E-mails worse than anything James O’Keefe has ‘uncovered’

Wingnutty “crusader” James O’Keefe — you know, the brave pimp and the (would-be) slayer of ACORN and NPR — has to misrepresent himself, or have his hos misrepresent themselves, in order to “expose” the “dirty truths” about the left/“left.” (And creative video editing, a la Andrew Breitbart, helps an awful lot, too.)

But e-mails, unlike the likes of Breitbart and O’Keefe, don’t lie.

And we have plenty of e-mails that expose the blatant dishonesty — and the incredible stupidity — of the operatives on the right.

Reports The Associated Press this week:

Everything from taking away computers to denying a year of service in the state retirement system was considered to punish the 14 Wisconsin [state Senate] Democrats who fled to Illinois for three weeks to block passage of a bill taking away union bargaining rights, newly released e-mails show.

Members of Republican [Wisconsin state] Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s staff bounced ideas off one another and the Legislature’s attorneys for days about how to penalize the [state] Senate Democrats for [having left the state] and pressure them to return, according to records released Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The watchdog group obtained the e-mails from Fitzgerald’s office under Wisconsin’s open records law.

The e-mails show Fitzgerald’s staff members were as worried about the public relations campaign as they were actually figuring out a way to get the Democrats to come back.

“I would just be somewhat cautious in whatever we do so that it doesn’t end up creating sympathy for the Dems,” Tad Ottman, a Fitzgerald aide, wrote to his chief of staff John Hogan on Feb. 20. “The more directly we can tie whatever action we take to what they are doing the better it will be.” …

The e-mails show there was a lot of discussion with legislative attorneys about how to legally impose fines on the missing senators and other steps that could be taken against them and their staff.

“I say we not only make it hurt for them, we have to make it hurt for their staff as well,” [Fitzgerald legislative aide Rob] Richard wrote on Feb. 20.

One idea Ottman suggested in a Feb. 20 email was cutting the size of each Democratic senator’s staff by one person “since one person from each of their office is failing to show up for work (the Senator).”

That idea and several others, like reducing or taking away per diem payments and denying a year’s service in the retirement system, were not pursued. Richard pointed out in the same Feb. 20 email that taking away a year of retirement service likely would engender a court fight. …

Indeed, the rhetoric that came from the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in Wisconsin was centered on the allegation that the absconded 14 Democratic state senators weren’t doing their jobs (except that they were – they were protecting their constituents’ best interests instead of Big Business’ best interests), when, in fact, as usual, the Repugnican Tea Party’s traitors’ motivation was petty, vindictive partisanship.

And clearly the Repugnican Tea Party traitors aren’t bothered by what is unethical or illegal – as long as they get away with it. Fitzgerald himself indicated that having attempted to have the 14 Democratic state senators arrested “would have been a public-relations nightmare” — he did not express his concern, from what I can see, that such an action would have been an illegal abuse of power.

And in the infamous recorded telephone conversation between billionaire pimp “David Koch” and Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker last month, Repugnican Tea Party traitor Walker stated that he and his henchmen had considered planting fake protesters among the legitimate protesters who had thronged the state’s Capitol.

Apparently, what dissuades Walker & Co. from committing dishonest (and even illegal) shit like this is not the inherent immorality (or even illegality) of it, but is the political blowback that might occur if the plot is exposed.

And the Repugnican Tea Party is supposed to be all about moral values.

Speaking of which, the contents of this e-mail, written to “Dead Man” Walker, trumps all of the others:

“If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the public unions. … Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions.”

That juicy e-mail was signed off thusly: “God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”

Carlos F. Lam is — or, rather, was – a deputy prosecutor for Johnson County in Indiana. Lam resigned after his unethical (if not illegal) e-mail to Walker was revealed, apparently by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Think about this: a prosecutor, one who prosecutes others for their (alleged) wrongdoings, himself suggested that a governor stage a fake attack (maybe even take a bullet???) for political gain. (It was right-wing geniuses, after all, who came up with the Reichstag fire…)

And the prosecutor ends his e-mail with “God bless,” as though the God he claims to believe in actually would endorse such a plan.

This is what we’re up against:

While a fundraiser for NPR just states obvious (if politically incorrect) truths about the right-wing nutjobs, which gains the scalp of the head of NPR for the wingnuts, a fucking Repugnican Tea Party governor and prosecutor are on the record as having at least considered planting fake protesters in Wisconsin in order to harm their political opposition – perhaps even employing a firearm.

The prosecutor no longer has his job. The governor should no longer have his.

The gubernatorial recall process in Wisconsin should take care of this, but in the meantime, those of us who are true patriots — who believe in the best interests of the majority of the people over the interests of the rich and the super-rich few, and who believe in acting ethically, morally and legally – have to remain vigilant.

