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Glenn Beck has kept his promise to bring 100,000 plus "teabaggers" and other assorted right-wing and racist reactionaries to Washington, D.C. in a supposed commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington, which culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous "I have a dream" speech. Grotesquely, King’s niece, Alveda King, has joined Beck at the Lincoln Memorial rally to preach her own form of hate against gays (she recently equated gay marriage with "genocide") and abortion rights. King is director of African-American outreach for the pro-life group Priests for Life.
"Something that is beyond man is happening," [Glenn] Beck told his supporters in DC. Quotes from participants: "Capitalism is what makes this country great." "I don’t want this country to turn socialist." "We have to take our country back." "Whenever you hear the words ‘social justice’, you should leave your church immediately."
Glenn Beck is one dangerous demagogue. He should not be underestimated.
Well, the right-wing can mobilize tens of thousands and bring them to D.C., while the left is mired in electoralism, i.e., concentrate everything on elections, and leave the streets to the demagogues. Nor have the "progressives" anything very much progressive to offer anymore, having accepted the permanent state of immiseration that comes from buying into the "war on terror," having allowed torture and war crimes to have been codified in the Army Field Manual and the Military Commissions Act, respectively. And "liberals" long ago dropped any pretense of reining in the CIA, whose lawlessness is reproduced day by day even as I type these words. . . .
Meanwhile, even as the New York Times puts out mealy-mouthed editorials at least somewhat critical of the current state of affairs (see today’s editorial, Legacy of Torture), the Obama administration continues its crusade to institutionalize the notorious Military Commissions, even if that means (to their embarrassment) making their test case a former child soldier who was threatened with institutional rape to coerce a confession. The Gitmo judge said he couldn’t see how such a threat would amount to torture or coercion, and there’s fairness in America circa 2010 in a nutshell (pun intended).
If I could give homework, I’d assign a view of Elia Kazan’s classic film, Face in the Crowd.
But I’m not a schoolteacher, only a part-time blogger (sitting right now in Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans, not pajamas). My disgust with this country won’t buy me a meal or put a fiver in a homeless man’s pocket. I can only share this feeling with what’s left of a nation that has a shred of integrity left, if even living in a country that blithely ignores accountability for the crimes of its leaders — torture, chemical warfare against civilian populations (Fallujah), running assassination teams, occupying other countries, letting millions get thrown out of their homes and jobs while protecting the fat-cats’ bonuses and right to even further exploit the populace — if even accepting citizenship in such a land doesn’t forfeit me the right to anything more than moral exhaustion.
The Age of Disgust. The legacy of the end of communism, with a corpulent, weepy would-be savior as the national emoticon, spewing hate and lies, and stuffing a lot of money into his pockets along the gold-lined way, you betcha. Home of the "suckers" and land of the "stupid idiots." Don’t ask me, ask Lonesome Rhodes.
[Graphic: courtesy of Tild at Tildology.]
109 Comments
I only have a rant left in me by the end of this week.
I saw Ms. King this week on various television venues, trumpeting her upcoming appearance. I believed that she would reflect on this as the hours ticked by towards her appearance, and that when waking this morning, she would be thunderstruck at the preposterousness of the event and her participation in it, and that she would develop an ‘unforeseen family commitment’.
I was wrong.
The nation is so much poorer for it.
Thanks, Jeff.
Thanks, Jeff. Our nation took a giant step backward today, and many will suffer because of it.
Am intrigued by first word in title of this diary. ‘Disgust’. Same title as a famous movie I once saw. Seems a talented director stopped making important films and started to make crap. He was rewarded financially for making crap but alienated from his beautiful wife who turned away from him in…disgust.
That plot has a certain resonance now.
Don’t know that movie, and I looked in IMDb after reading your comment. I thought of using the title of Sartre’s famous novel, Nausea. But I figured some might think I had eaten some bad seafood.
And Jeff @ 5: Le Mépris? I believe that film was released in the US as Contempt (Godard/Moravia).
Lonesome Rhoads is a great model for Beck, though. I’ve read that Andy Griffith found the character so repellent that he promised himself not to play that type again. While I can see his point, it’s too bad in a way, as he gives one of the great tour de force performances.
Just recently caught a showing of Network (Lumet/Chayefsky), which catches other aspects of our media-led slide into the abyss just as well as Face caught the fortunate yahoo. And to further inoculate against fantasies of good old days, there’s Meet John Doe from Capra of all people; in fact Dunaway seems explicitly to update Stanwyck’s fatally ambitious publicity “genius.”
Got a drop of blood in you that’s still warm? Ace in the Hole, aka The Big Carnival (Wilder/et al.). Very interesting to compare the reporters, the subjects of the media frenzies, and the other interested parties in these four stories.
Simply further evidence of the implosion of Late Empire.
Circuses, less bread.
Well-known and oft quoted, but worth reviewing again… from Chalmers Johnson’s 2004 work, The Sorrows of Empire (bold emphasis added):
Here you go:
http://tildology.com/2009/09/28/a-face-in-the-crowd-2009/
Lonesome Roads was brought down by his own words of contempt for his audience – how 20th century.
In the 21st century version, the crowd loves being kicked around and is so blindingly stupid and lazy as to pursue their own self-interest, preferring the myths of their billionaire masters instead.
To paraphrase Thomas Frank, the land is flooded and the survivors are up on their rooftops, shaking their fists at the heavens and calling for more rain.
