O'Rielly/Gibson's "War On Christmas" And How "The Thought" No Longer Counts (Part Two)
In my previous post, I finished with the following:
... the Christmas season tends bring out the worst of families because of the stress involved and the old "Never Bring Up Politics/Religion Up At Christmas Family Gatherings" is simply unavoidable due to how damned starkly divided the country is. AM talk radio and cable television loaded to the gills with useless bastions of sanctimony found at the elbows of O'Reilly and Gibson is just par for the course -- they look forward to families getting stressed out over Christmas because that's their meal ticket. Their paycheck. They milk it for the expressed purpose of dividing and conquering them all for the false God they trully serve -- Mammon; the Great Balaam of Capitalism. But that's not the only thing their "War" is being waged for. Much like Art Silber's contention that Krauthammer's opinions on torture is to turn us all into monsters because we feel compelled to do so, the "War On Christmas" tries to turn families into strict One-Man/One-Woman armies of eliminationism and elitism where the adage "It's the thought that counts" no longer applies.
Unlike
Wil Wheaton, my family doesn't consist of a single solitary Republican or Conservative (save for my brief 7 year
heptad as a Fundy Fristian and even then I didn't shove those beliefs down my family's throat -- I only parted with my religious "wisdom" when asked). My parents were diehard Democrats but weren't flower-power Liberals. They didn't engage in Vietnam protests and didn't attend Woodstock. In truth, they actually despised both the millitant eliminationist "Commie Pinko" rhetoric from the pro-Vietnam rightwingers and the loud and noisy acid-rock and partisanship that resulted from the extreme left. However, they were very vocal in their anti-Vietnam/Pro-peace stance. In other words, my parents were more like the old-school Joe Lieberman (back before Obnoxious Joe's spinal collumn got plucked out by Sub-Zero and then replaced it with a PTC membership card).
My father, in particular, was what I'd call a "Two-Faced Democrat" -- on one hand, he thought the ringwing's penchant for selling out was sick and twisted (e.g. "These Republican sonsabitches would sell their own mother for a dollar!") but yet believed if one engaged in any activity that didn't result in money/profit, it was pointless (e.g. "Why do you invest in Nintendo machines and the Internet when neither has made you not one damned dime, boy?!?") There were plenty of times when the old man would come up to me with a newspaper article and say, "See this thing the Republicans are doing here?!? If I was rich, I'd be all for it but since I'm not rich, I'm against it!" Stuff like that -- he was a Democrat that put a price-tag on his politics and his conscience. Often times he made me sick and disgusted and we butted heads often. He was the polar opposite of Bush and your typical Rightwing Fundy Fristian -- a Democrat that believed that enacting policies that he agreed with were "right" and everything else that he did not benefit from was "wrong". Dissenting with him on his hypocracy would earn you one of his typical rejoinders (e.g. "You bonehead!") or a "What kind of son are you?!?" if you happened to come from his loins.
But he often watched O'Reilly and Hannity late in his life and, knowing full well that he couldn't stand these people (he also watched "Hardball" but loathed Chris Matthews because "that motor-mouthed asshole won't let anyone else talk"), I had to ask him, "If you can't stand these obnoxious cretins, why in the hell are you watching them?!?"
"It's like a trainwreck, boy," he'd say, "You know you shouldn't look but you just
gotta or you'll go nuts. The degree of the blood, carnage, piss and vinegar that comes out of their mouths ... you can't help it!" See? He felt
compelled to tune into their idiocy. Despite his Democratic nature, he was an addict for the ridiculous, factless, logically-devoid opinions and mendacity of rightwing pundits and political water-boys. Every time he watched these shows, he'd get pissed and yell at the TV and even swear, "I'm gonna stop watching these goony bastards for good" only to have his cable box locked in the very next day where he could bitch, threaten, and utter oaths all over again.
The sad irony is he
knew he was making these pundits and shills richer than they need to be but wouldn't tune out because, again, he felt
compelled to. In his heart, he knew that the sewers below their snotlockers spewed disease and famine for 60 minutes of every day but -- for some strange reason -- felt that the antidote for their poison was
the poison itself. The justification for this reminded me of when I was told shortly after the bad LSD trip that scared me straight (by the same friend I dropped the LSD with, go figure) that the effects of the bad LSD trip could be "reversed" if I went on another fuckin' trip and that I should trust him on it because, "I should know -- I OD'ed before, remember?!?"
To put it another way, I was given the choice between living with occassional anxiety attacks for a while (or the rest of my life) which could be triggered whenever I consumed pot and alcohol be it first-hand or second-hand or I could pop another hit of "Face" acid in a 50/50 gamble to "reverse" it all provided that I don't run screaming down the road in a panic after experincing yet again the horror of Dad melting into a blob of flesh attached to bony legs and witnessing the Kellogg's rooster jump off the corn flakes box on the kitchen table, fly over on my mother's shoulder whose trying to curl the hair on her bald head, and then proceed to pull invisible gnats and grubs out of her Techni-color dream-beard. Fuuuuuuck that -- once was enough, thank you very much.
