Capitalism and capitalists have followed Alinsky’s lead by targeting the individual executives who made corporate decisions on things like bonuses.
This article, for example, targets Edward Liddy, the CEO of AiG, not capitalists in general. Other discussion of Wall Street bonuses challenge them on capitalist grounds by making the credible claim that the poor performance of financial wizards should preclude bonuses–they should not be rewarded for destroying their companies.
“These bonuses should be zero,” wrote one poster on the firedoglake.com blog. “Not down 44%. Zero. These banks should be using their profits to reinvest in the shoring up of their capital reserves, so that they [can] start underwriting and lending again, not paying discretionary bonuses. It’s not about keeping the “best and the brightest”…if they were that sharp, we wouldn’t be in this mess, would we now?”
Janeane Garafalo’s assertion that racism pervades the Tea Party movement also has merit–at least StormFront thinks so. They have asked members to join the Tea Parties, and along with other white supremacist groups believe they would find a fertile recruiting ground at such meetings.
In no sense can anyone characterize either as scapegoating. Neither Wall Street bonus babies nor teabaggers are taking blame for others. To the extent liberals use Alinsky’s methods to effect social change, they target the actual malefactors of wealth and privelege–along with the rubes who support an unjust system. They do not blame innocent individuals or groups for the sins of others.
Indeed, it is arguably the right that favors Alinsky’s techniques. They make a din that creates the impression of a larger movement at boisiterous town hall forums. They force rules of civil conduct on liberals even while violating them. They bully and ridicule, and attract activists who enjoy using these methods. They use any event as a reason to attack, and offer no constructive alternatives. And they picked, froze, personalized, and polarized Obama.
They also scapegoat amorphous groups–the liberal media, academic or Hollywood elites, unions, socialists, communists, and all those welfare mothers who think rich people owe them a Cadillac.
We should of course expect reactionaries–capitalists, corporatists, and religious leaders who see their base of political and economic power crumbling before changing social norms, demographics, and economic and scientific realities–to protect the foundations of their power. They have to demonize cultural, political, economic and demographic changes as socialist in order to hold the support of uninformed masses who fear out groups, “socialism,” “secularism,” and “liberal elites” more than they fear losing everything when some corporation sends their job overseas or refuses to pay for the cancer treatment because they had acne ten years ago. This is how they preserve the every-man-for-himself system that allows a small group of wealthy patriarchs to control the vast majority of US wealth. But they have no stronger a claim to America, and what it means to be an American, than liberals who believe that we can improve society by acting collectively.
And if they believe that socialism is about commitment to the “International Ruling Class,” they come to the intellectual gun fight without a good understanding of what bullets are.
Military Quote of the Day
May 15
Degenerates who think torturing prisoners is morally acceptable edition:
“Hold it the Greatest sin to prefer existence to honor, and for the sake of life to lose the reason for living.”
–Juvenal
Bonus quote on the same subject:
“A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.”
–Walter Lippman
Little Tent Conservatives
Apr 29
On the way back from a business meeting yesterday, I had the dubious luck of hearing the local conservative radio talk show host rant about Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic Party. Besides repeating the wingnut talking point that Specter switched parties because he knew former Congressman Pat Toomey would beat him in a Republican Primary, he also went on for about ten minutes about all the other RINOs he thinks should switch–guys like Chuck Hagel. He is not alone.
As Professor Sabato pointed out, conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, some part of Senator Specter’s calculation included his own political self-interest and his slim chances of winning a primary against Toomey. But conservatives who care about the direction of public policy in the US should quietly applaud Specter’s move.
Toomey cannot win a general election in Pennsylvania. The state is trending liberal, and Toomey is a Club for Growth conservative with all the standard right-wing/corporatist/social conservative positions on taxation, collective action, abortion, bankruptcy, crime, gay marriage, and other issues. This means that without a Specter switch, Pennsylvania would probably elect a more liberal senator next year. As it happens, Specter will probably win a Democratic primary and defeat Toomey in the general election, keeping the state’s Senate members to the right of the median Senator.
Conservatives like Doc Thomspon and Limbaugh apparently think that shrinking the party will make it stronger. But making it more ideologically homogenous will not help the GOP’s election chances, except in places with strong conservative majorities. Crazy rants and strident ideology do not attract new supporters. So keep preaching to the choir, Doc, and the GOP will keep losing.
The anti-gay marriage crowd went bonkers once again last week when Perez Hilton, an openly gay B-list celebrity and social commentator asked a Miss America contestant whether or not other states should follow Vermont by leagalizing same-sex marriaige. The contestant, Carrie Prejean, answered,
“Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anyone out there, but that’s how I was raised, and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman.”
Mr. Hilton voted against her, she came in second to Miss North Carolina, and the right went ballistic once more about the homosexual agenda, political correctness, “gay totalitarians,” and attacks on traditional values, whatever those are.
It should surprise no one that this answer, which favored a reactionary religious stance without regard to the nuances of the issue or any discusson of the idea that this debate really does have two sides, cost this woman competition points. The purpose of questions like this in beauty pageants is to uphold the pretense that the woman’s brain is at least as important as her appearance in skimpy outfits, the size of her boobs, or the silkiness of her hair. The fact that Miss Prejean could offer no informed opinion on why she thought states should not legalize homosexual marriage beyond her own family tradition is what cost her the crown, not the actual opinion she expressed.
