Michelle Bachman relieves our anxiety regarding global warming on the House floor when she informed us that carbon dioxide gas is not harmful because it is natural and comprises 3% of the atmosphere.
Dick Cheney will defend torture as being something other than torture because it works.
Sean Hannity will undergo waterboarding voluntarily to prove its not torture.
Glenn Beck (and other assorted right wing nutjobs) think all our various pecadillos at Gitmo and elsewhere were not torture because he “doesn’t think it is” and “it’s a matter of perception.” I guess when Beck looks up the definition of truth in the dictionary he reads “Glenn Beck’s opinion.” The philosophical problem of relativism never bothered him.
Republicans call for the resignation of Janet Napolitano because of a Homeland Security Report that presumably targets right wing extremists. They fail to extend their criticism to the Bush Administration which started the program of tracking extremists, which, by the by, included left wing extremists.
The examples of patently absurd and embarrassingly transparent illogic are legion.
This might all be for 'shits and giggles' if it weren't for the fact that much of the right-wing lunatic fringe, Conservative and Republican rhetoric decays into the absurdities of dualistic oppositions that preclude the possiblility of discourse, inquiry, dialogue and self-reflection. For this ideologically fanatical mindset self-criticism of America by Americans is equivalent to treason.
Voltaire is more relevant than ever: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
WHAT’S GOIN’ ON? Politics of Hyper-hyperbole, Demonization, Irrationality….
Given that there are enough people in this country who actually believe in Satan as evil incarnate, the Republican right wing can continue to try turning the most innocuous of Obama’s words and actions into demonic signs of impending tyranny, fascism, socialism and finally the arrival of the anti-Christ in the form of Obama himself.
Or is it because the Republican/conservative/lunatic-fringe actually have no remotely clear cut philosophy, platform or project which really serves America as a viable polity that they huff and puff with theatrically unconvincing feigned indignation and conviction? I simply can’t believe that anyone is convinced, for example, that Sean Hannity, who is far from stupid, really believes that Michelle Bachman is anything but a flake at best or literally delusional at worst, especially Hannity.
It is sad if not frightening however if in fact the real motive in all this fake-hysterical non-sense is to mobilize an irrational if not violent reaction by the pseudo-political hysterical fanatics who swallow the Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Beck demagoguery as objective truth. Maybe recent right-wing militant media is only life-support for the core loyalists, i.e., the fundamentalist Christian culturalists, but I do sometimes wonder if this could be more insidious than meets the eye. What exactly are the Republicans thinking if the best they can do is try to manufacture a mass ‘mob-mentality?’ And is this mostly media crowd of proto-authoritarians really anything remotely what we might authentically call “conservative” or “republican?”
Well, the “Republicans” who will in 2012 represent the real opposition to Obama have only one real interest to defend: the wealth and power of mega-capital which the recent 19 page Republican “budget” did its best to declare as its real interest. They did this by offering only one solution to the economic crisis: lower taxes on the rich.
Let’s get clear however, as Obama himself is proving, that there is no significant difference between the two major faux political parties in America. It’s not that Obama, unlike the Republicans, has a viable philosophy, platform or project that will transform America. He does not. He is proving to do nothing regarding the economic crisis except recycle the ‘bubble and bust’ boys but now with taxpayer money. Obama is the black Bush with a helping of Rooseveltian stop-gap measures. Obama is continuing the Iraq war and gearing up his own in Afghanistan. He apparently will continue to tap our phones and refuse to carry out the demands of justice by not prosecuting the Bush war crimes. Lastly, he seems to have little interest in restoring the integrity of the Constitution.
On the other hand, the opposition to Obama does not comprise a consensus let alone a coherent consensus. The vocal opposition to Obama that preponderates toward the lunatic fringe does not a party nor a “real opposition” make. Unfortunately the power of the centralist media and the force of mega–money will most likely again instumentalize, aggregate and mobilize the mass of Americans suffering the illusions propagated by the New Class. Again many will conceive of their situation as having to choose between the lesser of two evils. This mass authoritarian pseudo-consensus will continue to masquerade as the real opposition, the semblance of a political party and, unfortunately,as a meaningful, coherent, rational critique of our political situation as symbolized in Obama (which it is not).
But America is many blue moons away from any sober discourse and rational self-reflection on this time in our history. If rationality means anything amidst the irrationality of our time, it may well be an acknowledgement that we do belong to the same society and must all seek together to realize its universality as the maximization of social freedom. In doing so we must walk the narrow path between the Scylla of massification at the hands of the authoritarians and the Charybdis of atomization at the hands of the assorted cultural relativists and marketers of rugged, possessive individualism.
