In the discipline of cultural pathology, our case study can become a full-time cable channel. How did the American Dream become this Nightmare? What is it about us that keeps us from a modesty of means and dreams instead of living as a "Chosen People?"
I began looking at the meme of the American Century in the 70's. It is the distillate of Manifest Destiny, the Founder's Legacy reduced to the essential liquor of Providence. In this complex intoxicant, one finds both the moral idealism of Universal Humanity and the narcissism of how that UH looks so much like us.
For the religious critics of American culture, the current decay surely gives them ample material, just as it feeds the writers for Stewart and Colbert. If you want to have a NT perspective of counter-culture alienation, just blame modernity and secularism and hold fast to the "truths." Send the money to Rev. Slimemaker at ........ If you want a serious perspective to decide what gods are false, you might want to suspect those selling God as the answer right off the bat.
The Gods of America are Mars and Mammon. Jesus is dying on the cross again. Empire is ruling, and war is the way to peace. Get ready for that Great Gettin' Up Morning.
One of your darker takes, DRC.
I guess there are all sorts of ways we can criticize the current state of demise. What makes sense is that we all seem to be seeing a process and it's not going well for all of us on a mass scale.
is an article from an insider. It is a cult, doomsday cult, or he compares to the extremes in Europe in the last century. Sounds like fascism to me.
By "it" I presume you are referring to the extremes that have taken the Republican Party hostage? In other words, the topic of this thread, those being associated with or at least approved of by the Crackpot Party (otherwise: the Tea Party), as the now retired "operative" I believe identified them:
Mike Lofgren wrote:
But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy. It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill.
I read that essay on another thread and thought it belonged here because it paralleled the ideas presented in the study cited above:
Here's what I consider important about that study and why I felt correlating it with Lofgren's essay makes some sense, and especially so because some of the knee jerk comments about the study from the right make such typical paranoid charges as "it was paid for by the government": The study's purpose plainly stated:
Quote:
In exploring the TPM (Tea Party Movement), we set out to determine if general public support for the movement represents a new political and cultural phenomenon or whether it is simply realignment with the Republican Party. Specifically, what are the political and cultural dispositions of Tea Party supporters?
If those dispositions are new, as suggested, then it would seem that the whole project we call the United States can be looked at as very likely on that path those concerned about a turn towards fascism have expressed here. And for those of us who are not comfortable with authoritarianism, that's of some very great concern to us. It's another way of saying we've lost those factors in our political system that have kept the spinning top righting itself and upright, though occasionally wobbly.
When a former insider in the Republican Party walks away and spells out why in an essay that parallels a study of this sort, we might do well to listen.
Here is what the study's authors concluded from their efforts in the final paragraph:
Quote:
Recognizing that the 2008-2010 Tea Party Movement is one such backlash is key to understanding what is new about it and what is not. The coalition of views that makes up the TPM is largely the same that makes up the Republican Party. What is new about the TPM is its syncretic cultural work melding the 21st-century discontent to the symbolic memory of 18th century America. The words of one TPM supporter say it all: "We want to save America. We want to see this country go back to the original success formula that made it what we are today."
And then you get to DRC's ongoing pathology critique where he sees a misplacing of emphasis on the "symbolic memory" of American Exceptionalism and all that has arisen from that somehow meshed into Empire, especially the militancy that leads to war activities. And you can get to Antifascist's ongoing critique of logical positivism which also includes this critique of the positivist reading of the constitution (as expressed in the answers to questions in the study and in their conclusion) as if it were a fundamentalist's Bible reading.
