A Rough Beast Prepares to Slouch - December 31st, 2011

Imagine, if you will, the aftermath of a battle; the field is strewn with shattered artillery limbers, dead horses, stacks of dead infantry in hollow-squares, and smoke-tendrils wisping skyward from broken trees. In one corner of the field, however, is an untouched mansion. Not a hole; not a hoofprint in the lawn – the whole thing has passed it by.

Inside is a party, which was previously scheduled and which is going on apace; wine and whiskey is flowing, girls are getting pinched by lecherous old bastards with more money than either sense or morals, and the only thing anyone’s really worried about is whether they’ll run out of alcohol before sundown.

Afterward, everyone will take to their beds or their carriages, not knowing at all what’s just happened – nor will they care, much past the thought of what they had to pay the servants. They’re a class of people who gets to stay behind after sending a nation off to war.

You can damn well bet the servants knew – their fathers, brothers and uncles were among the infantry.

This is what has happened to America – the tainted mist wafting from the collective shattering of Middle Class America from three years of unrelenting social and financial warfare is the best clear indicator that the power-elite has destroyed an entire generation of young Americans, and all but wiped-out their parents.

The moneyed-classes in New York stood on the Stock Exchange balcony, sipped champagne and laughed about the first of the ‘Occupy’ movements. Frankly, I held my breath. I still do, every time the police pepper-spray pregnant women and old people – because one of these days, someone is likely to say ‘enough is enough’, and hang some police, stockbrokers, bank managers or who-have-you from the nearest lamppost.

We take a lot of nonsense from those in charge, we Americans. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that we actually believe that someday they’ll let us into the club; that voting still has power, and that we really do still have a chance. It was Steinbeck who said that socialism would never take root in America, because we don’t view ourselves as downtrodden; only as temporarily-displaced millionaires.

That’ll change when there’s enough disruption. In the meantime, the elite need not worry – there’s no strange-beast slouching toward Wall Street to sort them out for good.

At least, not yet.

Europe’s financial situation is hanging on by a thread; the result of thirty years of Chicago School/’trickle down’ economics has treated them no better than it's treated us, although they’ve connected the dots a little better than we have; they know that giving tax cuts to the wealthy only enables them to buy more toys, accumulate even more of the nation’s wealth, and instead of small business owners and people with futures, there’s now a continent full of unemployed students, cooks, housekeepers and drivers. Incredibly, America still views itself as ‘exceptional’, and hence exempt. Just ask any of the Republican candidates for President – they’ll tell you that there are plenty of jobs available; the only thing anyone has to do is take a bath.

Meanwhile, in spite of his pseudo-Liberal credentials, our current leader is really a Wall Street stooge; he’s ratified the previous administration’s assaults on civil liberties, and shows no sign of doing anything but pandering to those who got him elected by way of funding his campaign. It’s a full-on race to the bottom in 2012, with very little in the way of redeeming features. As the late Joe Bageant said, we now have an ultra Right and a center-Right, because so much oxygen has been sucked from the political discourse – it’s small wonder that the Republicans look crazy; the moderates abandoned the place a long time ago.

We’re many things now; this ‘America’, but we’re not a nation in any conventional sense; not with one person in six on food-stamps; one child in four living in poverty and one family in two below the Federally-accepted ‘poverty line’.

The basic math is dismal: Over 22% of the nation’s workforce isn’t working. Those are depression-level numbers, any way you cut it. The government’s steadfast denial of this problem is akin to the Japanese admirals who only reported cheery news to the Emperor up until they couldn’t hide the problem any longer. By then, two of their cities were little more than iridescent glass, and the rest of the country was rubble.

As 2011 ignominiously slips toward its end with the grace and dignity of a slug on the sidewalk, none of the problems from four years ago have been corrected – the banks are still in a disaster of their own making; half of the country is in threat of homelessness, and the only permanent solutions are those which the moneyed interests don’t want – because it will involve writing-down a lot of their debt, and accepting a higher tax-burden. The government’s income-problems are part and parcel of this; when the majority of revenues come from people who now work minimum-wage jobs, there’s no wiggle-room.

Meanwhile, America is becoming ungovernable in any functional sense – there’s no money to do it with, and Congress has either exempted or destroyed the only tax base from which to derive said revenue. Wall Street and its Congressional handmaiden have, with the collusion of the American voter, managed to destroy everything about this country which is worth saving.