We have to remain vigilant because the desperate members of the right wing, who are losing political power in a rapidly changing nation (and world) whose demographic shifts don’t favor them, have demonstrated amply that they will do just about anything to hold on to the political power that they historically are so accustomed to having.*

–

*The blatantly stolen presidential election of 2000 and the probably-stolen presidential election of 2004 probably are the largest, most glaring examples of this fact. 

‘HoBos’ in HELL

In his syndicated column for which he presumedly actually is paid, wingnut Jonah Goldberg — perhaps best known for having penned this lovely little tome:

(Ha ha ha! Comparing liberals to Adolf Hitler is funny! And original!) – makes the “argument” that because liberals* finally repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” it must mean that militarism is a great thing.

Wow. This “ironic progressive victory,” as Goldberg calls it, sounds like the kind of bullshit “logic” that Goldberg was roundly criticized for employing in his book with the Hitlerized smiley face on the cover.

Goldberg does in his column make some statements of fact, such as that the gay community very largely has been co-opted by the dominant, corporate-dominated American culture. (That he makes some statements of fact among all of his distortions and lies apparently is his tactic; many people, I surmise, believe that if they read one sentence that they recognize as truth, then all of the sentences that they read must be truthful.)

But Jonah Goldberg is no historian. In his column he bizarrely actually asserts:

Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian “free love.” And avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents’ generation along with their gray flannel suits.

Really?

There are leftists who are gay, but I’ve never known, in my 42 years on the planet, of a strong “gay left.”

“Two decades ago,” by my math, was the early 1990s, and I recall the 1990s being more of the same from the 1980s: unbridled materialism and consumerism among all Americans, gay or straight, male or female, white, black, brown, red or yellow. I don’t recall the 1990s as having been some sort of a repeat of the 1960s, as much as many of us might have wished that that had been the case.

The baby boomers, including gay baby boomers, of course, had some rebelliousness to them, but from the late 1960s to at least the early 1980s they largely were about partying. And – consequently… – from the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, it was combating AIDS, not combating capitalism, that the gay community was most concerned about, if my memory serves.

I just don’t remember that Big Gay Anti-Capitalism Era that Goldberg posits existed in our history (“two decades ago,” to be exact), and as far as is concerned that “bohemian ‘free love’” thing that the gay community wanted two decades ago, according to Goldberg, well, I can tell you that ever since about 1983 or 1984, when the AIDS epidemic started to decimate the gay male population, I, for one, have been quite careful not to become infected with HIV, which pretty much fucking precludes “free love.”** Two decades ago, in the early 1990s, when gay men were still kicking off from AIDS (until the protease inhibitors came along in the mid-1990s), “free love” was the last thing on this faggot’s mind.

But the wingnuts are still fighting the culture wars of the late 1960s and the 1970s, so Goldberg just reaches into his rectum and scrawls that my generation of gay men (Generation X) were copycats of the party-hardy gay baby boomers when no, we were not and we are not.

And Goldberg also stupidly asserts that the “gay left” “simply [picked] up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s” as though no gay people were a part of the sociocultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s when, in fact, the gay rights movement was a large part of those two decades, and of course many individuals in the other movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, such as the women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement and anti-war movement, happened to be non-heterosexual. Fucking duh.

And presumedly Goldberg’s sloppy assertion that the “gay left” “wanted to smash the bourgeois [prison] of … patriotic values” means that perpetual fucking warfare, a value of the right, is a “patriotic value,” so that if you don’t support perpetual warfare, then you are unpatriotic. (Nice try, Jonah. While you were at it, why didn’t you just write that members of the “gay left” wanted to “smash” puppies and kittens, too?)

Goldberg writes that “the sweeping embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by the gay community has been stunning” (he calls the “homosexual bourgeoisie” “HoBos,” borrowing from the book Bobos in Paradise), and this has been stunning, but this does not mean, as he asserts, “that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.”

“Hard work” is what the filthy rich who don’t work claim to value, and those who are poor, the filthy rich lie, are poor because they “hate hard work.” It’s not exploitation of the poor by the rich, you see; it’s that if you’re poor, you’re lazy, and if you’re filthy rich, you’re industrious — even though you are filthy rich only because of the hard work of others. (The right wing loves “hard work,” all right — hard work performed by others from whom they obscenely profit.)

And we all know how well monogamy is doing among the heterosexuals in the U.S. these days.

Goldberg essentially asserts (as far as I can tell from his inartful prose) that gay men and lesbians (and other non-heterosexuals) want same-sex marriage because marriage inherently is (and monogamy, by extension, inherently is) wonderful — and that they wanted “don’t ask, don’t tell” repealed because militarism is so fucking great.

