Frum on Conservative Paranoia
David Frum’s Spectator article on the political challenges facing the modern Republican Party has a nice ditty on the tide of extreme paranoia sweeping the conservative mediaverse:
Yet to listen to Fox News and other conservative media, you’d think we were living in Czechoslovakia in the final hours before the 1948 communist coup. Anchors end interviews by solemnly pledging to defend liberty and oppose tyranny. The network’s rising star Glenn Beck has mused about the coming turn to totalitarianism — and warned his audience that he has not been able to ‘debunk’ fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing an archipelago of concentration camps for political opponents of the Obama administration.
Now to be fair, during the Bush years more than one person passed me this “14 Characteristics of Fascism” document in order to prove that under George W. Bush the United States had become a fascist regime. Overreaction to policies you don’t like is a pretty understandable human impulse. The difference is that mainstream, prominent outlets usually try to restrain that kind of impulse. But this sort of over-the-top rhetoric isn’t burbling from the grassroots up, it’s being driven the very most prominent figures in conservative media and also by a large number of members of congress.
Here, for example, is Representative Michael McCaul who appears to be calling on the crowd to shed the blood of the tyrannical Obama administration:
It’s about our founding fathers who in 1773 threw a little party called the Boston tea party. And fought against tyranny and oppressive taxes, does that sound familiar? We’re continuing that revolution right here in Austin, TX today. Thomas Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty will be fed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. You are the patriots.
I’m sure that 99.9 percent of the people listening to Rep. McCaul understand that this is just hot air and BS. They understand that he doesn’t really mean what he says, and doesn’t really think that what patriots should do is risk their lives in an effort to kill authority figures. But suppose 5,000 people are conservatives and fans of Michael McCaul and 99.9 percent of them remember not to take him seriously. What do the other five people do? Shoot an IRS agent? Try to kill the President? There’s a real need for people in positions of authority to act more responsibly than this.
132 Responses to “Frum on Conservative Paranoia”
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April 16th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
So, in the last two days, we’ve had
1. A sitting governor openly talk about secession
2. Not, one, but two Fox News anchors openly agree with said governor.
3. A representative and potential candidate for the Illinois Senate seat held by Mr. Burris talk about how folks are “ready to shoot the people who raise taxes”.
4. This guy openly making violent allusions to the current administration.
YET. These are also the same people who are incredibly offended that the Bush DHS commissioned a report about the rise of right-wing extremism?
April 16th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Rising star lunatic Michelle Bachmann also quoted Jefferson about the occasional need for the spilling of blood.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
This type of talk will dissipate once the re-education camps are up and running.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Don’t forget there’s a census next year.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Amazing.
And recall — the Dixie Chicks were hideously unpatriotic people whose music required burning because they professed to be “embarrassed” that the President, like them, was from Texas.
Imagine if they had said spilling some Bushie Admin blood might be advisable. I’m sure conservatives would have been calling for burning of far more than their records.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I don’t think left-wing anti-Bush hysteria ever reached the fever pitch that anti-Obama hysteria has reached. And to the extent that there was anti-Bush hysteria, you really did not see any of that sort of thing a mere 3 months into his first term. It took a lot of over actions on his part–the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq–for people on the left to really start to get freaked out enough to pass around emails proving that Bush was a fascist.
Right wingers really really really hate to lose.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
What do the other five people do?
Murder cops when they show up on a domestic disturbance call.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
No, but its increasingly obvious that right wingers hate this president because he’s Black.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Shouldn’t the House Ethics Committee be investigating a member who publicly called for the violent overthrow of the government? Or the Secret Service? Or someone?
April 16th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
The same GOP yahoos openly talking about revolution will be the ones campaigning as “law and order Americans” in 2012 as a response to the violence they themselves are whipping up.
And to you GOP trolls who no doubt are hanging around, please find for me a SINGLE Democratic governor in the post-Civil Rights Era who has talked openly about dissolving the United States. Find me one. If you can’t, shut the fuck up.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I don’t know. While I agree that the Bush admin wasn’t a fascist regime, much of the Republican party then and now seems to be ‘incipiently fascist’ in its tendencies. There is, for example, the total subordination of truth and reason to the needs of power; the desperate quest for ‘others’ to demonize; the admittedly for the most part so far only rhetorical celebration of violence against political opponents. And now all the accusations of fascism that they are directing at their opponents. they have an uncanny knack for projecting, don’t they?
April 16th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I think we’ve gone from the Paranoid Style to the Psychotic Style. Or the Paranoid Schizophrenic style. It’s in negative correlation to the drugs: as anti-psychotics get advertised on primetime TV as a booster drug, psychotics broadcast in between commercials.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Yo,
Did anybody see a single minority at any of the tea-parties? On TV coverage or otherwise?
April 16th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
No, but its increasingly obvious that right wingers hate this president because he’s Black.
I dunno– they’d be just as outraged if Hillary were president. They’d just use different attacks. The fact that the right-wing has an anti-black contingent certainly means that they are going to use the Obama presidency as an excuse to vocalize what’s on their minds doesn’t mean that the wouldn’t have these tea parties if Hillary or Edwards were president. It’s just *which* hateful contingent of the right-wing comes to the fore. When Bill Clinton was president, the exurban right mocked him as a hillbilly. They hate Obama because he’s a Democrat. The fact that he’s black is just the icing on the cake for their feelings that he’s an interloper, and those who are normally silent about their racism feel comfortable about expressing it now.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
God, when David frickin’ Frum sounds the voice of reason, you know we’re truly and totally screwed.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
In McCaul’s defense, he called for the blood of his own side to be shed in rhetorically equal measure.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I like this. I really like it.
Nothing would be better in my mind than devolution, or reverting back to something more akin to a confederacy. We’ll see how those rednecks like the defense budget when they don’t have twice the federal pork of blue states coming in.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
McCaul’s headquarters is a few blocks from my house here in Austin. Austin! His district stretches from Austin to the west side of Houston. It was one of the Delay sponsored gerrymanders from a few years back.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Obama is a living embodiment of almost everything they have been taught to resent and hate: not just black, but urban, educated, comfortable with foreigners, youthful, hip, and so on. The only big thing he is missing is that he isn’t gay–but he is slender, handsome, and dresses well, and that may be enough to spark some homophobia among their closeted members.
So yes, it isn’t just a racial thing, it is the whole package. And the worst of it all is that the American people had no particular problem voting for him, which rocks their sense of place in the Universe to its core.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Sure did. They were almost all Republicans!
April 16th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
So yes, it isn’t just a racial thing, it is the whole package.
Kind of funny that the first president (or candidate) that I closely and directly identify with is the one that raises the ire of conservatives so strongly.
The funny thing is that Obama embraces all of the values that conservatives keep demanding that Americans — particularly immigrants — conform to: working hard, becoming educated, getting jobs that lead to economic success. But when someone actually does that, the right wing gets more angry about it than I’ve ever seen them, and in fact preferred the candidates who were self-conscious about not working hard and not valuing education. It’s almost as though (a) they don’t really believe all of those “American values” they’re preaching, or (b) are angry that someone who wasn’t them became successful before they did.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
That Thomas Jefferson quote from the esteemed congressman was printed on the t-shirt Timothy McVeigh was wearing at the time of his arrest, and was his justification for the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Perhaps someone should have pointed this out to the congressman, although I’m sure it would not have mattered.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I dunno– they’d be just as outraged if Hillary were president.
I think that’s half-right. It’s not quite the same because there actually are women in the Republican party, so they can’t quite use gender as an organizing principle without potentially paying a quite significant cost. Recall that in 2000, Mehlman, et al. wanted to reach out to African-Americans in order to shore up the party’s credentials with white women.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Tyro,
Well, meritocracy was supposed to be a test someone like Obama couldn’t pass. And so in their minds, he has to be cheating somehow (hence all the teleprompter obsession).
