MarkLimacher.com

If the history books used in American classrooms were grounded in any sort of reality, I often wonder what will be said about the age I am currently living in. Knowing that the fight to teach accuracy in schools is probably a losing battle, I wonder what lies the authors may come up with in the future to explain away the current right-wing psychopaths that have seemingly endless potential for media coverage. The incoherent verbal assaults taking place at the health care reform town hall meetings are bound to bring laughter to any reality-based person, myself included. Nothing elicits a grander guffaw than watching these encephalitic psychopaths completely mischaracterize socialism, the ‘founding fathers’, or the very Medicare they themselves receive. Our laughter must be carefully monitored, however, for it masks the precipitous horrors these people will bring to fruition. Having said that, I do recognize the necessity to express my stupefaction at the overwhelming ignorance displayed by these people.

Yes, you read correctly, I referred to the offending individuals as a collective ‘these people’, and there is a hard intention behind that. They are the genesis of a mass movement, a movement that has been gradually shaped and molded over the decades, a movement that has emerged from its adolescence with a hunger for violence.

The brains behind this movement lie in many hands, be they the practitioners of free market extremism, promulgators of the many systemic-industrial complexes, or proselytists of religious fundamentalism, but they all require the aid of the malleable. This is where the birthers, the deathers, and the tea-baggers come into the picture. The necessity of an angry mob, a collection of cognitively deficient pawns with which to direct as per your bidding, has always been necessary for those wishing to overthrow a regime of some kind. The one thing that needs to come about, however, is both a consolidation of message and the establishment of some kind of leadership, no matter how anti-establishment these people claim to be. Thus far we seem to be seeing a loose association of individuals with disparate objections, ranging anywhere from the anti-federal government, anti-tax lunatics to the viciously racist militiamen. Indeed, what seems clear at the moment is that no such consolidation seems to have happened, and frankly, it is often impossible to discern a decisive message with a great many of town-hall disruptions. Even a casual dip into Wikipedia reveals that the Sturmabteilung didn’t exactly coalesce into the kind of organization we associate with the term until 1922, by which point both the German Workers Party and the structureless pugilists had reconfigured into the NSDAP. Any further reading on Hitler’s rise to power, or any totalitarian regime for that matters, suggests the same, that consolidation of interests enables the success of a rise to power¹.

If it weren’t for disturbing trends that suggest such a cohesion is just around the corner, I might consider relaxing. Finding myself at teapartypatriots.org brought a little phrase back into my vocabulary, lost in the din of the town hall psychopaths: The 9-12 Project. Looking at the extensive list of ‘Tea Party Patriot Groups’, a.k.a. angry white idiot douchebags, the term ‘9-12’ appears more times than I am comfortable with. In case you’re still unconcerned, the The 9-12 Project is one of Glenn Beck’s masturbatory experiments in delusion that first came to my attention in March. In case you’re still vacillating on the connectivity here, I think it’s safe to say that the 9-12 project is precisely the coalescent meme necessary to bring about the dreaded consolidation. Given that Glenn Beck’s latest book, Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine (shazail!) has been on the New York Times non-fiction best sellers list for weeks², and knowing that the book ends with instructions on how to organize a 9-12 ‘club’ of your very own, my unwillingness to calm down is not a result of my own superfluous anxieties, but an objection to the unfolding of ensuing darkness.
Take a quick peek at the 9 Principles, and tell me you aren’t disturbed given specific trends in American Society (as written about here by friend of the site, Samantha Fingerhut).

1. America Is Good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
God “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” from George Washington’s first Inaugural address.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
Honesty “I hope that I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider to be the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” George Washington

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
Marriage/Family “It is in the love of one’s family only that heartfelt happiness is known. By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a family.” Thomas Jefferson

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
Justice “I deem one of the essential principles of our government… equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.” Thomas Jefferson

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness “Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence.” Thomas Jefferson

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
Charity “It is not everyone who asketh that deserveth charity; all however, are worth of the inquiry or the deserving may suffer.” George Washington

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
On your right to disagree “In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or more properly without thinking.” George Washington

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
Who works for whom? “I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation as the source of all authority in that nation.” Thomas Jefferson³

The sun is truly setting. Brace yourselves.