Our leadership is little more than an agglomeration of grifters and thieves, with the rest of us fighting over scraps. While Wall Street finishes raiding anything worth taking and Congress is their willing accomplice, people with PhD’s are now growing illegal dope and selling it; you can go to CraigsList on any given Tuesday and find babies for sale, along with people who’ll sell you a perfectly-useable kidney. Moms are cooking Meth in the garage, selling it to their teenage-kids’ friends on weekends. Morality is a wonderful thing when there’s money in the bank and a job to go to on Monday morning; it’s an unsupportable luxury if there’s not.

I spend quite a bit of time volunteering in local food banks and homeless shelters this time of year, and I’ve watched the mood of America’s homeless go from shell-shock to righteous outrage. The pot is ready to boil over. Millions are ready to say to the 1%, “You don’t get it? Fuck you!” The ‘Occupy’ protests have been peaceful so far; they’ve only called attention to the problem, without taking serious action. Laughter from a balcony; pepper-spray; denigrating comments from Republican Congressfolk and presidential candidates – these are not appropriate responses.

I’ve a feeling that sooner than not, they won’t be laughing so smart and pretty.

That rough beast? He's getting ready to slouch toward Wall Street and Washington, and he's a mean and nasty bastard; he’s been fed on a diet of junk-food table scraps and attitude for some years now, and he’s about to slip his fucking leash. The result will not be pretty.

I’ll make a prediction – there will eventually be show-trials and other suchlike from a legal-system bent on mollifying an increasingly angry electorate; when these efforts do not produce the desired results, there will be violence.

At that point, the beast will be loosed. Kennedy’s statement will prove prescient; having made peaceful revolution impossible, violent revolution will be not only inevitable; it’ll be on everyone’s doorstep. The last thirty years have made a lie of my childhood, but the opportunity will be there to finally and for good-and-all do away with the corruption which has plagued this country for so long, or either split into separate nations or sink into a form of fascist neofeudalism.

(On balance, splitting up might be the best thing for America. We’re better off than most up here in the Northwest; if you don’t count the crazies in Montana who are bent on creating an anarcho-Fascist ‘paradise’, we’re actually pretty sane up here. The Teabaggers and Fundies don’t like us, but that’s fine by me. They’ve got Texas.)

I’d like to see America saved. It’s a good idea; this country – sadly, we now lack the educated electorate necessary to pull off self-government. That ship sailed a long time ago.

Blind rage is ready to take the place of reason or sense. The falcon sure as Hell can’t hear the falconer any more, and that beast is ready, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor, to disguise fair nature with rage, lend its eye a terrible aspect, and imitate the actions of a tiger.

The Indispensables – Fifteen Books Which Are Required Reading for the New Revolution

Temple of Reason - Strasbourg

"To ignore the past is to remain forever a child."

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero; Roman statesman/philosopher 

Every change-agent and visionary is a reader.  

Why?  Because ideas are immortal.  Whether it was the French National Assembly, which wrote the Rights of Man and the Citizen; the Continental Congress, which wrote the Declaration of Independence, or the Occupy Wall Street general-assembly which wrote the list of Occupation demands, those ideas did not spring full-grown - they were taken from other writers.

It’s impossible to understand what’s going on in America without a solid background in what’s happened, and why. It's equally necessary to have this background to understand fully the nature of the problem and what's really at stake here.

I've created this list assuming that the reader is going to have a real grasp of world, as well as American history, and that they don't ascribe to the recent witch-hunting and book-burning approach of the ultraRight with their attempts to rewrite history in Texas and elsewhere.

Having a solid understanding of current events  is necessary for a fundamental reason:  Understanding the causes helps us connect the dots.  Connecting the dots gives us a good idea about changing things and bringing about a better future.

To that end, I’ve created this list of fifteen books I consider indispensable to the education of people who want to involve themselves either with an Occupy group or another organization which is active in bringing about legitimate, permanent change.

It isn’t intended as a definitive – I’m sure you’ll all have books you consider ‘required reading’.  Feel free to suggest them.

The Myth of Separation – David Barton

This one makes the list because of the danger David Barton represents.  He (along with people like Gary DeMar and Gary North) is one of the main proponents of a ‘Christian nation’ philosophy.  In this book, Barton attempts to discredit the commonly-held interpretation of the First Amendment which holds that religion and government are separate, and that the U.S. was founded and should remain without a ‘state religion’.

