discourse

Fuck the Elevated Discourse – Gimme a Talking Point and a Hammer

jacob1 Comment

Glenn Greenwald has an utterly valid point to make:

Somehow, the deep stupidity of our political discourse actually manages to escalate during presidential campaigns, becoming even more vapid and idiotic than normal. But, as I argued continuously when I did my book tour in April and May for Great American Hypocrites, this is the kind of campaign the GOP runs every election and in which they specialize, and there are only two options for Democrats in response: (1) purport to “rise above it” and thus ensure that they get slaughtered in a one-sided, one-way War of Personality Demonization which renders issues irrelevant (hence: the all-American Everyman War Hero versus the rich, out-of-touch, effete elitist), or (2) attack the GOP candidate using the same lowly character themes in order to neutralize the attacks and prevent the election from being decided on these grounds. It’s good to see the Obama campaign, finally, engaging these issues aggressively.

I know. We’re all dogfucking sick of the character assassinations, ridiculous shit like beverage preferences and fucking flag pins being treated as matters of Utmost Vital Importance, and the tantrums. I know we’d like it if our candidates could actually win by being decent, upstanding, grown-ups who obsess over the important issues rather than the number of houses their opponent owns. We’d like to forcibly remove braindead media gasbags from studios and replace them with people who will actually report actual news. We’d like the American electorate to discover what enlightened self interest is all about and decide the election based on what’s best for the country and for them rather than the beer-buddy qualities of the man they’re pulling the lever for.

You know what, I’d like all of those things. Fuck, I’d love all of those things. I’d also like a ranch with horsies, and a little house on the Mediterranean.

The sad fact is, I’m much more likely to end up with the latter than the former. I’m probably more likely to end up winning a trillion dollar jackpot than living to see the day when our national discourse rises above playground popularity contests. Maybe Efrique could work out the statistical probabilities for us. The graph is sure to be sob-inducing.

Obama’s going to have to attack, and attack hard, to win. He’s going to have to get vicious. He can’t give any quarter. We know what the GOP’s like – give them a micrometer, they’ll take a megaparsec, and still complain they’re the persecuted victims.

He promised to run a different kind of campaign. And you know what? He is. I’ve never gotten this sense of amusement from a candidate before. Most Dems under fire by the right wing noise machine seem either angry, desperate, or just as muddy as their opposition. Obama just seems entertained. I keep feeling his elbow in my ribs: “Get a load of them. Aren’t they precious?” And that’s a difference, too – I can feel him. When he talks about Republicon antics, he’s subtly putting himself beside us. We’re all feeling the same bemusement, watching the Republicons manufacture their little controversies with the same horrified fascination.

That could be a major reason why he chose Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden is a past master at the cutting remark, and he’s sure as shit not afraid to say what’s on his mind. He balances Obama quite well. Obama’s masterful at the razor-sharp little cuts that lop off an arm before the opponent realizes he’s been hit. Biden’s brilliant at the bludgeon. It’s a combo that’s guaranteed to blitz opponents on all fronts – if they’re not afraid to use it.

At this point, I think it’s safe for them to go on the counterattack. Not only safe, but essential. They can hold the high ground while turning their opponents’ own attacks against them. Sometimes, the most effective weapons are the ones you take from your attacker.

Obama and Biden won’t have to put all that much effort into it. The Republicons are past masters at making themselves look ridiculous. Where the Democrats have failed is exploiting the idiocy. They don’t need to take a page out of the Republicon play book – there are older, better traditions to draw from. Such as the Irish bards, who could take down a king with a well-placed bit of satire.

Republicons sneer, but that’s for immature little bullies. Let us try disdain.

Republicons like to sissify their opponents. While it might be emotionally satisfying to do the same, I think Obama has an excellent chance of going one better and infantalizing them. Do you think the American electorate really wants a bunch of babies at the helm? It could seem that way sometimes, but I think after nearly a decade of Bush’s playground politics, people are ready for grownups. They just need to be shown who the real grownups are.

Republicons like to make shit up and repeat until people are confused into believing it’s true. I think Obama needs to be just as relentless with the truth. Big truths, yes, but mostly small, simple truths: McCain is such a hothead even his colleagues and fellow POWs think he’d be a disasterous president. McCain doesn’t know his geography. McCain thinks rich people are poor. McCain needs a motorcade to go get a mocha. McCain can’t tell the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’a. McCain likes to tell lies. McCain takes credit for things he didn’t do. McCain thinks that the answer to every problem is to a) drill or b) bomb. And, yes, McCain is so rich he doesn’t even know how many houses he owns.

Simple points, simply told. And they can be told from the side of the people. Obama’s been doing something that I think is brilliant: he hasn’t been talking down. He’s been treating ordinary folks as if they’re smart enough to understand. They’re smart enough to agree with him. They’re fucking well smart enough to see through the Republicon charade and realize Emperor St. John, he is nekkid.

If Obama goes on treating the American people as intelligent, sentient beings who can understand that four more years of Republicon rule are not in their self interest, they may defy all expectation and prove him right. They’ll want to live up to that image of themselves. It’s what the Republicons have been manipulating all along: the need to be liked, listened to, part of the “in” crowd.

We can reach all of those needs while fulfilling another: people like to feel admired. They like to feel smart. I don’t think most Americans are stupid so much as they’ve had such low expectations to live up to for so long. And a lot of them are starting to realize they’ve been played for fools.