So I read the following Chris Hedges piece from Truthdig the other day, and couldn’t help but grow concerned about my well being (yes- again). The jist of the article is about the meetings that took place earlier this week in Yekaterinberg, Russia by the BRIC & Shanghai Cooperation Organizationg, and the panic that should be starting to sink in about the future of the US dollar. A brief sample:

…It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

Yet another take, Prairie2 put it rather bluntly, but effectively:

…The turmoil that this could produce has no large scale precedent. With almost no Americans having any sense of ownership in our society the reaction will be a feeling of hopelessness and an every man for himself mentality. The crazies on the right have been priming themselves for this sort of apocalyptic collapse for forty years and will have no doubt who is to blame. Those that don’t know who to blame will get a fair and balanced list on Fox News. Watch your back.

I’m reminded, rather insistently, by the post I made a few months ago in which I linked to the Robert Freeman piece regarding the US facing a possible Weimar moment. I know I do a great deal of yammering about fearing for my life/future, but I’m finding it much more difficult to ignore the sheer volume of evidence that’s beginning to mount regarding the speed with which the American empire is dissolving. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find much information about the results of said meeting, with a New York Times article indicating that the group “concluded with only a cautious statement suggesting a move away from the dollar’s role in global commerce and a call for greater representation of developing countries in global financial institutions.” I will admit that I find the general ‘non-statement’ quality of that reporting to send chills up my spine, but what else can I expect from the Times financial section. This seems likely to be a developing topic over the next several months, which is good only in that it gives me time to go and purchase some canned goods before the right-wing psychopaths band together in an omega-man-esque sort of glory.

As a kind of appertif, a sort of deliciousness in video form, I thought I’d post some of the perplexing sadness that is the David Letterman outrage.

I returned last night from my wonderful trip to Montreal- a trip that’s becoming a bit of annual tradition- and what was the big news of the last few days? Another right-wing extremist murdering someone, this time in the DC holocaust memorial museum. That struck me, because if I’m not mistaken, it was last week that another right-wing extremist murdered Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas. Who’s to die next week?

When the DHS put out the report about rising right-wing extremism on April 7th, it was met with ridicule of the highest order from all of the expected neo-fascist sycophants. Promptly it was touted as nothing more than an appaling and shameful measure to criminalize disagreements in political policy and practice. If I’m not crazy, murdering a person for providing a LEGAL medical procedure to women in need, isn’t politics as usual. Murdering a person whose job it is to guard a museum memorializing the Nazi Holocaust is not the way you discuss a difference in policy opinion. The conservatives are already defending their previous hate-fest on Napolitano, or at least trying to obscure their previous statements by further hating on the ‘left’, in an absolutely unprecedented display of ignorance. I’m left wondering the following.

The so-called ‘center’ has moved, with blinding speed I might add, to the right over the past 60 years, and at this exact moment of time I spend a great deal of my day worrying about my safety and the state of my life in the future. I never thought I’d live in a reality in which honest concerns about violent extremists would be an immediate part of my life. Retrospectively that was unintentional intellectual dishonesty, and exhibits such a tremendous amount of North American chauvinism that I should feel ashamed- but I fully acknowledge my situation now. I asked it once, but I will ask it again:
Who will be next to die? I fear I won’t have to wait long for my morbid question to be dutifully answered.

The Jay S. Bybee memo of thursday, outlining the methods of torture able to be utilized by CIA officials and other US Nationals abroad, came as a revolting shock. The day before, thousands of dangerously brainwashed right wing psychopaths protested taxes, and I suppose, all forms of societal responsibility and human empathy. Today, it is clear that virtually no justice will be sought on the former, as Attorney General Eric Holder vowed not to prosecute those who carried out said acts of Torture.

It has been a very interesting and illuminating few weeks. This is a country where students protesting a known war criminal as their university president are teargassed , beat up, and restrained while being pepper-sprayed by the police, but right-wing extremists protesting imagined tax increases and other racist and psychopathic fantasies are given an international media platform and totally legitimized (and in Neil Cavuto’s case, inflated).
Yes, it has been a VERY illuminating few weeks.

