AMERICA THE PSYCHOTIC! PART 3

In previous posts, I wrote about the media and the rightwing noise machine. Nothing I said was particularly original or different; there are hundreds of other bloggers all pretty much pointing out the same thing. At the end of that post, I also stated that I would be writing about the worse elements in our society which the Rightwing has chosen to ally itself with. One of those elements, and probably the most controversial of those is the Revelationist Movement.

The reason I consider the Reveletaionist Movement to be the most controversial is that unlike the Hate groups, which are not mainstream and are not considered to be viable, the Revelationist Movement is considered to be somewhat mainstream and a viable political as well as religious movement. You need only look at our President and what he has claimed in the past to see just how mainstream this movement is.

Again, there are many bloggers who have already taken great ains to point out just how perfidious this movement is. Talk to Action consistently tallies the Revelationist movement and its abuses. Crooks and Liars also regularly illuminates the insanity of this movement.

Why do I call this group insane? To put it quite simply, they act one way during the day, but believe and pray for something else. They act like your neightbors. They may even be friendly towards you most of the time. Yet given their beliefs, they are really only being nice to you because they believe you are damned to hell and doomed, just like any animal. Therefore, in their way of thinking, it really doesn't matter whether they are nice to you or not. You're dead anyway. And the only reason they are nice to you is because you always treat your animals nicely before you slaughter them.

For what else is their belief in Revelations, but the slaughter of all people except those who are to be raptured. If you are not one of the chosen, you will spend seven years on earth which will be like Hell, and all the unbelievers will either convert to the one true faith or be slaughtered. It is a violent end to everyone who doesn't believe as they do. It has very little to do with the teachings of Jesus.

So why is it a problem that these people believe as they do. Again, they place their belief in Revelations above all other beliefs. They act in a manner to hasten the The Rapture, to hasten the End Times and the conversion or death of all the rest of us. Which means, they don't believe in Global Warming, they want violence in the Middle East, and they do not tolerate any beliefs other than their own.

The problem again occurs when it comes to politics. The initial premise of our society was that a multiplicity of sects and factions would keep one sect or faction from becoming overly powerful. Up to now, this has more or less worked. But with the convergence of the Rightwing Noise Machine, the Incestuous Entrenched MSM, and the Revelationists, you no longer have a single sect or faction trying to dominate all the others, you have a single faction made up of disparate elements trying to dominate American Political Discourse. None of these elements by themselves can dominate the discourse, but together they make up a significant minority in the country.

The Revelationists are not by themselves a significant minority. They are a large minority, making up somewhere in the nature of a quarter of the population. Add to this your run-of-the-mill conservative, and other disaffected elements who wish to blame others for their failings, and that minority grows. The power-brokers in the MSM and the Rightwing Noise Machine with the help of the leaders of the Revelationist Movement bring their minions to bear n the Political process. The problem, of course, is that the Power Brokers believe they control the process. And at this time, it seems they do. But what happens when this coalition of the intolerant falls apart, which it will at some point. What will be left of our country when the intolerant have completely gutted our rights and freedoms because of the conviction in their own beliefs?

In the next section of this thought experiment, I shall continue to discuss the other misguided elements of our society.

AMERICA THE PSYCHOTIC! PART 2

Last time I spoke generally about the irrelevance of the Media and how this plays into the advancing US psychosis. To reiterate briefly, The World burns, and we obsess about nothing. Like individual psychotic episodes, the US is disengaged from Reality. There appears to be a collective disconnect from what is actually happening and what we believe or wish to happen.

To continue now with the Media, which is after all supposedly our collective conscience, let us turn our attention to the conservative media and the triangulation which occurs amongst the Media, the Netroots, and the Political Classes. There is no comparable behavior on the Left-leaning side, thus giving the Right even more sway than they should have. While the so-called Middle obsesses over the death of Anna Nicole Smith, thereby rendering itself irrelevant, the Left shouts against the wind, itself relatively powerless since it does not in fact control much in the way of Media; The Right, on the other hand, uses its massive propaganda machine fueled by the consolidation of media, rightwing think tanks, and a single simple message, that message being that if you disagree, you are unamerican to beat us into submission. And so they get away with setting the Media agenda, which is why a story about Nancy Pelosi and her flights back to her district gains traction. Peter Daou does a much more competent job of explaining this than I have.

This, of course, does not completely explain why America appears to be sliding into Psychosis, but it is one major component of this slide. By marginalizing some of those that differ, you make it easier for others to gain traction. The Right, by itself, does not have, even with this triangulation, the numbers to actually gain control of our political system. They simply control the means to marginalize certain other elements in the debate, and by marginalizing those factions, they allow other factions to rise beyond their natural level.

The Middle level Media are also complicit in this, as they seem to take their marching orders from the Rightwing noise machine. There are numerous blogs which look at how the MSM and Washington have an incestuous relationship. See here and here to name but two. But that incestuous relationship is even more eggregious when you realize that Terry Moran of ABC News is the brother of the blogger Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse. Or that Jonah Goldeberg of National Review owes his position to his mother's rightwing predilections. Or that Katie O'Bernie's husband was the hiring officer for the CPA in Iraq. Or that Campbell Brown recently married Dan Senior, the spokesman for the CPA under Paul Bremer. And this list goes no and on.