I don’t think they like it much. Not judging from the people I’ve talked to who were too smart to appreciate being treated as dumbshits by the Republicons for so long, and have now become left-leaning Independents, if not outright Democrats.

There are a lot more we can reach. Unfortunately, they get their news from the teevee. So we’re going to have to play the media game. Our MSM isn’t interested in substantive policy differences right now: they’re interested in shiny things. Fine. Give them shiny. Give them silly shite like, “McCain can’t remember how many houses he’s got.” That’s s
hiny enough to get their attention without allowing them to realize there’s a substantive policy issue in there.

Hit back with those silly talking points that conceal a lead pipe of policy often enough, and it’s just possible that by the end of this cycle, it’ll be the Dems who are considered the party of tough, rugged leaders while the Republicons are the babies crying in the corner.

And once we’re done turning the tables with talking points, we can see about kicking the magpies out of the media and replacing them with eagles.

(Written before the Sarah Palin train wreck struck, in case you’re wondering why I didn’t bring her up.)

Fuck the Elevated Discourse – Gimme a Talking Point and a Hammer
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Fighting Fair

jacob5 Comments

I don’t hang about Conservapedia much, or I wouldn’t have missed this delightful exchange. Y’see, Andy Schlafly, assclown extraordinaire, would lurrrv to debate a stinking librul – except for the fact he can’t. He ran away from Ames like a kicked cur.

(Note to Andy: here’s how challenges work. If you make ’em, you pay for ’em, and you stick by the original terms of your fucking challenge. Unless, of course, you’re so shit-scared of being publicly clobbered by a flaming liberal that you have to find a way to weasel out when one of the buggers misunderstands your grandstanding, chest-thumping, self-congratulatory bullshit and actually takes you seriously.)

The problem is this: Ames and people like him not only fight fair, they fight nice. They’re good, kind, decent people who try not to sink to the stinking pits of depravity their neocon opponents inhabit. And this is why liberals lose even when they win.

Ames won this round. Andy will claim the victory because he’s a lying sack of choleric monkey shit. It’s how the game is played, and the fake celebrations confuse people into believing something’s there to be celebrated. Since a liberal wouldn’t think of celebrating such a hollow victory, well, it’s the neocons who look like they’ve won.

I think there’s a lesson in here.

Yes, we have values, and we shouldn’t engage in tactics we despise to win.

But we need to be better bastards.

When slime like Andy tries to kick liberals in the teeth, don’t turn the other cheek. Let him break his foot hitting the hard stuff.

When bottom feeders like Andy try to move the goalposts, give their hands a good, sharp smack and announce, “The goalposts stay where they are, you son of a bitch. What, you have to cheat to win now?”

We don’t have to be nasty, necessarily. But liberals have a tendency to be conciliatory and offer compromises and try to accommodate, and people like Andy see that as weakness. They use others’ good will to fuck them over, because they know they can get away with it. They don’t understand diplomacy. They do, however, understand the use of force.

So we should get forceful. When we’ve tried a compromise and found the only thing our opponent’s willing to compromise is his integrity, compromise stops, and the smackdown begins. Call them out. Call them six kinds of coward, explain to the universe at large just what a stupid fucking loser your opponents have to be to pull that shit, expose the dishonesty and don’t fucking back down. Bludgeon them with the truth. Ream them with the facts. Don’t get nice again until they’ve shown you their belly. Because if you offer your hand the instant they stop growling but before they’ve shown submission, you’re gonna lose a finger.

And no, that’s not going to keep these pathetic little liars from slithering their way out of a tight corner and trying to play the victor. They won’t fight you honestly because they know they’re gonna lose. That’s why you celebrate calling them out on their lies. Throw the loudest, longest victory party evah whenever some neocon weasel-fucker has just ducked, weaved, and goal-post shifted himself away from certain disaster.

Stuff your liberal guilt into a sack and drown it. What do you have to feel guilty about when you’re fighting fair? You’re being assertive, not aggressive. You don’t lie, you don’t cheat, you don’t make impossible demands, so there’s nothing in the world to be ashamed of. And if you called your opponent a two-faced goat-fucker during a heated exchange, well, sometimes, truth hurts, but it’s important to tell the truth even so.

We don’t have to fight dirty. But fighting fair doesn’t mean having to fight nice.

Fighting Fair

When More Facts Are In Hand, the Smack-o-Matic Shall Be Unleashed

jacob

I’ve spent most of the weekend chasing down news articles on the anthrax case. Some of the information I’ve run across, when pulled together in one place, will make your toes curl. However, I don’t want to open my yawp until more facts are on the ground.

Stay tuned…

When More Facts Are In Hand, the Smack-o-Matic Shall Be Unleashed

Incoherent Bullshit by Kathleen Parker

jacob

It’s worse than I thought.

I’m gonna need a bigger woodshed. And a paddle made of tungsten carbide.

Kathleen Parker, darling of the Washington Post’s op-ed page, is competing hard for the “More Inane than Bill Kristol” title. She’s written two steaming piles of shit served up hot and stinking in just the past few days. If this keeps up, there won’t be enough Airwick in the world to kill the stench.

Let’s start with her May 14th column in the Jewish World Review, “Getting Bubba.” This chunk of detritus riffs off the twisted theme of a West Virginia voter who said he’d vote for McCain over Obama because he feels more comfortable with “someone who is a full-blooded American as president.” Kathleen agrees with him:

Whether Fry was referring to McCain’s military service or Obama’s Kenyan father isn’t clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that’s gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.