Can we begin to turn it around?
I hope so.
As Sister Dianne Ortiz has wrote, “A black blindfold holds every wave length in the spectrum of light — holds it and keeps it pressed against the head, as if to say, Don’t forget. Even if you can’t see the light, it’s there.“
How f@cking retarded, what, do they need to be drug tested? It could happen to anyone.
I read that editorial as more uninformed, and unsure of its ground, than mealy-mouthed, but it definitely lacked punch because of its failure to provide context or confident factual precision – both attributable, no doubt, to the failure of most of the American media to pay much, if any, attention to what the military is doing with its foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, in any detail.
To try to help remedy that lack of factual context and precision, I put together some details that I hope (speaking of light…) shed better light on the contours of the problems there, for a related comment yesterday (which notes an error that the editorial repeats) – details I’ll repeat here, to expand on that editorial’s limited perspective.
Those who haven’t been closely following the work of (now award-winning) Miami Herald Guantanamo reporter Carol Rosenberg, or Britain’s indispensable Guantanamo writer Andy Worthington, may not realize that:
1. As of August 17, 2010, the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station had 178 foreign citizens detained, in seven different prison camps. As of August 27, 2010, that number had been reduced to 176 detainees.
2. As of July 19, 2010, “a total of 594 Guantanamo prisoners” [only a fraction of whom – less than 37 – were ordered released by federal judges in habeas rulings] “[had] been released” [the vast majority of them by the military acting under unilateral Executive Branch authority, during the Bush and Obama administrations] “(or, in some cases, transferred to the custody of their home governments, or of other governments), and six men [had] died there, five in mysterious circumstances.”
3. Guantanamo’s peak prison population reached 779 “protected” wartime foreign prisoners. To bring that number down to the 176 still detained today, about eight years after most were first seized and sent to Guantanamo from abroad, hundreds of voluntary, unexplained, unilateral releases by the military, at the behest of the Executive Branch (most of them during the Bush administration), quietly took place, after detainees had been held for years. Hundreds of captives were thus released, without explanation, apology or reparations, despite supposedly being held ‘for the duration’ of the armed conflict in which they were and are claimed (without lawful basis, in violation of the due process required by the law of armed conflict and our Constitution) to have been “combatants.” Furthermore, all Guantanamo prisoners – even the small minority of detainees who have finally had a merits hearing on their habeas corpus petitions in federal court and won a release order as unlawfully-detained non-combatants – were and are unilaterally decreed, en masse, by the U.S. President and military (in violation of the Third Geneva Convention, Article 5, and Army Regulation 190-8 implementing same, which requires POW status by default unless and until fairly revoked) to be non-POW participants in an armed conflict with the United States. [All detainees are thus deemed ineligible for POW protections and treatment (treatment which flatly prohibits coercive interrogation), and for court-martial jurisdiction under the UCMJ if accused of violating the law of war, for the duration of hostilities and thus for the duration of their detention in American military/CIA custody.]
4. A total of only 24 (foreign, purportedly non-POW) Guantanamo detainees have been accused and charged under the 2006/2009 Military Commission Act(s) with violating the law of war – in addition to being indefinitely detained as “combatants” in the ongoing armed conflict.
5. A total of only 4 of those 24 (from among those 779) have been charged and convicted by Guantanamo Military Commission – two by plea bargain (one under Bush, one under Obama). (There have been no Commission trials that ended in acquittal.) Two of the four convicted were released to their home countries before President Obama took office. A third is awaiting sentencing, and the fourth was given a life sentence after refusing legal representation during his Commission trial.
6. The two non-plea-bargain Commission convictions are (automatically) under appeal. Oral argument in the two appeals was held in January, 2010, and very-consequential decisions on the arguments made – for and against the Commissions and the war crimes charged – from the newly-minted Court of Military Commission Review (which has almost no case load), are overdue. The appellate briefs in the appeal of Salim Hamdan are available here, and the January oral argument in that appeal may be heard here.
7. Meanwhile, since June, 2008 (thanks to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Boumediene decision authored by Anthony Kennedy), habeas corpus hearings have been ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (alone) to consider the petitions filed by remaining Guantanamo inmates (challenging their military detention as unlawful, usually with pro bono assistance from secrecy-gagged American civilian attorneys). Of the 52 habeas corpus cases decided and upheld on appeal by federal judges as of August 17, 2010, the judges ordered the release of 37 detainees, finding them unlawfully detained under the law of war (14 of those 37 remain detained due to unresolved appeals, or D.C. Circuit-protected Executive will), and judges permitted the military to continue detaining, as “more likely than not a part of” Al Qaeda or associated forces when seized, 15 detainees.
I don’t like them at all, but rush, billo and glenn exist for a reason. Do you think they would be making any real progress if obama delivered.
Here’s a suggestion… if you are so disgusted – leave.
I like that suggestion. I shall.
I have already left one decaying empire in disgust.
Another? Yes. There is a whole port of the world to see. I have visited about 48 countries, and lived in eight.
Or charge the war criminals as our constitution requires.
We have given quarter to treason, sir.
That’s a mighty Republican attitude there…or at least that’s what I thought when Republicans were saying that same thing to liberals when Bush was in office.
That was a small Nuremburg Rally, a Nuremburg rally none the less.
In right wing mythology Beck’s Bund Rally will go down in history as a benchmark.