Not to say that there has never been cross-pollination of Media and Politics before, but now that cross-pollination fits in very well with the desires of these Media outlets since very few of them are just Media outlets anymore.

There is more to this than what I have written, and I could go on forever, but I just want to point out lastly that the Conservative triangulation cannot in and of itself win elections. It does not have that kind of numbers. It is a minority, albeit a significant one, but by itself it is still a minority. So what it has done is insidious. It has allied itself with elements which do not want America to survive. It has allied itself not with the best this country has to offer, but with the worst. And while those worst elements again, do not make up a majority, there are just enough of them to help push elections over. In the next part of this series, I will be discussing those elements.

UPDATE: If the following is true, then you really have to wonder whether there is any difference between the Rightwing Noise Machine and the MSM.

AMERICA THE PSYCHOTIC! PART 1

Now, before anyone starts writing me nasty emails about this, as I expect I will finally have some traffic (Thank you Jon Swift for adding me to your blogroll), I believe that there are many excellent aspects of our Country (Yes, I think it's my Country too). As I have argued many times before, the fundamental principles upon which this Country was founded are some of the most high-minded and exceptional principles ever found in History. Our freedom to think and live pretty much how we as individuals determine our lives is something envied by most of the rest of the World as is our economic prosperity. We have created a country both unique for its aspirations and accessible because of its beliefs in opportunity and self-worth. Which makes this all the more horrifying as we allow our country to slide into psychosis.

That may seem harsh. Psychosis. Isn't that insanity? Yes, it is. But you need only look at the News for the day to see that this judgement is not too far off. As of today, 3,114 US soldiers have died in the Occupation of Iraq, and total non-mortal casualties in the neighborhood of47,657. Yet, given these horrendous figures (imagine how long we will be dealing with this mistake of a War), what was the top story of the day? Why, it was Nancy Pelosi and the Republican outrage over the aircraft put at her disposal to travel home to her district! The third most powerful figure in our Government, and Republican lawmakers were upset about the aircraft that was to be placed at her disposal to go home! And, of course, this is what the News Media deemed to be an important story. (Update: as I write this, the new breaking story is the death of Anna Nicole Smith. This story is considered so big that Keith Olbermann, not one usually associated with tabloid journalism, spent nearly half his show on it: a new low for MSNBC.) And the top story the previous two days was the Lust in Space story; an astronaut who drove some 900 miles to supposedly kill her supposed rival for a fellow astronaut.

So the so-called MSM adds nothing to the conversation. While the World struggles with poverty, violence, natural disasters, and even their own political scandals, which actually pertain to what is happening in the countries in question, the US spends like a drunken sailor and gossips about the death of a person who was famous for being famous. The Main-Stream Media should be considered irrelevant. End of Part 1.

IRAN; THE SCAPEGOAT AND THE EXCUSE!

It has become abundantly clear that BushCo intends to force a military confrontation with Iran, whether a pre-emptive air strike or an all-out ground war is simply the question. The Assistant Secretary of State has been making noises about the so-called Iran threat and the proof they have, recent reports concerning the attack on US soldiers in Karbala have been blamed on Iran, though no proof has been presented. And the MSM has quite simply decided to follow along, though at least this time there seems to be some scepticism.

So why now? Admittedly, Bush has called Iran one of the "Axis of Evil" (odd that given that Iran is a working democracy and actually allows women rights which they do not receive from our allies in the region e.g. Saudi Arabia) for awhile now, but the rhetoric has been mostly lip-service. Not that Bush would not have attacked Iran if he thought he could, but he went first to Iraq. So what new reasons are there for this sudden show of bellicosity?

To put it quite simply, Bush and BushCo. have to find a scapegoat and an excuse for their failure, and the easiest way for this to be effective is to sound the alarm about Iran. Iran, Iran, Iran. The Iranians are providing weapons to the Shia Militias! The Iranians are aiding the suicide bombers. The Iranians wish to control Iraq and to punish the US. I doubt very much that Bush actually believes any of these platitudes. But for him, it's a matter of not being held responsible. Bush, as he has said himself, doesn't care about his legacy; he cares only that he is not held ultimately responsible for the catastrophe that is his Iraq policy. He is the petulant two-year-old who when he sees he is about to lose, changes the rules of the game so that the game continues until he wins. Or everyone else simply becomes bored with playing.

Which makes it all the easier for the truly insane who believe that this is the correct policy to pursue these policies. So while it is obvious that Bush cares little about all of this, there is a cadre of policymakers, the so-called serious men, who believe wholly in this policy and will force US to continue to pursue it, come Hell or High Water. They will in the end destroy the US because they care nothing about the US; they care only about their policies and their belief in those policies. Cheney is such a man. McCain is such a man. Most of the contributors to the National Review are such men and women. The War Whore Michael Ledeen is not only such a man, he is also the ultimate hypocrite. He now says that he never advocated for war in Iraq, even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

And so now, unable to admit to the catastrophe that is Iraq, they turn their attention to Iran and blame Iran for all their troubles. Because, as everyone knows, Iran invaded Iraq in March of 2003. And the War Whores that bellowed for War cannot bring themselves to admit that they may have been wrong.