In his book, Barton either quotes out –of-context or entirely misquotes several early Americans, including many of the founding personages of the American government.  I don’t list this book because of its scholarship – which is sloppy and faulty in the extreme – I list it here because of its influence on those who would radically alter the U.S. government along religious and extreme ultraRightist lines, and because those same people have co-opted one of America's main political parties (the Republicans).

Death of the Liberal Class – Chris Hedges

Hedges is one of my favorite living writers.  He’s one of a handful who’ve connected the dots between the sellout of our bulwark institutions (education, religion, arts, media) to a ruling class of moneyed elitists.  In this book, Hedges describes that process – and the consequence, which is the end of the liberal traditions which actually made up most of America’s founding principles.

In this, Hedges posits that the real threat to American liberalism isn’t the Tea Party, or Obama’s failure to promote genuine Progressive ideals – but the sellout of American liberals themselves.

Empire of Illusion – Chris Hedges

The second of three Hedges books I’m recommending here, this is a deep piece, dealing with the wholesale abandonment of the core ideals of education and literacy in favor of utilitarianism (education not for the betterment of the person, but in order to get a job/be ‘productive’/feed the ‘machine’).  Hedges uses several examples, from the adult ‘entertainment’ industry – which commoditizes the very nature of women – to Abu Gharaib, which he describes as the end-result of a national moral bankruptcy. 

The American Empire, he posits, is based on illusion – illusions which are created by a corporatized media and fed to us through everything from film/TV to advertising, and which have created a nation of mental slaves. 

American Fascists – The Christian Right and the War on America – Chris Hedges

This last recommendation from Hedges’ pen peels back the layers of slick packaging and ‘family values’ tripe to expose the ‘Christian nation’ movement for what it is – a Fascist hate-movement, driven more by a drive for power and control than for the welfare of all Americans; in fact, it’s roots are very similar to the Fascist movements in Germany and Italy prior to WWII (which also had their foundations in religion). 

A deep hatred for a liberal, progressive, ‘open’ society, coupled with an uberNationalism and a dismissive ideology have combined to create a movement with a laser-like focus and one goal: The transformation of America to a ‘Christian nation’, where their brand of religion is the only one allowed; where the law of the land is measured first by its adherence to ‘Biblical principle’.

Hedges doesn’t draw direct conclusions – that’s not his style; it’s also not good analysis.  He makes the case that the Christian right has Fascist roots; that their efforts are against the basic tenets of the U.S. Constitution and are therefore anti-American, and that theirs is a significant component in a greater danger – the commission of evil, in the name of a better world.  Read this as a warning and a cautionary tale writ-large.

Idiot America – How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free – Charles Pierce

Pierce begins this tale with a trip he took to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where he saw a large fiberglass Triceratops in the lobby – wearing a saddle.  Listening to the narrator of one of the ‘presentations’ say, “We’re taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!”, Pierce decided to write this piece on the triumph of idiocy in America.

In it, he describes America’s addiction to ‘cranks’ – which are, in the main, likeable creatures in the vein of those who promoted the existence of Atlantis in the 1880’s, but which are different than the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, who, in his words, “spew bilious nonsense at 50,000 watts from 1,000 radio stations nationwide.” 

Beneath the humor is a serious message – having abandoned our standards of education, plus the liberal traditions of reason and critical thinking, we’ve turned the country over to people who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old; that Obama is ‘coming for their guns’, and that human beings actually rode dinosaurs.

Unequal Protection – How Corporations Became People (And How To Fight Back) – Thom Hartmann

Understand – I like Thom Hartmann. 

He lives here in Portland.  I’ve heard him speak, at one of my favorite bookstores here.  He’s not a great speaker; he’s a bookish fellow who sticks to his research.  In this, you’re going to find ‘Unequal Protection’ one of the most thoroughly-documented stories of corruption you’ve read.

The premise is pretty simple – corporate attorneys have used the Fourteenth Amendment to convince the Supreme Court that corporations are people.  Further, they’ve been doing it almost since it was ratified, with the Citizens United ruling being just the most-recent (and most egregious) misuse of the Constitution in this regard.

As an attorney-friend of mine is fond of saying, “Government power has never not been used.”  Read this one to understand what we’re all up against.  The good news?  We can fight back – and should.  (Note:  This is only one of Hartmann’s books on the American sociopolitical system.  All of them are good reads).