But if only "once was enough" for O'Reilly, Gibson et. al. Clearly, it wasn't for my old man. And it certainly isn't enough for O'Reilly & Gibson, either, since there won't be a Christmas anytime soon that doesn't have a
war they can attach to it. Even if future FOX NEWS polls were to show that 100% of Americans claim to be Christian, them fruitcakes would
still bleat like stuck pigs about some cockamamie "War On Christmas" being waged by 0% of American infidels simply because that's their meal ticket. They're merely trolling for fools to believe their bullshit and in exchange for higher ratings, book sales, and the militant keeping of Red State Christian Fundamentalists shackled on their idelogical plantation
despite the fact that they provide those Christians with all the rope necessary to hang them with via their own rhetoric.
O'Reilly and Gibson's motives are essentially to convince people that anyone that says "Happy Holidays" is deliberately seeking to remove Christ and Christmas out of the public square and they encourage their viewers/listeners to not accept or tolerate it. In other words, when the check-out clerks at Wal-Mart wishes customers, "Happy Holidays", they want those customers to get mad and accuse the clerks of waging a War on Christ, Christmas, and the "American way of life" (read: Capitalism). Remember, it is recorded in each of the 4 Gospels of the Bible that Jesus had no tolerance towards the combining of religion along with the persuit of money hence the reason He took a whip and
physically drove out tax-collectors, merchants, and other worshippers of Mammon right the fuck out of the Temple complete with overturning tables and kicking chairs. This fact is conveniently left out of the equation by O'Reilly & Gibson's "War" rhetoric each time they wrap themselves with that fake-assed veneer of religosity.
But also removed from the equation is the fact that by encouraging people to get mad and to rant, rave, and spread O'Rielly & Gibson's pre-packaged "Talking Points" on this war of theirs, they are nothing more than clearly advocating to their audience that
it's okay to be a Scrooge! Did you get that? It's just another page of textbook rightwing projectionism -- O'Rielly and Gibson's rhetoric falsely paints people as being Anti-Christian and Anti-Christmas
just because they didn't say the "RIGHT" thing at the "RIGHT" time and that "Right" thing simple boils down to "Merry Christmas". Just two fucking words.
Of all the things a person can say to one another, "Happy Holidays" isn't the worst thing in the world. But O'Rielly and Gibson are trying to convince people that saying "Happy Holidays" is the most offensive, discourteous, and disrespectful thing in the world and rightwing Christianity should also consider it the gravest sin of all mankind. That's not unity. That's not merriment. It's divisionary, eliminationist "Rebel Flag" waving rhetoric deliberately designed to keep rightwingers and Fundamentalist Christians in a constant froth for expecting people to be mindreaders at best and asskissers at worst. They want to fester a nation full of Scrooges ... and O'Rielly & Gibson openly admit with their very rhetoric that they are "Activist Scrooges" themselves.
And, of course, after O'Reilly and Gibson's "War" is finished for another year, they're hoping like all hell that nobody puts them on the spot by challenging them to
donate every single red cent they made off their bullshit "War" to charity. If O'Reilly and Gibson want to parade themselves as true Holy Soldiers out to protect Christmas, they they should
NOT cash in on their "War" and instead
DONATE every single dime they've pilfured and pillaged to the poor and homeless. It's not like there's a shortage of them. New Orleans is loaded with both right now. So, none of this "10% tithing" BS, O'Reilly & Gibson -- in your contrivance to filch exhorbitant ammounts of capital from your viewers and listeners with your ridiculous "War On Christmas", then you should do what
CHRIST would do:
GIVE EVERY SINGLE DIME AWAY!Prove to them that you really live in the "No Spin/Lipservice Zone".
Talk is cheap ... so do it last.
As for you, the reader, doesn't it just amaze you that people like this exist; that they can be so gullible and fall for O'Reilly and Gibson's horseshit?!? Seriously, do people actually expect people to take the time and think ahead about what kind of greeting we are going to give them before we give it because of some fear of them possibly being offended?!? Look, let me shoot straight with you: if you're so damned hung up on yourself that you can't appreciate common courtesy in the form of someone saying, "Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays", then do us all a favor:
STAY THE FUCK HOME! Just keep your cranky Scrooge ass shacked up on the sofa, re-insert the eggnog IV drip, and leave people alone.
Christ Almight, if I say "Happy Holidays" to someone and they get all red-faced accusing me of "taking Christ out of Christmas" or some shit, I'm gonna ask them point blank, "So, it's no longer the thought that counts, eh!?!" If they respond with, "Not from the likes of you who wage war on Christmas", I'm gonna smile wide and say, "Okay, well here's another one of my thoughts that doesn't count:
HO-HO-HO AND MERRY GO FUCK YOURSELF!!Happy Holidays/Merry Christmas to you all (except O'Reilly & Gibson -- they can go fuck themselves).
|
O'Rielly/Gibson's "War On Christmas" And How "The Thought" No Longer Counts (Part One)
Wheaton's got more balls than I do. After reading his tale, I can guarantee that if anyone in my immediate or extended family did to me what Wil's father did to him, I would've spared no second packing up my wife, kids, and leaving. The family would've been dead to me until they've retrieved their brains from off of Gibson & O'Reilly's demagogic crucifix. On the way out the door, someone would've said, "What about the Christmas gifts we got for you," I'd have told them to return them and then use the refunds towards their cable bill since Dad spared no hesitation in telling me O'Reilly & Gibson's thoughts mean more to him than those of his own flesh-and-blood. I'd also deliberately forget all the Christmas presents I had gotten for my family. I've done it before ...
