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.

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.

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.

Perusing rawstory this evening I came across this excerpt from Glenn Beck’s Fox News program that makes me uncomfortable in a way that I haven’t felt in a long while. There is something particularly frightening about the psychology of a man who weeps with a bottomless sense of righteousness, all the while pressing for the revolution he so desperately craves.

This is not the first time that Glenn Beck has whipped this element of society into a frenzy, we all of course remember the ridiculous War Room psychopathy that Colbert so adeptly put into perspective, but this talk extends back to his CNN days when he began to bitch about rebellion after Pelosi’s ‘coup’ of the house in 2006. Sadly, I feel we are possibly bearing witness to the rise of a terrifying populist movement in this country that will unleash horrors we can’t begin to conceptualize. The most cursory glance at the 9 Principles and 12 Eternal Virtues as defined by Beck on his ‘Project 9/12′ website reads like a mash-up between Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, an Ayn Rand wet dream and something out of the Goebbels playbook. Join me in keeping a watchful eye on his pontificating.
Posted: 16 Mar, 2009 | [2] Comments
Categories: General | Tags: Glenn Beck | By: Mark Limacher.