I, however, long have found it beyond unfortunate that instead of creating something new, so many non-heterosexuals have only wanted to mimic their heterosexual counterparts (yawn). Yes, as Goldberg points out, gay men and lesbians and other non-heterosexuals have been co-opted, but this is not testament to the greatness of capitalism or militarism or monogamy or any other of Goldberg’s wingnutty fetishes. This is testament to, among other things, the degree to which the plutocrats and corporatocrats have been able to zombify the American masses over several decades, regardless of their sexual orientation or race.

And, with virtually nothing else widely modeled for them, what else can we really expect of so many same-sex couples other than that they (desire to) mimic their heterosexual counterparts, and in a nation that doesn’t want to educate its college-age citizens and doesn’t want to provide them with decent careers or even living-wage jobs, can we blame financially and occupationally desperate non-heterosexual young people for wanting to join the U.S. military when so many heterosexual young people are in the same boat?

It also is a failure of imagination, as well as it is intellectual laziness, political apathy, materialism, self-centeredness and zombification by the corporate media (which want Americans to be obedient to the corporatocrats, not to be informed and to be free) – and it is not a testament to the inherent greatness of the wingnutty values that Goldberg and his ilk espouse (such as capitalism and militarism) — that accounts for why so many non-heterosexuals want to mimic their heterosexual counterparts.    

Further, there is much more about the ongoing push for same-sex marriage and the successful push for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” than great love for the institution of marriage or love for the institution of the military.

I, for one, have great reservations about monogamy and marriage. Scientists are coming to the conclusion that just as monogamy is not normal or natural for our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, monogamy is not normal or natural for most human beings, either — thus the high rates of infidelity and breakups and divorce. (Google it.) I’ll take science over religious/hocus-pocus moralizing any time.

However, for me the issue of same-sex marriage is not that the institution of marriage or that monogamy is so fucking great – the issue is fucking fairness. You allow all consenting adults to marry each other, regardless of race or biological sex, or you allow no one to marry.

While I have reservations about marriage myself, I can’t see myself telling any other consenting adults who wish to marry each other that they can’t. The wingnuts, however, have no problem whatsoever depriving others of the freedoms that the wingnuts claim to be all about.

“So now openly gay soldiers get to fight and die in neocon-imperialist wars too?” Goldberg snarkily begins his column.

Um, yes, they do, but no, that they do doesn’t mean that those wars for the war profiteers and corporatocrats and other assorted traitors are now just wars. That so many non-heterosexuals want to be able to serve in the U.S. military is just testament to the shitty national economy, with its lack of decent-paying jobs, and to the zombification of Americans, heterosexual and non-heterosexual, who believe, stupidly, that the U.S. military actually exists primarily to defend and protect the nation when, in fact, the U.S. military exists primarily for the obscene profits of the war profiteers and the corporate expansionists.

So I did not want to see “don’t ask, don’t tell” repealed because I think that the U.S. military is so fucking great. I generally believe that no one with two brain cells to rub together would join the U.S. military when the U.S. military hasn’t fought a just war since World War II. (Again, I do, of course, cut at least some slack to those who join the U.S. military because, unfortunately, they see no other career option than to make themselves cannon fodder for evil rich men who cavalierly send them off to bogus wars for their war profiteering and for their corporateering.***)

But, if you’re going to allow heterosexual dumbfucks and the heterosexual financially and occupationally desperate to join the U.S. military, then out of fairness, you have to allow non-heterosexual dumbfucks and the non-heterosexual financially and occupationally desperate to join the U.S. military, too.

It’s about fairness and equality, something that Jonah Goldberg and his wingnutty ilk wouldn’t know about, and while I understand that Goldberg is desperate because his dinosaurian values are in their death throes, I am one faggot who’s not going to allow him to actually Orwellianly attempt to twist the cause of equal human and civil rights for non-heterosexuals into being some sort of “proof” that his sick and twisted beliefs and values are OK.

Goldberg concludes his sick and twisted column: “And given that open homosexuality is simply a fact of life, the rise of the HoBos — the homosexual bourgeoisie — strikes me as good news.”

Yes, homosexuality is simply a fact of life (referring to it as “open homosexuality,” however, curiously sounds like Goldberg would prefer that all non-heterosexuals pose and pass as heterosexuals), but “the rise of the HoBos” is not “good news.”

The co-option of heterosexuals or non-heterosexuals (or whites or non-whites or…) by the toxic, militaristic, materialistic, consumeristic, capitalistic, jingoistic, ultimately soul-crushing system that Goldberg so slavishly supports is fucking tragic.

We’re not talking about “HoBos” in paradise — we’re talking about “HoBos” in hell.

P.S. Goldberg also writes in his column:

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.

Goldberg sounds like he’s trying to please all sides.

