Glenn Beck, Fox Network's "conservative" huckster extraordinaire, he of Nazi Tourettes, held a pep rally in D.C. today with his special guest, the former Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin, better known to disasterporn readers as The Whore of Babylon. Together, employing their own brand of nauseatingly perfervid rhetoric, the dimwitted duo addressed the throngs with such pearls of insight as "For too long, this country has wandered in darkness.'' One didn't get a firm date from Mr. Beck as to when, exactly, the lights went out in America, but, somehow, one imagines, given Mr. Beck's well advertised prejudices, darkness descended on the U.S. at approximately the same time that Barack Obama began serving as POTUS.
In the meantime, Glenn Beck would have us believe that the fact that this rally was held on the forty seventh anniversary of, and on the same ground as, Martin Luther King's historic, "I have a dream" speech, was nothing less than "divine providence." Note to Glenn Beck, you, sir, are positively full of shit, and you and your adherents are little more than thinly veiled race baiters who delight in vile provocation. As for bogus left/ right distinctions of the sort that Mr. Beck and his benighted followers traffic in, they are only for forlorn folks who are so hopelessly out of touch with the actual forces that shape our government and our society that no sensible person should give them any creedence whatsoever.
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32 comments:
Ew, goody, I finally connected with that POTUS acronym.
It really is unsavory... there is an expression "poutou poutou" in French. It's like baby talk when you're tickling a little kid...
I have nothing to say about Sarah, as you know.
But I like "wandering around in darkness".
It seems appropriate to me.
The problem is not the words.
It's... WHO'S SAYING THEM.
Maybe Sarah and company have some vague, blind intuition that RHETORIC STILL is the name of the game, and the ground zero vocabulary that has been afflicting American politics for so long is not INSPIRING PEOPLE to want to do something constructive ?
Martin Luther King ? THERE was an articulate man.
His speeches and sermons are outstanding, and still make an excellent read...
Edwardo, is there any way to comment on Jesse's Café ??
I THOUGHT that I saw a comment section today, and then when I reconnected, pfft, it was gone..
Was I hallucinating ?
The Internet is so... IRRATIONAL, isn't it ??
By the way, I thought you would like to know that I had a REAL BRAINSTORM this morning.
Thinking about conspiracy theory, in all its forms..
I realized that conspiracy theory participates in the tendancy towards totalitarian uniformization that is so afflicting our societies these days.
Bringing many causes, many influences down to ONE person, or one class, or one anything.
Like Hitler did with the Jews.
Like lots of people are doing on the blogs with "the rich".
Conspiracy theory is a symptom of the very thing that it claims to fight...
Pretty... PARADOXAL, right ?
We are paradoxal (ical ? I forget...) animals, aren't we ?
I'm gonna stick this down for Toby, I think he'll like it too... Maybe even do a post on it later.
If you scroll down to the bottom left where it says proprietaire you will be able to click on Jesse's profile which has an e-mail address.
Debra wrote:
"conspiracy theory participates in the tendancy towards totalitarian uniformization that is so afflicting our societies these days."
Please elaborate as I'm not entirely following your line of thought. We basically have three options-which are not necessarily mutually exclusive- when trying to explain what happened with respect to spectacular (and not so spectacular) human events:
1.) Randomness
2.) Incompetent bungling
3.) Coordinated planning
Unfortunately, without exhaustive, authoritative, and, last but not least, credible evidence, it is fiendishly difficult to prove any of the above drivers in pure or blended form. (In general it is much easier to disprove than prove a scenario, which is why in courts of law people are found "not guilty" rather than innocent. We can disprove a case against someone without necessarily establishing innocence.)
Such is the case, in my view, where 9/11 and The Kennedy Assassination are concerned.
Conspiracy theories exist in greater and greater number because we now have massively increased access to enough information to call into serious question almost any official accounts of events like the aforesaid ones. The fact that official accounts regarding the whys and wherefores of epochal events are so easily discredited feeds the conspiratorial bent.
The late historian, Richard Hofstadter, coined the term "The paranoid style" with respect to American politics. His inquiry deals with the very strong tendency amongst the electorate to view the world in conspiratorial terms.
In conclusion it is always useful to remember that just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
LOL, Edwardo, I tell my friends that it is best to think first before being paranoid in every realm except.. YOUR GOVERNMENT (whatever government, as it turns out.. that job of heavy duty PROTECTING THE CITIZENS (!!!) can give rise to some pretty heavy duty impunity and lack of thoughtfulness, shall we say).
You should ALWAYS be paranoid about your government...
Way back there on Toby's blog I did a few pieces about structural linguistics. I attempted to show how words MEAN by bouncing off each other, like... good and bad/evil, Sunday/Monday, democracy/monarchy/dictatorship.