When I was a teenager, my Mother and I were at odds one Christmas season and she give the ultimatum I've heard all my life: "You had better behave or I'll take all your Christmas presents back to the store." After over 15 years of being shocked into obedience by such a threat, I finally got sick and tired of it. In response I said, "Good! Take 'em back -- ever single damned one of them! Get your refund from them and stick it up your damned ass, Mother dear!" She hauled off and slapped me right accross the face ... and it was the last time she ever did because my reaction wasn't the reaction she had expected: the wail of a child scared of not just having no presents but that the child had crossed that proverbial line of no return where a parent's love turns to hatred and excommunication all because their authority was questioned.
On the contrary, my reaction was the exact opposite for I shed no tears at all and instead let my wild eyed stare and curled lip speak volumes. I let that blaze of welled up anger bore right into the very core of her soul ... and rejoiced as it ate her alive. In that instance, the idea of my continued innocence as a child in the mind of my mother -- her youngest child of six total -- burned up like a peice of flash paper only to be replaced with the dawning revelation that her son; the "baby of the family" has become a man -- not just any man but a man who has decided once and for all that when it came to physical or psychological abuse, that man would go where her other 5 siblings dared not: fighting fire with fire. Knowing full well that such a fire would consume her if she continued to gape into the abyss that was my own face, she moved on to address other family members that would play the game to her rules and, needless to say, Christmas to her was a way to cultivate attention. My mother always had a streak of "attention whoredom" in her and always will and it's mainly because of her own upbringing. That's where the cycles of abuse always turn and continue to turn -- generation after generation. I was determined to stop the cycle ... and since Christmas is nothing but another day among 364 others, it seemed a fine to start.
What happened next was my second salvo and the irony is I never intended it to be a salvo at all; I simply communicated the truth and it cut my mother to the quick. One of my nieces approached me (which was a act of courage in and of itself for I loathed kids up until I had one of my own 4 years ago) and asked me, "Uncle Jay, are you going to return the gifts you got for Gramma since she's gonna return yours?" Here is a young neice of mine and already the wheels of abuse and fucked up logical reasoning has been drummed into her small little skull -- a skull that doesn't know much about anything. In her reasoning, it would be justified for me to engage in a little "eye for an eye" -- to return the gifts I had gotten for my mother since she's going to the same thing. It's a line a reasoning that not only goes against every single solitary principal of common sense but also against every single solitary principal a man named Jesus hung on the goddamned cross for in the first fucking place --
LOVE!"No," I said, "I'm not going to."
My neice asked, "Why?"
My answer carried through the air, into my mother's ear drums, where it had the effect of causing her to drop the wrapped presents she was handing out for one of her other grandchildren, and when she went into her bedroom to retrieve more presents for them, she stayed there for a great ammount of time to the extent that my father had to put down his beer and video camera and take over Mom's job. It was an answer that I thought would've stopped the cycle of abuse in this family once and for all because, quite frankly, it should have: "Because my love for Gramma isn't
that damned shallow."
It did stop the wheels of abuse for a while but it cropped back up last Christmas when my daughter -- whom was 3 at the time -- was being a real pistol like I was that Christmas some decade and a half previous and my sister piped up, "Gwen, you better behave or else Santa will return all your presents to the store!" and my little girl's reaction was the same reaction she gave me when I realized spanking doesn't work: after wailing a wild-eyed "Noooo!" her small hands went to her face and she wept bitterly. My sister had humilated my little girl exactly like my spanking of her did before I myself even knew better ... and seeing my daughter like that lit a fire under my ass that, upon looking back, I literally have to thank God that I had gotten rid of all my guns prior to Gwen being born otherwise my Sister would've been looking down the barrel of one. That ammount of foresight not only kept me from the horror of possibly having Gwen blow her own head off at a young age in the event I neglected proper weapon storage but it also kept me experiancing life in prison and it forces me to load a different "gun" altogether -- my tongue.
Boy, was it ever loaded. After I had communicated inches from my sister's face that under no circumstance will I ever tolerate such talk around my daughter, she and my Mother poo-pooed it off saying, "Oh, you're over-reacting! You know we'd never take her presents back! We're just saying that!" My response to that was it had better be the last time they ever say that because if I hear such of a groundless, baseless, threat that just teaches my child a very myopic, shallow, and selfish idea of love and gives her the impression that it's okay to humilate people using such a psychological damaging tactic, I'd be forced to serve them both with restraining orders and/or bringing them up on charges.