April 16th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
International Mikey said:
No, but its increasingly obvious that right wingers hate this president because he’s Black.
I know it feels really great to be all morally superior and to turn your enemies into monsters, but really, this is not a useful thing to do. What is obvious is that they hate Obama because he’s a Democrat and he won. And he’s good.
Think of a schoolyard bully who picks on someone. He’ll make fun of a fat kid for being fat. He’ll make fun of a skinny kid for being skinny. He’ll make fun of a blond kid for being blond and a dark haired kid for having dark hair.
I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist or that it doesn’t exist in the Republican party. It does. But by and large, for most of the hate Obama crowd, the hate comes first. They hate him. And then they look for some way to be mocking and scornful about him. And sometimes they’ll pick something that appears to sensitive people to be borderline racist or that even crosses the line. But that’s more because they’re stupid and insensitive than driven by racism.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Somecallmetim, I really think you missed Tyro’s point. He might just as easily have said “They’d be just as outraged if Edwards were president.” And they would.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Re “What do the other five people do? Shoot an IRS agent? ”
—————
1) You might want to let a few more weeks pass from April 15 before you offer that up as a downside.
Look — Matt Bai in “The Argument” recounted what Rob Stein found when he examined what feeds this beast:
a) A few wealthy billionaires (Scaifes, Coors, etc) feed $300 Million or so per year to what are laughing called “think tanks” (AEI, Heritage,etc)
b) Think Tanks feed talking points to major nodes of the conservative propaganda machine (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and now Glenn Beck )
c) Said propaganda SETS the agenda for national discourse because the Democrats are silent –either out of cowardice, bribery from lobbyists checks, or smug indifference so long as their rice bowl is not at risk
d) Republican grassroots –which are some of the most stupid fuckers on the planet — lap it up like cream
2) It’s only effective because the Democratic Party does NOTHING to confront it. Well , aside from a few dirty, unpaid hippies like Kos, Atrios, etc.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
“fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing an archipelago of concentration camps for political opponents of the Obama administration.”
Whatever FEMA is building, that construction was going on under the Bush administration. So what were those places for under Bush? Opponents of the Bush administration? If so, why didn’t Beck have a problem with it then? I guess fascism is okay if your guy is in power.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
This post is too funny. It’s like Matthew has been asleep for the past 8 years.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Is it just me or is Glenn Beck wearing his wedding ring on his right hand? Did they like the right hand pointing but want to remind audiences he is a family man? What gives?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I don’t think left-wing anti-Bush hysteria ever reached the fever pitch that anti-Obama hysteria has reached…
*Snicker*
Don’t get out much, do you?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
@ 20
ZING!
April 16th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
to be fair, during the Bush years more than one person passed me this “14 Characteristics of Fascism” document in order to prove that under George W. Bush the United States had become a fascist regime. Overreaction to policies you don’t like is understandable..
Unfortunate cop out here. The two don’t balance out at all.
Fascism is wonderfully Promethean – it doesn’t have to look like Spain in the 40s or whatever. Every country has its own fabulously unique version. I think there’s a good argument to be made that the Bush ‘administration’ was a sort of proto-facism-lite (’lite’ being the American innovation). It’s a shame that one isn’t allowed to use the word ‘fascism’ appropriately, but one isn’t. That’s really a capitulation, and a bigger one than people like MY might think it is. Fascism is not some mysterious anomaly which happened to pop up in Europe for a few years. It’s an enduring impulse to authoritarianism which can insinuate itself into politics anywhere in the modern world.
I’d also note that the fathers of the modern conservative movement which produced Bush/Cheney admired Franco and fascist Spain, and were open about it. And it is not at all a sure thing that, if conservative Republicans had been in power in the 30s, the US would have sided against Germany. Yes, that’s a big counterfactual, but the point remains: there’s nothing wrong with calling authoritarian/fascist tendencies or drift what they are/were. In fact, it’s essential to do so, to think clearly about it.
I’d further point out that virtually nobody on the progressive left was calling for anybody’s blood.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I’ll concede there’s a lot to what Rob Mac says about the bully phenomenon. If he wasn’t black they’d find something else. But the fact remains that if, when casting about for a way to be scornful of someone, you choose their skin color or their ancestry, you’re being racist. There’s no way around it. Racism doesn’t have to be your primary motive to still be racism.
Pointing this out isn’t about creating monsters. Racists are all around us. They’re a part of life. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t point them out when we see them. Public shame can be a decent deterrent as well as a way to change attitudes.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
David,
Beck is wearing that ring on his left hand, unless he is in fact the Devil and has turned his head 180 degrees.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I’d further point out that virtually nobody on the progressive left was calling for anybody’s blood.
Virtually everybody on the “progressive left” was calling for blood. Hell, Matthew himself thinks that violence against conservatives is a good idea.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Hello Al #29,
Matthew actually does mention anti-Bush extreme rhetoric and makes a distinction between it and right-wing extreme rhetoric. One can argue (but why?) about whether or not that distinction makes sense (or other distinctions people could make), but there is in fact a distinction. I have no interest in having this argument.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I have no interest in having this argument.
And yet you bring it up! Seems to me that you are, in fact, interested in having the argument. And Matthew’s “distinction” is disingenuous.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
So, again, right wing trolls, care to produce a single Democratic governor, Senator, Representative that openly called for the dissolution of the United States in the last decade? Can you come up with an example of a single network news anchor that openly called for the dissolution of the United States before two Fox employees did that very same thing yesterday?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
“Fascism is wonderfully Promethean”
Do you mean protean?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Thanks Pete. Looking at it again, I don’t know how I thought otherwise.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Somecallmetim, I really think you missed Tyro’s point. He might just as easily have said “They’d be just as outraged if Edwards were president.” And they would.
Ah. I think you’re missing my point. These sorts of statements (”What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”) aren’t simply reflections of sentiments, they’re statements intended to shape other people’s feelings. And, when making such statements, you have to be careful not to eat into your own coalition. So the language may have to be a little more careful with regard to women, who vote Republican, than with regard to African-Americans, who don’t.
This isn’t a particularly bizarre phenomenon. Most of us curb our language in the workplace as regards women b/c we will get in trouble otherwise. And, over time, I suspect that has led to men who are less likely to be quite the assholes about women than existed in workplaces in the past. (This may be more believable when seen in reverse. Imagine you could suddenly put up nude centerfolds, etc. at work. How long would you estimate it would take before the place became extremely unfriendly to women? My guess is “not very.”)
April 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I don’t think the anti-Bush crowd was generally in favor of violence. Many were (and still are) in favor of imprisonment for Bush, but they wanted to do it through the proper channels of justice.
Though I guess no one’s thrown any shoes at Obama yet…
April 16th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I think it’s probably a good thing that we’re seeing this much Republican and right wing crackup so early in the administration, given that the vast majority of the population associates them with the asshats that got us into the messes we’re dealing with today.
I’d probably be more nervous if they seemed to be organizing any real sort of deep, dangerous movement, but even if this sort of tea party / secession / damn that Kenyan / where’s the birth certificate stuff turns out to push a few murderous right wingers over the edge, like the church shooter and the Pittsburgh cop killer or even another Timothy McVeigh, well, those things are all horrible, but not actual threats to government or the Republic.
And anyone directly involved in any such actual criminal and violent crap will be hunted down, arrested, and prosecuted, and nobody in the American public will shed a tear apart from the typical militarist loons who call fluoride a Communist plot.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Ryan makes some good points, but I think in these kinds of cases attempts at public shaming will be counter productive. Obama’s the president. I think his critics need to be given some latitude or we risk fueling the “PC” meme. Unless a racially insensitive attack is really over the top, we’re better off laughing it off.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Does anyone seriously think the REpublican fat asses have ANY potential for being real life violent insurgents?