Kingdom Coming – The Rise of Christian Nationalism – Michelle Goldberg

This is one of my top-five books of the past twenty years; Michelle Goldberg was one of the first journalists to ‘connect the dots’ of the American Fundamentalist movement and call it out for the danger that it is.

Today, it’s impossible to be a Republican without being a radical, Fundamentalist Christian.  Because of their ties to the Republicans, they are by nature well-funded (the moneyed-elites in Washington and on Wall Street give generously to Fundamentalist organizations).  Any candidate who is vetted for anything higher than state office has to be examined under their lens and found ‘worthy’.  In this book, Goldberg explains in plain language (no need to have studied American religious history in any depth here) the ‘parallel universe’ occupied by the Fundies; why they created their own ‘America’ in the first place, and why they feel bound and committed to foist it off on the rest of us. 

It’s that last step which has everyone from Goldberg to myself more than a little worried – because these people have influenced domestic and foreign policy itself, co-opted an entire political party, and created a political scenario where there is real potential for outright Fascism.  Read this, and understand why the notion of ‘Christian nationalism’ is such a threat to us all.

Republican Gomorrah – Inside the Movement Which Shattered the Party – Max Blumenthal

Blumenthal’s seminal work on the co-option of the Republican Party by the Religious Right belongs on every shelf in America – and while this book has been universally excoriated by the Fundamentalists and other religious Fascists in America, it was received by the rest of us on its publishing as the final ‘connect the dots’ moment regarding the deep ties between Fundies and Republicans.

I’ve said it before – it’s impossible to be a Republican now and not be a Fundie.  This book goes into the ‘why’.   (Note:  This book is less about the politics of the thing than about deviant psychology.  If you’re a bit squeamish reading about religious ‘leaders’ who have their roots in child abuse, prostitution and other such behavior, you might want to pass.  If, on the other hand, you want to really learn what makes these people tick and how they’ve come this close to running America, then read on.)

Griftopia – Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi, one of my favorites among the new generation of political writers, exposes in ‘Griftopia’ the behavior of Wall Street – written for the layman, Taibbi expertly uses plain-English to describe the techniques used by the Wall Street crowd to demolish our economy; he awards “Biggest Asshole in the Universe” to Alan Greenspan, who dismantled what little regulations remained over the financial sector and set the stage for the 2008 meltdown.

  You’ll laugh; you’ll cry – and you’ll finally understand after reading this one.

The Party’s Over and The End of Growth – Richard Heinberg

I put these two together because they really ought to be read at the same time.

In “The Party’s Over”, Heinberg lays out, with some pretty incisive statistics, the reasons why we are not only past the point of peak oil production, but discusses some of the inevitable changes which must occur.   You’re not going to find this read pleasant – and you might find yourself disagreeing with him on several points, mainly because they go to the heart of many of America’s treasured institutions – the suburb; the car; the yearly vacation; fresh fruit in January – the list goes on.  Whether he’s right, or whether we have a little time left (the USGS says we won’t hit ‘peak oil’ until 2020), the time to make those changes, starting with our own lives, is now.

In “The End of Growth”, Heinberg details something he glossed-over in the first book – the fact that Americans use over five times their share in energy resources; the Chinese are catching up with us rapidly, and the overall value of our vaunted ‘American lifestyle’ is rapidly becoming unsustainable.

With seven billion people on the planet, we are clearly headed for an energy crisis of global scale and proportion.  The ‘Occupy’ movements have called attention to this – what remains is to see if we’re going to be any more successful than Jimmy Carter in 1978 (his stance on energy cost him the election in 1980), or if we’ll finally wake up. 

The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein

This book is indispensable for one reason – it’s a chronicle of the collusion between the corporate world, the universities, and government.  From Chicago School economics, which succeeded in destroying the economies of Chile, Argentina and the newly-liberated Soviet Union long before they destroyed ours, to the agent provocateurs which America has used time and again to destroy entire governments – there’s a common thread:  Governments (and ours is one of the most-egregious practitioners of this tactic) can pass draconian laws and edicts during unsettled times far easier than they could when things are ‘normal’.

In this, Klein steps us all back and points out the things we’ve done in the name of ‘emergency’ – and the tacit support given to our Wall Street elites to loot the treasuries not just of our own country, but those of others as well, for no other real reason than economic imperialism and the enrichment of a few.  We see through this well-researched piece that America is not, and hasn’t been, a ‘democracy’ in any sense of the word for decades – we’re a plutonomy, run by and for a very few who’ve wasted no time in using every leverage to rape the world.

