Kemstone's Journal

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember voting for Glenn Beck for president. I don’t think many Obama supporters, upon casting their vote in 2008, were hoping that once president he would bend over backwards to do everything he possibly could to appease Fox News. I could be wrong—maybe Obama voters were really hoping for a president who would ignore progressives and listen only to the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity—but somehow I find that hard to believe.

Excuse me for ranting but I’ve got the need. Cenk Uygur’s epic rant over the Shirley Sherrod debacle on Wednesday’s Young Turks got me fired up. Between that and a dozen other columns and blog entries I’ve read these last couple of days, it’s clear that this story is far more significant than I initially realized.

At first my anger was directed almost entirely at Fox News. I couldn’t believe how so many people can still see them as an actual news organization when they clearly have a political agenda and will rush to broadcast any story that fits their pre-existing narrative with a deliberate disregard for what the actual facts are. Their #1 agenda is to do political harm to Obama. When presented with a heavily-edited video that seemed to show an employee of Obama’s department of agriculture boasting about how she discriminated against a white farmer, they didn’t waste a single moment checking to see whether it was what it appeared to be.

They could have found the entire unedited video but didn’t. They could have tried to contact Sherrod for her side of the story but didn’t. Most egregiously, they didn’t even try to contact the white farmers who were supposedly the victims of this discrimination, as if they had they would have learned—as the rest of the country learned when actual journalists stepped onto the scene—that Sherrod actually helped them save their farm, and that the story she’d been telling in that video was about how she learned that it was wrong to discriminate based on color.

But the Obama White House fired Shirley Sherrod before any journalism was done—before any basic questions were even asked. Sherrod told reporters that she actually had to pull over to the side of the road and submit her resignation via text message because she had to be gone by the time Glenn Beck went on the air.

Brillliant move on the White House’s part. Obviously they learned their lesson from the Van Jones fiasco, when they let Fox News hammer them for days before finally getting rid of him. No doubt they were patting themselves on the back for swift, decisive action when they got rid of Sherrod within a single news cycle.

Surely they had fixed everything. Fox News, upon seeing how quickly the administration caved in to them, would undoubtedly give him all the credit in the world and begin reporting how they’d been wrong about him all along—that he’s really not a reverse-racist and that he should be applauded for getting rid of Sherrod.

Of course not. Their number one agenda, remember, is to harm Obama politically. So when he did exactly what they wanted him to do, they hammered him for that! How could he fire her so quickly before checking all the facts? I can’t believe he just threw that poor woman under the bus like that. I mean, we’re Fox News so it’s not our job to check the facts but surely the White House has a responsibility to get the whole story before taking action.

And on that, they’re absolutely right. It’s not Fox News’s responsibility to report the truth—they are a propaganda network, not a news organization—but the White House does have a responsibility to make sure that the actions they take are based on hard facts and solid evidence.

But apparently that’s not how they operate. It would seem that they’ve got their eyes on Fox News at all times and stand ever poised to deflate whatever criticism that network might be leveling against them. They say Van Jones is a communist? Get rid of him. They say ACORN is full of criminals? Cut off its funding. Just please don’t hate us, right-wingers. We swear we’ll do whatever you say, Glenn Beck. Just stop saying mean things about us. What is it you want us to do? Just tell us who to fire and they’ll be out of here by 5 p.m.

Last year, in the midst of the health care debacle, I asked whether Obama was a pussy or a sell-out. I keep going back and forth on that question, but this drove me firmly back to the pussy side of the equation. Running the country based on Fox News talking points? How weak and pathetic can you possibly be?

What the hell do you think you’re actually accomplishing with this strategy? You think that if you keep caving in to Fox News, one day conservatives are suddenly going to change their minds about you? That if you keep compromising on all your progressive ideals and delivering watered-down, industry-friendly legislation, that right-wingers are going to start saying, “You know, maybe we were wrong about him. He might not be a radical socialist after all.”

News for you: That. Will. Never. Fucking. Happen.

So deal with it. Give up this absurd act of chasing your own tail all day long, turn off the goddamn Fox News channel, and run the country the way you would run it if there were no such thing as the Glenn Beck program.