No we don’t, Kathleen. What we have is assclowns like you who think there’s a patriot divide. Somehow, in your twisted, misfiring little minds, you think that there’s such a thing as “full-bloodedness.” According to you fuckwits, a person somehow is disqualified from being a patriot if their ancestors don’t meet some undefined residency requirement. Look at your list – two of three relate to birth, not character. You know what that is? That’s fucking aristocratic bullshit. As if a person is more of a patriot for what their ancestors were than what they are. As if “core values” have no meaning if a person is a first-generation American or, gods forbid, an immigrant who believes more in the American ideal than “full-blooded” Americans do. As if a person who displays patriotism is somehow a fake patriot because their ancestors came late to the party.

It’s about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry’s political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there’s a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

People aren’t plants, you stupid bitch. My roots run far deeper than Obama’s, and you know what? That doesn’t make me more of a fucking patriot. He’s far more a “full-blooded” American than I am. He’s willing to sacrifice his personal safety, his privacy, and his sleep for this country because he believes in it. You know what I’m prepared to sacrifice for America? Bugger-all. I wouldn’t die for my country. I’m too ashamed of the little shits like you to even consider it. The most I’m willing to do is vote for the person most likely to pull America’s head out of its ass and write ass-reamings aimed at the people who’d prefer this country remain firmly head-up-rectum. Who’s the patriot now, eh?

And what the fuck is this “blood equity?” You sound like you’ve been hanging around a few too many Grand Dragons, there. This nation was founded by immigrants, made great by immigrants and children of immigrants, and it’ll stay great just so long as it keeps accepting infusions of fresh blood. Some inbred idea of what America is will kill off its greatness and leave it snivelling on the sidelines.

The “guns, God and gays” trope has haunted Democrats, and Republicans have enjoyed dusting it off when needed to rile the locals. It’s an easy play.

But so-called “ordinary Americans” aren’t so easily manipulated and they don’t need interpreters. They can spot a poser a mile off and they have a hound’s nose for snootiness. They’ve got no truck with people who condescend nor tolerance for that down-the-nose glance from people who don’t know the things they know.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this, though Hillary Clinton has figured it out. And, the truth is, Clinton’s own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to. She understands viscerally what Obama has to study.

How much more fucking incoherent can you be? You say the “guns, God and gays” trope is an easy play for Republicons, and in the next breath, “‘ordinary Americans’ aren’t so easily manipulated.” Ask Marie Antoinette on this one – you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Which is it? Easy play or loser’s game?

By the way, learn some evolutionary biology, you fuckwit. Clinton’s DNA isn’t cobbled with American values. This who “American blood” and “American DNA” argument betrays a breathtaking ignorance of basic biology. It doesn’t even work as a metaphor. It sure as fuck doesn’t explain that fake drawl Hillary likes to swagger around with when she’s trying to out-rural the rubes. And that viscereal understanding – you can explain it just as well by realizing that Hillary decided to imitate the Republicons when she decided to go after the xenophobic white asshole vote instead of sticking to her principles. There’s no viscereal understanding there unless it’s a viscereal understanding of how to manipulate people who beg to be lied to.

Some Americans do feel antipathy toward “people who aren’t like them,” but that antipathy isn’t about racial or ethnic differences. It is not necessary to repair antipathy appropriately directed toward people who disregard the laws of the land and who dismiss the struggles that resulted in their creation.

Full-blooded Americans get this. Those who hope to lead the nation better get it soon.


What fucking “laws of the land” has Barak Obama, who’s certainly the target of this shit-cannon of yours, disregarded? What struggles has he dismissed? You don’t mention a fucking one, aside from his “bitter” comments, which were brutally honest and therefore anathema to the “choose your own reality” set. Is it a “law of the land” that you have to be dumber than the village idiot?

Your whole column implies that the only “full-blooded Americans” are small-town, rural Christian whites. That leaves out a fuck of a lot of Americans. There’s a fuck of a lot of us in
the cities
. There’s a fuck of a lot of us who aren’t white, but whose roots go just as deep as those rural Christian whites you’re so enamored of. There’s a fuck of a lot of us whose roots are shallow by your standards, but whose American values put your American values to shame. America, despite what you think, is a fuck of a lot more than the xenophobic, God-bothering, anti-intellectual, easily-led, not-racist-but-you’re-not-really-an-American-if-you’re-not-white small town dimwits you’re lionizing here.

Oh, and by the way: small town America ain’t limited to your definitions, either. You’re taking a tiny subset of rural America and turning it into the American ideal. It’s an old chestnut that gets roasted nearly every election, and it’s no more true now than it has ever been. Your misty-eyed view of America is just the dream of a fearful, tiny mind with delusions of grandeur.

I’m sure you thought that last line of yours was a brilliant Parthian shot. It wasn’t. It was a spoiled, ignorant little brat stamping her foot and screaming, “You better do what I say or else!” No one’s impressed except for the mental midgets who think foot-stomping tantrums are the height of learned discourse.

I can’t even get to your Washington Post tripe. My arm’s too damned tired. Sadly, No! and Glenn Greenwald already took you to their woodsheds over it, and all I’m going to do is administer one final swat: rampant homophobia has no place on the op-ed pages of any national newspaper, much less The Washington Post. I know you have absolutely no shame over it, and probably never will – your brain ceased functioning long ago, as evinced by your babble about bloodlines. But I’m hoping for the kind of outcry over your poisonous bullshit that will ensure the most prestigious news outlet you get published by in the future is the Worldnutdaily.

