February 9, 2011

Memo

From: Mark Tokarski, malcontent, party disloyalist

To: All Democrats, liberals and progressives who will automatically vote for Obama because

eventhoughheisnotsohothe’sbetterthan__fillintheblank__

Please note that House Republicans voted down extension of the USAPATRIOT ACT, and Obama is fighting to keep it in place.

Please adjust your perceptions.

The Obama administration only had to suggest to Mubarak of Egypt that he step down, and he does so. That demonstrates pretty well that he was only in power at the behest of American power. The fact that 87% of Egyptians have a negative view of the United States gives us a clear vision of the nature of the unrest in that country. They’ve had enough of Mubarak, they’ve had enough of U.S. foreign policy.

Withing the bowels of the administration (and it would not be different with a different president) it is not a question of democratic rule. Their problem is that they seem unable to stop it, just as with Iran in 1979. So it is a question of how to manage the unrest, how to solidify U.S. dominance even in the face of popular will. They are surely working with the Egyptian military and secret police behind the scenes to keep a lid on things. In the meantime, Obama’s job is to present a public face of pro-democratic governance while working to prevent it behind the scenes. It’s a real balancing act, and the reason why the U.S. needs a smooth spokesperson at this time.

Notice that the official line now is that Mubarak will not stand for “re-election” this September. When was he ever elected? This is a blatant attempt to buy time, probably to work behind the scenes to suppress the dissidents. Egypt is, after all, a terror and torture state.

Are you perceptions under management now? Or, have I introduced cognitive dissonance into your thinking?

I paid a brief visit to Electric City Weblog yesterday, just for old time sake. It’s not as busy as it once was. Most of the posts are written by Dave Budge, and there is little dissent in the comments. (The only “dissenter” I saw was David Crisp, a Democrat who thinks in that frame of mind, and so is allowed to comment there. His bomb has long been defused.) Others are Craig Moore, Lt. Col (R) Rich Liebert (does that title tell us anything about his attitudes?), Mike Mikulski and Aaron Flint, all reliable right wingers.

Rob Natelson writes there now and then. His posts are so predictable that I’ve come to believe that he suffers from a myopia brought about by constant reinforcement of his own views, a process of self-indoctrination that we are all susceptible to. He is incapable of seeing beyond his own prejudices, and does not leave that nest to engage in debate.

Gregg Smith still writes there, though not so much as Budge. who dominates the site.

Travis Kavulla, now a Montana office holder, is apparently absent. (Kavulla is now in a position of power, and is a truly dangerous man. He has no self-edit ability. Given his chance now he will put his ideas in action without laboratory trial, awareness of untoward effects, or respect for wisdom of the past. He is quite sure he is right about everything. This is the definition of a “radical.”)

Electric City Weblog is now, officially, what it was always meant to be, a right wing circle jerk.

Here’s a post that caught my eye: “Bias,” written by Dave Budge. I cite it in full as it is very short:

Bryan Caplan asks why there is so much attention paid to media bias when there are other institutions that have a more durable effect:

Both the media and schools are largely in left-wing hands – and the content reflects this fact. But consider the stark contrast between the two. Schools, unlike the media, largely target impressionable youth. Schools, unlike the media, are heavily tax-supported. Schools, unlike the media, usually can’t go bankrupt. And finally, schools, unlike the media, have a very high switching cost. Even with a voucher system, changing your kid’s school would remain a much bigger deal than changing the channel.

In short:
Aimed largely at impressionable youth (Media: no, Schools: yes)
Tax-supported (Media: no, Schools: yes)
Can’t go bankrupt (Media: no, Schools: yes)
High switching cost (Media: no, Schools: yes)

It’s a good question.

Here’s what is interesting – this is not up for debate. There is no question in their minds that the media and schools are “largely in left-wing hands,” and so there is no burden of proof. Without that burden, there is no need for discipline, and they are free to go off in any way they please without fear of being called out for lack of rigor. It’s not a “good question.” It’s a joke.

And it nicely sums up our media culture (understanding, at least here, that the “left” is an imagined monster that hardly even exists in this country). I watch The Daily Show each night, and only because it is funny. They often skewer FOX News, calling them out for their obvious mistakes. It doesn’t matter. The people who watch FOX news do not watch The Daily Show, and so are immune to any hosing down with reality. FOX does exactly what it is meant to do – agitprop, which requires intellectual isolation to be effective.

And so in this manner to has Budge, who has banned dissenters from ECW, created a vacuum where he, Natelson and Smith can spout their nonsense without detractors.

