The Radical Right

In the Republican primaries for the US Senate in Indiana on Tuesday, long-time Senator Dick Lugar lost 40% to 60% to Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s state treasurer. This in it of itself is shocking; Lugar has been in office since 1976 and had been considered one of the greatest minds on US foreign policy.

What led to his loss is even more upsetting. During the campaign Mourdock railed against Lugar for compromising with the Democrats and reaching across the aisle. He continued to call him “Obama’s favourite Republican,” trying to paint Lugar as a moderate and friend to the Democratic Party, saying that he would oppose bipartisanship if he were in office.

This is the disturbing things about the Republican Party.

Anyone who has taken any political science or American history class will tell you that things only ever got done in Congress when parties compromised with each other and decided to work together for the benefit of the country. Someone just won a Congressional primary on the ticket of ignoring common knowledge and the slogan of “We Will Not Work With You, Only Against You.”

“Bipartisanship,” “compromise,” and “working together” have almost become dirty words to Republicans and the Tea Party. The right has become so radical that it has simply refused to do anything that would possibly get anything done if it meant being an adult and actually working with people to do what is necessary for the country.

This may be a good thing after all though. As the Tea Party ultra-nationalists alienate the moderate and establishment Republicans, they will eventually go so far to the right that they will form a third party that will split the vote for the conservatives, giving Democrats and liberals the chance to elect real progressive politicians who can bring real change to this country.

The Third Red Scare

I am sure that most people are aware of the recent comments made by fading rock star Ted Nugent concerning President Barack Obama and other members of the Democratic Party. For those who are not, let me fill you in very quickly.

At the National Rifle Association convention, Ted Nugent said on stage, “…if Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” This prompted the Secret Service to contact Ted and have a nice, friendly talk with him of why he may or may not have threatened the president.

More fun comments from him at the convention were, “We are Braveheart. We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November,” and describing the Obama Administration as, “vile, evil, America-hating.” The funny, or more so scary, thing is that after he made these comments, the audience erupted into thunderous applause. It’s not that he simply thinks President Obama is a terrible president, it’s that he hates America. He might as well have said that a terrible football coach hates the football team he’s coaching.

In Florida around the same time, Rep. Allen West of Florida, who tried to defend Ted Nugent for the things he said, spoke at a town hall meeting, and when asked about how many Marxists are in Congress, he said, “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party who are members of the Communist Party.” Is it just me or does this sound an awful lot like Joseph McCarthy’s infamous talk in Congress about how he had a list of 202 Communists, which turned out to be a blank sheet of paper he was holding up, that had infiltrated the State Department, which helped kick off the Second Red Scare?

Now, the numbers West gave were not randomly pulled out of thin air like McCarthy did. He is referring to, and he admits to this, the 80 or so members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which he says is an American branch of an international communist organisation known as Comintern. The reason he believes they are communists is because he simply does not understand ideologies that are not his own and thinks that anything to the left of him is all one giant communist party, saying, “There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, socialism.”

These are just small samples of the bigoted garbage that is spewed out by the far right on a regular basis.

We are entering an age that makes it okay to say tremendously hateful and threatening things towards people who do not hold to the same outlook on politics, including the President of the United States. We are entering an age that makes it okay to divide Americans by fear-mongering. We are entering an age, if we have not already, of the Third Red Scare, when if someone says that they are not a gun-toting, homophobic, theocratic ignoramus (and proud of it), then they are a godless communist that hates America.

My Trip to the Book Store

Bored, no work, nothing to do but masturbate, tired of the books on my bookshelves that I have already read through, so I decided to go to my local Barnes and Noble that resides in one of the most conservative neighbourhoods in Texas and find some new books to read about liberalism, atheism, evolution, vampire romance, or whatever else may have caught my attention. While there, I came across a section of books labelled ‘Current Affairs.’

Most of it was books I had seen over and over again, ranging from The Audacity of Hope by President Obama to something about Sarah Palin being an idiot like usual. On a side-note, I don’t see why people still bother with Palin. She’s old news; she’s not even fun to laugh at any more.

While browsing through the section for something to quench my thirst for knowledge, I came across a specific book that made my eyebrow raise by a specific person that makes nothing of mine raise except my stress level.

On the top shelf, with its shiny, jet-black cover and blood red letters was Ann Coulter’s new book Demonic. At first, I thought it was an autobiography, but apparently the rest of the title was How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America. Like all of her other books that try to ‘debunk’ or ‘refute’ beliefs held by liberals, or at least anyone that she doesn’t like, I decided I would like to be a masochist for a few seconds and read a few pages to see what the far-right has been up to these days other than shooting up Norwegian camps filled with teenagers. Boy, was that a huge mistake. I literally opened the book to the first page that my fingers fell in between and started reading at the first paragraph that came into view.

Just that one paragraph was more than enough to make me want to bash my brains in with a rusty pickaxe. I don’t particularly remember what the chapter was even about; all I remember was the urge to hit my head against the nearest brick wall until the stupid went away. So that no one thinks I am lying about the stupid I am referring to, I decided to take a picture of said pickaxe-to-brains worthy paragraph to show other people the idiocy that is the right-wing and their propaganda.