Albion’s Seed – Four British Folkways in America – David Hackett Fischer

To understand America, you have to understand how it came to be – and if you’re still stuck believing the tripe you learned in grade-school (Columbus came and ‘liberated’ the natives; the Pilgrims made ‘friends’ with the natives in New England and lived in peace and harmony;  etc.), then you’re in for an eye-opener here.

In this piece, Fischer deconstructs the four major migrations from England – the Puritans, the Cavaliers, the Quakers, and the Scots-Irish.  Each brought a distinctive culture to America, along with the seeds of future conflict (by example, the descendants of the Puritans and Cavaliers were the cultural-combatants in the American Civil War).

This is a long book – but it reads well, and is quite probably the best explanation of America’s roots that you’ll find in print.  If you really want to understand the country, you have to understand the beginnings of its culture – and why ‘borderer philosophy’ has influenced the far Right in America from the beginning to the Tea Party today.

The Eliminationists – David Neiwert

I’ll warn you – this is a scary book.

In spite of our Enlightenment/Jeffersonian roots, America has always had a history of eliminationism.   Settlers were dismissive of the basic humanity of Native Americans; ‘sundown’ towns prevented persons of color from living there; the Klan was pervasive until comparatively recently (and still has a presence in some parts of the deep South) – on balance, we shouldn’t be surprised at the hatespeech of the far Right, which tends to come out of the woodwork during a real or manufactured emergency.

We now have a ‘war on terror’ – something the Right has used to demonize its traditional opponents (which really boil down to anyone who doesn’t look or think like they do).   Neiwert explains in very plain language in this book that the first step in a long slide toward Fascism is the demonization, objectivizing and eventual elimination of their opponents.

The process is simple – first, the Right engages in eliminationist rhetoric and full-on hate-speech to create ‘non persons’ of a group or class; next; they demonize the group, after which it’s very easy to deny them basic civil rights – or imprison them outright.

The conclusion is simple – traditional American conservative movements, including the Republican Party itself, have been co-opted through a skillful use of media by an ultraRight, eliminationist and proto-Fascist subgroup which view elements of American society (gays, Muslims, liberals and others) as ‘un-American’, and which deserve to be eliminated entirely. 

Don’t blame me if you don’t sleep terribly well after reading this – but then again, you shouldn’t.

The Conscience of a Liberal – Paul Krugman

The award-winning economist sets a few things straight here – first, the postwar boom wasn’t the result of a free-market economy and the vindication of Conservative ideology, it was the result of the policies of the Roosevelt Administration, severe regulation of the financial markets, and the efforts of the Eisenhower administration to create a genuine progressive tax system which put the burden of running society on those who’d benefited from it the most.

Things started going south when the neoconservatives, championed by Reagan, began dismantling the programs which made our prosperity possible. 

 Krugman also makes it clear that wealthy people (the ‘job creators’, as the current group of Teabaggers call them) don’t create jobs – customers create jobs, and customers don’t exist if they have no money to spend.

America is a wealthy country, Krugman concludes – the wealth is in the wrong places, and will never be used to create more wealth unless it winds up in the hands of customers who can create demand.

Read this one to understand where we are economically, how we got here – and how we can get back.

As I mentioned above, this list is far from definitive – you may have other suggestions; my intent here is to create a framework for the discussion of reading material which will educate and motivate those of you who want to create genuine change.  Again; please feel free to suggest your own.

Thanks again for reading!

Batshit of the Year Award

(I know; I said these pieces were too hard to research, and didn't get anywhere near enough response - and while all that is still true, I had to drag this column out of retirement to bestow the Batshit of the Year Award.

 In doing so, I had to consider three things - first, there were a LOT of bugfuck-nutsoids and batshit-crazoids to choose from.   I mean, there's Rick Perry, who came in a close #2, for terminating 6,000 firefighters when half of his state was on fire, then renting a *whole friggin' stadium* to beg his Invisible Friend for rain - so whatever the winner did, it had to really stand out as true, unadulterated, no-holds-barred-and-hold-your-nose batshit.  

Second, the award had to have meaning - in that, it had to go to a party which had really earned it, by the twin-virtues of being bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy all the time - as well as having performed a jumping-the-batshit-shark piece of egregious craziness which left everyone else wondering what happened.