Or is it because the Republican/conservative/lunatic-fringe actually have no remotely clear cut philosophy, platform or project which really serves America as a viable polity that they huff and puff with theatrically unconvincing feigned indignation and conviction? I simply can’t believe that anyone is convinced, for example, that Sean Hannity, who is far from stupid, really believes that Michelle Bachman is anything but a flake at best or literally delusional at worst, especially Hannity.
It is sad if not frightening however if in fact the real motive in all this fake-hysterical non-sense is to mobilize an irrational if not violent reaction by the pseudo-political hysterical fanatics who swallow the Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Beck demagoguery as objective truth. Maybe recent right-wing militant media is only life-support for the core loyalists, i.e., the fundamentalist Christian culturalists, but I do sometimes wonder if this could be more insidious than meets the eye. What exactly are the Republicans thinking if the best they can do is try to manufacture a mass ‘mob-mentality?’ And is this mostly media crowd of proto-authoritarians really anything remotely what we might authentically call “conservative” or “republican?”
Well, the “Republicans” who will in 2012 represent the real opposition to Obama have only one real interest to defend: the wealth and power of mega-capital which the recent 19 page Republican “budget” did its best to declare as its real interest. They did this by offering only one solution to the economic crisis: lower taxes on the rich.
Let’s get clear however, as Obama himself is proving, that there is no significant difference between the two major faux political parties in America. It’s not that Obama, unlike the Republicans, has a viable philosophy, platform or project that will transform America. He does not. He is proving to do nothing regarding the economic crisis except recycle the ‘bubble and bust’ boys but now with taxpayer money. Obama is the black Bush with a helping of Rooseveltian stop-gap measures. Obama is continuing the Iraq war and gearing up his own in Afghanistan. He apparently will continue to tap our phones and refuse to carry out the demands of justice by not prosecuting the Bush war crimes. Lastly, he seems to have little interest in restoring the integrity of the Constitution.
On the other hand, the opposition to Obama does not comprise a consensus let alone a coherent consensus. The vocal opposition to Obama that preponderates toward the lunatic fringe does not a party nor a “real opposition” make. Unfortunately the power of the centralist media and the force of mega–money will most likely again instumentalize, aggregate and mobilize the mass of Americans suffering the illusions propagated by the New Class. Again many will conceive of their situation as having to choose between the lesser of two evils. This mass authoritarian pseudo-consensus will continue to masquerade as the real opposition, the semblance of a political party and, unfortunately,as a meaningful, coherent, rational critique of our political situation as symbolized in Obama (which it is not).
But America is many blue moons away from any sober discourse and rational self-reflection on this time in our history. If rationality means anything amidst the irrationality of our time, it may well be an acknowledgement that we do belong to the same society and must all seek together to realize its universality as the maximization of social freedom. In doing so we must walk the narrow path between the Scylla of massification at the hands of the authoritarians and the Charybdis of atomization at the hands of the assorted cultural relativists and marketers of rugged, possessive individualism.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
I'm a Father!!!!
Two beautiful baby boys born April 7 and doing great!!! Mother is doing well and father is a basket case. But what a blessing!
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Bill O' Reilly and the Likes Thereof...
Bill O’Reilly is the “professional wrestling” of American political punditry.
Substitute Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Colter and a number of other right wing lunatic info-tainment wannabees and you have the same thing.
It’s a waste of time, of course, to try to analyze, debate, refute or deconstruct these parasites on journalism. The ‘pro wrestling’ analogy is sufficient explanation of it all. Just like ‘pro wrestling' they have and probably always will have their audience of uneducated and badly misled if not deluded myopic groupees who need to live in an overly simplified pseudo-reality.
For such sub-humans attempting to critically encounter the real is much too terrifying.
God bless and take pity upon them.
Substitute Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Colter and a number of other right wing lunatic info-tainment wannabees and you have the same thing.
It’s a waste of time, of course, to try to analyze, debate, refute or deconstruct these parasites on journalism. The ‘pro wrestling’ analogy is sufficient explanation of it all. Just like ‘pro wrestling' they have and probably always will have their audience of uneducated and badly misled if not deluded myopic groupees who need to live in an overly simplified pseudo-reality.
For such sub-humans attempting to critically encounter the real is much too terrifying.
God bless and take pity upon them.
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