The more words are able to bounce off of different words, and not just... an antonym, for example, the more shades of meaning there are, and the more complex our thought CAN be. (Think polarization and its problems.)
Conspiracy theory participates in a movement to eliminate words that bounce off each other, so that there are less and less options to refine meaning.
That makes : one class of people responsible for our economic situation, for example...
Totalitarian thought is intimately related to... what the word "ONE" means...
Think about it. "One" is a word that crops up a lot, now, doesn't it ??
"ONE nation, under God, INDIVISIBLE, with liberty and justice for ALL."
That's a tall order. Look at every word in it that points toward totalitarianism in some form : ALL (like.. TOTAL, huh ?), ONE, INDIVISIBLE.
I will START an etymological number on "one" on Toby's blog ONE day (!!!) but, for fun, haul out your dictionary, and take a look at the definition of it.
A word you never looked up, right ?
I BET the definition runs for several pages..
And remember the Shema Israel, the Jewish call to prayer (I can't find it in the old testament, I looked but don't know where it is...) : "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is ONE", it starts, I think..
I'm not sure that conspiracy theories really have to do with the "fact" that we have more access to information, I think they are related to the "fact" that we don't trust anyone or anything these days...
AND... our criteria for determining just WHAT constitutes PROOF are vacillating wildly in the demise of public belief in scientism, and the sacredness of the scientific method.
Interesting thoughts one ONEness. I have noticed that when "we", individuals and groups that is, declare ourselves to be one thing, it tends to cause us to foreclose on even the possibility of being something else.
There's something insidiousness about ONE. It makes one ONEder who or what is behind it. I smell a conspiracy! Seriously, it's probably nothing more than mankind's monkey mind delimiting the multitude of possibilities that many of us are actually capable of. From an evolutionary standpoint I can understand why myopia has such a hold on the species.
In the film business, the phrase "Back to one" means return to your mark-immediately- for another take. I can tell you, having had some experience hearing it repeated over and over and over, that it definitely has a certain oppressive quality, especially given that it is almost always delivered in a loud, hectoring voice by a single minded, intelluctually challenged (oneness, again) twenty something, DA, Director's Assistant, or, if ONE is feeling uncharitable, Dumb Ass.
You are so witty. I love it.
Actually they are called PAs for Production Assistants, pretty annoying.
Just finished watching an episode of "Psych" with my daughter.
The only American T.V. show I watch. Love it.
We get it with NO COMMERCIALS.
Eat your heart out, baby...
Psych isn't one I'm familiar with. Are these new shows that you are seeing sans commercials?
You should check it out. It is VERY FUNNY, and NOT dumb funny, moronic funny, the way so much American TV USED to be at any rate...
At least, for my taste. Lots of tongue in cheek stuff in it, and from what I hear, the actors get to do LOTS OF IMPRO during the shooting, so I think they must be REALLY HAPPY to be FREE to use their IMAGINATION and NEURONS in their WORK.
(Look at how much STUFF I tied together in that short sentence, Edwardo, be grateful, be grateful...)
I'm pretty sure that YOU see it WITH commercials, if you follow standard operating procedures, but, shall I put this delicately, and elliptically, WE do NOT follow standard operating procedures...
"WE do NOT follow standard operating procedures..."
Well, you/WE (who is WE?) ARE special.
Boy, do I have a tip for you, anonymous..
Click on Econosophy and other musings, in Edwardo's links, and go back to the LAST post I just wrote on mass produced CHEAP, VALUELESS CRAP (no matter how much it costs...) and where it's taking our society.
You too, Edwardo will like my last two posts, I think... (I know, I know, I got out of hand, but Toby got me all excited.)
Don't overindulge me in thinking that I might be special. I have to keep that feeling under close wraps all the time...
By the way... I'm going to stop reading attempter.
He is.. descending into a form of radicalism (out of despair, and hate...) Edwardo, that I do NOT approve of.
You can check out my LAST response to him on his LAST post, about Glenn Greenwald.
I am an... anarchist, Edwardo.
A Christian mystical anarchist.
That sums it up pretty well (for those who want labels.. but I'm NOT baptized, and I don't go to Church, so..)
i'm not participating in ANY political revolution, Edwardo.
It's against my.. BELIEFS and CONVICTIONS...
I should nuance that.
I am going to try, to the best of my abilities, to spread JOY and humor whenever possible, and encourage analytic thinking AND emotional response in my fellow human beings.
BUT.. I am NOT going to inflame their hate, frustration, despair, disillusionment,and desire to destroy.
To the best of my ability....