Now get the fuck out of my woodshed. I can’t take another second of you.

Incoherent Bullshit by Kathleen Parker

Gas Tax Holidays and the Pathologies of Democracy

jacob1 Comment

FindLaw’s Michael C. Dorf has an interesting column up discussing how the proposed gas tax holiday points up a few of democracy’s flaws. It sounds downright elitist in places:

More generally, the mere fact that Senator McCain would propose, and that Senator Clinton would then endorse, an idea that makes such poor policy sense raises a more fundamental question about democracy: Can rule by the people generate wise policy? In this column, I address the gas tax holiday proposal and then the broader question about democracy.

Yowsa! In one short column, he proposes to resolve the question that has nagged democracy since its inception. Ambitious bastard, innit he?

And a smart bugger to boot. If you need to explain to a very dense person why the gas tax holiday won’t save them any money, you could use this column to hone your arguments:

Accordingly, the temporary elimination of the federal gas tax will both decrease federal revenue—an impact that would be offset under the Clinton windfall-profits tax proposal—and increase demand for gasoline. Increasing demand for gasoline is utterly irresponsible. It will lead to greater CO2 emissions and other pollution as well as greater dependence on oil imported from unstable or hostile regimes. The gas tax holiday will not even lower prices at the pump by very much: The greater demand stimulated by lower prices (because of the temporary elimination of the tax) will in turn tighten supplies, leading suppliers to raise prices. A new equilibrium price will arise, and drivers will may pay nearly as much for gasoline without the tax as they did with the tax, except that the oil companies and their foreign suppliers will pocket much of the revenue that formerly went to the federal government as a tax.

I think this is information any average moron, including IDiots, could potentially understand: If you start buying more gas, the oil companies will scream “Bonanza!” and raise the prices on you. You end up with as much pain at the pump, but with more potholes.

But what about the “windfall tax”? Won’t that solve the pothole problem? Isn’t it better for the oil companies to pay rather than the people?

In a perfect world, yes. Meanwhile, back in reality:

Economists talk about the “incidence” of a tax, namely, who feels it, and the incidence of a given tax may be very different from its nominal object. Even a tax called a “windfall” tax on oil companies can be felt by drivers, if the companies pass on the cost of the tax to their customers in the form of higher prices—much as they would pass on other costs, such as those associated with higher oil prices on world markets.


I work for a corporation. I can assure you they don’t pay the federal taxes imposed upon them: you do. Look at your phone bill. See those regulatory fees? Those taxes? Those strangely inflated prices? Yup. That’s the corporation handing you the taxes your government handed them. Oil companies won’t behave any differently. No company addicted to profit will.

And yet, there are people stupid enough to fall for this sort of bullshit hook, line, sinker and fisherman.

On many issues, the people’s interests are heterogeneous. Then, democracy can become a tool for deciding which private interest to serve rather than for simply serving the interest of the undifferentiated public.

Worse, in many of these circumstances, the distributional principle chosen is not simply the greatest good for the greatest number. Instead, political scientists have shown that where a policy creates concentrated benefits for a small but well-organized group, it will often be selected even though the net costs outweigh those benefits. Because the costs are distributed over a much larger group, the people who pay the costs do not have nearly as strong an incentive to organize and oppose the policy that the people who benefit from the policy have to exert political pressure in its favor.

In other words, when we bend over with no more than a whimper, the special interests are likely to keep dropping the soap. And they have plenty of politicians pocketing their money that’ll be more than happy to deceive the public into thinking picking up the soap is good for them:

The proposed gas-tax holiday is not a response to rent-seeking but an exercise in demagoguery. It appeals to people’s misunderstanding of their own self-interest. When faced with what appears to be a choice between paying more for gasoline or paying less for gasoline, people can naturally be expected to opt to pay less. Likewise for the Clinton variation, when faced with the apparent choice of a tax on individual drivers struggling to make ends meet, or a tax on the fat cats who run the oil companies, Senator Clinton assumes that people will choose to tax the fat cats.

As we saw above, these choices are false, but explaining why requires more than a sound bite. Moreover, it is easy to portray anyone who opposes a populist measure such as the gas tax holiday as doubly elitist: first, for the apparent failure to appreciate that even a few extra dollars can make a difference to a struggling family; and second, for suggesting (even if correctly) that the people do not understand what is best for them.


Ooo, double elitist whammy! And we all know that in this country, trying to educate people so that they know just why they should stop bending over to pick up the soap is a horrible elitist thing to do. After all, what they don’t know won’t hurt the corporations, special interests, and everyone else with a bar of soap to drop.

Dorf closes with Churchill’s description of “democracy as the worst form of government, except for all the others.” And he makes excellent points that democracy has treated people a lot less shabbily than dictatorships, theocracies, and other assorted totalitarian fuckers. But it’s hard not to walk away with a sense that if we don’t rescue democracy from the hands of the deluded, we’re all in deep shit.

Good thing we’re holding a Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, eh?

Gas Tax Holidays and the Pathologies of Democracy

Sometimes My Country Makes Me Want to Stab Out My Eyes with a Dessert Fork

jacob

I’m so fucking depressed.

There’s too much stupid. My arms are tired. I can’t muster the energy to spank. I’m going to have to rely on my fellow bloggers to beat back the hordes of raging fuckwits for tonight.