I don’t find him to be an ally simply because he states, correctly, that same-sex marriage in all 50 states is inevitable. (I’m sure that many supporters of slavery saw its eventual demise, too. That doesn’t mean that they were anti-slavery — just that they were realistic about the current of events.)

If he’s going to assert that same-sex marriage is an inevitability for “ill,” then Goldberg should tell us how it would be for “ill,” and in his column he curiously doesn’t fucking bother to share any of the arguments against same-sex marriage that he says aren’t “grounded in bigotry” and/or that are “persuasive.”

And the only two possibilities that Goldberg apparently offers to us non-heterosexuals are the “free-love lifestyle” (you know, with its diseases and death and sinfulness and such) or the strictly monogamous married lifestyle that so many heterosexuals find to be stifling and soul-eroding.

But he’s happy to grudgingly allow us non-hets to take part in the misery that is monogamous marriage.

Gee, thanks, Jonah.

While Goldberg asserts in his column that “there isn’t” “some grand alternative” to these two miserable choices, I wholeheartedly disagree with him. Maybe heterosexuals’ biggest concern about allowing same-sex marriage has been that once non-heterosexuals got marriage, they would be able to transform it in a way that heterosexuals never have been able to do. 

–

*I prefer “progressives,” not because I’m ashamed of being a leftist, but because so many so-called “liberals” actually are milquetoast Clintonistas with whom I don’t want to be associated. (After all, it was the “liberal” Bill Clinton who is responsible for “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the first fucking place!)

**The AIDS epidemic first hit when I was still a freshman or sophomore in high school, and I saw the images of dying AIDS-stricken gay men (looking like concentration camp victims) before I seriously thought of having sex with another male, and to this day HIV transmission is a significant concern of mine, so this “free love” thing that Goldberg claims my generation perpetuated did not, in my experience, ever fucking exist.

***Goldberg snarkily remarks that “the folks who used ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ as an excuse to keep the military from recruiting on campuses just saw their argument go up in flames.” Ha ha ha!

Well, the primary argument against allowing military recruiters to recruit fresh cannon fodder on our high school or college campuses is that so many young people have no fucking idea what the U.S. military is really all about and so they are easily duped. And so many young people notoriously believe that they are immortal, a mistaken belief that the deliberately mispresentative, “Top Gun”-like military recruitment ads, which never show maimed or killed soldiers, perpetuate.

Our young should not be fed to the meat grinder that is the military-industrial complex, regardless of their sexual orientation. I invite Jonah and his ilk to go fight the wars that they claim are all about patriotism and actual national defense and leave our children the fuck alone.

I hate Muslims, but I don’t know any

Wrapping themselves in the American flag and in the Shroud of Turin, day by day the members of the radical right, most of them members of the Repugnican Tea Party, drag us closer and closer to “Christo”fascism.

Americans — thanks mostly to the tireless propaganda of “Christo”fascists and members of the Israel-first lobby (a.k.a. Zionists) – don’t like Muslims.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe that Muslims are more likely to encourage violence against non-believers than members of other religions are.

Forty-six percent of Americans believe that American Muslims aren’t patriotic or they’re not sure whether or not they’re patriotic.

Fuck freedom of religion — more than 60 percent of Americans believe that American Muslims should not be allowed to establish a Muslim center near the former site of the World Trade Center.

And more than 60 percent of Americans say that they don’t even know any Muslims. But that sure the fuck doesn’t stop them from having a negative opinion of Muslims.

It has been a long-standing American principle that there should be no religious test to hold public office, yet the White House apparently felt enough political pressure to announce today that President Barack Obama is a Christian who prays every day.

It’s a sad, sad day when the president of the United States of America has to assure the lynch mob for Jesus that he’s one of them.

But hey, how do we know that Obama is a Christian?

Maybe we should put him in a big vat of water. Only if he sinks will we know that he’s a Christian and not, say, a Muslim witch!

It’s true that the balls-less Obama administration is always caving in to the radical right, but it’s also a sign of how far the United States of America has fallen that Obama’s handlers should have felt the political pressure to announce that he indeed is a Christian. Who prays every day.

As I just wrote, it doesn’t matter whether he’s a Christian or not.

Speaking of public pronouncements of one’s Christianity, Jesus Christ Himself said (Matthew 6:5-6:6):

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward already.

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

To me, there is no other way to interpret this instruction other than that Jesus Christ Himself asserted that spirituality is a private, individual thing — not something to be paraded publicly so that others will think that one is such an upright, pious person.

But Jesus’ actual teachings never stop those who claim to be His followers.

You know, I would love a Christian. I just don’t know any Christians, if we define a Christian as one who actually follows Jesus’ teachings.

Here we have the members of the Repugnican Tea Party and other assorted wingnuts claiming to be Christian when they in fact are anti-Christian, and they are beating up on Muslims for political gain (even though most of them don’t even know a single Muslim). Yeah, that’s exactly what Jesus stood for.