Here’s a pic of Teabaggers of yore.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=10005684&MediaId=2745
Triumph of the Will directed by Leni Reifenstahl is a movie worth watching. It is of the Nuremeberg Nazi Party rally, I think the year was 1935. It is, or was, available online.
It’s all there.
If you didn’t catch it, the author of Common Nonsense speaks somberly about how Beck’s ambition dwarfs that of others in right-wing media:
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/11680/Common+Nonsense+Glenn+Beck+and+the+Triumph+of+Ignorance.aspx
Book TV replayed this yesterday, I think on C-Span 2.
- Tom
Many in Germany thought the man that became the future Fuhrer was a joke and never took him seriously until it was too late.
They thought Adolf was a joke—then he promised them jobs and order and honor and the majority voted for him.
Thinking the turnout at Beck’s “Religious Rally” proved once and for all why Bush had two terms as Prez. Yes Virginia, there really are that many idiots in America.
One elected term actually. The first was a steal.
And so was his second term, if you remember Ohio.
Your characterization of the New York Times and your following analysis is superior to my epithet (“mealy-mouthed”), which I only used because really I was writing in rant genre, and didn’t have the time or energy to do the kind of critique you did. I wish now that I have. But to everything there is a season… I still wish you’d take your critique and work it up into diary shape.
To skepticdog @13, yes, exactly right. Without failure or paralysis or cowardice or inaction on the left (and Obama is not the left, so let us say by those not on the right), the right is emboldened and the stage is left to them. But that would put things too simplistically. The real reason Obama doesn’t do much is because American politics are subservient to the maintenance and support of its military empire, and to change much threatens the latter. Any feelings of real change would inspire or motivate real hope, and then real organization to change things, and the police/intelligence agencies work overtime to make sure that can’t happen. Let us hope their efforts will ultimately be in vain, or overwhelmed by a national movement for substantive or social and economic change that they cannot derail.
To VCORE @14, don’t think the thought has never crossed my mind. But as an answer to the questions I explicitly or implicitly raise about this society, kind of knee-jerk, don’t you think?
To riversidepo @31, the history of the human race is one long orgy of violence and exploitation. The flawed and partial American Revolution, and the French Revolution that followed some 13 years later, were seen by some (and retrospectively by others, myself included) as steps in the right direction. The native Americans were unable to unify or undo the technological edge the interlopers brought to their land, were slaughtered or enslaved, or fought them to the terrible standstill of apartheid isolation. The Africans enslaved and brought to the United States joined the Union Army and helped destroy the slave system their labor had helped build, even if the Union was a wavering and ambivalent partner, and the North also dripping in racism. But the fight at least continued to edge in a more progressive direction, toward rights for women, toward the struggle for full civil rights for blacks and other minority groups, towards a fairer economic system, with progressive taxation and anti-trust laws. So… what could I expect… only that which did happen. What matters now is what do we do with what we are given. Do we fight to rein in and control the irrational destructive impulses in humanity, and the national and economic forms they have taken, or do we give ourselves over to the demagogues who serve the multinational corporations, the bankers, the military and armaments industries who actually run this society in large part?
To Romberry @32, I share your sentiments, and I think my despair over “progressives” and “liberals” is in line with your comments.
To figaro @34, I ask why Harry Reid wasn’t thrown out of the leadership after he starting echoing the anti-Muslim sentiments on the “mosque” controversy? Of course, it was only the latest in a number of “capitulations” for the man in the Senate most responsible for corralling the majority party into support for the wars abroad, the sell-out medical “reform,” etc.
beautifully written Jeff! applauds
Correction: My first paragraph @49 was really aimed at Powwow @12. No offense to canadianbeaver who wrote a nice comment.
I finally figured out your “still” reference in that paragraph @ 49, Jeff – you had me wondering, as I’d only written those details the day before I reposted them here (thanks for your appreciative comment in Daphne’s diary thread). No, I don’t think you’ve been missing diaries from me. I tend to bide my time until something provokes me enough to compose a (detailed) diary, and meanwhile leave comments where I think those interested (like the New York Times writer) might find them if they’re looking, and also partly, I suppose, as dry runs for later diaries. I think, in a way, I’m working against the superficial, fleeting topic-of-the-day nature of the blogosphere by using diaries to collect a lot of evidence at once when I do write them. So a “Guantanamo by the Numbers” diary may yet be in the cards – perhaps after we’ve formally reached 600 detainees released by our military – after years of detaining these foreign citizens seized abroad and then flown to Cuba, and despite the ongoing armed conflict supposedly justifying their indefinite detention – without explanation (aside from the 37 ordered released by federal judges), apology or reparations.
Re diaries, I understand. Due to the pressures to produce things, and to make an effect, no matter how small, upon the political discourse out there in the great world, I’ll produce shorter pieces, really less substantive some of the great comments by you or Mary; and other times, I have really originally researched articles, with a tremendous amount of material that I put out there, and they get sort of lost as the news cycle rolls on.
I very much appreciate your digging and your critical mind. Please keep up the work in any format you choose.
Is the General in the clip modeled after the father of the Koch brothers?
Rich has a good synopsis of the Koch-engendered mess we’re in.
It seems like a particularly ‘down’ time right now for progressives. We need some rays of sunshine from somewhere to rejuvenate the movement.
Just say now.
I need a valium
“Capitalism is what makes this country great.”