Or better yet, listen to both sides. Progressives have criticisms too, and theirs are actually based in reality. Instead of only taking Bill O’Reilly’s advice, try listening to Rachel Maddow for once. Her advice is actually designed to help you.

The Shirley Sherrod thing, in itself, is just a small story. But taken in the larger context of the way Barack Obama has been conducting his administration, it’s one of the most important political events of his presidency. It’s one of those Wizard of Oz moments when the curtain is drawn back and you see who’s really running the show.

The strategy is clear: Don’t waste any time worrying about what liberals and progressives are saying because liberals and progressives don’t matter. They will never vote for republicans, so you gain nothing by doing anything more than the bare minimum to appease them. You win elections by appealing to swing-voters, to the moderate center, to the people who want to see both parties working together in a bipartisan fashion to accomplish things in Washington. When conservatives criticize you, you should immediately respond to that criticism in order to show how much of a centrist you are and how much you’re willing to listen to the other side.

The strategy is also dead wrong. I don’t know who this imaginary moderate centrist voter is, but I’ve never met him. Is there a single American voter who wasn’t sure about Obama until he dropped the public option, watered-down financial reform, called for more offshore oil drilling, fired Van Jones and de-funded ACORN? Seriously, I want to know how many people will go to the polls and vote for democrats this Fall because Obama proved to them that he’s not ‘too liberal’.

It’s complete and utter bullshit, and it’s so frustrating that Obama is so wrapped up inside his Washington bubble that he can’t even see it. He thinks that Bush’s approval ratings were so low because he spent too much time appeasing his base and never compromising with the other side. Wrong—Bush’s approval ratings were so low because everything he did as president was a total disaster. But at least he got shit done.

Why don’t you try that strategy for awhile, Obama? Why don’t you take a “Bring ‘em on” approach to Fox News and let them say whatever the hell they want to say while you deliver on the Change you promised? The Washington punditocracy will no doubt say you’ve gone off the deep-end, that you’re drifting perilously to the left and that this center-right country won’t stand for it. But you know what? You might find that in the Fall, liberals and progressives will actually come out and vote instead of staying home. You might even find that these all-important centrist-moderates you’re so concerned about actually come out and vote for democrats as well because…golly gee…it turns out they didn’t actually care about bipartisan posturing as much as they cared about government actually getting shit done.

Wake up, Obama. You’ve handed control of the country over to Fox News and you wonder why you’re heading for a failed presidency. In 2012 you should just let voters write in Glenn Beck’s name instead of yours so he can run the country directly without a middle-man.

So much has been written about the Shirley Sherrod saga that it’s almost not worth it for me to put my two cents in, but here goes.

For those of you who don’t watch cable news, here’s the basic run-down of the story. Conservative activist Andrew Breitbart posted what he claimed was video evidence of reverse-racism in the Obama administration. It was from a speech given by Shirley Sherrod, who until yesterday worked in Obama’s department of agriculture, in which she talked about not wanting to help white farmers keep their property because she didn’t think any white people deserved her help.

At the drop of a hat, Fox News picked up this story and ran with it, hyperventilating all day long about this vile racism and what it says about Obama’s back-door reparations agenda—the completely bogus narrative the network sells to its viewers. Other networks followed suit and before you knew there was so much pressure that Shirley Sherrod was fired by the Obama administration before she even knew what hit her.

Later in the day, the entire video came out. It turns out that what was previously released had not only been taken out of context, but edited so heavily that the entire message of her story had been completely reversed. Sherrod was talking about how her first inclination upon seeing this white farmer was that she didn’t owe him any help, but upon delving deeper into his situation she realized that he was just as much of victim of the broken system as black people—that it’s not about black vs. white but rich vs. poor—and that from that day on she no longer judged people purely based on race. The whole point of the story was completely anti-racist—the exact opposite of what Brietbart and Fox News were saying it was.

Not only that, but upon contacting the supposed “victims” of her racism—the farmer and his wife—the news media learned that they are eternally grateful to Shirley Sherrod and consider her a friend for life.

This is not just a harmless mistake on the part of a news organization. This was a deliberate, calculated effort to add to the perception that Obama and his administration are racist and that they’re out to financially harm white people. There was a definite agenda behind this reporting, and that agenda was not to report the “fair and balanced” truth.