Even Disneyland is in on the Muslim-bashing, not allowing a Muslim employee to wear her hijab (head scarf) while in view of customers.

DisneyCorp told the woman she could wear only a hijab designed by Disney, but has yet to produce this special hijab. (Presumably, it’s not just a hijab with mouse ears attached to it…) 

Horrors should good little lily-white American “Christian” spawn learn tolerance of appreciation for other cultures! We can’t have that!

(I, for one, won’t set foot in the “magic kingdom” until and unless it embraces diversity. Fuck DisneyCorp.)

As it sank into fascism, Germany persecuted Jews.

As the United States of America sinks into fascism, it persecutes Muslims. And “anchor babies.” And non-heterosexuals. And…

God bless America.

It sure fucking needs it.

P.S. Interestingly, respondents to the nationwide poll taken this week by TIME magazine that I referenced above also were asked, “What if the following religious groups proposed building a community center and place of worship two blocks from your home — would you favor or oppose it?”

Seventy-eight percent said they’d be OK with a Catholic establishment, 73 percent said they’d be OK with a Jewish establishment, 65 percent said they’d be OK with a Mormon establishment, and only 55 percent said they’d be OK with a Muslim establishment.

Lynchings begin before Labor Day

The concept of the “melting pot” and the motto E Pluribus Unum (Latin for “out of many, one”) on the seal of the United States of America (and also on the seals of the U.S. president, of both houses of Congress and of the U.S. Supreme Court – and on most of our money, as well) mean absofuckinglutely nothing to the “tea-party” dipshits who claim to hold a monopoly on American patriotism and define a “patriot” as only a conservative, white, “Christian,” capitalist heterosexual.

There must be an election day approaching, because the wingnutty politicians — most of them stupid white Repugnican males — are working overtime trying to divide and conquer the American people for their own personal political gain at the expense of the nation as a whole.

So much for the fucking “melting pot.”

The members of the Repugnican Tea Party aren’t waiting to campaign until after Labor Day, however; their assault on those who are different from them already is in full force.

There is Repugnican has-been Newt Gingrich calling the planned Muslim complex near the former site of the World Trade Center part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” (Repugnican Tea Party star Sarah Palin-Quayle had already pleaded with Muslims — via Twitter [if Palin-Quayle runs in 2012, maybe Lindsey Lohan can be her running mate] – to “refudiate” the establishment of the Muslim center.)*

Come on, Newt. The unelected BushCheneyCorp (and other Repugnicans, like Rudy Giuliani) got to shamelessly milk 9/11 for political gain for at least five years (at least from September 2001 through November 2006, when the Repugs lost the U.S. House of Representatives and bogeywoman Nancy Pelosi became speaker).

The 9/11 cow is  bone dry.

Estimates of the number of Muslims in the United States vary widely, from around 1.3 million on the low end to 7 million on the high end, with 7 million being the estimate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which I surmise is inflated for political purposes, and from the estimates available, I surmise that there probably are around 5 million Muslim Americans at most.

So I hardly think that we Americans need to worry about the “Islamo”fascists taking over and destroying the nation.

Ironically, it’s the “Christo”fascists we need to worry about. While I can’t think of one right that the Muslims have taken from me, here in California, the Mormon cult, working with the Catholick church and other wingnutty haters, stripped me of my right to marry anyone of my choosing — a right that the California Supreme Court had ruled was mine under the California Constitution.

This Mormon website states: “In the United States the [Mormon cult] is the fourth largest individual ["Christian"] denomination, with over 5.5 million members, a population about equal to the number of Muslims.” [Emphasis mine.]

Ironic, eh?

Yeah, ya know, I’m not worried about the Muslims, but the fucking Mormons already have pushed their theocratic “Christo”fascism on me — and succeeded, at least with Proposition H8.

And one of the Mormon cult’s zombies, Mitt Romney, wants to be president. (Over this dead faggot’s body will an operative for the “Christo”fascist cabal in Salt Lake City become president of the United States of America. [And the wingnuts called Barack Hussein Obama a "Manchurian candidate"...])

The “Christo”fascists won’t stop trying to shove their fucking bullshit beliefs down the entire nation’s throat.

This title from amazon.com demonstrates what I’m talking about:

This book is No. 10 on amazon.com’s best-seller list as I type this sentence. (My guess is that it was hyped up on Faux “News” and other right-wing “media” outlets, and thus its success on amazon.com right now.)

Would a book linking Islam and American patriotism be acceptable? No? Why not? Why would a book linking what passes for Christianity in the United States and American patriotism be OK, then?

Why is it that the “Christo”fascist wingnuts don’t oppose theocracy — but that they just want to make sure that it’s their bullshit religion that runs the show, and not Islam or another bullshit religion?