Give me a break. Even the NRA is a pack of clowns in that regard.
This nation’s problem is NOT that it citizens are too prone to violence — it’s that they are a pack of craven sheep.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Hello Al,
The argument I do not wish to have is the one in which I pretend I am convincing anyone that Matthews’ distinction (or the other distinctions that could be and have been made) are legitimate. I was, however, interested in pointing out that it is disingenuous to accuse Matthew of ignoring left-wing extreme rhetoric and practices when he did mention them. This was the plain meaning of the comment I left.
Now you may also say that not only is Matthew’s distinction disingenuous, but that you never exactly claimed that he was ignoring the left. This too is another argument I am not interested in having.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
This post is too funny. It’s like Matthew has been asleep for the past 8 years.
Whose the Dem with the daily national show warning of fascism, Al? Who are the prominent Dems politicians putting secession on the table? And not without import, it seems to me, is that these people have done this before and all it cost was 2% of population.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Unless a racially insensitive attack is really over the top, we’re better off laughing it off.
Why can’t I do both–call it what it is and then laugh it off?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
It’s funny to see all the “progressives” who thought that the Jesusland/United States of Canada map was high-f*ing-larious in 2004 (Matthew included!) are now all of a sudden shocked, shocked to see anybody talk about secesion.
It’s really like people on the left have absolutely no concept of what their own side has done over the past 8 years.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Virtually everybody on the “progressive left” was calling for blood. Hell, Matthew himself thinks that violence against conservatives is a good idea.
Okay, Al, what are you talking about.
Just asking the question makes me feel like an abused spouse giving the abuser just one more chance, but what can I say—Al knows how to pique a guy’s curiosity.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Whose the Dem with the daily national show warning of fascism, Al?
Hell, I remember a Democrat Senator (in the leadership!) likening Bush’s keeping of terrorists at Gitmo to Hitler’s concentration camps.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
are now all of a sudden shocked, shocked to see anybody talk about secesion.
I’m not shocked, but I believe the point is that Governors and national network anchors aren’t just “anybody”.
But if they want to paint themselves as the equivalent of snarky bloggers, don’t let me stop them.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
What do the other five people do? Shoot an IRS agent? Try to kill the President?
I’d wager he first thing they’ll do is make a move to permanently silence David Frum.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
high-f*ing-larious in 2004
Right. So we think it’s a joke, and they think–see the flying of their second flag–it’s totally legitimate. Same thing. Totally.
Hell, I remember a Democrat Senator (in the leadership!) likening Bush’s keeping of terrorists at Gitmo to Hitler’s concentration camps.
Once, for which he was forced to tearfully apologize. Are you seriously claiming that either the amplitude or the frequency are comparable?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I don’t think left-wing anti-Bush hysteria ever reached the fever pitch that anti-Obama hysteria has reached…
Well, certainly not in Pittsburgh or Knoxville.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Hello Al #50,
We’re having the argument, but I’m not interested in having it.
Jesusland was a joke (a lame one if you ask me). Members of state legislators and mainstream public intellectuals were not, to my knowledge, debating resolutions about “Whereas the cosmopolitan essence of American county is being replaced by the hierarchical beligerence of the legal construct of the United State of America etc….”
Furthermore, secession itself is only a small part of the various rightist fixations and is not at all part of the quoted portions of the remarks by either Beck or McCaul.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Just asking the question makes me feel like an abused spouse giving the abuser just one more chance, but what can I say—Al knows how to pique a guy’s curiosity.
Yglesias: you “ought to be punching” Richard Perle.
Of course, he admits that he is struggling “to try to stop expressing my feelings about other people’s conduct in terms of fantasies of physical violence.”
April 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13374-2004Jun28.html
A Novel’s Plot Against the President
Character Fantasizes Bush Assassination
In Nicholson Baker’s new novella, “Checkpoint,” a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Al, for starters, the DEMOCRATIC Senator quickly apologized for his rhetoric, because he was made to feel that it was too inflammatory. On the other hand, when people like Michelle Bachman say that Congressmen should be investigated for having “anti-American” leanings, not only does she not apologize, she becomes a rising star in the right-wing talkshow circuit.
As for the “Jesusland” maps that made the rounds after 2004, they were pretty witless and bitter, but how exactly is that equivalent to a SITTING STATE GOVERNOR openly threatening secession from the United States.
I’m going to second the previous poster, when the Dixie Chicks merely said that they were embarassed to be from the same state as George Bush, they had their records burned, music banned, and received hundreds of death threats. Yet, there’s Perry, Beck, and Van Scientologist openly cheerleading secession. Think if a Democratic governor had said what Perry did during a GOP Administration…
April 16th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Hello Al #52,
“Likening to” is very different from “warning of.” This is a very important and easy concept, but many people (I believe on the left more than on the right) get it wrong.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Hell, I remember a Democrat Senator (in the leadership!) likening Bush’s keeping of terrorists at Gitmo to Hitler’s concentration camps.
Here is what Durbin said:
What was inaccurate about what Durbin said?
Incidentally, one of my favorite clips from the teabaggings was the CNN reporter and the guy with the Obama as Hitler poster. Asked to defend the image, he said he thought Obama was a fascist. Asked to explain why he thought Obama was a fascist, he answered because Obama is a fascist.
Durbin was making a real point. This kook was just a kook.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Bush’s keeping of terrorists at Gitmo to Hitler’s concentration camps.
Actually, Al, he was referring to the “enahanced interrogation techniques” used by the US. And the funny thing was– the US did develop its techniques by reviewing and adapting the experiences of Stalin’s prisonkeepers! Kind of funny about that, don’t you think? This was such a banal observation that turned the right-wing outrage hate machine on the senator for making a rather true observation about the bizarre nature of Bush’s use of torture. and he didn’t even call for secession or bloody revolution at the hatful journaliwsts and politicians on the righrt wing have done. It’s funny what gets your dander up…
But that’s another observation of the problem of the dynamic of the right when it comes to these protests. People l;ike Al are so filled with and buirsting with ignorant hate and existing on the boderline of violence that the smallest thing sets them off into overdrive. The reason Obama’s policies are setting them off so strongly is that they are hateful, hateful people who need to vent their outrage on someone, and Obama, a living breathing reminder of their powerlessness and impotence, is that target.
So, what we want to know, Al, is why the right-wing, in general, seems more given to hateful outrage than the left, and why are the prime movers and leaderhsip of the Republican party encouraging and participating in this sort of thing? Is it, psychologically, in your natures? Does it help you ingratiate yourself with your boss by doing this? Or do the leaders of the right feel that their only path to power is by exploiting the dishonest, hateful elements of the electorate because honesty would ensure that they’d lose?
We’re seeing a lot of these tea parties, Al, and I can’t help but wonder why your choose this aborrhent group of horrible, horrible people to follow?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Hello Campesino #59,
Good point about Checkpoint. On one level that was really a less important part of the left than this whole scene seems to be on the right. But on another level, comparing fringe rhetoric is really not a good way to make judgments about politics.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Every regional airport I live near or visit has been expanding and fortifying their perimeter for years. These are the FEMA, actually Homeland Security camps, right in front of everyone’s nose. Not for any specific purpose. Just there at the ready for anything.
Airports are almost universally quasi independent special authorities beyond the purview of local government. Just as universally with boards filled with local real estate insiders. Lots of sweet deals to be had by all, insiders. To say the least no bastions of liberalism.
Otherwise there is no reasoning with the Beck’s of the world how hold Henry Ford up as one who had the guts to fight FDR’s fascism. How can you fight against that? It can’t be done. Chase them down the rabbit hole and your liable to lose your mind too.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Why do the protestors hate America?
(Just bringing back a golden oldie from the past 8 years…)
April 16th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Hey, let’s also not forget about the British TV “documentary” about assassinating Bush. And the Broadway play celebrating a Bush assassination.