All of these readings do not bode well when put in a historical perspective with nations have gone the route of authoritarianism. And keep in mind that a presidential system (ours) is the one version considered most vulnerable to that route:
Quote:
Tendency towards authoritarianism
Winning the presidency is a winner-take-all, zero-sum prize. A prime minister who does not enjoy a majority in the legislature will have to either form a coalition or, if he is able to lead a minority government, govern in a manner acceptable to at least some of the opposition parties. Even if the prime minister leads a majority government, he must still govern within (perhaps unwritten) constraints as determined by the members of his party—a premier in this situation is often at greater risk of losing his party leadership than his party is at risk of losing the next election. On the other hand, once elected a president can not only marginalize the influence of other parties, but can exclude rival factions in his own party as well, or even leave the party whose ticket he was elected under. The president can thus rule without any allies for the duration of one or possibly multiple terms, a worrisome situation for many interest groups. Juan Linz argues that:
Quote:
The danger that zero-sum presidential elections pose is compounded by the rigidity of the president's fixed term in office. Winners and losers are sharply defined for the entire period of the presidential mandate... losers must wait four or five years without any access to executive power and patronage. The zero-sum game in presidential regimes raises the stakes of presidential elections and inevitably exacerbates their attendant tension and polarization.
Constitutions that only require plurality support are said to be especially undesirable, as significant power can be vested in a person who does not enjoy support from a majority of the population.
All against a background of corrupt money. How long money can buy truth and twist it into messaging to manage consent is my question. Were it just the ideologies of exceptionalism, I think we could deal with it. When it has the weight of gold and lead, when people choose to eat or starve or to live rather than die, what gets embraced is not what "makes sense" if it puts you at risk.
People are not bombarded with imagery in mass media that portrays a simple life set in nature. People in general do not live such lives anymore.
Money pays for all that. Money creates the system that wants to maintain itself, despite the ever rising barriers of contradiction telling us it's not working so well anymore for most of us, as the wealth of the middle class is siphoned upwards once again and people fall through gigantic holes in the capitalistic created sieve below.
And the people following the mythmakers Lofgren is calling crackpots think the whole broken Humpty Dumpty egg can be put back together again.
By "it" I presume you are referring to the extremes that have taken the Republican Party hostage? In other words, the topic of this thread, those being associated with or at least approved of by the Crackpot Party (otherwise: the Tea Party), as the now retired "operative" I believe identified
That is exactly what I was referring to. That and the Judis referenced neo-fuedal [actually that's my label, but Judis was referenced in the operative's article] sector of GOP.
I saw one of the researchers on an msnbc show [Ratigan?], and the group is the old john birchers born again..as it were. Mix koch [father was a founder of birchers] with falwell, or robertson, and they get born again.
Throw in a little ALEC and you get the disenfranchised voters that are seeing behind the curtain and could actually stop it. This is a blatant power grab, and fox had one radio nut-wing radio jock that doesn't think poor should be able to vote. He has since added 'so easily' to his position, so it is now it should not be made easier for the poor to vote. I guess a homeless shelter is not legitimate enough an address for voter registration.
That is exactly what I was referring to. That and the Judis referenced neo-fuedal [actually that's my label, but Judis was referenced in the operative's article] sector of GOP.
I saw one of the researchers on an msnbc show [Ratigan?], and the group is the old john birchers born again..as it were. Mix koch [father was a founder of birchers] with falwell, or robertson, and they get born again.
Throw in a little ALEC and you get the disenfranchised voters that are seeing behind the curtain and could actually stop it. This is a blatant power grab, and fox had one radio nut-wing radio jock that doesn't think poor should be able to vote. He has since added 'so easily' to his position, so it is now it should not be made easier for the poor to vote. I guess a homeless shelter is not legitimate enough an address for voter registration.
These Bircher types are not very astute people, in my experience. And I've known a fair number. Their coolaid seems to damage neurons. The power has already been grabbed. They'll just be patsies. However, that doesn't mean they can't do a lot of damage along the way.
“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio,” he said, “and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering” here at home.
Chomsky was speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, where he received the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.
“The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime,” he said.
He cited a statistic from a recent poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters say the average tea party member is closer to them than anyone else.
“Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error,” Chomsky said.
Their attitudes “are understandable,” he said. “For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined. This is in large part the consequence of the decision in the 1970s to financialize the economy.”
There is class resentment, he noted. “The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels,” he said.
And Obama is linked to the bankers, Chomsky explained.