I have read the Bybee memo, and I am sick to my stomach. I thought using insects as torture phased out in the Achemenid dynsasty, but apparently I was way off base. I thought water boarding would remain ‘just a Pol Pot thing’. Again, I was way, way off.
Honestly, where the fuck are the massive rallies about the torture, the deaths of detainees in US custody, the secret CIA black sites? Instead we have rabid right-wing psychopaths en masse protesting everything from a black man in the white house, to secession- yes, read it again, secession. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried anymore, this is getting so beyond dangerous that I don’t even have words most of the time. I end up stammering like Billy Budd for most of the day now. Example:
For all the coverage of Texas asshole Rick Perry talking about secession, the Georgia state senate passed this doozie 43 to 1. They passed resolution 632. Here is said resolution in full, but I’ll spare you some of the legalese, and cut to the chase. Firstly, they redefine the scope of the federal government’s authority of prosecution, and state that the ONLY crimes they can prosecute are treason, piracy and slavery. Everything else is null and void (somebody tell Madoff already). Secondly, they state that should the government attempt to overreach, the United states of America, and the United States Constitution is nullified and all authority is placed in the State government. What constitutes overreaching you might ask? According to Resolution 632, anything to do with the restriction of the sales of assault weapons would do the trick. By the by, this term ‘nullify’ has a rather distasteful history, such as during the civil rights movement as a means to disregard Supreme Court rulings on segregation, and my personal favorite, the Nullification Crisis on the path to the Civil War.

Once again I will not mince words- I fear that if nothing is done to stem the tide of this fulmination of anger and hate by these right-wing psychopaths, that some manifestation of insurrection is not only possible but likely.

It is getting harder for me to laugh at the ridiculousness of this news, and ridiculous and absurd it is indeed, but sometimes I know not what else to do.

Yesterday, as I made my way to the post office to mail my tax return, three right wing psychopaths stopped me before I was able to enter, asking if I was there to do the unspeakable (they were doing so to everyone entering/walking past the PO).

Psychopath 1: “You going in there to pay your taxes?”
Myself: “Yes…”
Psychopath 2: “Don’t go in there man, say no to socialism”
Me: “If you touch me I’ll sue”
Psychopaths in Unison: “Hey relax buddy, just spreadin’ the word”

At this point they turned away and continued handing their pamphlets to other unsuspecting passer-by’s. As the door shut behind me, I could hear the remnants of “Obama’s a socialist!” and “Say no to socialism!”, met with an abundance of hostility given that this is the fucking UPPER EAST SIDE OF MANHATTAN. That however, was nothing. The video below chills me. This should be old news at this point, but this kind of total insanity is only the beginning. This is getting so inappropriately out of hand, and I am left completely speechless at this shit. I’m reminded of the recurring South Park bit where the red necks in the town get so riled up about the typical memes that they spit all over themselves. The only difference is of course that this time it’s not satire; they’re heavily armed, uneducated, racist, culturally ignorant, bigoted and REAL.
Brace yourselves.

Today is tax day, and to mark the occasion, dumb ass republican mouth breathers will be gathering in groups around the country to insert each other’s testes and scrotums orally.

Such a glorious display of defiance against the evils of socialism is enough to bring a tear to my eye. Unfortunately, I’m not illiterate enough, hateful enough or downright willfully ignorant enough to participate in of the tea bagging parties themselves. No, in fact in all honesty, the sheer volume of armaments likely to be present at each one of these low-kal-klan rallies is enough of a deterrent for me. To be honest, I’m a little less than comfortable about this absolutely absurd anti-tax rhetoric. In the Barbara Ehrenreich piece I put up last week, she talks about how as a society we might want to start thinking about the common good, at least slightly more than usual, instead of only ever our individual interest. This is one of my major problems with this continent, we have somehow arisen at a point where we are so intrinsically selfish that a certain faction of society is willing to go around on tax day and place pretend their re-enacting the Boston Tea Party. Let’s make the distinction right now.

The Boston Tea Party took place because of a lowering in a ‘corporate’ tax. The British East India company was being taxed 25% on all the tea they imported by the British Parliament. Problems arose when Dutch tea, which was not taxed by their government, began to be smuggled into Britain and sold as much lower prices. To correct for this great loss of capital in a British company, the Parliament lowered said tax to 0%. At the same time, they passed the Townshend Revenue Act, which allowed for massive tax-rapings to begin in the colonies. The colonists were all like “hey bra, I’m just dreaming about founding a christian nation over here with my pal Jesus and Tom Delay, what’s with the taxes while the fucking East India Company gets an Enron of a pass??” and then Samuel Adams was all like “lets dress up like American Indians and dump the next load of tea they bring over here into the water!”.