The biggest lie ever perpetrated on the U.S. public is that capitalism and democracy are synonymous.
I believe one could make a good argument that US style capitalism, ie: corporatism, is antithetical to democracy.
Wow. Great post. I pull out my copy of Nausea every couple of years to remind me that all we have is the physical world. That may depress some but it gives me solace. In times like these, when the despair hits particularly hard, it is important to remember that these sorts of things have been going on as long as man has been around and that the pendulum will eventually swing the other way.
I’m going to spend today outside, creating a small circular rock patio around a bird bath. At this point, it is the only thing I can do to change the world for the better.
“mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
–Voltaire
Glenn Beck Ate Our Lunch!
I am a veteran of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, a political campaign manager, speech writer , and grass roots organizer. My one hundred campaigns included Carl Stokes, Maynard Jackson, and Fred Gray. I am so far left of center that if the earth were flat, I would be clinging to the edge!
Glenn Beck ate our lunch yesterday and whoever (Al Sharpton etc.) thought of doing a rally that would surely be compared to Beck’s, is either crazy or stupid! Beck’s rally was to be on the Mall, Sharpton’s in a high school gym? Hello? As far as media and PR are concerned, it was a recipe for disaster.
Beck ate our lunch yesterday, folks! For shame!
My wife and where there and wrote this travelogue > http://unsoliciteddrivel.blogspot.com/2010/08/our-beckbullpalooza-journal-or-i-see.html
Thanks for the most excellent report.
Why don’t you crosspost it here?
Great travelogue, although it did make me throw up in my mouth just a little bit…
What do you all expect from a country that in policy declared freedom from the King, equality for all (meaning white man), believed in Manifest Destiny, then proceeded to enslave for profit and engage in ethnic cleansing in a new land that appeared to “owned” by no one in particular and therefore ripe for picking (theft really!)
My expectations for this country couldn’t be any lower and yet we still keep walking under that bar.
It is people like Howard Dean and Harry Reid who fail to stand up for our core beliefs, who have allowed this to happen. It is people like us who don’t hold our leaders accountable who have allowed this to happen. We are a nation of cowards … all hail Glen Beck.
Glenn Beck is, in my estimation, the epitomy of all that is wrong with this nation!
yeah — and Beck’s assuming the mantle of Savior — bleccch
Dean? Really? Because in one instance he said that he personally thought that the Park 51 center should consider moving? That one issue makes him a coward? What about our president who on one day seemed to stand up for the right to put Park 51 in the proposed location and then the very next day said “I was not commenting on and will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there.”
If Dean and Reid are cowards, Obama is too. Or that’s the way it looks to me.
I don’t expect leaders to be perfect. They are after all just human. And I have to object to the “all or nothing” attitude that seems so common these days.
You may not agree with Howard Dean on the Park 51 issue. I know that I don’t. But that doesn’t make Dean a coward. In fact, of just about all high profile Democrats, my opinion is that Howard Dean is among the bravest of the bunch. On this issue, I just think he’s wrong.
Agreed, Dean is much closer to my ideal than obama, et.al. Maybe congress is not such a good place to look for future presidents. It is a good place to learn deal making and compromise.
I had Obama in there too but pulled him out because I’m tired of talking about him.
I think the issue of the Muslim community center and Dean’s response is fair game. There are some things that are non-negotiable and our constitution is one of them. If Dean isn’t willing to stand up to the right wing terrorists of this country, then he is a coward and is part of the problem.
Don’t forget that Dean also caved on the health care issue when he determined his position would lose and decided that he needed to seem more reasonable so that he could get elected to office at some point. He gave his blessing to that piece of crap and gave Beck and the neocons another avenue to weaken the already spineless Dems.
When Dems don’t stand up, the vacuum they create is filled by people like Beck. I don’t give Dean a pass on that. Dean is a coward and is part of the problem.
Moderateextremist at comment #38 summed it up perfectly,
“Who is responsible for transforming conservatism and conservatives from a demoralized, left-for-dead, pathetic, hangdog bunch after the 2008 elections…into a movement capable of staging and manning a spectacle like the one on the National Mall on Saturday?”
My response to that is Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, and just about every other spineless Democrat in congress who is afraid to stand up for their core beliefs because the scary Republicans might be mean to them.
never forget
DEAN is Dean Witter wallstreet…we have no commoners ..and most of the elected are filthy rich….status quo
Sadly … yes.
Um, they’re not spineless. It takes a lot of balls to constantly and consistently throw your strongest base of support under the bus.
They’re not scared that right-wing shock-jocks and Republicans will be mean to them. They’re politicians, they don’t have any core beliefs to be standing up for in the first place.
The only qualification for the job is that one is able to win a glorified popularity contest. That’s a very, very important thing to keep in mind about your government. It is wholly run by people who’s only qualification is that they were more shamelessly self-promoting than the next guy.
My idealistic side asks the question, “Does it have to be that way? Where are the hard-core liberals who don’t care about the popularity contest and who’s goal it is to fight for the great ideals this country used to embody?”
(/idealism)
You are absolutely right.
They’re writing initiatives and proposals.