This statement does not mean that i do not feel frustration, despair, disillusionment, and occasionally, the desire to destroy.
But... to the extent that I can CONTROL my behavior, AND MY SPEECH, I am going to try to avoid doing the above.
Credo...
Cheers.
It is your choice to read or not read his blog, but, suffice it to say, that I disagree with your assessment of Volatility and his work.
I, for one, have never read anything by him that advocates for violence of any sort. Now, you could make the case that because Russ characterizes those he writes about in overwhelmingly negative terms, that his pieces, on some level, lend themselves to those who would seek nasty reprisals against the many malefactors he writes about, but, that, in my view, would be attaching guilt in a way that doesn't have much, if any, merit.
All this by way of saying that comparing Russ to Hitler seems like hyperbole.
My view is that, vitriol notwithstanding, Russ is doing a service by his detailed attention to, and analysis of, the vast distortions and corruptions in our political/social system.
As you say, political systems and, indeed, entire nations, and cultures, come and go, but because we can not know the outcome of events in advance, we should not assume that a particular response to a given set of situations, i.e. inaction, or activism, is warranted.
Edwardo... in MY book YOU are not like attempter.
Because... I think that you are capable of sophisticated, and nuanced thought. It appears in our exchanges. You have a sense of humor too. I hear that.
Nothing of the sort appears in the exchanges I have with attempter.
I said, and I maintain, that Adolf Hitler was capable of sophisticated political and economic analysis. And that he fought against extremism in his own thought too, before... succombing to it.
I never said that attemptor advocated the recourse to violence.
But when attempter's rhetoric is SO vitriolic, and when he talks about the necessity of taking back our democracy from the evil Democrats and Republicans who are now controlling it, JUST HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE HE IS GOING TO GO ABOUT DOING IT ??
By throwing a party, and inviting all those nice people to pretty please hand over the keys to the government ??
He may not personally, and directly advocate violence, but violence is in his rhetoric, which is an incitation to hate.
I believe.
i hear it in his posts.
And I have told him so.
Our grandfathers were no more stupid than we are, Edwardo.
ANYBODY and EVERYBODY can get caught up in the consequences of vitriol WHETHER THEY WANT TO OR NOT.
The people who produce it. The people who do NOT produce it. The people who try their utmost best to NOT get caught up in it.
Remember... the school of fish, Edwardo.
Has that got you scared yet ??
It should. Not enough people believe in the school of fish, Edwardo.
These are dangerous times...
Deb asked,
JUST HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE HE IS GOING TO GO ABOUT DOING IT ??
Hmm, a lot of CAPS there, Deb.
Well, the great Frederick Douglass once observed that "Power never concedes a thing without demand. It never did and it never will"
Likewise Bertoldt Brecht offered "That you can't have a revolution without walking on the lawn."
Having said that, with respect to my conversations with Russ regarding his ideas about how we ought to respond to our deeply corrupt (political) system, what I have taken away tends to be along the lines of a combination of civil disobedience and "dropping out" of the system. No Molotov cocktails were mentioned, nor was anyone mentioned as a candidate to "swim wid da fishes."
Conspiracy theories exist in greater and greater number because we now have massively increased access to enough information to call into serious question almost any official accounts of events like the aforesaid ones.
Not to mention greater access to misinformation and lies disguised as fact. There's an unfortunate trend that if someone sees something on the Internet, it must be true.
Yes, indeed, Ded. Wikipedia comes immediately to mind. Its entries are often presented as solid sources of fact, which it can be, but, equally, because they are open to editing by anyone, are, actually, far from reliable.
For all that I intensely dislike Wikipedia (with rare exceptions...) I am mystified as to how ANYONE with THE DESIRE to maintain even a semblance of critical thought (that should be in caps, Edwardo, but I wouldn't want you to go deaf...) could think that Wikipedia presents itself as the DEFINITIVE authority on subjects.
Anyone... who desires to read critically can see the disclaimers that appear very often right up top, next to the entries. Gotta be BLIND, or brainwashed, or intellectually LAZY to not see them, I think.
I agree that we are inclined to assign legitimacy to what appears in print, or to what is written as opposed to what is oral. For historical and psychological reasons.
I also agree that the Internet has done MUCH to challenge, shall we say.. the legitimacy of previous, traditional sources of information (like the NYT, the WP in the States).
This fact, to me, is the result of the increasing democratization (yeah, that's right...) of our society, and the inescapable FACT that the democratic ideology IMPLICITLY challenges and discredits all HIERARCHICAL forms of authority (in our minds). (Lots of problems in that for education AND government... lots of logical problems that lead right to... the legitimacy of REPRESENTATION, and representative government itself.)