Last, it had to reflect a microcosm of a much bigger, more significant - and hence, dangerous - bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy  segment of society.  So, submitted for your approval is my Batshit of the Year Award - The Duggars)....

Before I get started here, I'll (re)clarify a couple of things.

First, (as if the regular readers of this small corner of the 'sphere don't already know by now), I'm an atheist.

This means that I don't believe in ghosts, angels, phantoms-of-any-stripe, and especially gods - I'm convinced they're the creations of people who were seeking in the main to subject other people to their whims.

This means all of them.  I'm an equal-opportunity dismissive in this sense;  I've got next to no use for the rantings of a misogynistic pederast (Mohammad); the rantings of a group of social-overlords who turned both classism and racism into an art (the Bhagavad-Gita); the rewritten, recycled rantings of a bunch of bronze and iron-age goat-herders (the Bible), or the current rantings of the handful of mystics, charlatans and other "holy people" tramping the earth today, busily buggering truth for money when they've never so much as held a real job or balanced a checkbook (I'm putting everyone from the late 'Osho' to the Dalai Lama in this last category).

Today, however, I'm going to comment on one of my most-encountered (and hence, least-favorite) of these, the American Fundamentalist Christian.

Most of us are pretty well-aware that Fundies are a fucked-up bunch.  First off; they hate a lot of things - gays; most modern culture; the American political system - the list does go on (I know; there'll be at least one of them who'll say, "But we don't!  We just hate the 'sin'!  We love everyone!"  That's bullshit - but it's also not the purview of this piece.)

On the other hand, there are things they love.  Lawrence Welk.  Side-hugs.  Purity rings (even if they don't work).  And fetuses.

Damn, but Fundies love fetuses.  

All kinds of fetuses.  Big ones that are just about to be born.  Small ones that would never live on their own.  And, in the case of this tale, in-between ones that look like little humans.   They love 'em so much, they'd like to pass a law against getting rid of one, no matter what.   They even support organizations which sponsor some pretty twisted laws; amendments to State Constitutions which would grant these things the same rights as people-walking-upright.

Now, the other day,  the Mom and Dad in this family suffered a miscarriage.  That's a sad event, and something which should be left to the persons involved to deal with in private.

But that's not their style.

See, they've already bred 19 other humans, and in spite of the fact that this ultimate piece of 'family values' arrogance (the average American consumes 300 times the resources of his/her Third World counterpart - sort of like taking the food/clothing/shelter allowance from 5,700 other people; a reverse-World Vision sort of thing; seeing how much they can take away, rather than donate, to starving children elsewhere) is already an egregious example of the command in their 'book' to 'conquer the earth and subdue it', they've also done this in the public eye, spawning (pardon the pun) one of the worst examples of a dismal medium, their own 'reality-tv' show.

So, it shouldn't surprise us that they pulled off a piece of theatre to capitalize on what would have been a very private, grieving moment for most sane families.

Nope, they took fetus-love to a whole new level.   They insisted on cleaning it up immediately after 'the event'; then had a 'naming ceremony' where they gave it a name.

Then, they hired this outfit to do a photo-shoot.

That's right - they named the aborted fetus, then had a company which specializes in such things take pictures of It.

Events didn't quite end there, either.  Afterward, they had a 'funeral' for it (much, I suppose, like Trimalchio's feast in Petronius' "Satyricon", or Virgil's funeral for his pet-fly (but hey - at least Virgil's funeral meant that with a mausoleum on his land, the government couldn't confiscate his property - a good-old-fashioned-and-understandable ulterior-motive - but again, I digress.)

Opinion:

Words fail here.  They really do.  I've heard of and seen some pretty fucked-up things in my life, but this takes the entire prize.  I do not understand this fascination with all-things-fetus; I really don't.  I understand that Christianity is a catch-all religion, with innumerable branches (and more being founded, it seems, by the year); I understand that there are Christians who won't 'claim' other Christians because of their behavior.  

Sitting on the outside of things, however, makes me wonder why, after a three-ring circus like this, every branch of the religion on the planet didn't gang up and disown these people outright.

As mentioned, this takes the prize - at least, in my own mind - for the Most Fucked-Up Thing Anyone Did in 2011- beyond Michele Bachmann's insane rants; beyond the donut-shovelling and gay-hating of Rick Warren; beyond the ultraRight sentiments of people like Matt Barber and Bryan Fischer, and the idiocy of people like Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan - these Duggar-people take the cake. 