Steve Benen over at the Carpetbagger Report got my day off to a depressing start with this stark assessment of Obama’s projected losses in Kentucky and West Virginia. Race may not be the only factor, as Steve points out, but it’s pretty damned hard to discount. Combine race with all the bullshit about him being an elitist urban liberal who believes in principles more than pandering, and it becomes all too easy to understand why Obama’s going to lose the working-class white vote.

They’ll give him a pass for the same reasons my white, working-class Midwestern relatives will: they can’t stand the thought of voting into office a man smarter than they are, and the fact that he’s a black man who’s smarter than they are just adds a whole new dimension to it. I hear racist poison spew from all sides when I speak to them. They don’t always try to cloak it. And I’d hoped they were an anachronism, but it’s become abundantly clear to me that they’re not uniquely ridiculous. There’s all too many just like them, or far fucking worse.

Don’t believe me? Have a look at this McClatchy article.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s race and inflammatory racial remarks made by his former preacher negatively affect how likely voters view the candidate, according to a new poll in Kentucky.

More than one in five likely Democratic voters surveyed said being black hurts Obama’s chances of winning an election in Kentucky, compared to 4 percent who said Obama’s race helps him.

More than half of respondents said Obama’s race isn’t a factor in the upcoming May 20 primary. But many still said the racially charged remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will play an important role as they decide whom to support.

Among white voters, Wright’s statements were important to 46 percent, compared to only 11 percent of black voters.


Pass me the dessert fork.

Blue NC just made it worse. They tried to show why race wasn’t the main issue in all this. Maybe it’s not, but it’s hardly comforting to read what is. Buried amidst a lot of very good, valid ideas and issues is this quote from Ohiobama, advising Obama how to campaign in Appalachia:

Forget all national issues for a few days and talk about local issues. Find out what those communities want and speak to those wants. Don’t send Oprah or Michelle to those areas; send George Clooney and John Edwards if you can get him. Don’t jet around. Take bus tours with multiple stops in small towns. Pay attention to local history. Visit historic sites. Recruit new voters from the hollows as well as from college campuses. In fact, avoid the college campuses, they stigmatize you.


So he has to send white males like George Clooney to campaign? Avoid colleges because of some fucking stigma? What the fuck does it say about this country when colleges stigmatize a candidate? How stupid do they want the President to be?

I was excited about Obama because, unlike most of our presidential contenders these past many years, he’s actually had a brain and a chance at winning. But I’m starting to wonder if he has any chance of winning once the American Ignorance Machine really gets cranked. Pretty Shaved Ape over at Canadian Cynic certainly didn’t buck me up on that front: he thinks both of our Democratic candidates are “mediocre.” Now how fucking sad is it that Obama isn’t mediocre enough in America’s eyes?

Which one of you buggers snagged my dessert fork? I need that back, thanks so much.

Especially after reading up on the Pledge controversy. Etha Williams at The Sacred Tree of Jeanne Shade quotes a plethora of stupid fuckers spouting off on why people should stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or leave the country.

Newsflash, fucktards: nothing in the bloody Constitution says that you’re supposed to be a bunch of blind fucking sheep bleating empty bullshit about flags and patriotism. Let’s ask Thomas Jefferson what he thinks about blind adoration of the United States of America, shall we?

“I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

“To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.”


Well, shit. Jefferson wouldn’t have supported the “love it or leave it” wankers. Hey, Etha? Who’ve they got to support them?

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

— Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Reich-Marshall, at the Nuremberg Trials


Oh, deary deary me. Seems that some folks have forgotten that there’s a place for dissent in a democracy, and a good reason for it: blind devotion and willful ignorance can, as Etha so beautifully pointed out, have rather severe consequences.

Speaking of willful ignorance, Blake Stacey over at Science After Sunclipse has an example of it that hits like a battering ram to the solar plexus. He reports on the latest battleground over evolution in classrooms – Maine, of all places – and quotes a man who’s a definite con
tender for Most Fuckheaded American:

Blevins spoke in favor of SAD 59 Chairman Norman Luce’s suggestion, that a philosophy class might provide a better forum for the study of evolution.

“That’s a sane approach,” Blevins said. “The evolution concept is a theory, and not provable. If the science department at Madison High is simply teaching theory, then you ought to leave it in the science department.”

My darlings, I present you Pastor Roy Blevins. He gets to wear the “Fucktard of the Day” hat. Blake did smite him mightily, but alas, this kind of stupid is adamantium. And he’s a pastor. People listen to this stupid bastard. They trust this stupid little twit.

And then they’re going to go vote for the dumbest bastard they can find when it comes time to select the person best qualified to lead our country.

Do you see now why I want my dessert fork back? Sharpened, please. I need to stab out my eyes in such a manner that they’re still intact enough to stuff in my ears so I can drown these assclowns out.

Sometimes My Country Makes Me Want to Stab Out My Eyes with a Dessert Fork

Consider the Source

jacob1 Comment

I was all ready to tear Hillary Clinton apart over this one:

In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas – using her child development background to help the defendant.

Yes, it’s outrageous. You can read the whole sordid story in Newsday: I’ll just give you a thumbnail here. Bored and wanting to get a soda, the 12-year old girl went for a drive with two older men and a 15-year old. The men pulled off the road, gave her alcohol, and then according to the 15-year old, the older men went for a walk while he had sex with the girl. When the older men came back, one of them, Thomas Taylor, forcibly raped her.