This isn’t random grassroots stuff. It’s part of the left-wing mass media.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
What was inaccurate about what Durbin said?
Right – to you, it is OK when a prominent Democrat politician compares Bush to Hitler. After all, to you it’s not inaccurate! But for a Republican politician to compare the Tea Partiers to our Founding Fathers is completely outrageous.
It is really a sign of how screwed up the left-wing really is.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Rapier, normally I don’t like to engage in conversation with really damaged trolls like yourself, but I’m going to make an exception here.
1. So, you actually believe that FEMA is constructing concentration camps at regional airports? The security can’t be to prevent people from stealing planes and crashing them into things? Nah, it MUST be for a concentration camp. You sound like that asshat Linda Thompson (not the folksinger, but the militia enthusiast in Indianapolis), who has been insisting for damn near 20 years that the Amtrak repair yard in Beech Grove, Indiana is really a secret FEMA concentration camp.
2. Henry Ford had the “guts” to fight FDR’s fascism? This is the same Henry Ford who was a big fan of Hitler and published an English-Language translation of the infamous anti-Semitic rant “The Protocols of Zion”,right? Why are modern conservatives so apparently willing to self-identify with white supremecists?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Hey, let’s also not forget about the British TV “documentary” about assassinating Bush. And the Broadway play celebrating a Bush assassination.
Did any of the people involved get a daily show on (I assume) MSNBC? The difference is that our intellectual fringe is very much the party fringe. (This is probably not always a good thing.) Yours is the political base (which is the nut of the Frum complaint).
April 16th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
AL,
1. Durbin was comparing US interrogation techniques to those used by totalitarian regimes, including Hitler’s. NOWHERE did Durbin say “Bush=Hitler”.
2. I notice you have yet to cite a single sitting US Governor who called for secession when Bush was President. Don’t give me this nonsense about novelists or fake documentaries. Rick Perry is an elected official calling for the dissolution of the United States. Are you too fucking stupid to see the difference?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Yglesias: you “ought to be punching” Richard Perle.
Indeed, Matt is objectively worse than Jim David Adkisson. Thanks for clearing that up.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
it is OK when a prominent Democrat politician compares Bush to Hitler.
Show me where in that statement Durbin compares Bush to Hitler. In fact, just show me where in that statement either the words “Bush” or “Hitler” actually appear.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Al, at this point you’re flailing, being evasive, and engaging in dishonesty rather than grapple with the fact that the major politicians adn media figured on the right are hateful and have advocated secession and blood-letting in opposition to Obama. I’d prefer you grapple with the facts head on rather than try to distract from them. We keep giving you the benefit of the doubt because you’re the “real Al,” not the “fake Al” who says many of the absurd things that you do. But you’re pissing away our good will in favor of the dishonesty endemic to the Republican party that you follow.
One more chance: why does the Republican party harbor such hateful political and media leaders while the democrats do not and have not? Next: Why did you lie about Dick Durbin to back up your fallacious assertions, and why did you dodge the issue when your claims were confronted? Finally: what is with your support of torture, anyway, and do you think that totalitarian dictatorships are an appropriate source of experience from which to find new interrogation techniques?
Al, you’re exposing the problem right here: you, being on the right, are clearly more hateful and dishonest than you ever see on the left. What is it about you people that leads to such behavior?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
“Fascism is wonderfully Promethean”
Do you mean protean?
What’s the difference? Greek dudes are all the same.
But seriously. Yes. Thank you. I thought ‘protean’ and somehow typed ‘Promethean’. I don’t even know how I did it. Bizarre.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Why would they bring the crazy?
Talk of secession by one of their governors, and the need to kill the tyrant Obama by one of their Congresscritters, has got to be a huge political blunder, right?
The answer would be an unequivocal “yes”, if they were expecting it to remain politics as usual for the near future. It’s hard to imagine any surer way of alienating swing voters than such craziness.
But what if, while admittedly crazy, they’re not being stupid? What if they expect the imminent breakdown of politics as usual? What if they’re right?
If we are facing a real economic catastrophe, rivalling if not exceeding the Great Depression, we will face threats to the continuation of politics as usual at least as great as those of the 30s. Father Coughlin and Huey Long didn’t have the opposition party behind them. The opposition party then was only passively, not actively and aggressively, obstructive, and couldn’t or wouldn’t block the emergency measures taken to deal with the crisis.
If politics as usual, and government as usual, fail to work — and these people can make them fail with their obstructionism in Congress — in this crisis, can you be sure that we won’t soon be playing a different game? You don’t need to worry about alienating swing voters if the game turns to violent revolution. You just need a dedicated minority.
What if the other side, with all this crazy talk, is busy lining up that dedicated minority, and is not, as we would like to believe in our complacency, simply failing in epic manner to play politics as usual at all competently?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Are you too fucking stupid to see the difference?
Al isn’t that stupid. Much more craven.
For example:
And the Broadway play celebrating a Bush assassination.
(Emphasis mine)
April 16th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
The difference is that our intellectual fringe is very much the party fringe.
Your “intellectual fringe” is the bulk of the party, including all of the mainstream media.
Dang, I forgot the Bush assassination fantasy book published by Nicholson Baker. Because it’s not like Baker is a NYT bestselling author or anything.
Let’s face it, violence and assassination fantasies have been a part of the mainstream of left-wing thought for the past 8 years.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
By the way, the real right-wing equivalent to what Durbin said would be something like anti-gun-control people who like to claim that the Nazis passed a law to register guns. Now there are lots of things wrong about that argument, including that as far as I can tell it basically isn’t true, but I’d happily admit there is a difference between that argument and running around with a picture of Obama made to look like Hitler.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Glen Tomkins, I think that the politicians advocating secession and screaming socialism and other right-wing stupidities are simply a symptom of lack of discipline. For 16 years, Republicans have been used to being able to say anything and getting away with it. It was all repeated verbatim, as though it were a reasonable thing to say. There wasn’t any pushback, so they were just able to push the envelope a little bit further. And a little bit further. And a little bit further…. until you have what we’re seeing today. What the Republicans are saying today are just marginally worse than what they were saying yesterday. And no one stopped them when they said that thing yesterday that was marginally worse than what they said the day before. So why not keep going?
Now, they may contribute to a breakdown of politics as usual in the wake of catastrophe, but I don’t think it’s part of some great chess game they have in mind.
The thing is, though, that the reason Obama’s “change” message reasonated so strongly is that the electorate really doesn’t like what people like Glen Beck, Gov. Perry, and Michele Bachmann are saying. Most of Al’s friends and coworkers probably hate him by now and are tired of his shtick. The problem is that the Republicans haven’t been smacked down hard enough to get them out of their funk.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Show me where in that statement Durbin compares Bush to Hitler.
Show me where McCaul said anything about killing Obama.
Show me where Perry said that Texas ought to secede.
Etc.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
It’s funny to see all the “progressives” who thought that the Jesusland/United States of Canada map was high-f*ing-larious in 2004 (Matthew included!) are now all of a sudden shocked, shocked to see anybody talk about secesion.
Why, oh why, can’t I resist Al?
What did ‘Jesusland’ maps have to do with advocating secession? Zero. They were not advocating anything, merely describing purported cultural reality. Otherwise, by your logic, all those post-election maps where states are colored in blue or red are advocating secession. Or when politicians like Palin write off parts of the country as not “real America”, they’re advocating secession. Of course they’re not. They’re describing purported cultural divides.
All that said, I think states should be allowed to secede, and I’m all in favor of Texas doing it. So what Perry advocated does not offend my patriotic or other sensibilities. But the fact remains that no prominent Democrat has advocated what Perry advocated, at least not in my living memory. And if ‘Jesusland’ is the best example Al can come up with, I’m pretty confident that my recollection is correct.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Al, for the last time, would you please cite an elected Democratic governor, Senator, or Representative during the Bush years who openly called for armed rebellion or secession because their party couldn’t win an election? Just one?