When the righting Christian fruitcakes within my ever-so-forked family tree caught wind of my "taking my daughter away from her aunt and gramma" (notice how I'm already declared guilty before I put ink to paper?), they had a shitfit and smeared me as a rotten parent whose "Michael Moore" liberalism is un-Biblical and typical of the "downfall of society". My response towards the Catholics in my family was a curt and unapologetic, "For the downfall of society, I need to look no further than the Catholic Church whose Pope told it's parishioners that a vote for Kerry is a vote for Terrorists. Thus, using the Pope's own logic, your vote for Bush was a vote for the Pope and a vote for the Pope is a vote for pedophiles and child-fuckers within the very Catholic Church itself. As a result, I'd rather have unabashed and open fags and lesbians such as Rosie O'Donnell or Freddie Mercury kiss and play with my child than you candle-carrying bunch of sickos." The same went for the Baptists in my family tree as well -- the day Catholic and Protestant members of the Sizemore clan can clean up their own churches, then and only then will I welcome their parenting advice.
Reactions like these from family aren't just limited to the Christmas season though, folks. On the contrary, the Christmas season tends bring out the worst of families because of the stress involved and the old "Never Bring Up Politics/Religion Up At Christmas Family Gatherings" is simply unavoidable due to how damned starkly divided the country is. AM talk radio and cable television loaded to the gills with useless bastions of sanctimony found at the elbows of O'Reilly and Gibson is just par for the course -- they look forward to families getting stressed out over Christmas because that's their meal ticket. Their paycheck. They milk it for the expressed purpose of dividing and conquering them all for the false God they trully serve -- Mammon; the Great Balaam of Capitalism. But that's not the only thing their "War" is being waged for. Much like Art Silber's contention that Krauthammer's opinions on torture is to turn us all into monsters because we feel compelled to do so, the "War On Christmas" tries to turn families into strict One-Man/One-Woman armies of eliminationism and elitism where the adage "It's the thought that counts" no longer applies. I'll explain how in Part II of this series tomorrow.
|
Oh, If I Were Only A Senator
Sen. John Cornyn: "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."
Sen. Jason Sizemore (in response): "Excellent, my good sir. My team of crackpot investigators and I will try very hard not to disturb neither your carcass nor your grieving friends and family with our presence the very second the gentleman ceases to draw oxygen."
|
Jail To The Thief-In-Chief
To hell with the chicken stick;
Ezra just pulled out the ol' 9 degree:
This is Bush's "fuck you" moment. He lost on the PATRIOT Act, lost on Social Security, is losing on the war, leaking popularity, lacking political capital, and finding his second term to be a series of very hard punches to the face. The mounting failures and multiplying blows finally became too much for him and so, finally, he's dispensed with political strategy and high-polling pretense and finally said what he'd been wanting to say all along.
Fuck you.
Planet Earth to George W. Shrub:
FUCK YOURSELF -- IT'S CHEAPER!
|
Update On "Operation: Help Arthur"
My idea on helping
Arthur seems to have hit a snag before it got off the ground:
It's probably very unwise of me to post these brief thoughts, but I honestly don't think I care any longer. I myself think this recent series on torture may be the best writing I've done in the last three years. I don't know of any issues that are of greater ultimate importance: these particular issues underlie many current events, and they explain much of what is now happening in our world.
Perhaps I explained it poorly; perhaps my writing in fact is very bad. I don't know anymore. What I do know is that some bloggers get over 100,000 visitors a day for writing...well. It would definitely be unwise to finish that particular thought. In any case, I'm now receiving several hundred visitors a day, and I don't think many more people have read or will read the final installments of this latest series.
...
There was much more I had planned to write on many issues I touched on only briefly in the essays on torture, and on a number of other subjects. I see no point in doing that now. I've been in this same place on several occasions over the past couple of years, more times than I care to remember. I've always managed to come back somehow. But in situations like this, there is sometimes that one final episode -- when recovery isn't possible any longer.
I think I've reached that point. As I say, I'm not even sure I care now one way or the other. If I live in a world where people like Charles Krauthammer, who want to officially approve the use of torture and reduce us as a nation to the level of the worst savages in history, have a significant presence in our culture and are viewed as "serious" commentators, while I can't get the attention of more than a few hundred people...it's not a world that holds much interest for me.
So this may be it, at least for the foreseeable future and unless something changes significantly. That seems extremely unlikely. Thanks again to all those who have supported my work here. I'll always be deeply grateful.
Perhaps next year will be better. I certainly hope so -- for all of us. And if anyone who made a donation would like it returned since it seems unlikely I will be doing any further writing in the near future, please let me know. I'll make arrangements to refund your donation as quickly as I can.
My plan on helping Arthur is dead in the water now and not because of what Arthur says here. On the contrary, I don't blame him one single damned bit. Arthur and I have a kindred of sorts -- he as a gay libertarian and I as a straight Socialist. Kindred because our differences alone would've earned us our own respective spots in Hitler's gas chambers long before he came around to exterminating Jews (and, as far as I can tell, we're still kindred spirits of today considering that the Bush Administrations's "Christian" gulags of Abu Ghraib and Club Gitmo would definately show no quarter whatsoever towards us two for exactly those same differences). My being born in 1974 is of no relief whatsoever because Arthur's words over the past few years paint a very painful picture of my beloved United States of America resembling Germany itself circa 1934 -- a nation whose otherwise neat and well-mannered people became swept into a fog of denial that itself translated into one of the most unholiest periods of world history. Hence the reason why I often refer to America as "The United States of Denial" here and elsewhere -- a moniker which probably reads as being snarky to TBT readers when in reality I say it with no snark whatsoever. It's the only ammount of shark I allow and I hope that each time I mention it, it ferociously bites TBT readers in the ass.
