Hopefully All Talk

Here it comes:

Milwaukee County’s Republican Elections Commissioner Rick Baas warned a crowd of volunteers and supporters Friday night to be “concerned about voter fraud,” and urged the hundreds of attendees to take an “extra step of vigilance.” “You as a Wisconsin resident can challenge people who are not supposed to be voting,” he said at the Milwaukee County Republicans event. “You’ve got to do that.” [emphasis mine]

 So the plan now is basically to encourage vigilantism?

Right of Way Outrage

I stumbled onto a story yesterday completely by accident, I am sure it is too little for MMFA or any other group on the lookout for proto-fascism in our midst. However, it is just one little tile in the mosaic of virulent nationalism and scapegoating that is essential if you want to plow under a rotting republic in favor of a dictatorship. Check out this headline:

Florida man ordered to remove American flag display draws huge support

 Contrast it with the original source:

Hundreds of flags line Cape Coral roads

Basically, the manager of a hardware store put up a bunch of little flags on the public right-of-way grass between the street and sidewalk, someone complained that it violated a city ordinance, and the city asked him to move them back onto private property... about 6 feet. This incident has 2 amazing similarities to 1984. First, that "hundreds" of people turned out to further violate the ordinance and put up a shitload more flags in exactly the way the telescreen announcer on Airstrip One constantly repeats how "workers spontaneously demonstrate to show their gratitude and joy." Second, is that the original story has disappeared down the memory hole. Originally, there was a segment from the Ministry of Truth (fox news) where they interviewed the guy involved and he admitted voluntarily removing the flags... until the patriotism police showed up and put up almost one hundred times more flags. Now, anything that might indicate that this incident began as a simple and easily resolved disagreement between an individual and the city is gone. In its place is a confrontation between unfeeling, unaccountable government mindlessly enforcing arbitrary rules and the patriotic masses standing up to the tyranny of right-of-way ordinances.

Wow, in Oceania it took dedicated effort by a huge bureaucracy to collect all copies of newspapers or other documents, destroy the item that the Party wished to change, and reissue them. Now with a few clicks the job can be done by one or two individuals in a few moments!

Orwell is rolling in his grave.

The Magical Ebola Mystery Tour

Yes really,

I had so hoped not to have to write about this. Yes all of you children on cable news, Ebola is scary but please get a grip. We have now experienced weeks of fear mongering by the usual suspects in media. Some just to sensationalize an exotic disease for ratings and therefore profits, but fox news has taken the opportunity to push their agenda of hate. To say nothing of the outright comic book villain level mischief attributed to our president and the government he heads by Alex Jones and the conspiracy nuts. I am interested in how the public is digesting the facts vs. misinformation and what the popular outlook is on this outbreak.

First off, I do not want to in any way downplay the seriousness of Ebola. This is not a "Don't Worry Be Happy" post, irresponsibility runs both ways. My heart goes out for anyone infected with this horrible disease. I would like to point out that the outbreak is very small and any commentary must keep this in mind. Also, how many potential epidemics have been hyped by the media in recent years? SARS, swine flu, and bird flu to name a few. I am old enough to remember the last time a new disease was taken seriously and not completely sensationalized, namely Lyme's disease. Though I do not know why that one was kept in perspective when we had just been through apocalyptic AIDS coverage. Mad Cow went the other way, real danger and potential safeguards ignored to protect the beef industry and heads-in-the-sand hamburger eaters. These outbreaks all have something in common though, we are all still here. To hear irresponsible media tell it though, we are one flight from Africa away from extinction.

And it is working. I have been monitoring chatter on the subject of Ebola (as much as one person can) in conversations both electronic and the real world. As far as I can tell, everyone has an opinion and they are all bad. First is the sentiment "I just don't trust the government to handle this." Well, this is just entry-level stuff but shows just how effective the republican party and right-wing noise machine has been in denigrating our democratic government. And the hypocrisy of these screeching, cage-crapping traitors is staggering as well. Was it not less than a decade ago that they were all about protecting the government and its republican office-holders from criticism during a national crisis? Anyway, yes, government's essential function of protecting the people is impaired when an insurgent force campaigns on, wins office on, and implements a platform of destroying government's ability to research and combat deadly diseases through privatization, budget cuts, staffing agencies with partisan hacks and incompetents, and demonizing science generally.