There used to be something called journalism in this country. It used to be that a news organization didn’t run with the story until they looked into it and made sure they knew the facts. When presented with an edited video clip, there are a number of steps that an actual journalist would take before jumping to conclusions and ranting about it on the air. For one thing, you could look for the entire video—it was available. You could contact Shirley Sherrod herself—she was available. You could contact the farmers who were the supposed victims of the racism—they were available too.

But instead of doing any of this, they leapt on the air and hammered home the “Obama is a racist” point as much as possible before real journalists could do their job and they’d have to quietly issue their corrections—but not until the damage was done. Shirley Sherrod, as of the time of this writing, is still without a job.

You can not consider Fox News a “news” organization. It just isn’t. It’s not a real news organization. Yes, other networks are blameworthy for picking up on the story before all the facts had come to light, but Fox News deliberately ran with it because it was exactly the kind of story they needed. Fox News is not news at all. It’s corporate-conservative propaganda. It’s a tool for the power-elites to keep the people under control by misdirecting their anger away from those truly responsible for their suffering—multi-national corporations—and towards fake boogeymen like a racist president hell-bent on taking money from white people and redistributing to black people. No such president exists—it’s a fictional character dreamt up in corporate think-tanks—but if all you watch is Fox News you’d have no way of knowing that. You’d really think some angry black politician is gunning for you.

ACORN, Van Jones, and now Shirley Sherrod have fallen victim to this despicable game. The Obama administration ought to be ashamed for just buckling at every turn and throwing these people and organizations under the Fox News bus before even checking to see what the actual facts are.

But it’s supposed to be the job of news organizations to check facts. They could have easily done it, but Fox News didn’t check the facts, and for that reason no serious, honest, objective person could possibly consider it a real news organization.

UPDATE: Living in Europe means I’m usually about 24 hours behind the news cycle. Since writing this I’ve heard some new insight, particularly from the Rachel Maddow show, that present this incident in a broader context than conservative perceptions of the Obama administration. This is primarily about the effectiveness of the southern strategy—the idea of the angry black man coming for the white man’s privilege—which has been used by politicians to win elections long before the world was controlled by multi-nationals. However, corporations no doubt recognize the benefits of this idea in terms of its divisiveness and power of misdirection, and they are consciously keeping it alive by using Fox News as their tool.

There are two kinds of conservative talk-show hosts: those who believe in what they say, and those who just pander to right-wing audiences because of all the money to be made in that racket. I’d put almost everyone at Fox News in the latter category, most especially Sean Hannity (a total phony only trying to copy Limbaugh’s success) and Glenn Beck (probably conservative but not nearly as far-right as he pretends to be). The only guy at Fox News who I think is the least bit genuine is Bill O’Reilly.

Don’t get me wrong–I disagree with him on almost everything. But he’s not nearly the demon that many on the left (I’m looking at you, Olbermann) paint him as. If you’re a liberal looking to weigh your opinions against those of an honest conservative (see my post on confirmation bias below), O’Reilly is your best bet.

He’ll go after the bullshitters no matter which side the bullshit is coming from. While the rest of the corporate cronies at Fox News are desperately trying to get their Tea Party audience to see BP as the victim in the aftermath of the oil catastrophe, O’Reilly actually defends the president’s cajoling of BP to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to compensate victims:

Cynics might say that he’s just pandering to his own audience of working-class folks by taking sides against the most unpopular corporation in America, and there may be some truth to that, but I’m willing to bet that deep in his heart of hearts he really does believe that the government ought to force BP to pay up.

And he’s damned right. BP isn’t going to compensate victims out of the goodness of its heart, and people like Michelle Bachman, Joe Barton, Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck and the rest know it. They just take the side of the corporate giant because they’re a part of the same machine. Protecting giant corporations is what pays the bills.

O’Reilly himself serves the machine by distracting his audience with culture war issues, but he’s succesful enough that he doesn’t always have to tow the corporate-propoganda line. In this case, he went after Bachmann’s ridiculously disingenuous idea that the escrow fund is some kind of mafia-style shakedown and actually got her to back down significantly. Thanks to him, it’ll be harder for republicans to defend BP, and easier for congress to make them pay the people whose lives they’ve ruinned.

Credit where credit is due.