Agreed. I think it is clear to many that by this point, after the horrific debacle of the Bush/Cheney years, that the Democratic Party did not only not stand up and really try to change things, but they are incapable of doing so. They were presented with a near-strike by Finance Capital, who decided not to spend anything and blackmail the U.S. government and society with a total shutdown of investment and money lending unless they were largely reimbursed or otherwise covered for their gambling spree and criminal fraud over the previous ten to fifteen years. The Democrats, most of them rich and/or upper-middle class had not a inkling of the radical change that was necessary at that point, but moved quickly to save the capitalist system from large-scale collapse. After that, it was back to business as usual, and any opposition was suborned into support for finance capital and its own agenda, and nothing is allowed to transgress their limitations on what is acceptable “reform.” So instead of meat, the population is served political gruel, and that is what we subsist on even today.
I think that even when the system finally implodes, as its crazy irrationality and drive for total dominance by small subgroups of society, combined with terrible technology and killing machines, portends, that people will still be defending capitalism, and screeching about the bogey-man “socialism”, even as the society descends into anarchy and barbarism. As someone who noted the Rwanda example above, it doesn’t take much to set off those inner triggers of mass hysteria and violence against the “other” in human society. The American ruling class is playing with fire, even nuclear fire, and unless they are reined in, and a new, more courageous left arises to actually contend for power, the future looks bleaker and bleaker.
Your comments are well thought out and your writing is beautiful. Thank you for providing this venue to rant.
I keep going back to the idea of the pendulum eventually swinging back to the progressive side–mostly because it keeps me from crying myself to sleep–but another very real possibility is that “a new, more courageous left” will never materialize and our great experiment with Democracy will fail, not because of faults with the concept or the founding documents, but because of inherent human weakness.
This ping-ponging between hope and despair is not an easy way to live. For now, I choose hope. I still believe we can have a positive effect at the ballot box and make some positive change if we don’t lose our courage–vote out ALL incumbents! But I reserve my right to fall weeping into a pile of mush should the situation call for that. ;-)
We have the troops to march. How do we make it happen?
Money.
Just how much money did the SCLC have?
Acronyms make my head hurt. Sorry for my last flippant response about money. I’ve got nothing. You’re question was excellent and I wish I had a better response.
We are on the same page, and I suspect about equally depressed over all this mess.
Sometimes flip is the way to go. The SCLC is King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Jane somehow found a way to get us this far. I wish I had more ideas to get us farther. If we could address the issue of propaganda in the media, we could create an opening. Don’t we have anti-propaganda laws here and aren’t the air waves owned by the public? Media Matters has more than enough documentation to prove that Fox is a propaganda outfit and now that they have donated 1 million to the Republicans, it should be a slam dunk to get them off the air.
Again, we are lacking anyone with courage, who is in a position of power, to tackle this issue.
Maybe the Firedoglake community can pool our money and buy a television network? I’ve got about 5 bucks in my wallet. Then we could create our own tea party megaphone.
I wish I had an answer to your question.
I really find it a perplexing question also. It seems to come back to the lack of charismatic leadership. But certainly there must be someones among us who could provide it. My sense is there is still a lack of comprehension that one has to look beyond Maslov for inspiration and that emotion can be a powerful force for the good as well as the circus.
Treat it like a conspiracy to commit torture. Investigate FOXN as if it were, in fact, coconspirator to a coup.
Investigate 9/11 as to why the media worked so hard to cover it up. Some of them were very willful about it and others are/were simply ignorant, which are which? That would be important to sort out.
and @ 75. You got it! I’d only add, where is the creativity to organize and motivate? As Scoop Nisker used to say, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” How do we do that effectively?
It helps to crystalize the current reality when you consider our political balance as a ratchet, not a pendulum.
:-)
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html
Too funny! Stop depressing me with your accurate comments.
Here’s the trick. Don’t let it depress you. Let it empower you. The first step to ending paralysis, stalemate, frustration, and helplessness is to accurately assess why all your previous efforts have resulted in no gains.
Once you can do that, then you can work on ways to change, or at least subvert, the things that have been real barriers.
I agree wholeheartedly and that is how I approach politics. But after carefully analysis, I have determined that we are fucked no matter what we do. Hence my depression.
My main goal now is to stop people from voting out of fear of the other guy. That seems to me the most logical path forward. We need to make the leadership understand that they work for us. Unfortunately, it has been an uphill battle. Most people look at me cross-eyed when I ask them to vote for a Republican so we can get rid of some of the dead wood in the Democratic party.
I admire your ability to stay focused and energized. I am trying to do the same but I fail miserably at times.
I see the concept of representative democracy as a problem generally, or at least the common version where the same people that draft the legislation are also the ones that vote on whether to enact it or not.
I don’t think it’s possible to have a thoughtful and effective government with any regularity under such a system. In abandoning any inclinations to assist or get involved in representative electoral politics; I’ve redoubled my efforts in popular initiatives.
I’d rather have “mob-rule” than “wealthy-elite-rule” any day. :-)
“…every other spineless Democrat in congress who is afraid to stand up for their core beliefs …”
The only core belief that Obama seems to hold is that if he
compromisescapitulates enough, republicans will learn to like him.Hmmm, he might be a growth industry. The really funny thing is that when hitler rose to power, he didn’t leave any liberals or conservatives standing. The GOP might be wise to consider that.
“It is people like Howard Dean and Harry Reid who fail to stand up for our core beliefs …”
When the republicans take back the house and start hunting witches with every committee in Congress, no one is going to look like a bigger sellout than Nancy Pelosi.