Beyond these real concerns though, is the outlook espoused by people who just don't trust the government to deal with the outbreak of Ebola in the US. They seem to be saying that they just cannot fathom anyone smarter then they are in a position to address the crisis. The doctors and nurses working at the CDC and NIH are not trained and experienced in health care, disease management, or disease prevention, they must be just like me. Not all staff members in this critical department are political appointees, and it just is not possible that cronies could completely take over. The hacks can do considerable damage and may make this crisis more serious than it may have been without the wrecking crew, but your average employee at the Centers for Disease Control is going to be more qualified than a bartender or roofer. There are still standards that must be met.

On the opposite side you have the double thinking conspiracy theorists. I do not have the stomach to look at any of those websites, but I get the drift just from statements like this:

Don't worry about the plague that's about to kill millions of Americans; FEMA has enough coffins and death camps for everyone. The rich will get the cure, of course. You did know there's a cure for ebola, right? Just not for us.

When one presents a fact-free assertion like this they must gloss over the concurrent belief that government is incompetent. But if I remember my Art Bell catechism correctly, conspiracy theorists accomplish this by separating the democratic, public, government with all of it's flaws and corruption from the shadow, private, government that carries out assassinations, overthrows other governments, and has "big plans" for all of us little people should we get out of line.

That last sentiment has really gotten out of hand. A deep-seated projection that pops up among conservatives every time a Democrat sits in the White House. "They are coming for our guns, they are coming for our women!" These are deeply authoritarian notions and we do not have time to annotate or even mention all of the self-pitying persecution fantasies spewed forth from the noise machine or its gullible followers except to say that this is what they would like to do to all the hated "others" that authoritarians feel both superior to and vindictive toward. Take this wonderfully eliminationist notion recently posted online:

If we just kill all with Ebola now it will save millions later....just sayin

The individual who posted this, and all the enthusiastic commentators supporting the idea forget one thing, who is going to do all of this killing exactly? The demon Obama and his "ordinary black panthers" or will we be privatizing murder? You can bet that every person concluding that killing the infected is a great way to go came away from every stupid history channel program on the Nazis feeling so superior to them and that they would never do anything like that...



I'm just going to drop these titles here for further consideration, they may be of some help.
And before you dismiss the last quote as just a silly notion from an average American guy with no support from the responsible governing class people, please have a glance at this story about the former GOP director of South Carolina who, in all seriousness, has a serious hankering for murdering Ebola patients.

The Kraken Is Such A Big Meanie

I get occasional feedback on what I write and I can read statistics, so I understand that there are some readers who felt I went to far in my characterization of the Republican Party and their voters. This is not some dry, academic journal it is my personal blog and I am under no real obligation to play the "both sides" card or pull punches out of some outdated sense of professional detachment. These are transparent excuses used by journalists in big media corporations trying not to offend their right-wing editors and owners. My anger at the mean-spirited ignorance of conservative voters is sincere, second only to Republican office holders because the latter can actually change laws and make decisions that hurt me and the people I care about. So yes, I am sick of holding back for politeness sake. But man, for all the harm they do to others conservatives are incredibly thin-skinned. You would think people willing to fuck over their neighbors for gain might not get their feelings hurt so easily or cry foul and act all butt-hurt about it but you would be wrong.

Sarah Wood, AKA the Opinionated Democrat, nailed the conservative strategy that has done so much damage to this country they claim to love but screw at every chance:

Republicans cut funding for critical programs then sit back, and when these underfunded programs start to falter or suffer or seem inefficient they blame the president and Democrats.... "See! Look! These programs don't work!" and they call them a waste of money, or job killers, or hazardous, blah blah blah. Then they shovel money to Wall Street, monopoly corporations, and wars in the blink of an eye and complain about the debt and our failing domestic policies they've stripped all the funding from.

For the love of all that is good and decent.... Stop. Voting. Republican.

 Do people this cynical and downright evil, these liars, deserve courtesy and nuanced, reasonable debate? No.

How about this screwhead that I found while browsing comments' sections:
Lawrence Wheaton · Top Commenter · Buena Park High

BS. What democrats consider a right to vote is illegal. No ID to prove you are a citizen. And I have heard your stupid argument about in person voter fraud. It's a BS issue as registering to vote does not require an ID so you can lie and then vote. There won't be a conflict at the ballot box yet a non citizen will get to vote. And yes, many people, especially college students register and vote twice in elections in more than one state. Hopefully there will be a better cross check between states and that will finally stop. You can go ahead and start with your liberal platitudes now.