I’m still on the fence about Twitter, but one of the decidedly positive things about it is the exposure to certain articles I would never have read had I not clicked on a link in somebody’s tweet. Yesterday I came across this article which I think is a must-read for anyone who gets their news from almost exclusively one source, be it Fox News, MSNBC, or even network television.

The Misconception: Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis.

The Truth: Your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information which confirmed what you believed while ignoring information which challenged your preconceived notions.

Our brains are configured to seek patterns. As such, we tend to see what we’re looking for. We’ve all experienced coincidences in which we think of an old film for the first time in years, and suddenly we notice that film being mentioned all over the place. There’s nothing miraculous about this–it’s just that we take in so much information that our minds have to filter it. It filters out whatever it finds irrelevant or contradictory and leaves us with whatever is relevant to or supportive of our pre-existing thought patterns.

When a conservative watches the news, his mind only pays attention to the facts that support his conservative worldview, just as a liberal pays attention only to facts that confirm his liberal bias. Cable news commentary shows are so popular because the information comes pre-filtered. The mind doesn’t have to dismiss contradictory information because it’s only exposed to information that confirms what it already believes.

Does this mean that everything we believe is wrong? Of course not–it only means we should make an effort to get our news from a variety of sources and to be open to considering other points of view.

I get most of my news from lefty sources, but I make sure to expose myself to conservative arguments as well from time to time. Occasionally I’ll even let one sway me. Still, I would probably do well to spend more time outside the liberal media bubble.

But in its defense, the liberal media bubble isn’t nearly as closed off as the conservative bubble. Liberal blogs often post conservative arguments and liberal talk shows often show clips from conservative talk shows in order to refute those arguments. None do it better than The Young Turks, as Cenk Uygur often plays entire segments of conservative shows so that nothing is taken out of context. But how often will a conservative host expose their viewers to lengthy arguments from the liberal side? They may have a liberal guest on to present an opposing viewpoint, but that guest is typically shouted down without being given an opportunity to fully make their case. The viewer only remembers the shouting match, while the actual point being made is filtered out and forgotten.

If all you want is to have your pre-existing worldview confirmed, then by all means watch nothing but Fox News or MSNBC. But if what you want is a well-informed, thoroughly considered opinion which you can defend with confidence, you have to expose yourself to other sources and remain vigilant against your mind’s innate confirmation bias.

In this post I’m going to outline my perception of what’s really going on at the highest echelons of power in the world today and how we are being controlled by giant corporations. I’ll admit right from the start that this is all speculation and that my assertions would have far more weight if I were to thoroughly research them and provide references, but my purpose as a blogger is merely to present ideas for others to consider. This is just my perception based on everything I’ve seen, heard, and read since becoming politically aware, and if it’s true I think we’d all do well to acknowledge it.

I’ll refer to the powers-that-be who control the corporations that control the U.S. and other world governments as the “power elite” though I won’t speculate much as to who these people are exactly and what their specific agenda might be if they have one. It may be the case that some organization like the Bilderberg group is really doing this with some master plan for global enslavement in mind, but but I haven’t seen enough evidence to convince me of such a conclusion. There is, however, a preponderance of evidence to suggest that political power today is concentrated in very few hands which have no concern for the collective well-being of humanity.

Their top priority seems to be the consolidation of power, but whether this is an end in itself or merely the means to some other goal is a question I’ll leave open. I’ll merely state how I believe they’ve managed to consolidate all this power and how they are continuing to do so.

1- Accumulate Wealth

Money is power, so the more money you have concentrated in one organization the more powerful that organization will be. The power elites seem to have gotten their hands in the big banks and worked hard to make those banks bigger and bigger to the point where the entire capitalist system became dependent on them. Once “too big too fail” they allowed themselves to crash and became even more powerful. For one thing, a few smaller competitors went under, thus increasing the influence of those left standing. But more insidiously, they crashed the entire economy, further squeezing money and therefore power from the hands of individuals. Now they’ve got hundreds of billions at their disposal and the average person can barely afford to spend anything on causes they believe in. Even if every last American citizen chipped in $5 to an effort to break up the big banks, the big banks could still out-spend them to prevent that from happening.