As an American citizen — born and raised here — I resent the assertion that any one religion has a monopoly on patriotism in the United States of America, and I find the conflation of “Christianity” and patriotism to be nauseating as well as unconstitutional, un-American and “Christo”fascist.

To me, a theocratic fascist is a theocratic fascist — whether he or she is an “Islamo”fascist or a “Christo”fascist (or, for that matter, a “Judeo”fascist).

Yet the Newt Gingriches of the world talk about such things as “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization” while they fucking orchestrate their own cultural-political offensive, based upon their hatefully twisted-beyond-recognition teachings of Jesus Christ, to undermine and destroy our civilization. That’s why I think of them as the “American Taliban.”

Mine is a secular nation, not a “Christian” or “Judeo-Christian” nation, no matter what the wingnutty fucktards claim. Memo to the wingnuts: Keep your fucking stupid, backasswards beliefs off of my constitutional rights, fuck you very much!

It’s not just the stupid white men — it’s the stupid white women, too, such as Palin-Quayle, the grand dragoness of the “tea party” crowd, and the racist, white supremacist Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the Wicked Witch of the Southwest, who has tried to use the persecution of the brown-skinned peoples in Arizona for her November election but who has been foiled by the federal courts, which refuse to decide on Arizona’s anti-browned-skinned-person law, now on hold, until after the November elections.

And then there’s John McCainosaurus, also trying to win election in Arizona on the backs of the wetbacks, proclaiming that the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constititution should be changed so that children born on U.S. soil to parents who aren’t citizens aren’t automatically U.S. citizens by birth.

On board with McCainosaurus is Alabama’s Jeff (short for Jefferson, but Jeff sure sounds a lot folksier to your Joe the Plumber set) Sessions, the top Repugnican on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Reports Politico:

Sessions … said a re-examination of the 14th Amendment “deserves serious discussion” and that he supports hearings [on changing the amendment].

“People do not believe you should be able to break into America, have a baby and then the baby becomes a citizen, and the whole family says, ‘We can’t go home. My child is a citizen,’” Sessions told reporters on Capitol Hill. “It’s an unfair way to gain priority in the application for legal immigration into America.”

Fortunately, on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee it’s Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont who calls the shots, not assbite Sessions, and Leahy wisely says that no such hearing will happen before the November elections.

Of course, after the November elections, it won’t be so much of an issue for the race-baiting Repugnicans and their “tea-partying” ilk anymore.

A person could, I suppose, make at least a semi-legitimate argument that at least one parent should have U.S. citizenship before a newborn squeezed out here or in U.S. territory could be a citizen, but tampering with the U.S. Constitution (or a state’s constitution), especially in order to strip individuals of their rights, is walking upon perilously thin ice. And tampering with the U.S. Constitution (or a state’s constitution) should not be used primarily as a political ploy to win the hater vote.

And it’s funny how the right wing thinks that the purpose of amending our federal and state constitutions is to roll back, rather than to expand, human rights. I had thought that the wingnuts were all about freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, freedom, liberty, blah blah blah — and against tyranny. But they sure love their tyranny by the (shrinking white) majority, don’t they?

And very apparently, only conservative, white, “Christian,” heterosexual, capitalist Americans (especially those possessing the XY chromosomes) are to have any fucking freedom at all.

So this is the Repugnican Tea Party’s obvious strategy for November 2010: to pit groups of people against other groups of people in order to take the voters’ attention away from the Repugnican Tea Party’s stark record of failure and its allegiance to the super-rich instead of to the common American. (Palin-Quayle, for instance, opposes allowing the Bush tax cuts for the filthy rich to expire, but at the same time she fucking claims that she’s a populist – just one of us. You betcha!)

Yes, the Repugnican Tea Partiers are uniters, not dividers. And they’re such great “Christians.” And, being the uber-patriots that they are, upholding the national ideal of E Pluribus Unum, they just love to stir that red, white and blue American melting pot, because they’re all about diversity.

–

*As I have noted, my only problem with the planned Muslim complex near the former site of the World Trade Center is that I don’t think that anyone visiting it would be safe from violence from the unhinged, self-righteous Muslim-haters.

American history wars

A Patriot’s History of the United States has Glenn Beck’s prominent endorsement on the cover. Gee, do ya think it’s fair and balanced? Why do I suspect that if the American fascists had their way, the book would be required reading for all Americans, perhaps especially in “re-education” camps? Below is the 1980 book that the 2007 A Patriot’s History apparently is a direct response to.

 

Two very different versions of United States history are among amazon.com’s top-selling books as I type this sentence.