Hillary Rodham got assigned the case. According to reports and her own book, Living History, she didn’t want it but couldn’t refuse. She threw herself into Taylor’s defense, and “fired off no fewer than 19 subpoenas, affidavits and motions – almost as much paper as was typical for a capital murder case that year, according to case files on microfilm.” She got Taylor out on bond. She questioned the forensic evidence. She questioned a 12-year old’s honesty.

“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing,” wrote Rodham, without referring to the source of that allegation. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body.”

Dale Gibson, the investigator, doesn’t recall seeing evidence that the girl had fabricated previous attacks.

But this was back in the day when blaming the victim was more fashionable than it is now, and Hillary was just doing her job.

Rodham, legal and child welfare experts say, did nothing unethical by attacking the child’s credibility – although they consider her defense of Taylor to be aggressive.

“She was vigorously advocating for her client. What she did was appropriate,” said Andrew Schepard, director of Hofstra Law School’s Center for Children, Families and the Law. “He was lucky to have her as a lawyer … In terms of what’s good for the little girl? It would have been hell on the victim. But that wasn’t Hillary’s problem.”

It was about this point where I exploded.

I leapt online and started searching for a pattern. Hillary Clinton, that great advocate of women’s rights, was a hypocrite. Hadn’t I recently heard how she treated a woman who accused her husband of rape? Didn’t this prove that her principles fly straight out the window when it comes to political gain? I was certain of it.

Until I saw that the sources for such rumors came primarily from right-wing smear machines.

I couldn’t find a damned thing from a respectable news source that backed those accusations up.

But I did see a pattern of a woman who has spent decades advocating for the rights of children and women.

Damn.

Blaming the victim is reprehensible. Making an effort to ensure that the victim isn’t making up her story is not. Hillary never put that child on the witness stand. She didn’t engage in character assassination. She just requested an assessment based on troubling information. We have no way of knowing where that information came from, as any records that might have shown the source were destroyed in a flood and some of the people who might have known have died. But I had to think: if I was an attorney, even with my absolute belief that we should never blame the victim for her own victimization, I would have done the same thing if I’d received information that cast doubt on the victim’s story. I would have filed that affadavit. I would have made sure that my client wasn’t being falsely accused. It’s the right thing to do.

I don’t have access to primary, unbiased sources to know what the circumstances were. I don’t know whether she was truly forced to take this case or if she could have refused. I don’t know if her advocacy for her client crossed the line into crusade against the victim. It’s horrible that the rapist got off with a slap on the wrist. The prosecution’s case fell apart because Hillary was able to poke too many holes in it. That’s not a failing on her part. It’s a failing of the prosecutor’s office and a failing of our criminal justice system. It only becomes Hillary’s failing if she could have turned down a case that conflicted with her principles, and so far, there’s no evidence of that.

This case does prove her pattern of being a bit too zealous in her work and her politcal quests, but here, the zealotry doesn’t seem egregious. It certainly doesn’t prove a lack of conscience. She conscienciously defended her client, despite the fact she hadn’t wanted to, and, she says in her book, “the case spurred her to create the first rape hotline in Arkansas.”

I still don’t like her getting a rapist off lightly. I still despise a justice system that not only allows, but demands, that defense attorneys blame the victim. But considering the sources, I can’t buy into the “Hillary destroys sexual assault victims for her own gain” idea. It just doesn’t ring true.

Consider the Source

Attention John Derbyshire: the Cantina is Open

jacob1 Comment

Poor John. It’s hard being a conservative in these troubled times.

Ben Stein’s fuckwittery knows no bounds:

In an interview with the Trinity Broadcasting Network, Ben Stein said the following amazing thing in an interview with Paul Crouch, Jr.

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

And John Derbyshire suffers:

And there are NRO readers who are on board with this dreck? I need a drink.


We have drinks, John. Claim yourself a stool and name your poison.

You know, we don’t see eye-to-eye on demographics, among a number of other things, but I’d be pleased to pour for a man who can hold forth so passionately on science in one column, and quote Voltaire in response to Ben Stein’s dumbassitude in another. I think we have a basis for conversation here. And at least in my cantina, no one’s going to torment you by gushing over the wonders of Expelled.

It’s possible you’ll run into a few Mexicans, mind. But you might find the brown people aren’t as scary as you seem to think.

Hell, I’d imagine even the flaming liberals in this cantina are preferable to what you’ve endured of late, eh?

¡Viva pensamiento racional!

Attention John Derbyshire: the Cantina is Open

John Derbyshire Gives Blogger Heart Failure

jacob1 Comment

I hear your two questions: “Who the fuck is John Derbyshire?” and “Which blogger?”

This blogger. Me. And this is John Derbyshire. Everybody say “Hi, John!” Yes, I’m asking you to say hello to a conservative columnist. A cheery hello, at that. Even though he’s a homophobic racist hypocrite (as he admits himself), we can extend a cautious hand of welcome. After all, for a conservative, he is, as he says, “a mild and tolerant” racist homophobe, which is damned near miraculous for a National Review Online columnist.

He immigrated illegally from Great Britian before he became legal and started hating on all the brown immigrants, so that likely explains why he’s the kind of conservative who can give me heart failure for being rational, reasonable, and uplifiting.