It’s apparently all he ever wanted – intellectual isolation, preaching without dissent from the congregation.
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Disclaimer: This site is no way affiliated with Electric City Weblog, The Perfesser, Budge or Kavulla. Any opinions expressed are those of the author and not of the management of Piece of Mind, Inc. “The Perfesser” is registered trademark of Rob Natelson.
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PS: This isn’t a terribly well-written piece, getting absorbed in personalities as it does, but I had it in my mind at the outset that what is happening at ECW, where they are cloistering and talking amongst themselves fairly typifies the nature of discourse in the country as a whole, and especially among right wingers who like to talk about “Econ 101” for the rest of us as they are daily confronted with the failures of their ideology. It is comfortable to fall into a self-affirming group in that situation. ECW is just a blog, like this one.

The scene was one of horror, with shocked men holding their heads in sorrow and women shrieking in rage and anger. Bodies were strewn about. It was yet another incident in the ongoing war of terror … not the bombing in the Moscow airport, which we are allowed to know about, but an American bombing of Afghan civilians, which we are not allowed to know about.

Since The Pentagon does not do body counts, we do not know the death toll. I heard the words of the interpreter – survivors expressed their outrage at the American invaders, wanting only that we go home. Given a choice between Taliban and Americans, they choose … the one that does not drop bombs on them.

I watched that report last night on Al Jazeera. We are conditioned, of course, and as always, to automatically disbelieve anything said about us by those characterized as enemies. So even though the report was aired on Link TV here in the home of the brave, it will not be noted elsewhere. Only those of us with minds freed up a bit will lend it any credence. The rest will not even see it, and so will be spared the resulting cognitive dissonance.

Murder is murder. I don’t care if the murderers are highly trained American pilots. Murder is murder. It is not “first degree” murder, as these young pilots are deeply indoctrinated in American ideology, and so think they are performing a necessary task. But it is not “manslaughter” either – that is, they are deliberately putting people in harm’s way, and so are responsible for the resulting carnage (which, fortunate for them, they never have to witness). Forgiving the naïveté of youth, real responsibility lies up the line in the command centers that order the air strikes. These are more seasoned veterans, likely more world-wise, and surely aware of the dangers of bombs launched from aircraft into civilian-occupied areas.

Will there ever be another Nuremberg? Will state-sanctioned murderers ever again be brought to justice? I doubt it, at least not in my lifetime. Far from being brought to justice, one of them recently received the Republican presidential nomination. He is some kind of “hero” because the people he dropped bombs on imprisoned him and (gasp!) possibly even mistreated him.

I am not a pacifist. I believe in the necessity of self defense, and just war. I want to be on the “just” side of the conflicts, those engaged in self-defense. They are the ones who do not have the stars and stripes on their uniforms.

I was recently listening to David Marsh on satellite radio – I really like the guy, as I rarely leave his show without having heard something new and different. Marsh is the sole extent of the sourcing that I will do for this post. I’m just putting it up because it has explanatory power.

NPR is a perfect complement to the liberals and intellectuals who support Obama and the Democrats. It’s mild, and full of programming that has no political significance. Its news is identical in content to the corporate networks, but has better production values than other radio news outlets. The only times I listen to NPR are when Terry Gross has something interesting going, and of course, for Car Talk and Wait Wait… . I think that Garrison Keillor fills up six hours of weekend programming. It seems much, much longer than that.

NPR was founded in 1970, and has from time-to-time over the years offered independent news and views. But it’s independence was untenable for two reasons: One, congressional oversight, and two, corporate funding. These are enough to keep it bland and unoffensive.

And this, according to Dave Marsh, is the purpose of NPR. The year 1970 is significant because there was an outbreak of democracy going on, and local radio played a significant role in spreading information for organizing purposes. All large cities had independent channels, and many mid-sized ones as well. Since 1970, even with rocky early years, NPR has sucked up all of the bandwidth oxygen from radio. We now have Pacifica, with three outlets, left out of the hundreds of local stations that existed in 1970. It’s flagship show, Democracy Now!, which started in 1996, now broadcasts over 900 outlets, but most of them are insignificant, and its audience reach is limited.

I don’t know how much credence to put on that narrative – I don’t know that NPR was specifically intended to put an end to rebel radio. I do know that its fund raising drives suck up a lot of energy and money from liberal-leaning groups and individuals, and that me-too news is not exactly a prize investment.

Pope John Paul II has now been “beatified,”, meaning that if they can conjure up one more miracle, and if he has never gambled, he’s into the Hall of Fame.