I was thinking the same thing when I read a few days ago how some tea partiers are salivating at getting subpoena power when they win back the house. Reminded me of how wisely Pelosi had used that power to stop the politicization of the justice dept. and finally brought accounting for torture in America. Oh, wait … never mind.
And one more thing slightly off topic;
I’ve been hearing rumblings in the progressive community that we can’t get rid of the filibuster because “What happens when the Republicans get back in control?”
The Democrats didn’t use the filibuster to stop the wars, stop Alito, stop warrantless wiretapping etc… What makes anyone believe that they will use the filibuster in the future? The Democrats will never benefit from the filibuster because they are too weak to use it and the Democratic leaders are only interested in strong-arming the progressives and not the blue dogs.
The filibuster is a strategic win for the Republicans because they will punish anyone who strays from the party line whereas the Democrats will promote them to positions of power like Joe Lieberman.
Get rid of the filibuster.
Was enjoying and agreeing with your comments until I got to this one, figaro.
Don’t really know where to begin after all my earlier diaries and comments on the issue, except by saying that the filibuster in practice has already been gotten “rid of” by both Parties long since – because both Parties are equally contemptuous and fearful of traditional, public, legislative process.
You know what really needs to be gotten rid of? The lack of public debate in the U.S. Senate and, even more so, the U.S. House of Representatives. [See, for example, the suspended, without recess or adjournment, via pretend quorum call, "sessions" of the modern Senate, and the blockade posed by the House (that is, post-1880, the Speaker's) Rules Committee to meaningful debate and amendment of legislation on the House floor.] “Our government” is our Congress. Only our Congress isn’t ours anymore, as we all realize – almost all of its actions have been taken, without meaningful objection, behind closed doors, where the deals with the powerful and the wealthy are worked out in secret.
It strikes me that many, or most, Americans (media included), have accepted, and would continue to accept, the status quo of an essentially undemocratic federal legislature ruled from the top down by a handful of individuals (or by the President) if only the Party or Parties in power more or less did what they wanted done.
For me, that’s not enough, because I believe that such a dangerous concentration of power sooner or later leads to the situation with which we are now confronted, and which we can foresee if Republicans retake the minority-silencing House. I want a genuine Legislative Branch of government – where individual legislators independently act on their own consciences and represent the constituents in their own districts whenever those conflict with the will of the President or the bosses of the Party of which, if any, they are a member. [In that regard, though doubtless no one in the media is asking them (or any candidates) this crucial, process-based question, if any "Tea Party" legislators elected to the House via the Republican ticket actually plan to regularly buck their Party leadership in Congress, when principle requires it, that would be a healthy, reform-promoting development unseen in the current Democratic Congress.]
What the comments in this thread are expressing, I think, is the enormous difficulty of challenging and diluting or dispersing power after it’s been concentrated (in this case, by two national political Parties that have the system rigged). Hitler started concentrating power for himself by targeting and imprisoning non-Jewish Germans unwilling to salute and follow one man’s will, years before he attacked any foreign nation. By the time he had the means to be a serious threat to his people and the world, his power was already so concentrated – from the ground up – that challenging it in any meaningful way was almost an impossibility within Germany. That’s the lesson that the American politicians and media promoting or tolerating or appeasing playground bullies with national megaphones, like Beck, haven’t learned – it’s only in the early stages of such distortions of American sentiments and principles that they can have a meaningful impact by pushing back. If public figures wait too long, their chance to safeguard or improve the course of the nation will be gone. And, of course, we already have a well-entrenched, effectively state-sponsored demonization campaign against Muslims and Arabs that’s centered in and maintained by “our” Congress.
The failure or lack of public “leadership” in this nation is indeed profound – it manifested most glaringly in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and has long been obvious in the years since, and can probably be attributed in large part to the censorship (and/or abuse) by the corporate-power-serving national media of anyone who tries to be such a leader.
She should go after them now, with a vengeance.
Expose them right before the election. You wanted torture to lie us into war? The Bush Cheney administration would never have gotten it without the full support of their Republican congress! The only way that is not an impeachable offense is if Pelosi is a part of the cover up.
What she needs to hear is more pressure from the folks who will or will not reelect her into office to investigate all that then she hears from the forces making her want to cover it up. I think the way to do that is with a sit in her congressional offices demanding an answer to the illegal war and unsupervised funding questions.
Your history lesson entirely skipped the Doctrine of Discovery. Sorry, but that rant is not fact based if you leave out the Doctrine of Discovery, it is still being used in law, even today.
Christian ‘doctrine’ fueled dehumanization: UNPFII report
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/92454329.html
I highly recommend clicking the link and reading it all, then maybe MY slogan of “take back our country” will make more sense.
We are still here.
For me the most obscene aspect of the Beck thing was his including Native Americans on the speaking stand and perverting the early history to somehow present the Plymouth and Virginia settlers and Native Americans as peacefully co-existing and worshiping the same God. We all know that barely lasted beyond the first Thanksgiving. Sort of like the school books that described slaves as “people who came to work in the fields.”
The Mormons have a whole big plan they are implementing, that is just a small part of it.
I’ve been arguing freedom of religion as a strategy to legalize pot for years. I really think Beck is their latest answer to what I am doing. I should watch his show but I don’t. I just cant stomach him, but I do think he finds me irresistible to denigrate.
It is one of their techniques, when they notice a leader (like me) they dish out enough bad experiences to induce (in my case crippling) PTSD to make them stop leading. I have a feeling the Bush administration worked it to a fine art and Obama is loath to undo their work so in practice we have almost no leaders.