I’m sorry, but a Republican Governor yesterday called for the potential dissolution of the United States over the vital issue of a potential increase of 3% for the top marginal tax rate in 2 years. Little fuckers like you can spin this nine ways to Sunday, invoking non-sequiters like British novels and British films, but what Perry said yesterday is the most irresponsible and inflammatory comment said by a sitting elected official in my lifetime.
The party of Lincoln has become the party of secession. Do you really want this label for your party, Al, you little cunt? Do you really think that the “elect us or we’ll start a new Civil War” strategy is a winning tactic in 2012?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
and I’m all in favor of Texas doing it.
Should have added: If that’s what its residents want to do.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
This whole FEMA camp thing is a hoot. During the Bush years left-wingers all knew they were being sent there and now it’s flipped 180 degrees and Obama is going to send Republicans there. I remember looking at some of the “lists” of these “camps” a few years ago and they were jokes. I’d actually been at some of these “camps” in California. One was a maintenance yard at Vandenberg AFB. Another was a fence around a pumping station on the California Aqueduct. Too funny.
Good debunking here
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4312850.html
April 16th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Dick Durbin was not only correct, he was prescient. And it’s easy, in a way, because people in favor of torture are always the same stupid, bureaucratic, hopped up nincompoops who think alike.
So it’s not surprising that Fourthbranch Cheney et al were attracted to the sorts of techniques the U.S. once denounced as torture by the Soviet Union and North Korea, and even attracted directly to those tyrannies’ torture instruction manuals, and so it’s not surprising that Durbin (and anyone else) could so easily predict where the little tyrants of the Bush Jr. administration would turn for inspiration on how to torture in modern, industrial manners.
What, were they going to read texts by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln and Plato and Aristotle on how best to torture prisoners? No, for that you turn to the people who ran industrial concentration camps and gulags and Japanese POW camps, because, who else are the pants-pissing ‘conservatives’ going to turn to and learn from in order to get their torture going?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
One more thing, Al.
Conservative bomb-throwers like Beck, Savage, Bachmann, et. al are really skilled at ranting about how much they hate Latinos, immigrants, gays, non-Christians, the educated, “liberals”, the media, African-Americans, the poor, etc. Why do they want so badly to rule a country filled with literally hundreds of millions of people that they literally can’t stand to be in the same room with? Do you think this sort of sneering hatred towards LARGE portions of the country contributed to the GOP actually losing a majority of the states in the last Presidential election?
For god’s sake, you guys managed to lose INDIANA and NORTH CAROLINA to the Democrats. Look at the demographics of this country. Look at how you polled with younger voters. Look how you polled with Catholics. With Latinos. With gay voters. Being an all-white, rural, Southern evangelical Protestant party is a recipie for permanent irrelevancy. But go on, hatred is really your ticket to big success in the future.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
http://democrats.us/beta/forum/view_topic.php?forum_id=17&id=403
SHOULD CALIFORNIA SECEDE?
Forget the jokes that the Right tells that we’d all be better off without California… at least before Gov. Grey Davis was recalled.. It’s NOT true. But can a state the size of California EVER be fairly treated in an anti-democratic federal system such as we have in the US? What are the implications if it cannot be?
US federalism is a study in GROSS inequality…. so much so it I personally consider it obscene. It’s a system where individual citizens are given grossly disproportionate power in the federal government based merely on state residence. It was the nation’s first affirmative action program. Yet those who are disenfranchised MUST pay the same level of taxes as their more fortunate countrymen. This gross inequality is most evident in comparing the political power of a citizen in California to one in Wyoming.
California, if it were a nation would be the 5th or 6th biggest economy in the world. It has natural resources… ports… a well developed infrastructure… wealth… it could make it on its own. Despite what the rabid right thinks, we as a nation need California more than they need us. I’m unsure what the Constitutional hurdles are, but I believe that California should seriously consider seceding
from the Union…. not because I’d like to see the US break apart… but only to wake the rest of us up to the inherent inequalities of our federal system which is not just producing morally illegitimate government as we have seen in Election 2000… but is virtually reform proof. Currently states representing only about 4% of the US population can theoretically block ALL reform to the US Constitution desired by the other 96%.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
but what Perry said yesterday is the most irresponsible and inflammatory comment said by a sitting elected official in my lifetime.
Just to be ornery: I don’t get it. What would be the big deal? Is there something magical about the number 50? Who cares if we lose a state or two? Liberalism is about freedom, and people should be free to emigrate — individually or en masse — if that’s their wish. Plus the Republicans would lose a lot of electoral votes and Congress members which would be good for the rest of us who stay.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
This whole FEMA camp thing is a hoot. During the Bush years left-wingers all knew they were being sent there
I was a left-winger in the Bush years and I’ve never heard of this before now. And your debunking link doesn’t actually speak to paranoia on the left about this at all — the guy was on Beck’s show so obviously his audience is the right.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
AL: it is OK when a prominent Democrat politician compares Bush to Hitler.
DTM: Show me where in that statement Durbin compares Bush to Hitler. In fact, just show me where in that statement either the words “Bush” or “Hitler” actually appear.
This is a good illustration of the real problem. The exchange above assumes that it is impossible to appropriately even compare Bush’s and Hitler’s policies in any substantive way – not to say they are the same, but to compare them in a substantive way. It assumes that it is impossible for Bush to have favored policies which are at all reminiscent of the latter. Of course, it’s not only possible, but it happened. However, we can’t call it what it was, because….just because. Movement conservatives are under no such restraint, are in fact under no restraint at all. They can say the most ridiculous, and even seditious, things imaginable, and they’re just being ‘patriots’.
This is a right wing trick. You could call it (oddly enough) ‘preemption’. It’s not unlike having taken impeachment ‘off the table’. Impeachment was invented for officials like Bush and (especially) Cheney. But it was unmentionable by ’serious’ people in Washington because, er, you know, Clinton was already impeached (for Kafka-esque reasons) and, you know, we just can’t. There were actually good political reasons not to impeach Bush and/or Cheney, but it’s a serious error to decide that they therefore didn’t deserve it. The distinction matters.
Same deal with using the words ‘fascism’ or ‘authoritarianism’. You don’t have to have believed in a physical resistance against the late administration (or to believe that Bush was ‘just like’ Hitler) to be clear in your mind that that administration was both of those things.
Don’t let the American right wing define the terms of debate. They are not ethical (and proud of it, BTW; in DC this is called ‘tough’ and ’smart’).
April 16th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Wow, that’s terrible. Which Democratic governers, senators, congressmen or party leaders wrote such trash?
April 16th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Ryan,
It is an irresponsible thing to say because there is very little chance of a state seceding without violence and bloodshed. Do you think that Texas would willingly give up the weaponry at the various military bases that the “oppressive” Federal government forced them to have? No, of course not. The “independent” Republic of Texas would merely seize United States property as some sort of prize. Not to mention the inevitable retribution against their perceived “enemies” within the state that don’t willingly go along with their treason. I’d imagine that black and Latino residents of Texas wouldn’t be too thrilled at the prospect of being at the mercy of a highly armed insane right wing redneck Republic either.
Again, I think it is irresponsible to overtly, tacitly, or covertly threaten the dissolution of the country because you can’t win an election. I literally cannot think of a single instance in the modern era where a sitting United States Governor, Senator, or Representative said such a thing.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/nov/09/20041109-122753-5113r/
Blue states buzz over secession
Secession, which didn’t work very well when it was tried once before, is suddenly red hot in the blue states. In certain precincts, anyway.