2- Control the Electoral Process

The democratic process has been around for too long to simply discard it altogether, so the power elites need to maintain the illusion that things are as they always were. As big as they are, a population united against them could topple them and the sudden abolishment of elections could very well lead to violent revolution. It’s much easier to let the people go on believing they still have a say in the direction their country goes.

So you simply put all your money into the candidates you know will do your bidding. Elections are little more than a popularity contest that allows the public to choose which brand appeals to them most. The Ron Pauls, Dennis Kucinitches, Mike Gravels and Ralph Naders of this world don’t stand a chance thanks to the corporate influence over the media, a point I’ll get to momentarily. Instead you get the Bill Clintons and Barack Obamas of this world who can pretend to be on the side of the people while actually catering to the power elite.

The 2008 election really felt for awhile like we were determining our country’s future, but it was all just a show. After eight years in which their puppet George W. Bush did everything the power elite could have asked for and more, the people were demanding a change of course. Bush had been too blatant about where his loyalties lied, and the people wouldn’t accept anyone who looked like they’d continue to funnel wealth and power from the middle and lower-classes to those at the very top of the economic ladder. So they offered us Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both novelties due to their race or gender. On the surface, both represented change, but underneath the veneer both candidates were exactly the same. Had the Hillary brand won out over the Obama brand, she would have been governing in the exact same way.

The McCain brand was clearly not strong enough on its own so they attached it to the Palin brand, which served another of their purposes I’ll get to shortly. Had the public chosen this brand things would be more or less the same, only the McCain/Palin administration would not have had to bother as much with appearances. Obama ran on a platform of change so he has to pretend to deliver on it. Thus we get an industry-friendly health care bill and an industry-friendly financial reform package, both of which look like change to the naked eye but which only perpetuate business as usual. Had McCain won they simply wouldn’t have had to put on that particular show. Elections do have consequences but mostly purely cosmetic ones.

3- Divide the People

The only real threat to the power elite is a population united against them, so they do all they can to divide us. It’s easy when every mainstream media outlet is owned by a handful of giant corporations which are themselves controlled by the power elite. They get to decide how the news is reported and which stories are told in the first place.

Of course you never see stories about power consolidation in the mainstream media. Fights over issues such as the deregulation of airwaves and net neutrality are barely mentioned, and when they are brought up they’re never explained sufficiently. If you’re lucky, at least both arguments are presented, but even though one side is being completely disingenuous they are never called out on it.

Much more visibly, however, we see the obsessive focus on culture war issues that most divide us. Abortion, gay marriage, immigrants, drugs, and so on…these are all easily comprehensible issues that people get fired up about. Recently, organizations controlled by the power elite such as Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity have hit a grand-slam with the whole Tea Party movement, which has been extraordinarily effective at dividing the people against each other.

The most obvious culprit in the media world is Fox News who blatantly promote the Tea Party and constantly level the most ridiculous charges against the president which serve both to misdirect the anger of their conservative audience and back progressives into a corner from which they have to defend the president against these baseless accusations. Most laughably, they’ve succeeded in getting nearly every conservative in America to believe that Barack Obama is a socialist when in fact he is the exact opposite. Obama is bought and paid for by the corporations and is doing absolutely nothing to diminish their power or increase state control over them. To continue deceiving his own base he has to make it appear as though he is reining them in, which allows Fox to continue attacking him for his “radical socialism”.

But Fox News isn’t the only network to blame. Every last one of them refuse to cover stories of corporate consolidation of power, and even the most progressive hosts on television don’t go near such issues. Even Rachel Maddow, whom I respect more than any other TV commentator, spends most of her time going after republicans while leaving the corporations more or less alone. Olbermann takes it one step further and spends most of his time making fun of conservatives and attacking the right-wing, and while the attacks may be warranted it doesn’t help us in the long run when what we really need to do is put our differences aside and come together against our common foe. MSNBC allows progressives to call politicians on their bullshit because there’s an audience for that and they’re relatively harmless as long as they don’t get to the heart of the matter. But liberals hosts are just as useful for polarizing the public as conservative hosts.

4- Provide No Alternative

The power elites can and will maintain their control as long as those of us who can see what’s going on can’t see a way out. The two-party system is entrenched so deeply within the system that almost everyone who votes feels forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. The democrats used to be the party that stood for the little guy, but now they serve their corporate masters just as much as the republicans only less openly. They still have to pay lip service to progressive ideals to get elected and keep the show going on.

