So I open my daily missive from all things right-wing nutty, and find out that Janet Kagen, who once advised President Bill Clinton to outlaw late-term abortions except in medically necessary cases where the mother's life was in danger, whose legal writings if you actually read them (as vs. rely on the media) are well within the mainstream of legal thought in America, is... a radical leftist who wants to impose Stalinist rule in America?!
Shark tanks, my friend. The right wing in America today ain't jumping the shark, they're jumping whole *tanks* of sharks. WND "editor" Crazy Joe Farah is turning into the raving spittle-flecked parody of lunatic right-wingers that lefties love to depict all righties as being... but who didn't actually exist within the right-wing mainstream until recently (remember, Crazy Joe McCarthy was run out of Washington by a *Republican* administration, there was always a lunatic fringe in the GOP but it wasn't running the show). Brietbart was right... people like Farah and his birther pals are making the GOP look like a bunch of street people muttering about government mind control beams, the President being a space alien installed to destroy Earth, and things of that sort. Sad, really, that the GOP is reduced from being the party of Goldwater and Eisenhower to being this demented parody of what it once was...
-- Badtux the Insanity Penguin
The Right certainly has eroded the power of the insult. These days, calling someone "Hitler" or "communist" means nothing more than "I disagree with your political position" or "I didn't vote for the leader of your political faction." "Nazi" is just another way of saying "I don't like you."
ReplyDeleteI suppose the Right feel justified because the Left spent years calling Bush/Cheney Hitlerian. I still have a T-shirt I bought for only $5 at an anti-war protest in front of S.F. City Hall with Bush's sneering face adorned with a Hitler 'tash, over top of quotations from "1984." If the Left hurled Hitlers at them, then Righties will hurl it back.
At least Leftists could point to foreign invasions, torture prisons and spying on the citizenry to justify the Nazi label. Obama's keeping all that Nazi-like shit going, but that's not what wads Farah's panties. He and Glenn Beckkk get upset over fascist, but un-Nazi things like bailing out car companies with tax money and forcing people to climb into hospital beds with private insurors. I don't think they'll start calling Obama "fascist" because they'd have to explain what the word means in economic terms, and hell, they LIKE fascism.
I spend a lot of time on websites where liberals pretend to be raving conservatives. Jesus's General is one of the more amusing ones. But we fake conservatives make more sense than the real ones, because at least we try to adhere to some internal logic, instead of taking contradictory positions. It's all-nuts, all-the-time.
And the sad thing is, whatever wack idea a pretend conservative comes up with on one of those sites, trying to humourously push the bounds of outrageousness, it's not long before a real "conservative" advances the same thought in all seriousness.
A couple months ago, I sputtered that some Americans should have their citizenship taken away so that they could be tortured and exiled to stateless places like Antarctica or the middle of the ocean. After all, only Americans have any God-given rights, eh? I was being spoof-silly. What happens earlier this month? Joe Liarman introduces a bill to revoke citizenship without trial. That won't go anywhere now, but when a Republikkkan president is selected in 2012, it will be the (un)law of the land...
I was always irritated by the rabid lefties calling Bush "Hitler". Anybody who'd read Molly Ivins' excellent book Shrub would have realized that George W. Bush simply lacked the fundamental drive to become an absolute dictator. Oh, he liked being President, but he was pretty disinterested in, well, actually Presidentin'. He had Dick Cheney for that :). Hitler, on the other hand, was a driven legend in his own mind who wanted to rule, control, and micromanage, like, everything.
ReplyDeleteDamn, I miss Molly. She had this talent for spotting the fundamental character of someone, then making it funny as hell when she told you about it. One reason I know that TANG (There Ain't No God) is that Molly is dead, and that vile evil black hole of depravity Dick "Darth" Cheney is still alive...
-- Badtux the Reminiscing Penguin
What got me concerned is that these demented parodies might actually be given power by the ignorant voters of this country. I guess we will see when bat-shit crazy takes over.
ReplyDeleteWell, when we called Bush "Hitler," it was shorthand for "realPresident Cheney and the U.S. power structure" is Hitler. Less explaining necessary that way.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I'm proud of, after being a newspaper reporter for 10 years and a psych/hospital nurse for even longer than that, is that I can size people up like Molly. I sense the bullshit. But yeah, TANG. Gov. Ann Richards, eh?
Bukko the Rabid Leftist (who can still hold a polite conversation)
Thing is, Darth Cheney could rule only as long as GWB was Preznit, and that meant 8 years. And installing GWB as Preznit for Life would have required more effort than GWB was willing to expend, there was brush to clear back in Crawford after all :).
ReplyDeleteSo it was a silly comparison from day one -- a President that the majority of Americans wanted to be President or at least didn't mind being President (if you count everybody who stayed home on election day 2000 as a "I don't mind if Bush becomes Preznit"), vs. a leader (Hitler) who was *never* elected by the majority of Germans (just by the majority of Germans *in his parliamentary district*) and who swiftly seized full and absolute power. Don't get me wrong, the Bush Administration was pure evil and a disaster for America. But Bush wasn't Hitler, and bringing Hitler into it just made lefties look like cretins, much as bringing Hitler into it makes Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg look like cretins.
- Badtux the Non-mustachioed Penguin
" a President that the majority of Americans wanted to be President or at least didn't mind being President (if you count everybody who stayed home on election day 2000 as a "I don't mind if Bush becomes Preznit")"
ReplyDeleteI prefer to call them "voters for none of the above," giving them the benefit of the doubt. The never wrong WikiAnswers tells me that 84 million people who could vote didn't. Relatively close to making the president illegitimate. In my humble and slanted mind.
Who are these "rabid lefties" calling Bush Hitler? I'm sure they're out there. I myself am annoyed when any current leader is compared to Hitler, whether it's Bush or Saddam Hussein.
ReplyDelete'Sides, I suspect Cheney et al. wanted to be more like banana republic dictators.