The F Word

I went to a Tea Party rally on April 15th. There were lots of anti-Obama signs with the S Word on them — Socialism.

There wasn’t a single placard with The  F Word — Fascism.

A thread runs from Teddy Roosevelt through Benito Mussolini to Barack Obama. What Roosevelt called Progressivism, Mussiolini realized as Fascism, and now Obama brings it full circle by embracing the once and future American synonym for Fascism–Progressivism.

Like eugenics and socialism, fascism was embraced in the first third of the 20th century by many perfectly nice people. Technocracy, time/motion studies, eugenics, social engineering–the intellectual fads of this time had in common the notion that smart, enlightened, people who like being in charge of stuff would lead the rest of us besotted disorganized self-absorbed pub-crawling job-rutting tax-paying brat-raising fox-watching SUV-worshipping soccer-game-shlepping domino’s-pizza-ordering titty-movie-watching-after-she-goes-to-bed-at-last mouth-breathers to the kind of lives we would earn as their relatively pampered pets.

Mussolini, the most successful of all Progressives, Italianized the movement by calling it Fascism, and brought it into actuality and inevitable disrepute. I hope Obama similarly taints the term Progressive.

While socialism and Fascism usually result in similar real outcomes and use the same coercive methods, there are fundamental differences. One of them is that socialism uses helping the poor as its excuse; fascism justifies its my-mommy-told-me-to-tell-you attitude by appealing to a common social purpose and moral vision that everyone must support. I hope people who are calling Obama a socialist will look at what he’s actually doing and realize that it’s far more accurate to call him a Fascist.

Not only is it more accurate, but it is the right thing to do if you really want to annoy his supporters. Socialist doesn’t have any sting anymore. Too many people on the right have used it inaccurately. So it’s come to mean “anything government does that conservatives don’t like.” Similarly, on the left, the term fascism has come to mean “anything conservatives want the government to do that we don’t like.”

But when each side switches it up, the words get rehydrated. Liberals who accused George Bush (rightly) of socialist tendencies left conservatives nonplussed or embarrassed. Similarly, using the F word, and backing it up with specifics about Obama’s fascist agenda, knocks liberals off balance and opens them to reason–or at least to the need to prove why a particular Obamanation isn’t fascist.

Finally, for now, there is another important difference between fascism and socialism: fascism tends to demonize multiple domestic groups, even ones that aren’t fighting it. Fascism fights multiple little skirmishes against scapegoats–Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc.  Socialism tends to just lump people under Enemy of the State/People. I think this is because the Fascist moral platform has separate enemies for each of its tenets.

How many groups has Obama gone after already?

Gay Rites

I kind of hate gay people today. Because they’ve made me pay attention to a beauty pageant. Miss America/Universe/Galaxy/Something.

Perez Hilton, who has figured out how to be famous just for being gay, got chosen as a beauty pageant judge for girls.

Perez ambushed some blonde chick with a question about whether she supported gay marriage. Deer in the headlights at first, she tried dancing around the question in that incoherent word salad beauty pageant way we’ve all learned to love from YouTube. Then, you could see her at a certain moment just shrug inwardly and think, “Aw, go for it!”

She switched gears and spoke her limited mind: in essence, she wasn’t raised to believe in Adam and Steve. Not a really logical reason for being against gay marriage, but I give her props for guts and standing up to take her lumps.

Perez and his politically correct cohort of judges all marked her down enough to make her lose.  There’s controversy over whether she was really the front runner before this gaffe, but it’s obvious she couldn’t have won after failing to curtsy properly before the Queen.

A while ago, some gay activista did a google maps mashup pinpointing people who contributed to support Prop 8 (the California anti-gay-marriage proposition). How this is fundamentally different from putting Nazi yellow stars in people’s windows, I don’t know. People identified as donors to the Prop 8 cause have been fired after being discovered (political donations are public record–watch out!). How this is different from what most people think of as McCarthyism, I don’t know.

I’m a fundamentally libertarian person. I don’t really care about the gay marriage issue that much, because I don’t have a dog in the fight. But up till now I would have, as a no-brainer, voted for allowing gay marriage.  I wished gays well in their cause.

From now on, I’m voting against gay marriage if it comes up on any ballot I’m filling out. When mainstream gays repudiate this fascist streak that Prop 8 brought out in them, I’ll reconsider.

Gays have made themselves into just one more obnoxious, self-righteous, cranky, can’t-shut-up-about-their-pet-peeves-in-polite-company faction.

Welcome to the TMW bucket.

Great Job, Gays!

Update 2015:  I did vote for gay marriage in Washington state. Don’t regret doing it. But I am sick and tired of most gay people. The majority in my western Washington state part of the world are either fascists or cowards.