My idea of helping Arthur was something I originally developed to help Katrina victims even though I myself endured much of this past Summer without the basic need of running hot water as a result of being laid off without any place else to go for work (even the Monroe County welfare office and "Michigan Works!" program can't place victims of the Corportocracy's outsourcing in a McDonald's). I never got around to it because I didn't know just how much traffic I gathered here -- my installation of SiteMeter being a recent thing -- and didn't thing it would be of much help. As the months rolled by, I noticed Arthur because Billmon had another one of his pity parties and, like always, I considered his plight worse than mine. That's how I live, it's how I vote, it's exactly why I'm a poor 31 year old motherfucker with over 15 years of self-taught computer software/hardware experiance and without a single highschool diploma or college degree to my name (paper certifications on the wall or wallet is of no value in the face of raw hands-on experiance -- those paper certs just tell people you've agreed to be institutionalized while your tuition made someone at Cisco or Microsoft even richer than they need to be).
Anyway, the idea itself consisted of opening an account at CafePress and turning one of my tin-hat wearing activist epiphanies into to a T-Shirt. I'd hawk the sonofabitches here or everywhere I comment on other blogs, see if Mike or Dave at
C&L or
Ms. Shakes would be kind enough to return some old-fashioned Blogwhoredom to my corner of the 'Sphere and Arthur would gain 100% of my profit. That's right -- 100% of the profit. Fuck my running hot water -- there's always my two sisters or the hotplate to heat water up with. Arthur is an older guy who probably needs his perscriptions filled. That is, was, and always will be my rather selfless mentality and I got it from my father.
See, unlike other blogs, I don't require any charity to tell you the truth because I'd just as soon tell your ass the truth for free. That's why TBT doesn't have a Pay-Pal account. Plus, Aldous Huxley is right when he says, "Ye shall know the truth ... and it shall make you mad" and that alone should keep TBT away from ever becoming a full-fledged card-carrying member of Blogads or the Liberal Blogvertising Network since I like the idea of reserving the right and honor to piss off any advertisers and other blogs with my content than cashing in on it (and that is something I've been withholding from doing for too long -- some blogs on my own Blogroll have been insulting my intelligence lately yet I've withheld my tongue and it's a monotony I look forward to breaking with this very post).
But that snag isn't because of Arthur's words as I stated above. Reading between the lines, I see indications that he's getting a shitload of feedback from selfish bastards from both sides of the aisle who probably complain that his writing is of no more financial worth than the garbage that passes for news and opinion from the bobbleheads of the Corporate Press in the name of "contributing to society".
Bullshit.
Arthur's essays on Torture is something you'll never see come out the collective grocery holes of Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann anytime soon regardless of the ammount of smoke John Aravosis blows up their asses (that is, whenever he himself isn't hawking a T-Shirt). That's no disrespect towards Olbermann or Cooper but their contributions can't simply forgive the Corporate press for their 9-year orgy of fellating themselves at the feet of the Balaam of Capitalism and it shouldn't until Clinton's deregulation act of 1996 gets repealed and "The Fairness Doctrine" gets re-instated. I also see indications of people who probably gave Arthur an eyeball full of, "If I drop you a few bucks, what's in it for me?!?" as if his essays aren't enough and that's the mindset that gives me great pause on enacting my "Help Arthur" T-shirt plan:
do I really live in a country whose people actually require something tangible in order to feel better about helping someone else?!?!?My conscience and compassion towards Arthur alone is enough for me to enact it right now even without his foreknowledge of what my T-Shirt would actually say and if it's something he'd be receptive of (but I get the feeling Arthur would be moved to tears once he did know) but not necessarily if it means certain people absolutely must have this tangible object in order to feel better about helping a fellow American that's less fortunate. I hate to come off as sanctimonious as O'Reilly but the last person I'd want buying and wearing the T-Shirt I intended to create and market in exchange for giving Arthur some well deserved cash flow is a materialistic, selfish, American fool to go along with the idealogical American fools of Krauthammer's ilk and if these are some of the folks that Arthur has had to endure to the point where he must issue refunds to them because he's said or wrote something they didn't like, well ... I guess I don't blame Arthur for going dark and, unlike Arthur's natually soft-spoken demeanor, I won't pull my punches -- shame on you people. Seriously, shame on every single one of you. Take your refund from Arthur and buy yourselves the clue that will elude you and your $120 a month cable/DirecTV service for many moons to come.
Without the essays from Arthur or
Dr. Gerry Lower, and the occassional Global Eye in my HaloScan from Disco (the "Norm!" of TBT if I may say so) I myself would never realize the world I thought I knew, the world I often lambasted along with the status-quo because of my own ignorance (brought on deliberately by a money-grubbing Corporate press), and the world I find myself living in much to my own horror and dismay. These fine gentlemen alone, IMO, have contributed much more to society than the entire Blogosphere combined. Much more than I or anyone could do by simply working the typical 40-80 hour work week and signing away/cashing the check every April 15th (if I even had a 40-80 hour work week to begin with) or hammering on our own blogs. With their words, I can finally understand not just the who, what, where, when, how, and why of my surroundings but also place a finger on why some people do the things they do or did the things they did in their reactions to those very same surroundings.