Of course, conservatives want to generate outrage over this, since they have no real answer to the discrimiation argument in support of gay marriage. So they blame phantom agendas and totalitarians for Miss Prejean’s loss, and scream bloody murder about this newest example of how Hollywood liberals and gays are destroying the American way of life. This probablygives them some satisfaction, but if they want to know why their popularity continues to slip they should look in the mirror at the angry people they have become.
Most of what you see on the blogs linked above–not only on this subject–is anger, rage, and reactive foot stomping over percieved criticism of or insults to America or Christianity. They offer very little policy discussion except assertions that traditional ways are better because they are so…traditional. Very little discussion of how to adapt conservative principles to modern society can be found here. Instead, they want to stop time and preserve traditional gender roles, traditional market rules, and traditional goverment power without defending any of these policies on social utility grounds. “We’ve always done it this way” is all they have.
This is a losing strategy because no one listens to the angry guy. People dismiss angry ranting, however righteous its basis, because it offers no solutions. Americans instinctively understand that the most outraged guy in the room usually has the least justification for his rage.
The gay marriage debate is the perfect example: homosexuals face real discrimination with regard to inheritance, power of attorney, the right to contract, and protection of partnership assets–the State treats them differently than it treats straight people. This is a simple fact that cannot be dismissed with “but gay men have the same right to marry women as straight men do.” But instead of seeking or proposing sensible ways of ending this discrimination, such as separating the religious consecration of sexual unions from state sanction, conservatives rant about the meaning of “marriage” and loudly make the ridiculous claim that the “marriage” of two gay men somehow affects the rights or privilege of heterosexuals to marry. For most people, this only sets them up for ridicule.
A lot of Americans, from the faithful to environmentalists to anti-globalists would like to see a managed social progress that protects those who want to hold on to traditional ways of life while allowing others to move forward and establish new traditions. Wingnuts don’t help their cause with strident rage over non-insults. “You kids get off my lawn” isn’t working.
Whack Jobs
Apr 10
Jason Corley, the publisher of one of the sites blogrolled as a “Whack Job” site, writes to ask if I really think he fits that description. The answer is yes.
This is, of course, quite subjective. In my view, Mr. Corley believes some pretty wacky things. He thinks, for instance, that because President Obama acknowledged the imperfection of the United States, and did not visit the Omaha Beach cemetery, he must hate America. He thinks that criticism of President Obama by liberals means they are “leaving the Obama train.” He thinks that the editor of Newsweek “adores” Islam, and considers a story about the comparative relevance of Christianity and Christian thought an attack on the faith.
He is not alone. A lot of others believe similar crazy things. So in honor of Mr. Corley, I will begin a series of posts (If You Believe…..you may be a Whack Job)* pointing out “whackjobbiness” wherever I find it. I don’t plan to ignore liberal looniness in favor of that on the Right, but I have an idea how this will shake out. We’ll see.
*Thanks, and the appropriate apologies, to Jeff Foxworthy.
John Hinderaker, a Minnesota attorney who once proudly called himself “Hindrocket,” believe it or not, complains about President Obama’s understanding of American history in this Powerline post. He is either a pathetic liar, or an idiot who knows no American history.
Hindrocket first claims that “there has never been a time when it was hard for people who look like Obama to vote here in Minnesota.” Though the “Star of the North” state is to be sure more progressive than most, it was not free of lynchings, and the Klan was active there between the wars. Native Americans had to give up their tribal status to vote in Minnesota until 1960. So it is fair to say that “people who look like Obama” have at times found it hard to vote there in the past.
Next this “attorney” asserts that President “confesses wrongly” past American sins when he promises to close Guantanamo and prohibit torture, presumably on the grounds that the US was not torturing detainess before Obama won the election. I guess you can make this claim with a straight face if you define torture away–waterboarding doesn’t count, he says (though we thought it did when the Japanese and Khmer Rouge used it). It is difficult to overstate the moral and ethical nihilism required to believe that the abusive and torturous interrogation techniques our people used on detainees–many of them innocent–amounts to just “getting your face wet.”
But his worst case of historical ignorance has him saying this:
“So what was the point of Obama’s gratuitous reference to “our past treatment of Native Americans”? Did he mean to suggest that it was somehow equivalent to the Armenian genocide? If so, once again, he needs to be better educated about history.”
Mr. Hindrocket needs to read up on his history if he thinks that the treatment of Native Americans by colonial and US authorities has no equivalence with genocide in Armenia. As in Armenia, the American indigenous population was deported (as slaves to Caribbean planters), force marched (can you say Trail of Tears?), and simply massacred (Wounded Knee). Depending on whose numbers you use, as many as 18 million aboriginal human beings were killed by western explorers and the American government during a sustained campaign of genocide that lasted over 300 years.
This little screed by the Hindrocket is nothing more than a recitation of the Right’s American Exceptionalism talking point–we are somehow special, and anything we do is moral by definition. He is wrong about this, and his American arrogance is especially interesting coming from a presumeably educated man and a Christian. Whether in history class or in church, he should have learned that no country, and no one, is perfect, and it’s too bad that this moral coward can’t bring himself to admit it.