One popular map circulating on the Internet shows the 19 blue states won by Sen. John Kerry — Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Maryland and the Northeastern states — conjoined with Canada to form the “United States of Canada.” The 31 red states carried by Mr. Bush are depicted as a separate nation dubbed “Jesusland.”
The idea isn’t just a joke; one top Democrat says, “The segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don’t pay for the federal government.”
“Some would say, ‘Oh, poor Alabama. It’s cut off from the wealth infusion that it gets from New York and California,’” said Lawrence O’Donnell, a veteran Democratic insider and now senior political analyst at MSNBC. “But the more this political condition goes on at the presidential level of the red and blue states, the more you’re testing the inclination of the blue states to say, ‘So what?’”
Mr. O’Donnell raised the subject of secession on “The
McLaughlin Group” during the weekend. “Ninety percent of the red states are welfare-client states of the federal government,” said Mr. O’Donnell, who was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat.
In a telephone interview, Mr. O’Donnell said the red states that went to Mr. Bush “collect more from the federal government than they send in. New York and California, Connecticut — the states that are blue are all the states that are paying for the bulk of everything this government does, from … Social Security to everything else, and the people in those states don’t like what this government is doing.”
The Internet has exploded with talk of a blue-state confederacy, including one screed circulating by e-mail that features a map
of a new country called “American Coastopia” and proposes lopping off the Northeast, the West Coast and the upper Midwest to form a new country, away from the “rednecks in Oklahoma” and the “homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming.”
April 16th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Dang, I forgot the Bush assassination fantasy book published by Nicholson Baker. Because it’s not like Baker is a NYT bestselling author or anything.
Similarly, Hamlet is a play that encourages regicide, Huck Finn is a novel that encourages slavery, and Catch-22 is a novel that encourages people to put flies in their eyes.
April 16th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
The Internet has exploded with talk of a blue-state confederacy
He read it on the internet! It must be true.
Now, Campesino, what sitting governor said stuff like that.
And which left-wingers were paranoid about FEMA camps? I was as big a liberal democratic activist as anyone back in ‘03-’04, and I didn’t hear anything like that. Then again, I don’t have a cable news channel and editorial page of a financial newspaper telling me what to think. Unlike ignoramuses such as yourself, I could see what was going on on the ground. I suspect someone told you “this is what left-wingers beleive,” and you ate it up, because you tend to be kind of gullible and set in your ways as a slavish devotee of the right.
Your poor cut-and-paste jobs that you spam the comments section notwithstanding.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Wow, Campesino, except you have yet to show me where a single sitting US Governor, Senator, Representative BEFORE Rick Perry openly talked about dissolving the United States.
Either way, now that the Conservative movement has decided that openly threatening secession is an acceptable rhetorical tactic in partisan political debates, then maybe they shouldn’t get their panties in a bunch about a report that talks about a rise in right-wing extremism, eh what?
April 16th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Mr. O’Donnell raised the subject of secession on “The
McLaughlin Group” during the weekend.
But, see, the McLaughlin Group is just the fringe. It has nothing to do with the mainstream of left-wing thought. After all, it’s not like the McLaughlin Group is on a major TV netowrk or anything. Oh, wait.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Wow, Campesino, except you have yet to show me where a single sitting US Governor, Senator, Representative BEFORE Rick Perry openly talked about dissolving the United States.
Campesino has a bizarre affectation in which he seems to think that pasting text from a marginally relevant article that he read somewhere counts as a factual argument. It’s a testimony to how dimwitted many republican activists are. They have a kernel of information that is sufficient to shut down further thinking in order to convince themselves that they’re right and shut down any thoughts to the contrary. It’s a fascinating infrastructure of mindless conformity they have going within their community.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Al, last time I checked, Laurence O’Donnell wasn’t a US Governor like Rick Perry.
By the way, when Pat Buchanan wrote that book last year that portrayed Hitler as the innocent victim of WWII and blamed the Holocaust on Winston Churchill, did the conservative movement dismiss him as the “fringe”, or did they continue to turn to him for cut-and-paste material for internet boards?
April 16th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Let me preface by saying I’m an Obama fan, I disagree with the tea partiers, etc. But, Yglesias’s post made me think, in a very pedantic way: He is condemning any suggestion of violent revolution. When would violent revolution be morally appropriate, in his view, or in the view of the commenters here? In US history classes we lionize the American colonists who decided to take up arms against their British masters. Would this decision be justifiable under the view of 2009 progressives? Just sincerely curious.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Ryan Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
This whole FEMA camp thing is a hoot. During the Bush years left-wingers all knew they were being sent there
I was a left-winger in the Bush years and I’ve never heard of this before now. And your debunking link doesn’t actually speak to paranoia on the left about this at all — the guy was on Beck’s show so obviously his audience is the right.
==========================================================
Here’s one from back in the Bush days:
There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general’s signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached. Ask yourself if you really want to be on Ashcroft’s list.
http://salonesoterica.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/fema-concentration-camps-locations-and-executive-orders/
=========================================================
YOU don’t want to be on Ashcroft’s list do ya?
April 16th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Show me where Perry said that Texas ought to secede.
Oh no you don’t. You actually agreed above that Perry talked about secession, which in fact he did. You are right that he didn’t say Texas “ought to secede”. Rather, in response to a question about the people chanting for succession at the rally he attended, he responded:
“There’s a lot of different scenarios. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.”
Conversely, you claimed Durbin compared Bush to Hitler, which he did not. So, to sum up, you were right about Perry talking about secession, wrong about Durbin comparing Bush to Hitler.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Camp, again, an internet blog cut and paste doesn’t really answer the question of when is the last time a sitting US Governor openly talked in the affirmative about dissolving the United States?
Again, the FEMA thing was an obsession with right-wing militia types during the Clinton years. I mentioned militia lawyer Linda Thompson earlier. In the early 1990’s, she would appear all over Indianapolis AM talk radio loudly insisting that the Beech Grove Amtrak yard was really a FEMA concentration camp (hell, on YouTube you can find videos of this very conspiracy theory). Ms. Thompson accused a local reporter of being a CIA agent. Oh, she also had a videotape that she sold that she said showed the government using flame throwing tanks to murder the Branch Davidians. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that future famous mass murderer Timothy McVeigh happened to be one of the people who purchased her tapes.
Then again, obviously the sitting governor of one of the largest states in the country talking about dissolving the Union wouldn’t hold a candle to the damage done by some crackpot in Beech Grove with a grainy VHS tape.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Hello Al #98,
You’re right in the big point. Saying the other side is less civil is less useful than it might seem at first, but as far as specifics…
The “testing the inclination of the Blue States to say ’so what’?” from O’Donnell quoted by the Washington Times does not really seem to be, in itself, “raising the issue of secession.” You could also interpret that to be a question about re-evaluating the way the federal government spends money, or even a subtle (yes) Atlas Shrugged style scenario where those brilliant New York investment bankers don’t make a lot of money because they don’t want money to go to whatever in the Red States. This is different from a serious discussion of secession which in turn is different from what Beck and McCaul have said.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
And which left-wingers were paranoid about FEMA camps? I was as big a liberal democratic activist as anyone back in ‘03-’04, and I didn’t hear anything like that.
***************************************************
Don’t get out much do you? See #102 and here’s another one from 2006
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/240506femaplan.htm
April 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
He is condemning any suggestion of violent revolution.
While perhaps we, as Americans, can’t be against violent revolution on principle, I feel that the track record of violent revolution is a very poor one, and I don’t think it’s something one should resort to or appeal to under many circumstances, and certainily none in which the democratic levers of power are still functioning.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
For fuck’s sake, this is beyond tedious. Al and his wingnut Super Friends haven’t produced a single Democratic elected official who expressed sentiments even remotely similar to those expressed by Perry, McCaul, Bachmann, et al. Put up or shut up.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Campesino, nutpicking much?