I found him on The Panda’s Thumb. He’s one of the rare few conservatives who’s been quoted as saying non-outrageous things about evolution. I still hesitated before clicking that “Continue reading A Blood Libel on Our Civilization at the National Review” link. I mean, it’s the fucking National Review. It’s fuckwit central. But I like to think I have courage, and at times even an open mind, although that’s been hard to keep open after the abuse it’s taken from the neocons. So I steeled myself and clicked.

His article has a promising start. Right under the title, it asks, “Can I expell Expelled?”

Absolutely, John. You most certainly can. By all means. I’d be delighted to hold the door open while you boot them in the arse, even.

Things then became a bit rocky, but I soldiered on:

What on earth has happened to Ben Stein? He and I go back a long way. No, I’ve never met the guy. Back in the 1970s, though, when The American Spectator was in its broadsheet format, I would always turn first to Ben Stein’s diary, which appeared in every issue. He was funny and clever and worldly in a way I liked a lot. The very few times I’ve caught him on-screen, he seems to have had a nice line in deadpan self-deprecation, also something I like. Though I’ve never met him, I know people who know him, and they all speak well of him. Larry Kudlow, whose opinion is worth a dozen average opinions on any topic, thinks the world of Ben.

Oh, deary, deary me. He loves Ben. No good can come of this.

So what’s going on here with this stupid Expelled movie? No, I haven’t seen the dang thing. I’ve been reading about it steadily for weeks now though, both pro (including the pieces by David Klinghoffer and Dave Berg on National Review Online) and con, and I can’t believe it would yield up many surprises on an actual viewing. It’s pretty plain that the thing is creationist porn, propaganda for ignorance and obscurantism. How could a guy like this do a thing like that?

Easy, my dear John. Ben Stein is an opportunistic assclown. He’s snookered you into thinking he has a frontal lobe. I am so sorry you had to find out the truth this way.

Heh. You said porn. Hur hur hur.

So far, not so bad. Gingerly, I continued picking my way through the piece, convinced that at any moment, I’d get my legs blown off by a sudden claymore landmine of neocon fucktardedness. There were moments where I’d stop, breathless, convinced I’d just tripped a wire:

The first thing that came to mind was Saudi money. Half of the evils and absurdities in our society seem to have a Saudi prince behind them somewhere, and the Wahhabists are, like all fundamentalist Muslims, committed creationists.


Awshit. Just when it was all going so swimmingly, here we go with the Islamofascists are responsible for everything bad!!1!1!!! spiel. What a fucking disappointment… holy fuck, what’s this?

This doesn’t hold water, though. For one thing, Stein is Jewish. For another, he is rich, and doesn’t need the money. And for another, the stills and clips I have seen are from a low-budget production. Saudi financing would surely at least have come up with some decent computer graphics.


Ye gods. Logic! Tortured, twisted logic, true, but considering we’re dealing with a conservative mind writing in the National Review, that’s pretty damned impressive. Most of them just leave it at “Islamofascists didit, blow them all to bits, the end.” The man questioned his assumptions. He tried applying reason.

This is where the heart attack happened. Clutching my chest, I continued to read:

It is at any rate clear that [the producers of Expelled] engaged in much deception with the subjects they interviewed for the movie, many of whom are complaining loudly. This, together with much, much else about the movie, can be read about on the Expelled Exposed website put up by the National Center for Science Education, which I urge all interested readers to explore.

Total. Heart. Failure. He, John Derbyshire, a conservative writer for the National Review, just referred his readers, nay, urged them, to visit ExpelledExposed.com, not to debunk or sneer but to learn.

I’d say “be still, my heart,” but you’ve stopped, so that’s redundant at this point.

My own theory is that the creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are. What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.


My heart stopped already, right? Can it stop again? He even freely admits that these fuckers are trying to pass religion off as science!

One of my favorite comments came from “Pixy Misa” (Andrew Mazels) who correctly called Ben Stein’s accusing Darwin of responsibility for the Holocaust “a blood libel on science.”

I would actually go further than that, to something like “a blood libel on Western Civilization.”


Wow-e-wow. Just… wow. I know I’m dead, now. Conservatives in our country just don’t say things like this. I must have ended up going down the wrong leg of the Trousers of Time this morning. Total alternate universe. Has to be.

Western civilization has many gl
ories. Ther
e are the legacies of the ancients, in literature and thought. There are the late-medieval cathedrals, those huge miracles of stone, statuary, and spiritual devotion. There is painting, music, the orderly cityscapes of Renaissance Italy, the peaceful, self-governed townships of old New England and the Frontier, the steel marvels of the early industrial revolution, our parliaments and courts of law, our great universities with their spirit of restless inquiry.

And there is science, perhaps the greatest of all our achievements, because nowhere else on earth did it appear. China, India, the Muslim world, all had fine cities and systems of law, architecture and painting,
poetry and prose, religion and philosophy. None of them ever accomplished what began in northwest Europe in the later 17th century, though: a scientific revolution. Thoughtful men and women came together in learned societies to compare notes on their observations of the natural world, to test their ideas in experiments, and in reasoned argument against the ideas of others, and to publish their results in learned journals. A body of common knowledge gradually accumulated. Patterns were observed, laws discerned and stated.