This was Lawrence's polite and reasonable response to the Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in Illinois to actually give everyone the right to vote. No Larry, college students do not vote more than once, you're thinking of Republican office-holders and conservative hypocrites who whine about "illegals" voting. Can you take this lout seriously? I mean he even knows he is wrong and pulling his "argument" directly from his third point of contact by denigrating the empirical evidence as simply "liberal platitudes."

Okay, maybe he is just a dick troll online and would be civil if face to face. But what about all these open-carry gun suckling children? Brandishing weapons in public to intimidate everyone else because it is their "right" to trample everyone else's. Especially those brave "men" threatening the Moms' group. This is fascism, a right-wing populist movement to destroy democracy and install dictators who promise oppression and loss of freedom, maybe it is couched in attacks on scapegoats at first but it never stays there. I guess... we should be happy that the scumbags these fascists elect are only interested in rigging the economy in favor of their friends and undermining the existing government instead of actually implementing a totalitarian version.

"Oh," you say, "but Mr. Kraken, that's just Texas, they are all assholes down there." Well, say I, that would be bad enough but then this "militia" group in Wisconsin got caught (because the feed to their group was public, dumbasses) discussing, seriously, showing up at polling places to challenge black voters while armed. Has this kind of crap ever been so brazenly visible in America?

These are just a few reasons why I not hold back, these people must be stopped. They will never go away but the good people of this country must defeat them now, and every election in the foreseeable future. Until conservatism is again a realistic alternative that can coexist with democracy and justice, i.e. when it stops being authoritarian, it cannot be allowed to hold power.

Your Gloomy Midterm Election Reminder

It has been an interesting two years hasn't it? Maybe more for my generation than any other, we get an up close and personal lesson in why it is not enough to pull the lever for a Democratic President and then go back to our own busy lives. The Children of Darkness simply do not quit, ever. They are more tenacious than the hardest-core social justice activist because "God" tells them to fuck the poor, the immigrants, women, working people, minorities, the environment, and civil rights. So this is my feeble attempt to persuade you to get out and vote this year.

I have had quite enough of the more punk then thou, emo-prog, hipster bullshit attitude of  "Democrats are just as bad" or any other sentimental nonsense that voting doesn't matter thank you. That kind of duck-face whining is nothing more than an excuse for being lazy. As any historian will tell you, America is an experiment. The first modern attempt to allow "the people" to govern themselves, so shut up and pitch in. Or you will probably find yourself in debtor's prison one day soon stitching soccer balls together with your teeth for one or another wall street bankster.

Look, to put it quite simply, republicans will make your life harder. Democrats may make bad calls, support bad policies from time to time, get persuaded of the wrong initiative, or succumb to corruption but that is not part of their platform. On the other hand, when republicans do those things it is by design. The GOP does not continue to clamor for more wars, lie reflexively about even the most trivial things, deregulate business, take kickbacks, privatize anything they get their hands on, or display stunning incompetence and fundamentalist ignorance in office because they are bad conservatives, but because they are good conservatives. This is what they want to do, and what they will keep doing every time we stay home. See The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation by Thomas Frank for more info.

Do you have kids in school, even college? Have you ever had a major illness or need health care? Do you have student loans? Is there even the slightest chance you might find yourself unemployed? Not voting will allow republicans to sneak in and do what they do best: harm you and the people you care about. Am I laying it on thick here? Too bad. It is the truth. Republicans are a clear and present danger to the republic and your individual well-being. Let's ask some more rhetorical questions. Do you think life would be improved by giving more control over your life to your boss? Republicans do. Would life be better if fundamentalist churches had more power over society? Republicans will vote yes every time, in fact they trip all over themselves to make outrageous proposals for who can bring us closest to the Dark Ages. Is there never a bad time to outsource jobs? Cut taxes for people who make fortunes rigging the economy? Pollute the land, air, and water where you live? Take away your right to vote, plan your family, be safe from gun maniacs? "More, more, more!" says the GOP. Heck, a former dictator of what we laughingly call the People's House (of Represent-atives) during Bush Hell once said with a straight face that there is nothing more important during a time of war than to cut taxes.

Republican voters cannot be reasoned with, I've tried. You've probably tried too, that angry uncle or grandfather that simply won't shut up about "all the taxes they pay" to support "those lazy people on welfare," nothing gets through does it? Or the, "you're too young to understand what's good for you, so quit trying to change the world" from the same crowd. You can be sure he will vote, and vote against you or your children having a future. Of course, "it will be for your own good." So if this is the case, there is nothing to do but show up to vote and bring as many friends as you can, at least the ones with a conscience. Rule of thumb, if your friend reads Ayn Rand, let him be. Unless you want to sit through another two years of frivolous investigations into the attacks on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Or endure another thirty or forty votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act that is probably already helping your health, take the relatively small investment of time to register and show up to vote. This well-informed, conscientious person certainly will be. Don't let her decide which rights and how much money you will have to give up this time around.