The FEMA paranoia was cooked up under Clinton. Having actually been on the ground as a Democratic campaign activist in the ‘03-’04 season, I can’t really point to that being something people were concerned about, though I guess a few blog posts you point to say otherwise. You’re not making a coherent argument. You’re finding a link somewhere, stamping your foot, and saying “Well, that proves ME right.”
We didn’t see this sort of paranoia at Kerry rallies or anti-Iraq protests… certainly not the sort of thing here at the teabag rallies or the Palin rallies which seem to be populated ENTIRELY by the fringe (in part because this is all the right wing has left). The problem is that the Republican politicians are not sufficiently publically ashamed of their party yet. People like Perry have to be humiliated into apologizing and trying to activiely run away from their paranoid base before the party will improve. Campesino’s ability to lie to himself into convincing himself that the “Democrats are just as bad as the republicans” isn’t the sort of delusionalism that’s going to help the party. It’s a sign of denial and refusal to grapple with reality at the moment.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
107. Of course, the American Revolution wasn’t necessarily a Revolution but a change in power (small distinction to be sure, but compare the events of 1776 to 1789 France). The actual US Constitution was a Revolution, and one could arguably say that the Founding Fathers merely delayed the violence by trying to punt the slavery issue down the road.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Campesino, here’s an example: where are the front page posts on the daily kos, or posts from Atrios, MattY, or Hilzoy warning of such camps? Where are the Democratic politicians warning of these things? Were are the governors, other than Rick Perry, a republican much like Campesino, I might add, advocating for secession?
They’re not there, Campesino– the fact is that you, Campesino, are following a deranged political movement while the Democrats are one of the last bastions of sanity within the body politic, which is why the public has abandoned the republicans in favor of the Democrats. You stubborn dishonesty and refusal to address the points of the others here bear that out.
Like most Republicans, Campesino, you reflect a combination of dishonesty and denialism. You’re much in the same category of the Glen Becks and Rick Perry’s of the world, which makes me think that you have some moral and intellectual problems that draws you to follow those sorts of people. The Republican party isn’t in disarray– the Republican party is serving as a home for the socially resentful and morally blind. The problem is that Campesino’s leaders, like Michele Bachmann, haven’t yet received the public condemnation they deserve.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Again, Campy, never heard of this.
Pete, you concede too much. It’s not just that O’Donnell isn’t a governor/etc., it’s that he doesn’t advocate secession. The most he does is describe (accurately) the pattern of transfer payments and note that some in blue states are unhappy with this pattern.
It’s only the reporter who links this to secessionism, for which his only evidence is — once again — Al’s Jesusland map. Oh, and the “exploding internet”.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Ryan, I can see your point, but I wonder if O’Donnell, while not putting his toe in that water, was coming close to taking off his socks, rhetorically speaking. If I had been on that particular program as a producer that night, I would have told the entire panel that they should have been ashamed of themselves for even scraping that topic.
Of course, Republicans have no such shame. I notice that none of our Republican friends have explained just how openly loathing large portions of the country is a long-term recipie for electoral success.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Pete Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Camp, again, an internet blog cut and paste doesn’t really answer the question of when is the last time a sitting US Governor openly talked in the affirmative about dissolving the United States?
Again, the FEMA thing was an obsession with right-wing militia types during the Clinton years. I mentioned militia lawyer Linda Thompson earlier. In the early 1990’s, she would appear all over Indianapolis AM talk radio loudly insisting that the Beech Grove Amtrak yard was really a FEMA concentration camp (hell, on YouTube you can find videos of this very conspiracy theory). Ms. Thompson accused a local reporter of being a CIA agent. Oh, she also had a videotape that she sold that she said showed the government using flame throwing tanks to murder the Branch Davidians. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that future famous mass murderer Timothy McVeigh happened to be one of the people who purchased her tapes.
============================================================
Of course it’s all silly. They were Clinton’s camps in the 90s and after 2000 they were Bush’s (Halliburton got a contract to build more!) and now Obama’s going to round up all the Tea Party people. Just flip a switch and a different battalion of the tinfoil hat brigade gets exercised.
You should be laughing at Perry – it’s a silly Texas cultural thing
April 16th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I would have told the entire panel that they should have been ashamed of themselves for even scraping that topic.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? O’Donnel knew that if he had advocated secession, there would have been a national outrage and a campaign to have him fired. Whereas for Republicans, saying stuff like this is considered normal and acceptable, so it’s no surprise that Perry would mouth off like this. The Republican mainstream has a wide berth to say lots of crazy stuff whereas Democrats face hostile pushback from the pearl-clutching right.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
As much as I’d love to laugh at Perry, I think that you amp up the concern level for domestic terrorism when instead of nutballs being ginned up by internet blogs or grainy VHS tapes from nutball militia lawyers, you have a sitting governor saying, in essence “who will rid me of this wayward priest” (read Beckett if you don’t get the reference), all while being cheered on by a large cable news network.
Tell you what, if Rick Perry’s words are shown to influence a nutball’s act of violence, akin to the Knoxville church shooter invoking Bernie Goldberg, will you promise RIGHT NOW to come back to this blog and publicly state “I have blood on my hands”? If you think that such a thing won’t happen, you should have no problem making this pledge.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Do you hear that? It’s the sound of Pete and Al furiously Googling for an example of a mainstream Democratic figure calling for secession and bloodshed. Don’t get sucked into their “I know you are, but what am I?”, “Your fringe is worse than my mainstream!” style of diversion. The point that get’s missed in all this silly back on forth is that the Tea Party arguments are completely internally incoherent. Even if it is a small minority opinion made large by the lens of right wing media, and even if their participants carry signs and make speeches that appear to be racist or inflammatory, these are side points. The main point is that the policy arguments (such as they are) make no sense and can be demolished easily without resorting to attacking the arguers:
> If deficit spending is so horrible, and mortgages our future, then why was there so little outcry until a Democrat took the White House?
> Why is that Democrat being vilified for raising taxes, when he’s giving most people a tax cut as we speak?
> Why is it impossible for the Government to create jobs and stimulate the economy, yet cutting defense systems destroys jobs?
These are off the top of my head. I’m sure others can do better, if they are not distracted by the Google fu of talented trolls.
April 16th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
They’re not there, Campesino– the fact is that you, Campesino, are following a deranged political movement while the Democrats are one of the last bastions of sanity within the body politic, which is why the public has abandoned the republicans in favor of the Democrats. You stubborn dishonesty and refusal to address the points of the others here bear that out.
Like most Republicans, Campesino, you reflect a combination of dishonesty and denialism. You’re much in the same category of the Glen Becks and Rick Perry’s of the world, which makes me think that you have some moral and intellectual problems that draws you to follow those sorts of people. The Republican party isn’t in disarray– the Republican party is serving as a home for the socially resentful and morally blind. The problem is that Campesino’s leaders, like Michele Bachmann, haven’t yet received the public condemnation they deserve.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You could have saved yourself a lot of keystrokes by just typing “neener, neener”. Your conviction that the Republican party is unadulterated evil and Democrats are pure virtue speaks only of your naivete. Get a life. Or a sense of humor
April 16th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
John I, respectfully, I haven’t been Googling anything. I brought up Linda Thompson’s AM Radio militia adventures because I happened to have been a reporter in Indianapolis at the time, and had the great misfortune of having to interview her once.
Yes, the tea parties were incoherent Astroturf events that had no real message and no real point. Except a sitting governor openly talked about secession in order to score applause points from the crowd.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?9abaa598-e962-4238-be26-67b473a20aa3
Akaka Bill Could Lead to Secession – That is Not a Lie
Just Ask U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka
U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, himself acknowledged his bill could lead to total independence. When asked during a National Public Radio interview whether the bill “could eventually go further, perhaps even leading to outright independence.” he replied, “That could be. That could be. As far as what’s going to happen at the other end, I’m leaving it up to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs Web site “Hawaiian Governance FAQ” regarding the Akaka bill has the following posted on the site:
“What form of government will be established? The ultimate form of government — be it total independence, nation-within-a-nation or free association — must be decided upon and ratified by the Native Hawaiian people.