Unlike Arthur and some other bloggers that I won't mention (yet), I don't have to blog for a living -- I'm young and smart enough to make my own way if it were not for so many damned barriers that Dr. Lower hammers home:
American capitalism and its supporters have literally thrown away the gifts from God brought to the people by men like Jefferson and Franklin and Paine ... in the name of what again? Do we squander American wisdom for no reason but to sustain those encumbered with too much wealth and power? Do we let it all go down so that two investment bankers can blow $30,000 during one evening on booze for a party of eight people? Do we let it all die for those who have no common sense at all, no grasp of when enough is enough, and no concept of who they are?
In America, the most popular deities are Jehovah/Yahweh - the God of the Bible and Mammon, the God of the U.S dollar. Both of these "Gods" often claim that they created it all, done it all, made it all, and are therefore entitled to it all. Our forefathers were very suspicious and critical of "God"s and their followers. On the subject of Christianity's pastors and clergy, Thomas Paine said:
Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins ... and you will have sins in abundance.
He's right -- take one look at Christianity and you'll see sins in abundance with their shell game with pedophilac priests and bishops, covering up for the most un-Christian corrupt fools like Abramoff, DeLay, etc. The list goes on and on. I'm convinced that if Thomas Paine were alive today, he'd take one look at Capitalism - the official religion of the worshippers of Mammon whom has had this country in such a "have/have-not", "right/left" stranglehold for 40 years or so, and say:
Accustom a people to believe that their God's dogma is entitled to exist ... and you'll have an "entitlement culture" in abundance.
That is the revelation that has escaped our minds and our consideration for many, many years while lunatics such as Limbaugh and Krauthammer continue to paint the "entitlement class" as something other than the direct cause of Capitalism's dominion:
themselves. And upon consideration, it's perhaps no wonder why it's tough for the victims of Katrina, people like me who refuse to accomodate or crucify my own values and principals in order to further Capitalism's dominion in America in exchange for "a living", and for Arthur to gain anyone's attention out of merely hundreds of people. But those wonders won't erase the shame regardless of all the wetdreams of greater Left Blogistan. They never do. Of that you can be certain, especially if you feel up to asking a few German immigrants over the age of 70 (those still alive) or if you'd like to wait just a few more years. Why? America is on a "end-of-times" crash course of bankruptcy and irrelevancy that despite any victories of the Democrats in 2006-2008, their plans to help people like Arthur or the Katrina victims will indeed be a case of
"too-little - too late" much like my "capitalistic" T-shirt plan to help Arthur and as much as I agree with Dr. Lower's major points in both the essays of his I link to, he has much more optimism than I do for he feels America is indeed going to turn away from Captialism and bring on a human rights-based Democracy that'll do the work of everyone's "God". I may hope and pray that his optimism becomes reality but I must respectable say to Dr. Lower that after being suckered by both the God of rightwing Christianity and the God of Mammon on that whole "faith-alone" basis, I'll believe in Jefferson's God (i.e. the American people) when I see it manifested in the acts of much more than Arthur's "few hundred people" ...
There was a time before life was taken for granted
'Will never come again
Our flower is dead, the seed is unplanted
They put it all to flame
Burning down, burning down ...
Burning down, burning down ...
Livin' for the right to be, livin' for the right
Livin' for the right to be, livin' for the right
Livin' for the right to be free ...Nazareth
"Burning Down"
(1995)
|
Culture of Sick Bastards
Here's a list of
122 rotten Un-Christian, Un-American sonsabitches that need to be cut-off from U.S. Dept. of Treasury's payroll and physically tossed right into the Hague for their vote in favor of using torture. Assholes like these need to be asked a very sobering question: If "torturing his own people" was one of a thousand justifications for removing Saddam, what in the flying fuck is
your justification for continuing his sadistic legacy?!?
"America -- Better At Torture Than Saddam Hussein!"That's the message sent, signed, and endorsed by these 122 lunatics. Previously sent, signed, and endorsed by the likes of Stalin and Hitler. That's the inherit problem with lunatics in general - they really don't fall far from the tree.
(Hat tip -
AmericaBlog)
|
Another PSU Bites The Dust
Turned on my rig at 4:30 AM and within moments the power supply started whining like a Dremel tool. That's the second one this year. The original PSU lasted me 3-4 years across as many upgrades but this one died within 4 months. It pisses me off because I had planned a shitload of updates here today -- one of which was going to be an attempt to raise some well deserved funds for
Arthur for his
Six Part Essay On Torture that's worth the price of a hardcover novel alone -- but that's going to have to wait until tomorrow as I've already commandered my nephew's rig for 5 hours today and he's probably itching for a
World of Warcraft fix.
Besides, I need to contact Arthur and a few others bloggers first to see if my idea is something all the parties would approve of before I run headlong with it. I sure don't want to step on anyone's toes with this wild idea of mine ...