“The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain,” he said. “They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: They were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are “fine guys” and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’
In the video, a man who looks like Ives sits in front of a Fascist Party logo wearing a uniform with yellow shoulder patches. Another photo shows a uniformed man sitting in front of a fascist cross. The blog that inspired Norwegian mass shooter Anders Behring Breivik describes fascist solar crosses as “symbolic representations buried deep in the regions of the brain where the primal responses to stimuli are rage, awe, and fear....”
These people are around, and many of them are in positions of power. It's scary. I think that the tides are working against them. We'll see. (Not much of a post, I admit. I'm not sure what there is to say). Won't it be wonderful when Texas becomes a blue state?
I saw that article on Raw Story today and thought the guy won't get any support from patriot groups especially those in Texas because they are strongly anti-fascist.
No, all Teabagger Patriots are fascists. They won't like it being pointed out. Like roaches scurrying after the light is turned on, Teabaggers will scurry from the fascist label, but cling to the hyper militantism and jingoistic rhetoric.
Who are we supposed to invade next, Syria or Iran? Let me think, does Syria have oil?
I watched this 2003 Canadian mini-series on Hitler's rise to power entitled, "Hitler: Rise of Evil." This film is pretty good although there are some historical inaccuracies, but they are minor and do not impact the essential events leading to Hitler's rise to power. Here is a list of historical events that the miniseries condensed or otherwise covered sparingly.
What I found most interesting was how Hitler and the Nazis moved into the Reichstag in 1932 and whenever they did not get what they wanted shutdown the entire government by refusing to vote on any government business then walking out of the chamber thereby triggering new state elections as the Reichstag rules required. The Nazis forced four elections in one year by using this parliamentary tactic. In other words, they shutdown the German government and then campaigned on the theme that the government was dysfunctional. Sound familiar?
This is the same tactic that the Republicans and the Tea party Fascist party are using in today's Congress. The fiscal cliff, filibuster, and sequestration are having a similar effect on crippling the United States government when the Republicans and radical Rightwing don't get their way. In Robert Draper's book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives,"Draper wrote about a January 20, 2009 meeting of GOP leaders at a Washington restaurant, The Caucus Room, where they plotted to sabotage the American Economy to prevent Obama from winning a second term.
Watch the movie of Hitler's tactic starting here at 49 minutes with Hindenburg complaining of the Nazi problem.
Also, I should note that executive producer on this mini-series, Ed Gernon, was one of the first media persons before Dan Rather fired from their jobs for expressing opinions critical of the new Bush II administration.
Quote:
Ed Gernon, the executive producer, compared the climate of fear that led to the rise of Nazism to the war on terrorism.
"It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war. I can’t think of a better time to examine this history than now." —Ed Gernon
Production company Alliance Atlantis, where he had worked for more than a decade, fired him for this comparison. CBS said that his "personal opinions are not shared by CBS and misrepresent the network's motivation for broadcasting this film."
Associates claimed that CBS was prompted to act by a New York Post article that claimed the comment was a sign of Hollywood’s anti-Americanism and stated that Gernon had said President George W. Bush should be looked at “through the prism of Germany’s psychopath.”
Also, I should note that executive producer on this mini-series, Ed Gernon, was one of the first media persons before Dan Rather fired from their jobs for expressing opinions critical of the new Bush II administration.
Quote:
Ed Gernon, the executive producer, compared the climate of fear that led to the rise of Nazism to the war on terrorism.
"It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war. I can’t think of a better time to examine this history than now." —Ed Gernon
Production company Alliance Atlantis, where he had worked for more than a decade, fired him for this comparison. CBS said that his "personal opinions are not shared by CBS and misrepresent the network's motivation for broadcasting this film."
Associates claimed that CBS was prompted to act by a New York Post article that claimed the comment was a sign of Hollywood’s anti-Americanism and stated that Gernon had said President George W. Bush should be looked at “through the prism of Germany’s psychopath.”
As a someone who divorced myself from consuming Hollywood-generated entertainment/propaganda on television on a daily basis back in the early seventies and have refused to pay for it ever since, I find the above part of your post instructive. Now-a-days when I do take a brief look at most of the pop entertainment from Hollywood I see it filled with verifications of the standards of a violence-prone, authoritarian society willing to use its vast military power to control the planet.