In our contemporary world, these tea bagging parties are the hellspawn of Fox News and other right wing cash sources, used to manipulate the dumb and the mean of our society into gathering on tarmacs around the country on tax day to place each other’s testes and scrotums into each other’s mouths, because Barack Obama wants to raise the tax rate on those who earn above $250k a year from 36% to 39%. Lapsang the bastard!

As an additional treat, a new podcast episode is below with panel guests Nora Burkey, Samantha Fingerhut and Nykki Dular. We discuss a variety of topics including Nykki Dular’s thesis on children, the tea bagging parties (forgive me, I mispeak and refer to the Dutch East India Company when in fact I mean to say British East India Company), New School Free Press Items, and Hot Dogs.
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I wonder how many of these people pulled a Larry Craig between takes, or thought about killing their spouse on the day of taping? How many of these individuals don’t actually appreciate that a black man is the spokesperson of this video? The kids in the second clip were probably promised trips to something other than the creationism museum this summer if they read the script- convincingly of course.

We should all be growing very, very alarmed. We are witnessing the prelude to catastrophes and calamities that may, despite my lust for optimism, may be inevitable. I am of course referring to Glenn Beck, and perhaps more to the point, the mounting hate from the right-wing.
Robert Freeman writing on commondreams.org lays out a rather terrifying comparison. Weimar Germany, Freeman claims, presents a chilling archetype for the precipice we now face.

In early 1919, Germany put in place a new government to begin rebuilding the country after its crushing defeat in World War I. But the right-wing forces that had led the country into the War and lost the War conspired even before it was over to destroy the new government, the “Weimar Republic.” They succeeded.

The U.S. faces a similar “Weimar Moment.” The devastating collapse of the economy after eight years of Republican rule has left the leadership, policies, and ideology of the right utterly discredited. But, as was the case with Germany in 1919, Republicans do not intend to allow the new government to succeed. They will do everything they can to undermine it. If they are successful, the U.S. may yet go the way of Weimar Germany.

Let me be very clear about something: I think we face a situation where in the years to come, if nothing is done to curb this violent hate of ‘the government’, ‘socialism’, etc, we will descend into unspeakable places. However, we may be lucky that certain differences exist. First off, we have not yet reached the point where we are taking wheelbarrows of cash to the supermarket to buy a quart of milk, but as Freeman points out we do face an inconceivable debt load. Given that we can never dream of paying off this profound amount of cash, there remains great uncertainty on how much longer a hold on the actual economic meltdown can be maintained. Secondly, there exists no legitimate representation of the leftist element(s) in this country. Even those of us who approve of being deemed ‘progressive’ or ‘lefty’ have no true elected representatives in any form of government. This might take some of the wind out of the hate-sails, but sadly I fear reality is malleable even in this instance. The pro-fascists in our society will brand, as they are doing now, all forms of competition with their goals as socialism, lunacy, and a threat to each and every citizen. As I mentioned in my previous Beck post, his 9/12 project is extraordinarily disturbing, but watching the clip from his program shows how many millions of psychos are out there watching this drek. Give it a few years, and these militant, frothing at the mouth, autocratic fetishists will hold power.

I’m creating a new category for posts to keep up with the mounting insanity from the fascist element in this continent. On my mind right now: a one Mr. Jonathan Krohn. Since his debut performance at CPAC, he has been touted seemingly everywhere on cable news, including the fucking TODAY SHOW, and a rather lengthy New York Times article. I am in awe of this, because it is very clear what is going on. This is not some end of the show ‘comedic’ guest spot, or an Arts & Style section throw-away- this actually the establishment of a new conservative ideologue (fitting that for the right-wing it should be a child in the literal sense). Personally, if asked to seriously examine his views, they are troubling if not mind-numbingly repetitive, but they do have the cadence of intellectual grounding. I’m reminded of Jonathan Tolin’s piece on huffingtonpost a few weeks ago when he described Krohn’s act the following way:

“What’s striking here is not that Jonathan Krohn’s writing sounds like standard-issue conservative punditry; it’s that most conservative punditry sounds like the writing of a thirteen-year-old.”

Discussing this matter last night with some of my closest friends, we all agreed that he is a chilling mimic, a kind of lunatic-fringe-chameleon, able to manipulate his voice to sound like the big-boys of his ‘craft’.
Below are some of my favorites. (more…)