The late progressive historian Howard Zinn‘s A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present, first published in 1980 and current to 2003 in the revised edition that is available now, is at No. 27 on amazon.com right now, propelled up the list by his recent death. (It probably would be higher, but a lot of us “socialists” who voted for Barack Obama — which would be 53 percent of those Americans who voted in November 2008 — already have the book.) 

And at No. 1 on amazon.com right now, unfortunately, is 2007′s deceptively titled A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror – the title of which appears to be a direct response to Zinn’s tome and which tells you the slant that its two authors (one of whom wrote another book titled 48 Liberal Lies About American History) take and which indicates that if you disagree with the two white male authors’ version of American history, then you aren’t a patriot; in fact, you probably hate your country, hate freedom, and you probably want the terrorists to win!

(Hey, at least Sarah Palin-Quayle’s book has dropped to No. 56; it was at No. 1 for weeks…) 

Now, a wingnut might come back with the “argument” that Zinn and/or his supporters would say that if you disagree with his take on U.S. history, then you’re not part of the “people,” but I don’t think that was Zinn’s intent. His intent, I believe, was to tell U.S. history from the viewpoints that usually are ignored, including from the viewpoints of the downtrodden and the conquered. Well, hell, in his own words, Zinn said:

…[Ours] is a beautiful country, but it has been taken over by men who have no respect for human rights or constitutional liberties. Our people are basically decent and caring, and our highest ideals are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which says that all of us have an equal right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The history of our country, I point out in my book, is a striving, against corporate robber barons and war makers, to make those ideals a reality….

Agreed. Our nation is a long way from fully living up to its stated ideals — we’re still arguing whether or not it is OK to discriminate against non-heterosexuals, for fuck’s sake, and while we are a nation of immigrants, the wingnuts for some time now have been on an anti-brown-skinned-immigrant kick, and what happened not long ago enough at Abu Ghraib was not, as Sarah Palin-Quayle might put it, very American-y, was it? – but to the wingnuts, just having stated those lofty ideals centuries ago is enough.

The Glenn Beck-endorsed A Patriot’s History, I am sure, tells the viewpoint of the powerful and the conquerors – the viewpoint that always has been taught in our schools (as it’s the conquerors who get to write the history), the viewpoint that if a public elementary or high school teacher were to challenge, he or she very well might find him- or herself in hot water.

Did we really need yet another white man’s version of U.S. history? We don’t have enough of the white man’s perspective? Fuck a duck.

I have read much of Zinn’s account of American history, and far from being some foaming-at-the-mouth, anti-American screed, it seems to tell the historical accounts and facts that the wingnuts don’t want to be taught in our schools because they’re not flattering.

Didn’t the Nazis — I know you’re never supposed to bring up the Nazis, but fuck it, I’m going to — teach their young a whitewashed, hypernationalistic version of German history? What’s the fucking difference between the Nazis doing that and Americans doing that?

It is too bad, but perhaps inevitable, that history should become so politicized, that is has become about indoctrination rather than about telling, to the best of our ability, the truth.

The telling of history was a central point of George Orwell’s 1984, with the totalitarian government of the novel rewriting even recent history to suit its political desires.

History, and how it is told, matter.

I wouldn’t read A Patriot’s History first and foremost because I wouldn’t read anything endorsed by Glenn Beck, who, I am fairly certain, is the anti-Christ. I mean, isn’t that how the anti-Christ is said to be? Able to sway the masses with his talk of purity and piety even though his soul is as black as pitch?

And again, I wouldn’t bother with something like A Patriot’s History because it’s the version of U.S. history that we’re all already familiar with: White Americans are God’s chosen. They’re all about courage and bravery and independence and freedom and liberty and democracy and puppies and kittens, they can do no wrong, blah, blah, blah, hand me something in which I can vomit, please.

Traditional U.S. history is, in a nutshell, feel-good history. It isn’t about reaching the truth of what actually happened; it’s about feeling good about oneself and one’s nation. Worse, it’s about brainwashing the sheeple about how great their lupine overlords are and is part of the long process of beating the sheeple into submission to their overlords.

Nor do I believe in, as we progressives are accused of by the right, feel-bad history.

Problem is, anything that contradicts the traditional myths that are passed off as American history is labeled, immediately, as “anti-American” or the like. 

I believe in acknowledging what the United States of America has gotten right and what it has gotten wrong. Declaring independence from the British monarchy, for instance: right. Smacking down the pro-slavery South in the Civil War: right (but we Northerners should have finished the job…). Defeating Hitler and his allies hell-bent on world conquest in World War II: right. Decimating the Native Americans and stealing their land in violated treaty after violated treaty: wrong. Slavery: wrong. Interning Japanese Americans during World War II: wrong. The Vietnam War: wrong. Allowing the White House to be stolen in 2000: wrong. The Vietraq War and the Abu Ghraib House of Horrors: wrong. The election of the nation’s first non-white-male president in 2008: pretty cool.