Of course the description of that process is not the described, as Alfred Korzybski might note if he was still around to do so.
The general description has to do with promoting good and democratic ideals throughout the planet (which will presumably somehow make us all safer... eventually). The actual fact of what is taking place in the far reaches of our vast empire is something else. Meanwhile the blowback is modified by feel good cop shows with pro military trending intelligence technology posing as the normal state of life in America. With generals giving their opinions about the next invasion of some threat to our freedoms. With follow-the-leader news broadcast verbatum as the public relations spokespersons for authorities in government provide it... It ought not surprise anyone to read that a corporate-owned media institution with direct ties to the MIC would want to dissociate itself with anything that might discredit anything the Empire is up to related to beating the drums of war.
2006 – Viacom is split into two companies, with a new Viacom being spun off of the company, and the "old" Viacom being renamed CBS Corporation thus reviving Westinghouse's last name prior to sale.
Anyone not subject to attitude shaping anti liberal propaganda that pervades American culture can notice that Hollywood's major trend setting, media-controlling corporations have long been trending in this rightward direction. When Congress willingly participated in a nationwide witch hunt for what it called communists during the McCarthy era, whatever potential for a broader and inclusive political spectrum was seriously put at risk, and the United States has been moving rightward in its media -- after what might be seen by some as a very brief interlude during the Sixties -- ever since. This statement in particular reflects that cowardly McCarthy era period in our highest levels of government:
Antifascist wrote:
Quote:
Associates claimed that CBS was prompted to act by a New York Post article that claimed the comment was a sign of Hollywood’s anti-Americanism and stated that Gernon had said President George W. Bush should be looked at “through the prism of Germany’s psychopath.”
Rupert Murdoch's New York Post acts much like Townhall.com, an internet news blog associated with Townhall Magazine, which is yet another megaphone for the more extreme right wing opinions, like written opinions it publishes from Fox Cable opinionizers and such who react to what most who still have some semblance of liberal attitudes left in our minds see as a right leaning, pro corporate, militaristic Obama Administration by calling anything Obama does or says a form of socialistic tyranny (I easily found this example this morning: Will Tyranny Ever Come to America?).
The purpose of these more extreme media versions of right wing thought is not to balance out a liberal media with a critical conservative observation, but to provide a vaudeville act for propaganda contextualizing.
The notion that our media is liberal is a laughing matter to the rest of the world who can see using that term as an obvious propaganda ploy required to create an atmosphere of reaction needed for the simple-minded knee jerk responses from a less than observant, less than critical, increasingly de-educated and dumbed down general population.
No, the purpose is not to offer balancing rational objective political opinions, the purpose is to provide a public excuse for the corporate managers of the media to respond in ways that will remove any hint of serious progressive analysis of rightward trends from public discourse while maintaining the illusion that there may still be some communists hiding under their corporate media beds that could frighten us out of our somnambulistic stupor.
"The moronic George W. Bush said, in Orwellian double-speak, they hate us for our freedom and democracy. They don’t hate us because we bomb them, invade them, kill them, destroy their way of life, culture, and infrastructure. They hate us because we are so good. How stupid does a person have to be to believe this BS?"
Homeland Security, a gestapo institution, has “crisis actors” to help it deceive the public in its false flag operations.
The Obama regime has drones with which to silence American citizens without due process of law.
Homeland Security has more than a billion rounds of ammunition, tanks, a para-military force. Detention camps have been built.
Are Americans so completely stupid that they believe this is all for “terrorists” whose sparse numbers require the FBI to manufacture “terrorists” in so-called “sting operations” in order to justify the FBI’s $3 billion special fund from Congress to combat domestic terrorism?"
“In God we trust,” reads the coinage. It should read: “In Satan we follow.”
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury(Reagan Admin.) and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
Comments
In the discipline of cultural pathology, our case study can become a full-time cable channel. How did the American Dream become this Nightmare? What is it about us that keeps us from a modesty of means and dreams instead of living as a "Chosen People?"