Glories! Yes! “Spirit of restless inquiry,” even so! Science, “greatest of all our achievements,” absolutely! I’ll even forgive you that little sneer at other countries for not having a scientific revolution, because by your narrow definition of a scientific revolution, you’re right. They didn’t have one. But you understand the glory and importance of science, John, and that…

…brings to us a feeling for what the scientific endeavor is like, and how painfully its triumphs are won, with what sweat and tears. Our scientific theories are the crowning adornments of our civilization, towering monuments of intellectual effort, built from untold millions of hours of observation, measurement, classification, discussion, and deliberation. This is quite apart from their wonderful utility — from the light, heat, and mobility they give us, the drugs and the gadgets and the media. (A “thank you” wouldn’t go amiss.) Simply as intellectual constructs, our well-established scientific theories are awe-inspiring.


This, my darlings, is where I began to cry. Because John Derbyshire, a conservative, stated precisely how I feel about science. He expressed perfectly my own sense of wonder, my awe and appreciation, my love. His passion and mine recognize each other joyously. This is what draws us together over the divide. This is what makes those differences in ideology solvable. A conservative gets it. He understands, and respects, science. This is hope, people. This is fertile middle ground, this is. He can’t be the only conservative in this country who feels this way.

And how does he feel about Ben, now?

And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone.


Ouch. And Intelligent Design?

The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)

And yes: When our greatest achievements are blamed for our greatest moral failures, that is a blood libel against Western civilization itself.


Very ouch.

All that’s needed now is for more true conservatives like John Derbyshire to get so disgusted with the neocons and theocons that they wrest back conservatism from the assmonkeys destroying it. It can be done. That middle ground that I was pining for a bit ago, it can be created again. We’ll all be freely mingling in it, visiting from our respective ends of the political spectrum, cheerfully ribbing each other over what we consider each other’s silly ideologies, but able to debate rather than degrade, talk rather than shout.

That’s what this article has shown me. It’s still possible. The divide is not yet an impassable chasm. There are some people on both sides busily building bridges and caulking the cracks. They’re making it possible for us to reach each other.

And when we get there, won’t we ever have a delightful time bashing the IDiots? Once I get my heart started again, anyway.

John Derbyshire Gives Blogger Heart Failure

Dear Media: Stop Sucking

jacob

There’s not a day goes by where my blood pressure isn’t raised by media asshattery of some description. They ignore issues that directly threaten our Constitution in favor of the latest celebrity crotch shot. They pass over Bush approving torture and obsess over the morning beverage choices of a certain presidential candidate. They yammer endlessly about ridiculous shit, and when someone calls bullshit, they snivel, “Bu-bu-but that’s what the American public wants.”

No, we fucking well do not want. That’s what you decided we wanted, and no matter how often we tell you otherwise, you choose not to listen, you ignorant, pompous fools.

Paul Waldman has your number:

Reporters will choose to write about flag pins. They will choose to write about whether some catastrophic, heretofore hidden character flaw has been revealed by a comment a candidate made, or by a comment somebody who knows the candidate made. They are not merely onduits for the campaign’s discourse, they create the campaign’s discourse, as much as the candidates themselves.


I think there are a lot of reasons for the breakdown in American intelligence and ability to handle pieces of information larger than a soundbite (Religious Right, I’m looking at you. Yes, that is my middle finger shoved up your left nostril). We’re busier, we’re more distracted, and we’re distracted by the newest shiny objects, but you know who’s habituated us to bullshit masquerading as news? The fucking media, and their far-right handlers.

Kids who grow up in abusive homes think the abuse is normal. They think that’s how everybody acts. People who are fed nothing but pap by the nation’s media think pap is all it’s about. They don’t know there’s an alternative. If the media stopped spoon feeding the lowest fucking common denominator, then the other denominators might smarten up a bit. And the denominators have discovered this wonderful thing called the Internet that’s given them a window into another life. They’re discovering the abuse isn’t normal. They’re discovering there’s things like substantive issues and world opinion. They’re hungry for steak. The media keeps feeding them pap.

Just because starving people eat what you give them doesn’t mean it’s what they actually want, you stupid fucking morons.

Steve Benen over at the Carpetbagger Report gets to the crux of the matter nicely:

To me, there are two key problems with the media’s emphasis on trivia, mini-controversies, and the buzz of the day. The first is emphasis — I know there’s going to be some interest and coverage of some minor flap or another, but on a daily basis, it’s wildly disproportionate. That was one of the jarring things about last week’s debate — not that there were some questions about the various distractions, but that there were 15 questions about the distractions that constituted the entire first half of the event.

The second is that, too often, the media takes trivia and decides it really isn’t trivia at all. Instead of mindless coverage of some inconsequential flap or gaffe, an outlet or media personality will insist that the flap or gaffe deserves to be elevated into a national controversy, worthy of serious and genuine analysis. So, when Obama bowls a 37, it’s not just a punch-line or the subject of good-natured ribbing, it becomes an excuse to scrutinize Obama’s manliness and his ability to connect with small-town voters. If he orders orange juice at a diner, it’s the same thing. Clinton’s laugh drew similar scrutiny, as did the price of Edwards’ haircuts.

It’s not enough to highlight the sideshow; the media wants people to believe the sideshow is a serious issue. That’s the problem.


Sideshows were never meant to be the centerpiece of the circus. That’s why they’re sideshows, you see. It’s time our media realize that. To help them along, I have a not-so-friendly message:

You have a choice in the matter: you can choose to continue your decline from watchdogs of democracy to Fifi the Performing Poodle, or you can consult a good proctologist to have your heads extracted from the right wing’s colon. Seems to me the choice should be easy.

Dear Media: Stop Sucking