Update 2019: I no longer have any gay or trans friends in Washington state or on the West Coast, for that matter. My opinions as expressed above have made them all run for their safe spaces. Gutless little single issue fascists. I lost my only trans friend for voting for Trump.

I have departed the increasingly intolerant and intolerable blue hell that is western Washington state for a deeply red state. Courtesy of my wife, I have inherited a few gay friends here. So far, so good, but I’m reserving judgment. Oh, and it is me who is judging this time.

P.S. Don’t even start in on me about the grammatical correctness of that last sentence. I know what I’m doing.

The Rambo Stereotype

Obama’s new DHS attack dog, Janet Napolitano, is catching flak for suggesting that veterans are one insult away from going Rambo or at least joining a militia.

From the internal memo asking law enforcement to be on watch:

“The return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

Today, she tried to clarify, saying something along the line that it’s not that veterans are more likely to go off the deep end, but are likely to be more effectively violent if they do. Fair point, but not the original point. They only came up with this point because they were challenged, not because they meant it originally.

There is a meme, actually an archetype, of the military veteran that was created by Hollywood from the Vietnam War. Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Rambo, on and on. Psychologically scarred, unable to adjust to civilian life, easily triggered into violent fugue states–veterans as victims, not heroes, but dangerous victims much like Old Yeller near the end.

Everyone has helped to perpetuate this stereotype, including veterans and veterans groups.  That’s how the game is played in America–the most pitiful victim wins the most money and attention, and many veterans and nearly all veterans advocacy groups have competed hard in this ugly game.

I’ve worked with a lot of veterans, many are in my extended family, and this veteran-as-victim stereotype is crap. I’m not saying that going to war is no big deal with no after-effects. I’m saying the men (and increasing numbers of women) who serve come back stronger, smarter, more grown-up and they deal with their demons with admirable courage and mostly in private. Those who come back physically maimed more often than not rise to inspirational heights of maturity and achievement–they’re crippled, not cripples. I prefer hiring veterans because they’re more stable, work harder, are used to bad conditions and hard slogs and have excellent values. These people are heroes, not victims, for the most part. They’re far less likely to go off the deep end, more aware of the complexities of the world and far better Americans than careerist political hacks like Janet Napolitano.

Anyhow, most liberals take the ’70’s veteran stereotype very seriously. They are as skittish around veterans as I’d be hearing Old Yeller banging and barking in the shed. They think that veterans who aren’t crazy must have been on the Brute Squad.

This DHS report is pure establishment liberal worldview, with nobody in the office grokking how offensive it is because they swim in it. Same for the establishment reactions to the Tea Parties.

300,000 people (I think that’s a very low estimate) peacefully, respectfully protested and the mainstream liberals saw only violent, extremist yahoos on the verge of a shooting war. The TP protests I went to were cheerful, good-natured and calm, except for the few provocateurs who were screaming weird crap at normal people, deliberately trying to start a fight.  All the attempts to incite were in vain. Most of the people at the protest were veterans at dealing with provocative adolescents. There were cops everywhere when it started, on horseback, on foot–hell, there were more cops than protesters before start time. By the end of it, the cops were all relaxed and hanging out and many were engaged in casual conversation with people with signs.

If you didn’t go, you wouldn’t know. You’d think this was a bunch of right-wing, fringe nutjobs, the distaff side of the WTO protest movement. That crazy bullfrog Janeane Garofalo, who is unfortunately morphing into Roseanne, said that this was only about racism, that we were a lynch mob for the new president.  Sure, there were plenty of right-wing nutjobs present at the protests. About 10%, judging by the signs. They were well-behaved too. But most people there were middle-aged middle class people who pay their bills online, know how to use Excel, and can do math. Thus, they are scared to death, as am I, watching an American government that is aggressively innumerate.

The bottom line here is there are too many Americans who need to believe that veterans and people who pay their bills and demand that others do the same are irrelevant nutjobs.  These people want you to call the police and wait instead of owning a gun and acting. They think the system can survive any insult they can throw at it. They are all moral and spiritual adolescents, as is our new President. I blame the Republicans. Had they not failed so blatantly and frequently the last 8 years, we would have never rolled the dice like this, given these teens the car keys and now be watching them floor it approaching the cliff.

Tea Bagging

Just in case anyone doesn’t know, tea bagging is when you dip your balls in a girl’s (or guy’s) mouth while getting oral sex in a very superior position.

People who went to the April 15th tea party protest are being sniggeringly called tea baggers by the oh-so-arch-and-cleverati. Next one of them says tea baggers on national TV needs to be asked what tea bagging is, and forced to explain it.

I don’t mind being called a tea bagger. The satisfaction I obtain from metaphorically tea-bagging Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank is somewhat repulsive, but worth it. If that’s what it takes to make the government my bitch again, I’ll just rock back and forth and think of England.

