From the Fox News Website
A reader comment (on the proposed Presidential address to school kids):
"Our children are grown - should this have happened when they were in school I would have kept them home or had them attending an alternate class - I would have been at the school to see them in an alternate class or would have taken them home - they are still my children and my responsibility to see that they are not fed a bunch of garbage. Remember Hilter took over Germany by reaching the children and having them turn in their parents.THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN HERE!!!! "
Obama is going to teach children to turn in their parents - for what, exactly? And to whom? And where will these hapless parents be taken, pray tell? And if Obama has all this power, why are you able to spew such venom about him 24/7, w/o black helicopters swooping in to take you to a reeducation camp? If he's some mad megalomaniac in charge of every aspect of American life, why can he not pass any legislation? Why has he not seized all your guns, as you constantly fantasize he's going to do? And Hitler directly or indirectly led to the deaths of 50+ million people, so how dare you malign the memory of the dead with this rhetoric?
Or, in other words - how bat shit insane are these people who read and write this stuff?
Sometimes I get down. Last night I was thinking of Ted Kennedy, and how every time we liberals praise him, we have to preface everything with "Well, of course he was a lousy human being, but..." Same thing when we say something good about Bill or Hillary or Bobby or JFK. Hell, Jimmy Carter is probably the most Christian president we've ever had, with not a whiff of scandal about him, but even with him we have to start by saying, "Well, of course he was a lousy president, but..." It's like we start out every sentence by apologizing! But the right - no apologies there! They're just more loyal than us - you've got to give them that. You don't see them saying "Well, of course Rush is a pill popping fiend..." or, "Well, even though Dick shot his friend in the face..." No, their heroes most certainly do NOT have feet of clay as far as they're concerned. And when we bash the other side, the rhetoric's different, too: I may have called Dick a fascist, but I know I never said he was Hitler, or that he was gonna brainwash our kids into turning against their parents. Because that's just insane. Sorry, it is.
And the scary big difference between right and left, a difference that's almost like an elephant in the room? Several of the heroes of the left have been shot dead in public after constant vilification. I tried myself to overlook this and think, "No, that's crazy, that'll never happen. This is America. We elected a black president. We're over all that insanity and violence." But if there are people who think Obama is trying to talk their kids into turning their parents into the authorities for thought crimes, you have to wonder - if they're crazy enough to believe that, what else are they crazy enough to do?
I'll pray for this president.
"Our children are grown - should this have happened when they were in school I would have kept them home or had them attending an alternate class - I would have been at the school to see them in an alternate class or would have taken them home - they are still my children and my responsibility to see that they are not fed a bunch of garbage. Remember Hilter took over Germany by reaching the children and having them turn in their parents.THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN HERE!!!! "
Obama is going to teach children to turn in their parents - for what, exactly? And to whom? And where will these hapless parents be taken, pray tell? And if Obama has all this power, why are you able to spew such venom about him 24/7, w/o black helicopters swooping in to take you to a reeducation camp? If he's some mad megalomaniac in charge of every aspect of American life, why can he not pass any legislation? Why has he not seized all your guns, as you constantly fantasize he's going to do? And Hitler directly or indirectly led to the deaths of 50+ million people, so how dare you malign the memory of the dead with this rhetoric?
Or, in other words - how bat shit insane are these people who read and write this stuff?
Sometimes I get down. Last night I was thinking of Ted Kennedy, and how every time we liberals praise him, we have to preface everything with "Well, of course he was a lousy human being, but..." Same thing when we say something good about Bill or Hillary or Bobby or JFK. Hell, Jimmy Carter is probably the most Christian president we've ever had, with not a whiff of scandal about him, but even with him we have to start by saying, "Well, of course he was a lousy president, but..." It's like we start out every sentence by apologizing! But the right - no apologies there! They're just more loyal than us - you've got to give them that. You don't see them saying "Well, of course Rush is a pill popping fiend..." or, "Well, even though Dick shot his friend in the face..." No, their heroes most certainly do NOT have feet of clay as far as they're concerned. And when we bash the other side, the rhetoric's different, too: I may have called Dick a fascist, but I know I never said he was Hitler, or that he was gonna brainwash our kids into turning against their parents. Because that's just insane. Sorry, it is.
And the scary big difference between right and left, a difference that's almost like an elephant in the room? Several of the heroes of the left have been shot dead in public after constant vilification. I tried myself to overlook this and think, "No, that's crazy, that'll never happen. This is America. We elected a black president. We're over all that insanity and violence." But if there are people who think Obama is trying to talk their kids into turning their parents into the authorities for thought crimes, you have to wonder - if they're crazy enough to believe that, what else are they crazy enough to do?