I began looking at the meme of the American Century in the 70's. It is the distillate of Manifest Destiny, the Founder's Legacy reduced to the essential liquor of Providence. In this complex intoxicant, one finds both the moral idealism of Universal Humanity and the narcissism of how that UH looks so much like us.
For the religious critics of American culture, the current decay surely gives them ample material, just as it feeds the writers for Stewart and Colbert. If you want to have a NT perspective of counter-culture alienation, just blame modernity and secularism and hold fast to the "truths." Send the money to Rev. Slimemaker at ........ If you want a serious perspective to decide what gods are false, you might want to suspect those selling God as the answer right off the bat.
The Gods of America are Mars and Mammon. Jesus is dying on the cross again. Empire is ruling, and war is the way to peace. Get ready for that Great Gettin' Up Morning.
One of your darker takes, DRC.
I guess there are all sorts of ways we can criticize the current state of demise. What makes sense is that we all seem to be seeing a process and it's not going well for all of us on a mass scale.
http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-...
is an article from an insider. It is a cult, doomsday cult, or he compares to the extremes in Europe in the last century. Sounds like fascism to me.
By "it" I presume you are referring to the extremes that have taken the Republican Party hostage? In other words, the topic of this thread, those being associated with or at least approved of by the Crackpot Party (otherwise: the Tea Party), as the now retired "operative" I believe identified them:
But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy. It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill.
I read that essay on another thread and thought it belonged here because it paralleled the ideas presented in the study cited above:
Study Reveals Cultural Characteristics of the Tea Party Movement
Here's what I consider important about that study and why I felt correlating it with Lofgren's essay makes some sense, and especially so because some of the knee jerk comments about the study from the right make such typical paranoid charges as "it was paid for by the government": The study's purpose plainly stated:
In exploring the TPM (Tea Party Movement), we set out to determine if general public support for the movement represents a new political and cultural phenomenon or whether it is simply realignment with the Republican Party. Specifically, what are the political and cultural dispositions of Tea Party supporters?
If those dispositions are new, as suggested, then it would seem that the whole project we call the United States can be looked at as very likely on that path those concerned about a turn towards fascism have expressed here. And for those of us who are not comfortable with authoritarianism, that's of some very great concern to us. It's another way of saying we've lost those factors in our political system that have kept the spinning top righting itself and upright, though occasionally wobbly.
When a former insider in the Republican Party walks away and spells out why in an essay that parallels a study of this sort, we might do well to listen.
Here is what the study's authors concluded from their efforts in the final paragraph:
Recognizing that the 2008-2010 Tea Party Movement is one such backlash is key to understanding what is new about it and what is not. The coalition of views that makes up the TPM is largely the same that makes up the Republican Party. What is new about the TPM is its syncretic cultural work melding the 21st-century discontent to the symbolic memory of 18th century America. The words of one TPM supporter say it all: "We want to save America. We want to see this country go back to the original success formula that made it what we are today."
And then you get to DRC's ongoing pathology critique where he sees a misplacing of emphasis on the "symbolic memory" of American Exceptionalism and all that has arisen from that somehow meshed into Empire, especially the militancy that leads to war activities. And you can get to Antifascist's ongoing critique of logical positivism which also includes this critique of the positivist reading of the constitution (as expressed in the answers to questions in the study and in their conclusion) as if it were a fundamentalist's Bible reading.
All of these readings do not bode well when put in a historical perspective with nations have gone the route of authoritarianism. And keep in mind that a presidential system (ours) is the one version considered most vulnerable to that route:
Tendency towards authoritarianism
Winning the presidency is a winner-take-all, zero-sum prize. A prime minister who does not enjoy a majority in the legislature will have to either form a coalition or, if he is able to lead a minority government, govern in a manner acceptable to at least some of the opposition parties. Even if the prime minister leads a majority government, he must still govern within (perhaps unwritten) constraints as determined by the members of his party—a premier in this situation is often at greater risk of losing his party leadership than his party is at risk of losing the next election. On the other hand, once elected a president can not only marginalize the influence of other parties, but can exclude rival factions in his own party as well, or even leave the party whose ticket he was elected under. The president can thus rule without any allies for the duration of one or possibly multiple terms, a worrisome situation for many interest groups. Juan Linz argues that:
Constitutions that only require plurality support are said to be especially undesirable, as significant power can be vested in a person who does not enjoy support from a majority of the population.