We weaken, not strengthen, the nation by continuing to pass off jingoistic lies and half-truths and whitewashing as American history. You can’t fix weaknesses whose existence you won’t even fucking acknowledge.

A Patriot’s History: More of the same.

A People’s History: At least you get another view, a more complete picture, an idea of the nation’s weaknesses that need to be addressed.

Which is the more patriotic? To work to improve one’s nation, especially to ensure the expansion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and liberty and justice for all, or to claim that the white-male geniuses created a perfect nation and that there is no more work to be done?

We liberals need to stop resting on our laurels and start slaying the vampires

 

These wingnutty titles, for which trees actually died, are typical of amazon.com’s top 100 best-selling books list right now.

So I was perusing amazon.com’s top 100 best-selling book titles just now, and among the top 100 are these lovely wingnutty titles:

• Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
• Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays (gee, the wingnuts just can’t get enough of that “tyranny” thing; funny, for some reason it wasn’t tyranny when Repugnican George W. Bush stole the White House in late 2000, but it’s “tyranny” when the majority of American voters actually do elect a Democratic — er, I mean, “Socialist” — president)
• Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (this is by the same wingnut dipshit author of Liberty and Tyranny, so his argument probably is not that the Supreme Court destroyed the United States of America by having appointed G.W. Bush as president in late 2000)
• A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media (of course, it was perfectly fine with the wingnuts when the mainstream media just rolled over and played dead when the Repugnican-dominated Supreme Court, not the majority of American voters, elected Bush in 2000, and it was perfectly fine with the wingnuts when the mainstream media were nothing but fucking cheerleaders for the unelected Bush regime’s bogus Vietraq War in early 2003 ["shock and awe" makes great television!])
• Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (replete with a cute little picture of a smiley face with a Hitler ‘stache, comparing liberals to Adolf Hitler; nice!)
• Atlas Shrugged (the dead Ayn Rand’s ancient wingnutty novel that apparently is like Dungeons & Dragons to conservative geeks; Rand also wrote a nonfiction tome lovingly titled The Virtue of Selfishness*)
• The American Patriot’s Almanac: Daily Readings on America, by wingnut William Bennett (wingnuts almost always wrap their toxic ideology in such nice sheepskin as “patriotism” and “liberty”)
• Ann Cunter’s latest drivel (does it even matter what the title of it is?)
• Bill O’Reilly’s latest drivel (ditto)
• In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms, by wingnut dingbat “Dr.” Laura Schlessinger (hey, if a woman wants to be a stay-at-home mom, that’s fine by me, as I support a woman’s right to choose, but why do I have the sinking feeling that Schlessinger’s stance is that a woman should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?)

While it’s a virtual wingnut extravaganza on amazon.com’s top 100 best-selling books list, there is a dearth of liberal titles on the list, which makes me suspect that we libbies are resting on our laurels now that centrist Barack Obama is in the White House.

My fellow libbies, let me remind you that the wingnuts are like Freddy or Jason: They have a tendency to come back.

The ideological war continues; there is no hiatus just because we finally have an actually democratically elected president in the White House who is a Democrat.

Just like Team Bush hijacked the White House in late 2000, the wingnuts have hijacked such terms as “liberty,” “freedom” and “patriotism” — while calling their opponents (who would be us, the majority of Americans, who voted for Barack Obama in November 2008) “tyrants” and “fascists” and “traitors” and the like.

We need to put an end to this shit now – and not allow Freddy or Jason to return from the dead.

Speaking of the undead, I also noted that amazon.com’s top 100, curiously, is chock full o’ vampire titles.

Hmmm… Conservatism, vampirism… Same thing…

We liberals need to get off of our laurels and finish the job of driving that stake through the heart of the vampire that is called conservatism.

(Maybe we can start with the queen of the damned wingnuts, Ann Cunter…)

*Library Journal says this of The Virtue of Selfishness:

…[A] good essayist with a flair for the dramatic turn of phrase, [Rand] wasted her obvious writing skills in an effort to support outlandish personal opinions cloaked in the guise of logic. An absolutist thinker, she devotes one whole essay to an effort to persuade us that we really should see things as black and white, with no shades of gray.

Born in Soviet Russia, Rand so despised socialism and collectivist thinking that she leapt to the furthest extreme possible to become the champion of unbridled capitalism, the rights of the individual at the expense of the community, and the diminution of all regulation by the state, with the exception of a judicial system and the control of crime.

Among the sadly dated ideas she conveys are the attitude that homosexuals are mutant symptoms of a sick society and the belief that anyone with an interest in internationalism is a “one world” proponent.

To use one of her own favored words, Rand’s political and social philosophy is critically “muddled.” …