More on that later!
|
Puritans In Your Porn Stash
Over the past few weeks,
Dave Neiwert has been undertaking the task of deconstructing the latest mouth-foaming lunacy eminating from the GOP's rabid pomeranian mongrel Michele Malkin and
Shakespeare's Sister drills it with the ol' 1 Iron:
An ingrained reaction to project one’s own nefarious motives, methods, and assumptions onto their opponents is inevitably wrapped up in shame and repression. To wit, many of the most anti-gay crusaders among the GOP’s ranks are closet queers.
That's one instance and she's right as all hell. But Ms. Shakes forgot another vital instance of textbook rightwing projectionism that
Arthur dredged up recently when talking about Sen. Brownback:
It goes without saying that, as news stories regularly demonstrate, those who rail most stridently against the evils of pornography often are revealed to have huge private stashes of their own.
PrOn!!!1Oh, yes. It's the ol' nipples and dicks factor. Tits and ass. Smut and scroggage. No matter what time or place anyone has ever lived here in the United States of Denial, you can always count on textbook "damned durty librul hippie" projectionism on the part of rightwing Conservatives whenever there's (1) a fag, (2) a fetus, or (3) a crotch involved. These three things drive them out of their own goddamned gourds. They are totally obsessed with them and they'll always be ripe wedges for liberals and Democrats to ride like surfboards just to watch these sanctimonious shitheads squirm.
I recall the first time I really realized just how bad rightwing Christian Conservatives were obsessed with people's crotches when I myself was a young born-again rightwinger Fundy Fristian in the early 90s. I was reading all their moonbat screeds from Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, etc. and one particular book I was reading about "the nasty Godless radical left" was written by Pastor John Hagee. In this book (which I still have buried in the closet where it can molder until the fucking Rapture, for all I care), Hagee made a flippant projectonist rant against the secular, Godless left's penchant for porn that I felt was just too good to be true. Compelled, I flipped all the way to the back of the book to Hagee's Bibliography in order to find the source he was citing and laughed my lilly white ass off:
Penthouse Magazine!When I managed to stop braying like a jackass, I couldn't help but wonder if that particular issue of
Penthouse just happened to fall into Pastor Hagee's pudgy little hands by the Holy Spirit or if he bought/subscribed to
Penthouse for the articles. If it was the latter, I've got really bad news for him: if that fucking excuse didn't work with my mother when she found the smut-mags I raided from my old man's stash when I was wee lad (and boy was he pissed when I got the pages of his "collector's items" sticky), how in the hell does he expect it to work on most Americans who reside in the reality-based community?!?
It isn't ... not unless you're allready on the rightwing Fundy Fristian plantation. Not unless you already give people like Hagee a pass because of that old and tired "concerned men of the cloth can consume questionable material in their role as moral teachers" bullshit. Not unless you're John Ashcroft -- a grown man whom to this very day still can't read Song of Solomon because he's scared shitless his own Mama will return to Earth from Abraham's bosom ahead of Christ just to kick his ass high as a kite.
Arthur is right, though -- rightwingers have a shitload of porn. Hell, my own porn-stash -- which consists of traditional JPG images; no MPEG/AVI movies or animated GIFs -- is a whopping 767MBs. That's roughly one blank CD's worth. This is the largest my own stash has gotten because I haven't had the time (and a sober mind) to go through it and toss 200+MBs of it (which looked good when viewing it from a totally vodka-pickled perspective). All of my Rightwing friends, however, have my ass WHIPPED in various and kinky ways from Sunday: Gigabytes, even Terrabytes of the shit, man. However, they've got one thing going for them that the porn-lubbers-in-the-closet at FreeRepublic and LGF don't have -- a subdirectory within their porn stash were they cram all their snuff videos: the suicide of R. Bud Dwyer, Nick Berg's rolling head, etc. Like the current morally bankrupt Bush Administration, they have no shame or boundaries at all.
Hell, even when Bill Clinton used Lewinsky's snatch for a humidor, the first reaction from my rightwing Conservative friends wasn't shame, wasn't anger. It was the total opposite: "Clinton did what?!? HOLY SHIT! Did he smoke the cigar?!?! Tell me, please! Did the President of the United Fuckin' States smoke the damned cigar?!?!?!" When I said, "No", they were up in arms. "What a fuckin' failure! Some Slick Willy he is!" A month later, these same rightwing friends of mine were putting on the fake "Moral Majority" facade about themselves and yammering about how typical of liberals Clinton's conduct was because of our penchant for degrading women via porn and endless assaults on God and marriage.
So, anyway, if you're up for an essay that'll solidify the idea that when it comes to being completely full of horseshit and hypocracy, the GOP and the Tali-Born Again has that particular free market perpetually by the crotch, then the fine folks linked above probably don't mind preaching to the choir. Enjoy!
|
Hall & Gabler Blasts FNC While On FNC
I totally missed this one over the last few days but John at
C&L posted the video of FNC's "Fox News Watch" where Hall & Gabler tear into Pinkerton and Burns over this whole "War On Christmas" bullshit that other FNC dittoheads such as Cavuto, O'Rielly, and Gibson always start mewling about. I don't watch that blasted ass network because I feel like shaving my legs and rolling on the ol' leaderhosen whenever my digital cable box can't flip past it fast enough (which is never - slow ass Motorola piece of shit) but I've gotta say Jane and Neil's comments are right up there with their comments regarding the Jeff Gannon scandal. Jane railed on Jerry Falwell and the Taliborn Again as the source of this "war" on Christmas while taking a well-deserved swipe at Pinkerton when he started getting all sanctimonious and Neil Gabler repeatedly shoved FNC down Burn's throat.