What we’re seeing now is the political right-wing being constantly pushed further to the right thanks to Fox News and the groups that fund the Tea Party. This gives democrats plenty of breathing room to move away from the left and towards the center-right, to where the republicans used to be. A democrat today is like a republican of twenty years ago, while a republican today is like a dixiecrat of a hundred years ago, capitalizing on the xenophobia and the fear people have of “losing our country”.

In 2012 we’ll be presented with yet another choice of brands. Some far-right lunatic—the only republican capable of winning a primary anymore—or Barack Obama. Either way, the corporations win. Obama can continue to snuff his base and serve the corporate masters time and time again right up until the election because he knows progressives will have no viable alternative. We either get the corporate shill on right or the corporate shill slightly to the left of him (or her, if they actually decide to go with Palin).

5- Marginalize Dissent

The internet is the last bastion of hope we have at disseminating anti-corporate views without fear of being silenced. But net neutrality is already under attack and Obama is—surprise, surprise—already showing signs of caving in on this issue. Very soon corporations will have the power to un-level the playing field, making corporate-friendly sites far more accessible than those who oppose or allow their members to express opinions opposing them. How long before any anti-corporate blog post is censored and any anti-corporate YouTube video is removed? Freedom of expression may be breathing its last gasps.

So let’s keep fighting while we still can. I’m contributing the only way I know how—by presenting my point of view and hoping others will agree with it. I drop my pebble in the ocean of online discourse and hope the ripples spread as far as possible.

The only hope we have is to organize against the power elite and consolidate our own power to stand against that they’ve already accumulated. That means putting aside our personal and political differences for the time being and approaching online discourse from a standpoint of trying to accomplish something. Far too many people blog and comment purely to feed their own ego, and while I’ll admit there’s an element of that to my own endeavors in the blogosphere, my primary motivation is to contribute to humanity in whatever way I can.

And that means stopping these corporations before they become too big to stop. If a handful of like-minded elites manage to accumulate more than half the world’s wealth/power, the other half will be powerless to stop them. It may already be too late. Thanks to the narrative we get from the media we are more polarized than ever, pitted against each other over issues of complete triviality in comparison to the big issue. Fighting amongst ourselves is exactly what they want us to do, and they’re doing a great job getting us to do it.

But we can all recognize what’s happening if we look hard enough, and whether we’re conservative or liberal we can all agree that we don’t want to have the entire world run by a small group of wealthy elites who seem motivated purely by self-interest. I’ll write posts like this as often as I have to, and continue to try and expand my online presence to reach as many people as I can because I believe this is the most important issue of our time—perhaps of all time. I hope you agree.

I have to confess that I couldn’t hold back a huge grin when I heard the angry, threatening phone messages left for Bart Stupak after he gave up his pledge to kill the health care bill if it didn’t go far enough in restricting abortion. One guy called him a “baby-killing motherfucker” and said he hoped Stupak would bleed out his ass. Another woman said “There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill, and all of those thoughts that are projected on you will materialize into something that’s not very good for you.” You’ve got to love it. She’s going to destroy him with the awesome, unstoppable power of “The Secret” (which you’d think she could have used to kill the bill before it passed).

What makes these calls so amusing to me is that Stupak is the farthest thing from a baby-killer you can imagine. Because he pushed so hard to make abortion restrictions a part of the health care bill, the final bill does contain language that will make it almost impossible for some women in the country to have an abortion if they can’t pay out-of-pocket. His only failure was not being able to make it even more difficult.

Stupak is just one piece of collateral damage in the Great Republican Strategery Fail of 2009-2010. Stupak, a democrat, told everyone that the health care bill forced taxpayer-funded abortions, and that his amendment was the only thing standing between the Evil Government and millions of dead fetuses. He was adopting the republican strategy of lying about what’s in the bill for the sake of scoring political points. He took a risk, hoping that either his amendment would be passed or the bill would fail, so he could go out and claim a major victory for the pro-life cause, or at least say that he fought the good fight. But his amendment failed, the bill was passed, and now all those people who a week ago saw him as the Lone Good Democrat now see him as a back-stabbing baby-killer. It’s pure poetic justice.