All against a background of corrupt money. How long money can buy truth and twist it into messaging to manage consent is my question. Were it just the ideologies of exceptionalism, I think we could deal with it. When it has the weight of gold and lead, when people choose to eat or starve or to live rather than die, what gets embraced is not what "makes sense" if it puts you at risk.
Money does not talk, it swears.
People are not bombarded with imagery in mass media that portrays a simple life set in nature. People in general do not live such lives anymore.
Money pays for all that. Money creates the system that wants to maintain itself, despite the ever rising barriers of contradiction telling us it's not working so well anymore for most of us, as the wealth of the middle class is siphoned upwards once again and people fall through gigantic holes in the capitalistic created sieve below.
And the people following the mythmakers Lofgren is calling crackpots think the whole broken Humpty Dumpty egg can be put back together again.
That is exactly what I was referring to. That and the Judis referenced neo-fuedal [actually that's my label, but Judis was referenced in the operative's article] sector of GOP.
I saw one of the researchers on an msnbc show [Ratigan?], and the group is the old john birchers born again..as it were. Mix koch [father was a founder of birchers] with falwell, or robertson, and they get born again.
Throw in a little ALEC and you get the disenfranchised voters that are seeing behind the curtain and could actually stop it. This is a blatant power grab, and fox had one radio nut-wing radio jock that doesn't think poor should be able to vote. He has since added 'so easily' to his position, so it is now it should not be made easier for the poor to vote. I guess a homeless shelter is not legitimate enough an address for voter registration.
That is exactly what I was referring to. That and the Judis referenced neo-fuedal [actually that's my label, but Judis was referenced in the operative's article] sector of GOP.
I saw one of the researchers on an msnbc show [Ratigan?], and the group is the old john birchers born again..as it were. Mix koch [father was a founder of birchers] with falwell, or robertson, and they get born again.
Throw in a little ALEC and you get the disenfranchised voters that are seeing behind the curtain and could actually stop it. This is a blatant power grab, and fox had one radio nut-wing radio jock that doesn't think poor should be able to vote. He has since added 'so easily' to his position, so it is now it should not be made easier for the poor to vote. I guess a homeless shelter is not legitimate enough an address for voter registration.
These Bircher types are not very astute people, in my experience. And I've known a fair number. Their coolaid seems to damage neurons. The power has already been grabbed. They'll just be patsies. However, that doesn't mean they can't do a lot of damage along the way.
Chomsky knows a bit about fascism, and the similarities to the current eventsQuote:
Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America By Matthew Rothschild, April 12, 2010
Noam Chomsky, the leading leftwing intellectual, warned last week that fascism may be coming to the United States.
“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio,” he said, “and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering” here at home.
Chomsky was speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, where he received the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.
“The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime,” he said.
He cited a statistic from a recent poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters say the average tea party member is closer to them than anyone else.
“Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error,” Chomsky said.
Their attitudes “are understandable,” he said. “For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined. This is in large part the consequence of the decision in the 1970s to financialize the economy.”
There is class resentment, he noted. “The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels,” he said.
And Obama is linked to the bankers, Chomsky explained.
“The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain,” he said. “They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: They were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are “fine guys” and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’
The evolution continues...
By David Edwards,Tuesday, March 19, 2013
A tea party leader in Texas is defending his promotion of the American Fascist Party as something he thought was “pro-Constitution, pro-America.”
James Ives, who was listed as the president of the Greater Fort Bend County Tea Party in 2011, confirmed to The Texas Tribune on Monday that he had made a promotional video for the American Fascist Party and advocated tea party principles on a Fascist Party message board
In the video, a man who looks like Ives sits in front of a Fascist Party logo wearing a uniform with yellow shoulder patches. Another photo shows a uniformed man sitting in front of a fascist cross. The blog that inspired Norwegian mass shooter Anders Behring Breivik describes fascist solar crosses as “symbolic representations buried deep in the regions of the brain where the primal responses to stimuli are rage, awe, and fear....”