The true bastard of the whole segment was Cal Thomas. What a complete and utter stooge. Notice how relatively fucking quiet he was?!? Other than preaching that bullshit line about Jesus not being about tolerance, he didn't say much at all. There's a reason for this: fake-ass, fraudulent Christian conservative collumnists such as him who merely give lipservice to Christianity in order to shore up money, votes, and power to Republican apparatchiks simply don't feel confortable talking about their faith or their beliefs
when Liberals and Democrats are present at the social table. I know, I know -- rightwingers like him often claim the same thing regarding liberals but that's just textbook "projectionism". They themselves are the one that clam the fuck up until they are all alone with their own collumns/TV/Radio shows or amongst other like-minded people. Then and only then do they -- if I may shamelessly borrow the Rush Limbaugh phrase -- sport the intellectual chops to defend their ideals
and bloviate the whole "Liberals Are Scared Of Religion" meme. These sonofawhores only like "preaching to the choir" and the presence of Gabler and Hall on that panel intimidated the ever-loving piss out of Cal Thomas.
|
Obnoxious Joe Tosses America Under The Bus
Man, it never seems to fail. Not long after I make refference to "cankerous blighted asses" (see previous bitchfest), comes
this (Hat Tip
AmericaBlog)from Marshall "Moose" Whitman's bassett hound -- Sen. Joe Lieberman:
Lieberman, whom the Bush administration has praised repeatedly for his war stance, defended the president. "It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years," the senator said.
It's time for Joe Lieberman, a rotten sack who has sucked up to the most ridiculous, totalitarian, dickheaded, immoral, inhumane, un-Christian, un-American asshat to ever wear the mantle of President of the United States to the point where it even makes Karl Rove jealous, to acknowledge that he himself will be a Democratic Senator for a hell of a lot less time than the three years we're stuck with Bush (barring any Fitzgerald indictments, impeachments, or America-hating pretzels). Come the 2006 mid-term elections, the American people are going to pull a long-awaited
FATALITY on your goddamned political career, Joe ...
"We can't tolerate the kind of division that current exists in our country," the senator said. "Why are we fighting among those who have the same goals?"
We allready know all about your
goals, Senator. In fact, so do you when you admit:
"I understand the position I'm taking on the war in Iraq is controversial," Lieberman said. "In a sheer political sense, it would be easier to keep quiet."
When over 60% of this country is sick of Bush, sick of this clusterfuck of a war, sick of the ever growing Coalition Of Dead Troops, sick of the lies and propaganda from not only the White House but from the Republican-owned-and-operated, tax-break/no-bid contract collecting, Corporate MSM, you can take "political sense" and cram it up your tailpipe, Senator, and you don't have to be detained in Club Gitmo or Casbah Abu in order to do so because what you say here makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER!
So, why didn't you shut your fucking grocery hole, Joe?!?
TAG: Joe Lieberman
|
Bullshit On President Bush-itler's "Compromise"
This needs no introduction. Just keep fuckin' reading:
The President has made it very clear that we do not torture, he would never condone torture or authorize the use of torture. If someone doesn't abide by our laws, they're held accountable, and we have done that. That's the difference between us and others. When it comes to human rights, there is no greater leader than the United States of America, and we show that by ...
PRESTO! CHANGE-O!... seeking a compromise with a leading Senate Republican over its efforts to exempt the CIA from a proposed ban on torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners, President George W. Bush's national security adviser said on Sunday.
"We are working hard in good faith on both sides to come up with an approach that can be supported by the president and the Congress, to both find a way to be aggressive in the war on terror and still comply with U.S. law," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said on "Fox News Sunday."
As far as I'm concerned, everyone currently employed in the White House along with their sympathizers in the CIA need to be bound, gagged, and frog-marched directly in front of the Hague. Torture and other inhuman treatment of prisoners is
AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME and deserves nothing short of having their fates decided by an international coalition just like the Nuremburg trials. Also, anyone on Capital Hill -- Republican or Democrat -- that does come up with a "compromise/approach" on this issue must also join the forementioned crooked, immoral, un-Christian, and un-American sonsabitches from the White House and CIA. Failure to do so is akin to illegally squating on Federal land and usurping the Government from the American people whom would then have every right to remove your cankerous blighted asses by any means necessary -- from ballots to bullets.
Let's be very clear here, ladies & gentlemen (and I use those terms very, very losely):
TORTURE SHALL HAVE NO TOLERANCE -- EVER -- AND YOU MUST CEASE AND DESIST! Non-compliance to this very basic American value and principal is to run the grave risk of Americans seeking political, capitalistic, and/or physical reprisal that you won't be able to spin as "domestic terrorism" for the power belongs to THE PEOPLE and the people shall consider such reprisals as
JUSTICE!(Hat Tip
dKos & Arthur)
|