Ignorant and proudly displaying your gullibility is no way to go through life lady.

Dicing Up The Problems

I woke up this morning, got a cup of coffee, and sat down to write about a Niebuhrian approach to the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Then it dawned on me that I have really lost my edge, having not actively studied or taught Niebuhrian ethics in some time. So while I re-educate myself on the subject and see if the theologian of public life has anything to say about this latest flare of violence in a violent region, perhaps it is a good time to re-examine what this blog is trying to do in its sporadic existence.

Before that however, if you have not seen this clip of John Cleese explaining why stupid people do not understand that they are stupid, you really should.

 

I have been following current events and the public ways people perceive them for a long time now, and even if memory is a poor resource for measuring, the public displays of stupidity seem to be rising exponentially every year. Does this base assumption need to be established? That America is a nation with a huge number of idiots? Drooling morons even? This statement is not to bash anyone for being stupid per se, for every 101 there has to be a 99 if IQ means anything. What I have a problem with is conspicuous displays of ignorance. More on that later. What is important here is to what degree is intelligence inherent, and to what degree it is a product of our environment?

 

There certainly are exceptional people out there, I have known quite a few, but intelligence is not a single axis. Education and experience can do so much for people, but you have to be open-minded enough to learn. I used to proceed from the assumption that curiosity and the desire/drive to learn was a universal human trait. As I have aged and encountered different people however, that notion has just been shattered. If one wanted to point to the single epiphany that shaped my gloominess, it was realizing that most of my friends were utterly uninterested in learning or trying anything new. Nor were they humble enough to accept that they could be wrong and possibly need to re-examine positions or opinions.

 

After seeing twenty something factory workers become frozen in their beliefs right before my eyes I started paying attention to talk shows, letters to the editor, and eavesdropping on passersby finding the same thing. What happens to people? There is a great big world out there and between the library or the internet one can find out a lot of things. Jello Biafra once sang "your lack of curiosity is the key to our success" with No Means No on Sky Is Falling & I Want My Mommy in the ironic way he is best known for as a songwriter. Not only has the dumbing down of Americans made it so much easier for grubby authoritarians and demagogues to sneak into public office or the media, but we have started falling for some really strange things lately.

 

Conspiracy theories may have always been on the fringe of American society, it was long-rumored that George Washington longed to be crowned monarch and do away with all this republican nonsense. But conspiracy theorists have relentlessly pushed their crazy and sometimes dangerous ideas into the mainstream in recent years. While the entire right wing apparatus is guilty of breathlessly pushing lies and misinformation, conspiracy theorists are a different animal (see my recent post on Robin Williams' death). Just a few recent (and stupid) examples: "Facebook is going to start charging a subscription fee!" "Halloween is National 'Kill a Pit Bull' Day!" And my favorite "6th graders taught how to use strap-on dildo!" These are stories posted by actual people on social media recently, and all three are various levels of untrue. The first and last were originally posted on satirical websites and the second was a meme mash up of newspaper clippings and flyers.

 

If you want to anger Facebook users more than anything, start a rumor that they will have to start paying for it. The rebuke was conveniently located just below the original story in "related links." Of course, with a simple understanding of what media (even social media) is in this country you do not need to check whether National Report is just some goofy competitor to the Onion, it is. You would know that FB's users are the product for sale, to advertisers. Perhaps big Z did not intend to build this sprawling online apparatus simply to put eyeballs in front of paid advertisements, but that is what Facebook does, the same way NBC or the Washington Post functions. Any effect of improving communications or allowing relatives to stay connected or long lost friendships to be rekindled is incidental. Killing pit bulls? Seriously? This is a dog-loving nation, can you think of a more offensive idea? But people take it seriously, just as they believe in angels and the knock-out game. Okay, maybe the last one is a more offensive idea. If I was being paid to do it I could not find something more likely to drive the fox news watching grandmas and grandpas of America crazy. It is of course, an exercise in propaganda and mental trickery, but the first three entries of a Google search are from right wing nincompoops passing the story off as valid. The strap-on story was a twist, right down to the photo shopped cell phone camera pictures, but while you can't expect the tea party or ron paul types to understand Photoshop when they are busy dragging us back to the Gilded Age, whoever was really responsible had more of an agenda then simply getting a rise out of the self-righteous teabaggers and info wars conspiracy theorists.