I once had a teacher – an ex-marine nun (believe it!), who shook my young psyche by claiming that the fact that the ancient Greeks and Romans worshiped so many gods was not an outdated practice – that we could find the same thing going on currently with The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. Each of these minor gods is worshiped in the same way that the Greeks might have done so with Hermes and Hera – important, but not like Zeus, the big guy.

The search for miracles is confirmation bias on steroids. I wonder if the church employed Natelson and Budge in the process. It’s also comical. If this God of theirs were so powerful, why is he so sneaky about imparting evidence to us?

Sarah Palin says that Julian Assange “… is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands,” who should be “pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.” Read … murdered. Mike Huckabee at least has the decency to call for a trial before executing Assange. Vice President Biden says that Assange is a “high-tech terrorist.” The incendiary word “terrorist” automatically sanctions murder.

President Obama allows for compilation of a list of “high value targets” – people who can be summarily executed on sight. The fact that the list includes American citizens troubles people. The absurdity of limiting outrage only to American citizens escapes people.

In a sane and normal world, Palin and Huckabee are charged, tried, and if convicted, serve time. President Obama is impeached, but not until the clown Biden is first removed, to keep him out of that office.

But this is not a sane world. We are so deranged by the constant onslaught of agitprop that we think of incendiary or illegal violence or threat of violence by American patriots to be acceptable, while the same behavior by official enemies, once “communists” and now “terrorists,” is somehow crazed.

And the scale of violence in our eyes is so small – I mentioned in another post that American pilots commit massacres daily “while texting.” It was hyperbole, but only to point out that we think that our pilots massacring people is normal and acceptable. The fact that we do our murder and mayhem on high and from afar, by fighter jets and B52’s and long-range missiles and by use of drones does not remove us form culpability for our behavior.

And yet, when there is blowback, as with 9/11, it is them! They are the terrorists.

Violence comes home to roost, attitude precedes action, actions follow rhetoric, agitprop inflames psychos to murder, and we’re shocked! Shocked.

I’ve been spending part of my mornings with Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I love the guy, and wonder why he spends so much of his excellent mind thrashing at the windmill of religion. But I’ll read whatever he writes about anything of his choosing, as it’s a delight just to sit in his sidecar as he navigates. (He says he’ll leave them alone when they leave him alone. Surely he knows both are impossible.)

Just a couple of his observations – if God rested on the seventh day, what did he do on the eighth? (Never thought to ask.) Religion, he says, is “both the result of and the cause of dangerous sexual repression.” Too true, says this Catholic boy who sheepishly had to confess through a screen to a possible child abuser that he had touched himself to a happy result.

Nothing optional – from homosexuality to adultery – is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate.

He wonders how the Jewish people ever made it as far as they did before Moses while thinking that “murder, adultery, theft and perjury were permissible.” It must have been quite a mess before the old guy stumbled off the mountain. I did not know (the 8nuns did not tell me!) that the Immaculate Conception was not official church doctrine until 1852, and the problem of there being something about Mary was not solved until 1950, when they discovered her miraculous Assumption into heaven, hymen intact.

The moments I spend with Hitchens in the A.M. are better spent and far more enlightening than those of monks and nuns creeping into chapel. Is it possible that he might be some kind of deity. We’ll see after he succumbs to esophageal cancer … if he returns in a more durable body.

Don’t know who said this – I thought it was Ogden Nash, but it doesn’t pop up on the Google:

May all my friends be safe and well; may all my enemies go to hell.

Julian Assange stated in an interview last Thursday that he feared that if extradited and imprisoned in the United States, that he would die in prison “Jack Ruby style.”

For those not familiar with that reference, Ruby maintained throughout his stay in prison that he was framed – not that he did not kill Lee Harvey Oswald, but rather that he had no choice.

“The world will never know the true facts of what occurred–my motives. . . . Unfortunately, the people that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive, and who put me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come aboveboard to the world.”

Ruby died in prison in 1967, shortly before he was to be given a second trial in Waco, Texas. He was convinced that an injection that he received while in prison contained active cancer cells. I don’t know the science of that – I do know that premature death of people like Ruby should be regarded with high skepticism.

Assange appears to be playing a game here – he is raising his profile, possibly buying assassination insurance. There is no doubt that the Obama people want him jailed, and probably dead. The combination of corporate and government activities to shut down Wikileaks ought to raise eyebrows everywhere, but we are a land of shaved brows.

But if Assange’s profile is kept high, killing him becomes problematic, as any “accidental” death would everywhere (except in the American media) be regarded with suspicion.

Here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave public opinion does not favor Assange and Wikileaks. We are a most docile people, not even needing locks on our jail cells.