I'll pray for this president.
posted by KPaffenroth at
12:20 PM
11 Comments:
Charlie Stross points us to this article on Ur-Facism by Umberto Eco. It's quite enlightening.
I ain't even a liberal -- or actually I have a plethora of tendencies that ping as "liberal" but an equal plethora that ping as "conservative," which may mean I'm an undeclared Libertarian, although of the decidedly non-militant sort -- but I'm singing the Hallelujah Chorus in response to this post.
Right on target.
(Although, minor point -- not to you, but to the field in general -- there *was* a fairly substantial amount of liberal grousing from 2000-08 to the effect that Team Bush was pursuing a distinctly and quasi-openly fascist agenda.)
If I never have another person tell me via web link, email, or email that Obama is a non-U.S. citizen and Islamic terrorist who has illegally usurped the throne and is hellbent on deliberately "destroying America" etc., it will be too soon.
And don't even me started on those who "can't believe" that he "wants to destroy" "the greatest health care system in the world" by "having the government take it over." Gag. Retch. Fume. Weren't some of these same people surely among the ones who have bitched about America's broken health insurance system for two decades now?
Oops. Kim's blog, not mine.
Nicely done, Kim.
See, I have nothing against calling Dick a fascist - I know, no surprise there, but hear me out: it's qualitatively different, I think, than saying "Oh no! He's after our children!" That I never said, or heard, during the Bush years. And given how attached most of us are to our children - I think it's a dangerous ramping up of the rhetoric. Call Obama a liberal, say he's after your tax dollars, say he's gonna put the government in charge of everything and the government is bloated and inefficient and will ruin everything: I think all those statements are verifiably untrue, but they're within "normal" political discourse. But please don't say he's gonna pull the plug on grandma and brainwash your kids: that to me is revving things up to a point where some screwball's gonna hear it and go do something bad.
Indeed. Have you by chance seen the open letter to Obama from Lou Pritchett, former president of Procter & Gamble? I would think it an obvious hoax if Snopes hadn't verified its authenticity (http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/youscareme.asp). Pritchett goes on about a list of reasons why Obama scares him. They're all ludicrous. He doesn't mention the "You're taking the children!" angle you talk about here, but he ends with this:
"Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years."
I especially enjoyed this riposte from a professor of religion at Butler University, telling Pritchett why *he's* the scary one:
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/08/you-scare-me-mr-pritchett.html
Y'know, they may *seem* crazy, but I think that "unbelievably stupid, ignorant, and gullible" may be an equally valid hypothesis. In other words, if one million people believe the hateful, impossible rhetoric emerging from one certifiable right-wing lunatic, do you have 1,000,001 crazy people, or one nut job and a million ignorant rednecks? Maybe an academic point if the outcome is the same...
See, I think the Bush Admin came a lot closer to pushing towards Facsism than the current admin.
1. Blatant disregard for all treaties and conventions, going it alone. This is epecially true with Geneva Convention.
2. Patriot Act
3. Domestic wiretapping
4. Torture
5. Propaganda (Fox News)
Maybe Obama's shock troops could swoop in and take that writer back to punctuation school?
Be neat if I actually included the linkm, wouldn't it?
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html
"No, their heroes most certainly do NOT have feet of clay as far as they're concerned."
That’s because, while those of us in the Reality-Based Community at least try to put our evidence before our conclusions, they do it the other way around. Obama is evil, therefore anything he does, no matter how seemingly benign, is evil. But Bush, Beck, et. al. are clean, virtuous & god-fearing, so they must have a good reason for everything they do, or else it’s just evidence that they’re “forgiven.” QED.
"I may have called Dick a fascist, but I know I never said he was Hitler"
I think that’s an important distinction. Fascism is a (largely discredited) political ideology, so you’re essentially criticizing their policies (in the strongest possible terms). But calling someone Hitler is saying they’re an evil, megalomaniacal tyrant who has/will kill millions of people. Much more personal and inflammatory.
Tho it must be said: while you may never have called Cheney Hitler, if I had a nickel for every time someone did, I could retire early. And while I agree the past Administration did much to invite/deserve the comparison, I heard Bush I, Reagan, even McCain called Hitler enough times. Heck, I was even compared to Hitler more than once back in the day for having voted Republican.
See, even that's funny (as in "odd" as well as "darkly humorous) - I frequently do have the debate about whether or not it's right (or productive) to call the other side fascists or Nazis. I'm kinda doubting on the other side they have so many qualms about hurling the label. And I'm all for rising above the fray and holding onself to a higher standard, but come on! It's just looking a little ridiculous, as well as making me fear more for the president's safety.
Hey - I drive through Goshen every couple months. Looks like they might like FoxNews out there. (And we have plenty of Republican bumper stickers and lawn signs in our town, too.) You carrying the Lefty banner proudly?
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