As for attempter, I am VERY GLAD to learn that he is a fellow dropout. (But.. does he have a sense of humor ??...)
And... I did not insult or attack him in any way, I feel.
But.. I DID warn him that too much vitriolic bile would eat away at his soul AND AT THE SOUL OF OTHERS.
In.. good faith.
By the way... Market Ticker is on my definitive black list. I will NEVER AGAIN open a window there.
Talk about... the temple merchants.
Jesus would be ranting.
Too many temple merchants in the country, Edwardo. Even among those who are DENOUNCING the temple merchants, (that's me...) idolatry of money is the major problem of our time.
Totalitarianism is the major symptom of decadence.
We are... in it up to our ??
I think a surfeit of human activity is the major problem of our time, perhaps, of all time, but I will admit that I don't have quite the same level of conviction on that score.
There is a French expression that goes... "brasser de l'air"... Waving your arms and sounding off a lot.
THAT is doing good business too... A real bubble there.
Speaking of Market Ticker, which is a blog I read despite disagreeing with many of the positions of the proprietor, he seems, in his Labor Day post to be advocating the most powerful form of "dropping out" imaginable. I can't say I disagree with the basic idea.
I held my nose and read the post on Market Ticker.
You will notice, if you remember, that I was saying this stuff on SuddenDebt more than a year ago...
And getting a fair amount of nasty reaction to it. (Thai, particularly did NOT UNDERSTAND this one...)
I feel EVEN MORE QUALIFIED to espouse this position that my particular (literary and critical) talents in the monoculture society that we have set up will not allow me to put meat and potatoes on the table, much less.. "earn a living"...
That said, a little perspective is called for.
I seem to remember that.. up until the moment that the U.S. formally entered WW2, Ford and company were financially supporting Adolf and doing business with him WITH NO QUALMS (well, we will give them the credit that MAYBE they didn't know about the death camps, but I'm not sure that even THAT would have stopped them when flesh and blood people become anonymous... NUMBERS (however big the numbers are, by the way...)) What did government DO to curb big business during WW2, Edwardo ? How did it come about ??
The prison "solution" reflects tremendous naivete, still, Edwardo. Like the the threat of prison as social control wears thin REALLY QUICKLY UNLESS PEOPLE HAVE internalized social control in some way, and unless THE WAY YOU DO BUSINESS allows them to access their identifications with other people's feelings so that people are not just numbers and charts to them. Not enough prisons to put everybody in, not enough filthy lucre to stick a policeman behind every banker, and WHAT WOULD THE FUCKING COUNTRY LOOK LIKE WITH A POLICEMAN BEHIND EVERY CITIZEN ?? (sorry about the caps..)Maybe... like what it looks like NOW ??...
Too much FAITH in LAW AND ORDER there, Edwardo. I'm not.. BUYING...
The unfortunate thing is that once you have got rid of safeguards (Glass Steagle act, spelling ?), THERE IS NO SYMMETRY involved in trying to put them back in place again.
You will also remember that I said on SuddenDebt this year that all of a sudden the American people has suddenly WOKE UP to the fact that work will not SAVE YOUR SOUL (the way that our ancestors so desperately wanted to believe...), and that this realization is very painful. (The American people has been PROTECTED on a very large scale from the way things are running (down) in our civilization, due to its previously cushy position as empire, and the unique position of its currency.)
For the rest of the piece.... I am DEFINITELY doing my (best) part.
And trying not to be TOO LAZY in the meantime...
Hey, I'm hanging out at Mish's place a little bit.
THOSE people are less rabid than the people on Naked Capitalism.
Kind of civilized place there... Plus, for the time being, they seem to honestly LIKE me..
Say a prayer that I don't get sucked down into that black hole, and never come out for air, food, or sex...
By the way, it's kind of DEAD over at SuddenDebt.
Maybe Thai's demise had some permanent effects on the spirit of the place ??
I've noticed that about Sudden Debt. It's almost as moribund as my blog.
And I also see you have posted over at Volatility. Couldn't stay away, eh?
Thai and I had a debate on the issue of corporation's legal status, and my recollection was that he took issue with my taking issue with corporations being given the same rights as people, but I may be, in the words of The Shrub, misremembering.
Aha... the infamous blank page syndrome strikes ??
YOU ARE NOT ALONE..
The COUNTRY is suffering from blank page syndrome.
And.. I didn't know you were a lurker...
(Mea culpa, I don't really know what that means in the U.S. these days, so don't get TOO excited... Expatriotism (HA, THAT'S a find.. expatriotism...) has SOME advantages.
Sometimes I comment and other times not. Does that make me a lurker?
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