“What’s the difference between Independence, nation-within-a-nation, and free association? Independence: The model would mean complete legal and territorial separation from the United States and the re-establishment of the Hawaiian nation-state.”
April 16th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Campesino,
Prisonplanet isn’t a left wing source. Alex Jones is now and always has been part of the radical right fringe.
I know a lot of conservatives believe that the truthers are a bunch of left wing wackos. In actual fact the truther movement has served as a common meeting ground for wackos and kooks of all stripes.
But I do seem to recall some FEMA camp paranoia showing up on Counterpunch or Z-Mag at some point.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Again, campy, it’s not advocacy if you’re explicitly “leaving it up to” somebody else.
Even so, this is getting silly. I see nothing wrong with advocating secession. Yeah, in practice it might get violent, but if seceding should be legal (which I believe it should), then at some point you have to let people… advocate secession.
This illustrates why Dems are being dumb about this. Let Texas go! I’m sure Republicans would be happy to let Hawai’i go — two fewer Dem Senators! Two fewer Dem electoral votes!
April 16th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Eric H Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Campesino,
Prisonplanet isn’t a left wing source. Alex Jones is now and always has been part of the radical right fringe.
=========================================================
Actually, it was approvingly linked through AlterNet – which just goes to show how these things flip back and forth from Left to Right & vice versa
April 16th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Politics making for strange bedfellows and all of that…
Anyhow this brings us back to the point of the original post. On the left we have to take a trek out into the furthest hinterlands of kooksville before running into this sort of paranoid nonsense. On the right we need only watch Fox News.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Ryan Says:
April 16th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Again, campy, it’s not advocacy if you’re explicitly “leaving it up to” somebody else.
Even so, this is getting silly
=========================================================
Again I agree that the whole thing is silly. By the standards of the hyperventilators here though, Akaka should be far worse than Perry, as he actually submitted a bill to Congress (several times!) that he frankly has no problem that it might lead to Hawaiian independence. Perry was just banging his gums.
Also by the same standard, Howard Dean is a horrid traitor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR2007033002076.html
The present movement for secession has been gathering steam for a decade and a half. In preparation for Vermont’s bicentennial in 1991, public debates — moderated by then-Lt. Gov. Howard Dean — were held in seven towns before crowds that averaged 230 citizens. At the end of each, Dean asked all those in favor of Vermont’s seceding from the Union to stand and be counted. In town after town, solid majorities stood. The final count: 999 (62 percent) for secession and 608 opposed
=========================================================
How could he dignify such an impossibly seditious measure by moderating debates on it?
April 16th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Sorry Pete, apparently I meant Campesino. Carry on, y’all…
April 16th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
I grew up in Dallas, where the McCaul family was one of my family’s closest friends. Rep. Michael McCaul older brother was my best friend and I spent countless days at their house from the 1st grade through college. Rep. McCaul’s father died of cancer in the middle 1980s, about 60 years of age, way too prematurely for such an active person. He was one of the finest persons, finest men I ever knew. He was my second father. He was as attuned, kind, caring, responsible, humorous and smart as you could hope a person to be. Everyone loved him. and his family was this way too. So it is very distressing and disappointing to hear this talk from his youngest son. I do not think his father would approve or support any of the BS from Rep. McCaul. It is a sad shame. Michael McCaul got caught up with the Delay and now probably Perry. What a rotten bunch. His turning to this kind of Limbaugh, Bachmann, Beck, Perry style of political conservatism is so very very very disappointing. He could have been a real leader, not another hack.
April 16th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Pete,
how can you miss my points. There has been a cottage industry in US military and intelligence circles for decades planning for marshal law under extraordinary circumstances. Various executive orders and plans by the likes of Ollie North dealing with contingencies to numerous to think of unless your of a mind to. Which not coincidentally the planners of such things are eager to dwell on,sometimes to the point of obsession.
I am just saying this about airports. If in the bowels of Homeland Security there are not planning documents and discussions about using regional airports as the centers of emergency operation from events ranging from bio attack to civil unrest, they are incompetent. It does not have to be nefarious.
I am speculating that regional airport expansions are to some degree impelled by these things.
As to Beck, Ford and Hitler. I was noting the absurdity of it all. Missing that is close to as ironic as Beck’s absurd framing.
April 16th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
> Unfortunate cop out here. The two don’t balance out at
> all.
>
> Fascism is wonderfully Promethean – it doesn’t have to look
> like Spain in the 40s or whatever. Every country has its own
> fabulously unique version. I think there’s a good argument to
> be made that the Bush ‘administration’ was a sort of proto-
> facism-lite (’lite’ being the American innovation).
I admit to being more than a bit puzzled both by Yglesias’ comment (and Drum’s endorsement of same), and by comments similar to this one. The physical actions of the Bush/Cheney Administration (1) met most if not all of the classical definition of 1935-era fascism (2) were similar to the proposals of the genuine US fascists of the 1930s. So I am not sure what the complaint is: if it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. And re the comment there is no need to invoke American exceptionalism and uniqueness: there was an American fascist movement in the 1930s, it had quite a few members, and it looked a lot like Dick Cheney’s vision of America.
Cranky
April 17th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Outside of the pointless polemics, there is one large way in which Hitler’s politices certainly presaged the policies of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., which of course has to do with making military spending a support of the whole national economy. At one time, up to wwi, in fact, military spending was treated as a sacrifice. Not only that, but going to war in any major way consisted of the population making large sacrifices. The rightwing conservatives that propagandized for Hitler in the early thirties, like Ernst Junger, actually believed that is what fascism would be all about. Hence the bogus notion of Massmobilmachung.
Junger was, of course, wrong. Rather, the military buildup was connected to a consumer buildup. Hitler was intent on making war whilst making the people of Germany as comfortable as possible. He encourage Christmas – he was a great Christmas man,as big on the subject as Bill O’Reiley. In Heimat they show the Christmases of Hitler’s time – how perfect! In an essay on the great forgetting of the bombings, W.G. Sebald also talks of the Nazi Christmases. Unforgettable.
That was one of the reasons behind the massive use of slave labor, and the hesitation to mobilize women the way they did in the States. Looking at the policy Hitler pursued, you see the military begging him to curtain certain consumer goods in order to promote the military effort, and Hitler being extremely reluctant to do so.
These policies were perfected by the superpowers after WWII – on the one hand, a policy of building nuclear weapons and a continuing series of bloody and pointless peripheral wars, on the other hand, a policy of no-sacrifice. When that didnt work – Korea, Vietnam – the wars were rolled up. And when that really didn’t work – Afghanistan – the regime came down. Although, interestingly, the Americans armed the people who then attacked them on 9/11, and – due to the massive and criminal incompetence of the Bush junta – left them on the ground to take over a nuclear power, Pakistan.
Bush of course following the longterm Hitlerian policy of minimizing sacrifice during the Iraq war – a war combined with a bubble. How sweet is that? Not so sweet for the six hundred some thousand dead Iraqis, but pretty sweet for the ADD American public, which showed zip curiosity about even the bodies being shipped back – hence, the lack of photos.
We could well call the last sixty years the world that Hitler made. But the Soviet Union fell apart pursuing that insane policy of hyperaggression and minimal domestic sacrifice. And now the U.S. is too. Maybe there is a god.
April 17th, 2009 at 7:32 am
When Jesse Helms threatened the life of Bill Clinton, he got a visit from the FBI. Might be useful for them to pay a few visits now.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:17 am
[...] Michael McCaul from Texas is making speeches about tyranny and oppression, citing Thomas Jefferson’s quote that [...]