Hmmm…
This sounds like the same sort of religious intolerance that we’ve heard with regard to Muslims, and the Park 51 project…
I’m glad that you can sort out this kind of thing…
I tend to be an absolutist where religious freedom is concerned.
Thanks for the heads-up about the Mormons.
How can we get rid of them?
Sorry for you, that is a myopic from from a Western Civilization perspective. Mine is based on an indigenous one that takes in to account what the other side of the world has wrought on this one.
Interesting that those were among the quotes selected. Do you think any of our highest Democratic leaders would object to those particular quotes? I don’t. Some examples…
“Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.” – Barack Obama
“You would be hard-pressed to identify a piece of legislation that we have proposed out there that, net, is not good for businesses.” – Barack Obama
From Fortune/CNN…
And just for good measure, how about Democratic catfood commission co-chair Erskine Bowles:
Bottom line is that when you add all of that to the Torturville thing, I have a hard time worrying about Beck and the Tea Party folks. I feel like I have enough to worry about just keeping my eye on the folks that are supposed to be on our side.
IMHO I do not believe we need to fear a Nazi-type genocidal regime here, 12 years of fascism. Even though many Americans are more racist than even Germany in the thirties most Americans, unlike most Germans, can’t stand being told what to do. A German I know who was once asked why the holocaust happened said “Once we Germans decide to do something we don’t stop until we finish the job.” That isn’t us. What is far more likely in my opinion is a Rwanda- style anarchical genocide, after which people will have the nerve to act surprised.
I’ve been banging this drum to the point of redundancy the past week or so. I’m glad I’m not alone. And don’t be surprised to see a “Draft Beck” movement for 2012.
Beck/Palin – the Tea Party* dream ticket for 2012.
*(Alice in Wonderland, Mad-hatter style Tea Party.)
Time for some introspection…
Who is responsible for transforming conservatism and conservatives from a demoralized, left-for-dead, pathetic, hangdog bunch after the 2008 elections…into a movement capable of staging and manning a spectacle like the one on the National Mall on Saturday?
Or…should we wait until the morning after Election Day in November?
“Glenn Beck is one dangerous demagogue. He should not be underestimated.”
!!!
Nor the people who agree with him…
The thing is–Fox and Beck promote this for months. Other networks may not promote it directly but by covering it they certainly do indirectly. There is organized money behind it. And of course there are plenty of stupid people to take advantage of.
How can these events possibly fail?
If the left had similar support and promotion I’d expect a large gathering as well. But we’ll never see that because those with money and power won’t allow it.
Diverse grass roots campaigns for these things can’t compete with media giants and a running tap of corporate money. Beck tying religion to the movement is brilliant, really. When political movement and religious fervor become one–it’s a potent mix.
If social justice becomes a sin–as Beck seems to want to make it out to be—you won’t be able to reason with the religious nuts in ANY way. Logic holds no sway.
All of these things make his events “can’t fail events” and the media sees this big success(which they helped to create) as the will of America.
It’s a lot to fight.
I get emails that are forwarded along–I have friends who are on lists and everything is forwarded–and these are UNION guys. What is the email? Rightwing propaganda. They are battling on all fronts and winning. They are using the structure at hand to do it.
The left remains unmotivated and disorganized.
How do you fight back when that’s the reality?
IMHO, a big part of the problem is that many on the left (or rather, the center, which is where I put liberals) would never deign to become involved with “union guys”. A lot of upper middle-class liberals are only interested in personal, cultural issues like gay rights, a woman’s right to an abortion, etc. but are economically comfortable and don’t want their taxes raised nor for the economy to be restructured to redistribute wealth to the lower 80% living a subsistence existence. Thankfully that is not true of this website.
You’re right. I’m a college educated, blue-collar union member. Despite supporting many of the “veal-pen” causes, most of my liberal friends are actually very Reaganesque in their world view. They do not understand the idea of working-class heroes, and instead deeply admire celebrity and wealth, ie., Bill Gates, etc. The notion that blue-collar workers (read people who don’t own their own businesses) should have decent wages, pensions, and other benefits is disturbing to them. There aren’t many working class people playing on the gold courses they frequent, so there is no real opportunity to meet and socialize as equals.
In times when class war intensifies, we will all be called upon to declare what side we’re on. I’m not counting on my liberal friends.
Count on this one. I may be an effete white-collar business owner, but I know where I stand.
Lol, there aren’t many of us. My father was a truck driver and a Teamster but I have a PhD, and in all the time I was working on it the only other working class person I met doing the same was a German who had once worked in a VW factory. I completely agree with you about the attitudes of non-working class people toward us. They try to understand what we are like but instead of focusing on THE defining feature of being a worker- living from paycheck to paycheck, continuously afraid that the next one won’t be there– they focus on our mannerisms: the way we talk, the food we eat, the clothing we wear, our choices in entertainment, and other things you might notice while pumping gas. They just don’t understand what it is like not to have money to fall back on if you have none at the moment and an emergency strikes, as it always does. It is as though to have something in common with us and to be respected by us that they must express an appreciation for things that we wouldn’t be doing if we could afford to.
I would think that any small business owner would identify with that condition thoroughly.