These people are around, and many of them are in positions of power. It's scary. I think that the tides are working against them. We'll see. (Not much of a post, I admit. I'm not sure what there is to say). Won't it be wonderful when Texas becomes a blue state?
I saw that article on Raw Story today and thought the guy won't get any support from patriot groups especially those in Texas because they are strongly anti-fascist.
No, all Teabagger Patriots are fascists. They won't like it being pointed out. Like roaches scurrying after the light is turned on, Teabaggers will scurry from the fascist label, but cling to the hyper militantism and jingoistic rhetoric.
Who are we supposed to invade next, Syria or Iran? Let me think, does Syria have oil?
How can any flea bagger be anti-fascist and vote against what's best for them time after time?
Fascism in the U.S. won't be called fascism.
As Sinclair Lewis noted, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross".
An Assassinator-In-Chief, wrapped in the flag and cheered on by millions, is probably an indication of that sort of thing unfolding.
The German term for their Assassinator-In-Chief was der fuehrer. We call ours, Mr. President.
Assassinations of American citizens are un-Constitutional.
When heads of state are above the law....there is no law outside of what they say it is.
Sieg Heil.
Retired Monk -- "Ideology is a disease"
I watched this 2003 Canadian mini-series on Hitler's rise to power entitled, "Hitler: Rise of Evil." This film is pretty good although there are some historical inaccuracies, but they are minor and do not impact the essential events leading to Hitler's rise to power. Here is a list of historical events that the miniseries condensed or otherwise covered sparingly.
What I found most interesting was how Hitler and the Nazis moved into the Reichstag in 1932 and whenever they did not get what they wanted shutdown the entire government by refusing to vote on any government business then walking out of the chamber thereby triggering new state elections as the Reichstag rules required. The Nazis forced four elections in one year by using this parliamentary tactic. In other words, they shutdown the German government and then campaigned on the theme that the government was dysfunctional. Sound familiar?
This is the same tactic that the Republicans and the Tea party Fascist party are using in today's Congress. The fiscal cliff, filibuster, and sequestration are having a similar effect on crippling the United States government when the Republicans and radical Rightwing don't get their way. In Robert Draper's book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives," Draper wrote about a January 20, 2009 meeting of GOP leaders at a Washington restaurant, The Caucus Room, where they plotted to sabotage the American Economy to prevent Obama from winning a second term.
Watch the movie of Hitler's tactic starting here at 49 minutes with Hindenburg complaining of the Nazi problem.
Also, I should note that executive producer on this mini-series, Ed Gernon, was one of the first media persons before Dan Rather fired from their jobs for expressing opinions critical of the new Bush II administration.
"It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war. I can’t think of a better time to examine this history than now." —Ed Gernon
Production company Alliance Atlantis, where he had worked for more than a decade, fired him for this comparison. CBS said that his "personal opinions are not shared by CBS and misrepresent the network's motivation for broadcasting this film."
Associates claimed that CBS was prompted to act by a New York Post article that claimed the comment was a sign of Hollywood’s anti-Americanism and stated that Gernon had said President George W. Bush should be looked at “through the prism of Germany’s psychopath.”
Also, I should note that executive producer on this mini-series, Ed Gernon, was one of the first media persons before Dan Rather fired from their jobs for expressing opinions critical of the new Bush II administration.
Ed Gernon, the executive producer, compared the climate of fear that led to the rise of Nazism to the war on terrorism.
"It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war. I can’t think of a better time to examine this history than now." —Ed Gernon
Production company Alliance Atlantis, where he had worked for more than a decade, fired him for this comparison. CBS said that his "personal opinions are not shared by CBS and misrepresent the network's motivation for broadcasting this film."
Associates claimed that CBS was prompted to act by a New York Post article that claimed the comment was a sign of Hollywood’s anti-Americanism and stated that Gernon had said President George W. Bush should be looked at “through the prism of Germany’s psychopath.”