 

My point here, and to conclude this ramble, is that in the age of technological manipulation, viral news, and extreme political polarization we all need to try just a little harder not to fall for this kind of nonsense. The purpose of this blog has been to defuse some of the fear out there. The Children of Darkness could not exist without the irrational fear and self-righteousness of the gullible, don't fall for their traps.



The Kraken Resurfaces

I apologize for my absence gentle readers. Without going into boring details it has been a crazy, hectic month. I have only been able to briefly follow all of the confrontations and protests in Ferguson, MO. And barely keeping up with the outlines of these ISIS clowns and rest of the world's response to their blood-soaked antics. I simply cannot believe there are grownups in this country seriously considering getting involved in yet another Middle Eastern conflict. Scott Walker continues to be the worst plague ever inflicted upon the people of Wisconsin, he is ahead in the current gop gubernatorial contest of who can harm their constituents the most. I wonder if I can still vote absentee?

Anyway the biggest contribution I have made (and it is next-to-nothing at that) lately is a comment thread on an article Bob Cesca wrote on Sept. 11 of the by now usual shtick. Michael Moore Thinks Obama Will Only Be Remembered for Being the First Black President Because what is really important is for the pragmatic left to police the far left, not beating back the authoritarian right and the real harm they do to people for spite and profit.

The Gloomy Historian • 4 days ago

I don't want to be the contrarian here, but what do we remember about presidents from a century ago? Do we popularly remember the Harding administration's establishment of a federal budgeting process or that it was spectacularly corrupt? Bob is a civil war buff, does he champion reconstruction as a far-sighted program of modernizing and enlightening the south? Or a spectacular failure of idealism into corruption and power-grabs? In a way it falls to professional historians to shape whether the Obama administration is remembered as James Buchanan, standing by as the union is ripped apart by reactionary monsters; or Lincoln, trying his best to fix an impossible situation; or something else entirely. There is a reason historians allow twenty years to pass before seriously studying events, passions need to cool and cranks with an agenda need to be rooted out before history can approach the past with anything like objectivity.

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  ChrisAndersen The Gloomy Historian • 4 days ago

  Ask yourselves this: if Lincoln had survived his second term would he be remembered as fondly? The Lincoln we know was the Lincoln who died right after winning a war. The Lincoln we know was not sullied by the inevitable compromises that would have come from Reconstruction.
  Lincoln accomplished great things before he died, but anyone who studies him knows that he was as much a compromiser and "sellout" as any President who ever lived.

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    The Gloomy Historian ChrisAndersen • 4 days ago

    "Sellout" is a very strong word. Yes, Lincoln compromised and changed his mind when situations changed and facts came to light. Lincoln's core value never changed though, he was going to preserve the Union no matter what. The surprising thing is, as the only sitting president to encounter a large-scale armed insurrection, how lenient he was toward the traitors. You make very relevant points. I was mostly speaking about popular history, how we regular folks know history. Reconstruction, in particular, was hijacked for over half a century by southern apologists who wrote the history many of us learned about Carpetbaggers and Scalawags and Redeemers. The right already has an infrastructure in place to destroy any Democratic President's legacy,

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      ChrisAndersen The Gloomy Historian • 4 days ago

      I used "sellout" in the sense that many people use when really what they mean is "he didn't do what I wanted him to do". I used it loosely to describe Lincoln because it is so often used loosely to describe Obama.

I am not even sure what he is arguing with me over. But boy, do people like to argue with historians.

Then I left this gem from my own intellectual history research on one of Chez' regular media criticism columns. No replies though but Chez' treatment of WFB shows how much the pragmatic left longs for a conservative opposition that will play fair.

One aspect of this phenomenon, one of many for sure, is that the current mouth-breathing populist front men for corporate power use the intellectual foundation WFB built and propagated to "shorthand" any argument. No one on fox, for example, needs to explain why liberals are bad, or why conservatives are good. Buckley and National Review established all of these preconceived notions 50 years ago or more and they just continue on zombie-like, without ever being challenged. And do not give Buckley too much credit for intellectualism, his books and articles are filled with cheap innuendo, ad hominem attacks, and every other logical fallacy around. In "Up from Liberalism" for example, he goes on a diatribe against Eleanor Roosevelt that must be the template for every subsequent hit job ever undertaken.