And yes - in case you are wondering - yes, I'm better than they are - because I (an atheist), unlike they (members and practitioners of a supposedly life-loving religion), actually respect the dead - in whatever form.

(So, even though 2011 is not-quite-done, I'm awarding this year's Batshit of the Year Award to the Duggar Clan - especially Mom and Dad Duggar - because of all the bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy stuff I've reported this year, this has to be the creepiest, skin-crawliest, dead-disrespectful-ist, bugfuck-nuttiest and batshit-craziest thing I've seen in a long-assed time.  

Also unlike them, I have propriety.  If you want to see the aforementioned photos, go here - I won't post them.)

1984; Redux....

The other day, our President, Barack Obama, the first African-American elected to the nation’s highest office and a man who should by virtue of his skin-color if nothing else know a thing or two about a thing or two about the concept of the word, ‘freedom’, stated that he would not veto the National Defense Authorization Act.

Understand something. 

The NDAA is a catch-all bill, made necessary because we decided after WWII that, as a nation, we were better off with than without a standing army.  Because the Constitution calls for re-funding of any military appropriations beyond those to fund the Navy, Congress has to resort to a large, unwieldy piece of legislation to fund everything from the Iraq War to those $800 coffee pots about which you’ve all read.

It’s a huge document – and one in which all kinds of appropriations can (and are) hidden in the political weeds.  This year is different, though, because the NDAA now contains verbiage which states that the military can declare anyone a ‘terrorist’ – then detain them without trial. 

Let me make this clear:  The government can swear someone is a ‘terrorist’ – then the military can detain them in one of their ‘camps’ without trial, for the length of their War on Terror – a conflict which, because it was never officially ‘declared’, can never really end.  No trial, no hearing.  You do not get to pass ‘go’, or collect two hundred damned dollars, either.  You’re done.  Forever, if they feel like it.

Theoretically, I could be declared a terrorist for writing this piece, then slammed into a cell next to a guy named Ahmed or Mohammed or Joseph or Luis or – well, you get the point – and have the key thrown away.  For good.  Period.

There’s a name for this sort of behavior.  It’s called Fascism.

There’s also a name for what America has become.  It’s called a Police State.

David Neiwert, author of “The Eliminationists” (one of the best books on the subject of the far Right and its media efforts to demonize, objectify, and eliminate its opponents) makes a case for five stages of Fascism – (1) a rural movement toward national ‘renewal’; (2) coalition of or transformation of the movement into a political party, either by the creation of a new party or the hijacking of an existing one; (3) the legitimization of the movement – a nation’s real leadership-elite throws-in with the thugs; (4) assumption of control via established electoral process; (5) radicalization through the achievement of political or military victory.

It’s easy to dismiss the evangelical-freakshow on the Republican debate-circuit; Gingrich looks for all the world like 300 pounds of mashed-potatoes stuffed into a suit – but he’d also cut off all forms of public welfare if he were elected.  Romney can’t seem to figure out what to say next – but he’s taken a page from Obama’s book, and he’s pandering to any group which will get him elected.  Rick Perry’s extended urka-durka-thon continues apace, even though over the past few encounters with his worthy-opponents he’s all but taken out a bazooka and blown up the metaphorical campaign-bus.  It’s great theater.

So was Hitler, with his Charlie Chaplain mustache and his funny salute – he walked around playing soldier in his homemade uniform; he and his brownshirts – until they won an election.

Last November, the entire country lost its sense of self and voted in the Teabaggers (the inheritors of Bush's philosophy that the Constitution is 'just a goddamned piece of paper') – and believe me, they’ve wasted no time in making their agenda felt.  They’re the brownshirts of the new era, and having hijacked the Republican party, they’re going to make their mark in history – and they’re taking down the Constitution to do it.

These people are serious as a heart-attack, and they’ve brought Fascism to America.  It’s wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross, just as Sinclair Lewis warned us it would be.  The powers that be at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are using these people in a last-ditch effort to save their power; on the opposite side are a handful of unemployed students, homeless veterans, and people like me.  And, hopefully, you.

We’re there.  Every one of our best thinkers – from eloquent writers like Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky to hard-nosed researchers and political scientists like Robert Paxton  - have made this abundantly clear, and have stated in no uncertain terms that once we cross the line from legitimacy to control, no nation has ever returned.

America will now become whatever the powers that be want it to – unless those of us who believe in what used to be are willing to stand in front of the tanks.

It’s come to that.