In case the picture cannot be read, here is the paragraph I was talking about.

‘The first exception to Americans’ abhorrence of mob action came in the sixties. The civil rights movement gave mobs a halo. Disgust with Jim Crow laws overcame Americans’ natural aversion to disorder. At the outset, the civil rights movement consisted of peaceful citizens battling mobs that were oppressing blacks – mobs that were, as always, led by Democrats. Orval Faubus, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan – Democrats all.’

She might as well just say, ‘These people called themselves Democrats a long time ago and were against blacks when political parties believed in completely different things than they do today, therefore all modern Democrats are bad people and against blacks,’ even though almost ninety-percent of all blacks vote Democrat.

What Ann Coulter doesn’t seem to know, or refuses to accept, is that before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democrats were the conservative party and the Republicans were the liberal party. After that act, the parties switched platforms after a series of events and disagreements over policy and ideology. If one were to talk to some senior citizens who were Democrats back in the good ol’ days, they will most likely say how they switched parties when the Republicans became the conservatives, because back in the good ol’ days, the Democrats were the conservatives. Either Ann Coulter is that historically illiterate, which would not be surprising one bit, or she is purposely deceiving her historically illiterate audience to try to demonise the Democratic Party, because she knows that her audience is the type that will believe almost anything without any proper evidence as long as it fits in with their preconceived notions, hence why most conservatives are creationist Christians, including Ann Coulter.

But Ann Cuntler is not the only face-palming fun that I had while at the book store. Right under her/it were the Glenn Beck books about the same stuff; only difference is that they had a slightly less unattractive conservative on the cover.

Along with the usual rhetoric about how liberals are evil and how President Obama is going to ruin the country somehow by implementing this horrible thing called socialism, I noticed his book Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine.

Apparently, what America’s favourite class-clown doesn’t seem to realise is that Thomas Paine was a hardcore liberal that spoke out against the ‘free market’ and wanted government regulations over corporations to make sure that they did not become too powerful. Paine saw government as a necessary evil, but saw that everyone deserved a free education and help from the government and that all social programmes would be paid for by taxes. If one thought that Thomas Paine was in any way, shape, or form like Glenn Beck or was at all similar to a conservative at the beginning of this entry, I suggest actually reading some of Paine’s works, especially Agrarian Justice and The Necessity of Taxation. After reading those, go listen to one of Beck’s radio shows, since he’s no longer on Fox News, and see if you can refrain from laughing when he tries to claim that Thomas Paine was the equivalent of a modern-day conservative.

But wait, that’s not all!

I had even more fun in the ‘Current Affairs’ section when I came across this little gem of right-wing idiocy. This one was right next to Ann Coulter’s book, so I think we all know where this is going.

This one is called Revolt! How to Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs, A Patriot’s Guide by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.

I love how it’s apparently ‘patriotic’ when one goes against President Obama’s supposed socialism, but when it was against President Bush’s fascism, it’s damn near treason.

I have always wanted to ask this to a conservative who actually thinks that President Obama is a socialist/communist/Marxist/whatever-other-terms-the-right-uses-to-scare-its-sheeple, but could you please give me an example of President Obama wanting to implement socialism in America?

He lowered taxes and is going to keep them there for another two years; he’s caved to almost every Republican demand when it comes to the economy; he watered down the healthcare bill so much that it might as well have never existed; he constantly is putting conservatives in office over liberals and progressives. I need an example, please. I guess the closest one can come to socialism with President Obama is how he wants to…I honestly don’t know.

Now, I’m not the biggest fan of President Obama, but I would sooner vote for him than any candidate the GOP has been lining up for us to point and laugh at.

So yes, that was my adventure to the book store. In the end, I got a book by Paul Krugman in order to wash away the stupid.

Amendment as of the 28th of July

I headed back to the same Barnes and Noble a few days later to find a book that had to do with religion/atheism, but instead I came across another piece of conservative propaganda and stupidity in the ‘Current Affairs’ section again; I think the stupid just draws me to itself so that I may mock it. Right next to Glenn Beck’s Common (Non)Sense was another one of his self-pwning pieces. This one was called The Original Argument: The Federalists’ Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century. In other words, ‘I’m going to slant history to favour my side as much as I can to sway gullible sheep into agreeing with me.’

Glenn Beck does not seem to have any understanding of American history, which is completely understandable seeing as how he has no understanding of what Thomas Paine actually stood for, because although the Federalist Party could be loosely construed to be similar to modern conservative values in some fields, the Federalist Party were in favour of just that, a federal power, hence the freaking name. I thought Glenn Beck wanted less federal power, isn’t that why his latter mentioned book is about how we need to stop the ‘out-of-control’ federal government? As with Ann Coulter, either Glenn Beck knows this, that the Federalist Party were for a stronger federal government and the Anti-Federalists were for more state control (which is something that I thought conservatives like Glenn Beck wanted in America today), and he is purposely deceiving his audience, or he doesn’t know anything about the history of the country he was born in and claims to love. At this point, I’m still unsure as to which one is more likely.