I live in a constant state of high-stress. Working ridiculously high numbers of hours a week when I can bring in enough work; while terrified at the inevitability that the current stream of revenue will disappear shortly. Then when things slow down, and I ought to be able to relax, I’m confronted with the immediate reality that I need to be vigorously drumming up new work.
It is constant cycle of feast or famine, on timelines that can swing within a matter of a couple months. Worse these days, now that projects tend to be much smaller in scope, and run for much shorter durations in the down economy.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There are of course working class people who start small businesses (sadly, often during economic downturns when they are laid off), and still are working class: their business is just tools they need in order to work, like a carpenter’s hammers, saw’s etc., and if they stop working they starve like any worker. But there are also small business owners who are independently wealthy and are running a store for something to do. I met someone once in college who told me her mother was rich, when I asked what they did she said they operated one of these packaging stores like a FedEx or UPS store. What I found out later is that the mother had bought it to give the new husband something to do, that they had trust funds etc. from real estate investments and industrial activities that meant that they were not relying on their little store to survive. Their lives were NOT similar to those of working class people. There are of course people in between these two extremes.
I thought union support of prop 19 was an indication of the powerful new post partisan political coalition that was forming around the issue of unreasonable police states, loser black market economies, and marijuana law.
Great post Jeff.
There’s a bright side to the ongoing Glenn Beck-Saran Palin jerkfest that will probably culminate in 2012. Maybe when true leadership comes around, people will finally see the disgrace of demagogues, and reject them out of hand. People learn by comparison. Once a true leader enters the stage, the likes of Bush, Obama, and Beck will remembered for the low-life opportunists and demagogues that they are. But the question is, where is the true American political leadership that the country, and the world is waiting for? America’s history of leaders is extraordinary, form Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, to JFK, and MLK, men have risen to the occasion. I think true American leaders will rise in our day too, so we should remain hopeful.
I can tell you from trying, it is really dangerous.
My guess is every one of them ends up in prison, in a mental ward, is turned, discredited, or killed. I figured the only way for us to do it was as a group effort – so they would never know who our leaders are. Of course that leaves us rather leaderless
Jeff. Thank you so much for this superb “rant.”
When paranoids like Beck can gather a crowd of near half a million one wonders were are the true intellectual and spiritual descendants of MLK? The betrayed and disappointed liberal and progressive “troops” are there.
I actually read Broder today. He wrote only on the MLK event. Link I was struck with this paragraph which gives I think accurate context.
Kennedy got King.
Obama gets Beck.
The one positive result of the Beck extravaganza is that it will get the attention of the serious minded public media and hopefully be more closely examined and exposed.
The bad news is it will also get the attention of every Democratic office holder from the president down. Care to guess what message they will take to heart?
According to Beck himself (1:08): “I have just gotten word from the media, there’s over a 1000 people here today.”
That’s it over 1000. And you have to admit it does look pretty pathetic.
That hardly compares with MLK Jr. 1963.
I wonder how many in the Beck crowd purchased Gold when they got home.
Teh stupid…..
I’d like to point out that I’m shocked, SHOCKED, that this kind of corrosive, toxic wet-blanketism has made its way onto the front page of FDL.
The kind of talk in this article is usually swiftly admonished when it’s presented in comments.
To the rest of the planet America has always been a strange place. It was energetic, creative, and except for a little imperialism, minor wars and and a few coups, generally a positive force in the world.
Having worked for years in the US I often envied your sense of purpose and dynamism. But I always felt a sigh of relief crossing the border back to Canada, where individualism is tempered with more compassion, common sense and compromise.
I never dreamed that America would fully devolve into a neoconservative security state run for the benefit of wealthy and autocratic men pandering to theocratic zealots. I never thought I would see a day when your cherished liberty would extend only to gun ownership and the freedom to descend into poverty.
I agree with Figaro@26, “it is important to remember that these sorts of things have been going on as long as man has been around and that the pendulum will eventually swing the other way”.
The only questions are when and at what cost? What will America look like when the pendulum finally changes direction, and how much collateral damage will have been done?
My suffering (albeit mild) under the rule of a George Bush wannabe and his Insane Clown Posse government, is nothing compared with the helpless burghers in foreign lands yet to be bombed – not to mention the growing permanent American underclass.
Time to pat the dog, do a little gardening or help at the food bank.
Whenever a right-winger blogs about “restoring honor,” I suggest torture conspiracy prosecutions of former President Bush and VP Cheney would be the best place to start.
Beck is barely getting warmed up. Put his image next to one of Adolph, and see the close physical sameness.
What to me is a thing to consider: That there may be sort of archetypes, that come to the fore, at the appointed times in history. Archetypes that channel the emotions of the masses. But they appear when the conditions are just ripe, like most things in nature do.
That we in this time are so cock sure in our “agnosticism”, or our naive evangelism or catachisms and rampant secular humanist half backed cosmopolitanism, Are illequiped to recognize demigods when they make landfall.
I want to emphasize the physical similarity, body type, facial type, phenotype: A compact roman type. Beck seems to have sprung from some past millenium. But that is good stagecraft too, which is constituent of course.
Even great psych’s like Jung in particular, were interested in the Archetype, ( a kind of template, that underlies mere existants.) In ancient world they had many gods, that gave something. We are fools to deny our betters, of that time? Our ancestors, who lived big, and had better genes.
Thanks this comment is an attempt to say things, that are above my pay grade etc. And don’t let me leave with out Thanks to Jeff Kaye for a great post, and many fine comments out there.