I love it that once again, nice liberal people are bringing wonderfully depraved sexual terms into the mainstream. First, the Clintons made blowjobs a nightly news subject. Then Oprah mainstreamed salad tossing. And now Colbert and Kos bring tea bagging into the list of terms you must understand to be culturally literate.

Next up: Two congressmen, one cup.

Trust

Incredible how we think everyone’s an irresponsible idiot, yet we drive in traffic.

The above line has been sitting in my drafts for a couple of weeks.  Last night, I read email from my daughter. She’d just gotten a cool new job! I called to congratulate her, and it took her about 45 seconds to slow me down and let me know that she was in an ambulance.

A 16 year old in Dad’s Buick (seriously, Dad’s Buick, with Dad in the passenger seat and Grandma on oxygen in the back seat) made a very poor new driver left turn decision. Totaled my daughter’s beloved Impreza. As she said to me today, “That’s the only inanimate object I’ve loved since Kitty!”

Kitty was a stuffed animal I bought her at the Jacob’s Lake gift shop near the north rim of the Grand Canyon when she was barely toddling. Kitty was her constant companion through all childhood misadventures and trials, including a Kitty-napping by a jealous schoolgirl friend. Kitty eventually shuffled off this mortal coil, and is in an urn or a pillow or a jar of formaldehyde now, I can’t remember which. Kitty and Blankie, RIP. Probably in the same pillow.

So she’s fine today, if in mourning for her Impreza, and bruised as hell.

But that truth remains. Every day, we drive at lethal velocities, trusting our lives to people we despise–people we wouldn’t trust to make the right decision about anything else, but we trust them to make split-second right decisions and they trust us and we get home every day.

Once every 11 years, like with my daughter, that trust is violated. But given how stupid you (and I) think most people are, shouldn’t it be every 11 minutes that we get slammed into?

Cop takes the rap – you read it elsewhere first

Robert Powell, a Dallas cop, stopped a guy for rolling through a red light. The guy turned out to be an NFL player, Ryan Moats. His mother-in-law was dying and he was rushing to the hospital. Powell did the usual cop shtick, and Moats, understandably somewhat agitated, didn’t help the situation any, being a large black man sassing a little white cop.

Cop Powell resigned today. Before I started writing this post, I was going to take his side. Based on what Fox news reported, Cop Powell was a little insensitive, perhaps didn’t believe the black guy’s story, and decided to take firm control of the situation. Certainly within median cop behavior.

So, I thought, from the careless way Fox reported it, that here was another case of a celebrity getting a working stiff fired.

But before I started typing tonight, I decided to look up some other sources on the Moats story. Here are additional facts not reported by Fox:

• Moats’ wife and another woman, presumably a relative, were also in the car.
• The red light was right in front of the hospital.
• The women were also trying to get the cop to listen to reason.
• They left the car and ran into the hospital ignoring Cop Powell’s orders to return to the car.
• Cop Powell’s partner told him that Coats was telling the truth, and still Cop Powell dragged out the stop, just to be a little bitch.

Before I move on to my new point, since it turns out that ex-Officer Powell ruined my original point, I just want to say I hope you get sued, little Cop Bobby Powell. I hope NFL rich guy Coats takes a few hundred thousand of that NFL money and gives it to a lawyer whose only mission is to make your life miserable and drain your bank account. If you want to stop that, you better do more than resign. You better buy a Louisville Slugger and a case of KY and head over to the Coats house and show them your new magic trick of being able to make a Louisville Slugger disappear by sitting on it.

Here’s my new point: all of these details I listed make the story much more compelling and interesting. Why didn’t Greta von Facelift report them? It would have made her show much better.

Rewinding her crappy show, watching the video she showed of the dashboard cam, the exact same snip I’m sure she’s been showing for days, I noticed the hospital in the background, but she didn’t even point out that they were damn near in the emergency room bay.

I have two possible theories about this:

Fox wanted to slant the story to make it sound less horrible because they hate black people.

Or they got some video off some feed, got some wire copy, couldn’t get an interview with anyone close to the story, and basically did less research for their story than I did writing this post. They lost interest.

The big bucks media are incredibly lazy and sloppy. They don’t ask obvious questions. They don’t spend 5 minutes trying to get it right. Yes, there are exceptions. Like there are excellent public school teachers.

I’m so sick of supposedly big-budget news organizations reading press releases and showing free video and begging viewers to send in cell phone video and reading news off the internet and showing the same 20 seconds of nothing over and over while tap dancing till someone shovels some real news into their gaping orangutan maws. “Ok, we’re still showing the courthouse steps, expecting at any minute….”

They’re parrots now, only not as pretty. Can’t wait for what’s happened to the newspapers to happen to them.