As a someone who divorced myself from consuming Hollywood-generated entertainment/propaganda on television on a daily basis back in the early seventies and have refused to pay for it ever since, I find the above part of your post instructive. Now-a-days when I do take a brief look at most of the pop entertainment from Hollywood I see it filled with verifications of the standards of a violence-prone, authoritarian society willing to use its vast military power to control the planet.
Of course the description of that process is not the described, as Alfred Korzybski might note if he was still around to do so.
The general description has to do with promoting good and democratic ideals throughout the planet (which will presumably somehow make us all safer... eventually). The actual fact of what is taking place in the far reaches of our vast empire is something else. Meanwhile the blowback is modified by feel good cop shows with pro military trending intelligence technology posing as the normal state of life in America. With generals giving their opinions about the next invasion of some threat to our freedoms. With follow-the-leader news broadcast verbatum as the public relations spokespersons for authorities in government provide it... It ought not surprise anyone to read that a corporate-owned media institution with direct ties to the MIC would want to dissociate itself with anything that might discredit anything the Empire is up to related to beating the drums of war.
Westinghouse Electric (1886)
Anyone not subject to attitude shaping anti liberal propaganda that pervades American culture can notice that Hollywood's major trend setting, media-controlling corporations have long been trending in this rightward direction. When Congress willingly participated in a nationwide witch hunt for what it called communists during the McCarthy era, whatever potential for a broader and inclusive political spectrum was seriously put at risk, and the United States has been moving rightward in its media -- after what might be seen by some as a very brief interlude during the Sixties -- ever since. This statement in particular reflects that cowardly McCarthy era period in our highest levels of government:
Associates claimed that CBS was prompted to act by a New York Post article that claimed the comment was a sign of Hollywood’s anti-Americanism and stated that Gernon had said President George W. Bush should be looked at “through the prism of Germany’s psychopath.”
Rupert Murdoch's New York Post acts much like Townhall.com, an internet news blog associated with Townhall Magazine, which is yet another megaphone for the more extreme right wing opinions, like written opinions it publishes from Fox Cable opinionizers and such who react to what most who still have some semblance of liberal attitudes left in our minds see as a right leaning, pro corporate, militaristic Obama Administration by calling anything Obama does or says a form of socialistic tyranny (I easily found this example this morning: Will Tyranny Ever Come to America?).
The purpose of these more extreme media versions of right wing thought is not to balance out a liberal media with a critical conservative observation, but to provide a vaudeville act for propaganda contextualizing.
The notion that our media is liberal is a laughing matter to the rest of the world who can see using that term as an obvious propaganda ploy required to create an atmosphere of reaction needed for the simple-minded knee jerk responses from a less than observant, less than critical, increasingly de-educated and dumbed down general population.
No, the purpose is not to offer balancing rational objective political opinions, the purpose is to provide a public excuse for the corporate managers of the media to respond in ways that will remove any hint of serious progressive analysis of rightward trends from public discourse while maintaining the illusion that there may still be some communists hiding under their corporate media beds that could frighten us out of our somnambulistic stupor.
"The moronic George W. Bush said, in Orwellian double-speak, they hate us for our freedom and democracy. They don’t hate us because we bomb them, invade them, kill them, destroy their way of life, culture, and infrastructure. They hate us because we are so good. How stupid does a person have to be to believe this BS?"
Homeland Security, a gestapo institution, has “crisis actors” to help it deceive the public in its false flag operations.
The Obama regime has drones with which to silence American citizens without due process of law.
Homeland Security has more than a billion rounds of ammunition, tanks, a para-military force. Detention camps have been built.
Are Americans so completely stupid that they believe this is all for “terrorists” whose sparse numbers require the FBI to manufacture “terrorists” in so-called “sting operations” in order to justify the FBI’s $3 billion special fund from Congress to combat domestic terrorism?"
“In God we trust,” reads the coinage. It should read: “In Satan we follow.”
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury(Reagan Admin.) and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/08/washingtons-presumption/
I highly recommend the movie Antifascist posted, "Hitler, the Rise of Evil". An evening well-spent in a drama format. It's in two parts. Part one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d42GhnKowwc
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"