The wingnuts are furious that this bill passed, and this is a huge problem for the Republican Party, who gambled big on the bill’s failure and lost. The wingnuts were told by their cheerleaders in the conservative media for an entire year that this bill had no chance of passing. Locked in their self-made bubble of Tea Parties and Fox News, the wingnuts had no way of knowing that over half the country actually wanted health care reform, as everyone they talked to and everyone they saw on TV were vehemently against it. Suddenly, the bill passes and to them it seems like Obama, megalomaniacal tyrant that he is, single-handedly forced this bill down the country’s throat over the objections of every American—at least every ‘real’ American. Now the republicans are left with a base of insane, frothing-at-the-mouth gun-toting redneck racist militants who will no longer be satisfied with mere political opposition, but who are downright howling for blood.

The republicans decided on their strategy at the very beginning of the Obama presidency, when Rush Limbaugh declared that he hoped Obama would fail and any republican who dared challenge that declaration—anyone who said it might be wiser to work with the president to get things done for the American people—was promptly chastised and forced to apologize to Lord Limbaugh. It would seem that the only way to maintain the support of their right-wing base would be a strategy of 100% opposition, leaving absolutely no room for compromise of any sort.

And as the fight went on, they found themselves having to move further and further to the right, adopting each new crazy talking-point put out there by their craziest members lest they be considered not-crazy enough to be a republican and viciously attacked as a collaborator or traitor. The health care bill will make everyone’s taxes skyrocket. The bill will take away your doctor and force you into a government-run system that will let you die if you’re seen as too expensive. The bill will mandate federal funds for abortion. The bill will set up death panels to issue end-of-life orders to the old and handicapped. Every crazy charge leveled against this bill was met with silence by most republican lawmakers, while some actually encouraged and propagated these falsehoods for fundraising purposes. Nothing like good old-fashioned fear-mongering to open up those wallets.

Now the bill is law and the wingnuts are in a frenzy, afraid to go see their doctor lest they discover he’s been taken away and thrown into the assembly-line of that evil Government Health Care factory where children with Down’s Syndrome go to die. They’re lying awake at night with loaded gun in hand, dreading the moment that government bureaucrat is going to show up at the door and order them to report for execution. Freedom is dead, tyranny has arrived, and now it’s every man for himself.

Naturally, there are those on the right who believed all this bullshit who are now openly calling for the assassination of Obama, or at least tacitly endorsing violence against lawmakers. One conservative blogger who believes that someone from the government is actually going to show up at his house to kill him is calling for people to throw bricks at the windows of local Democratic Party headquarters, and some of his fans are doing it! I’m shocked that so far no one has taken a shot at the president, but that can’t be too far off.

So how are republicans reacting to the overreactions of the beast they helped create? Eric Cantor got on TV and blamed the democrats for using the instances of violence for political purposes! He said he gets all kinds of threatening phone-calls, people attack him for being a Jew, and just the other week somebody took a shot at his office (it was actually just random gunfire) but that he never blamed the other party for this (never mind that no one in the other party accused him of wanting to kill senior citizens) and he didn’t even mention his office getting shot at (at least until the press conference where he mentioned his office getting shot at). Shame on the democrats for using these instances of violence for political purposes. Eric Cantor would never use an instance of violence for political purposes…except in the present circumstance.

Turning the blame for the violence around and pointing their finger at the democrats—I’ll bet he and Boehner erupted with laughter when they came up with that move. There’s nothing they can’t use against the other party, even the stuff that’s entirely their fault. It’s the other side’s fault for blaming them for the stuff that’s their fault.

But this tiny piece of political gamesmanship is inconsequential in the big picture. The republicans aren’t hurt by the wingnut rage because people blame them for stoking it—they’re hurt by the rage because they have no choice now but to submit to it and follow where it leads. They spent an entire year painting the president as some kind of tyrannical dictator hell-bent on destroying America, so they sure as hell can’t negotiate with him now. David Frum, a republican spin-doctor, pointed this out in a column and was promptly fired from his job at a conservative think-tank. All voices of reason will be purged from the party.

As such, the party will get smaller and smaller and any hope of a republican resurgence like they had in 1994 will be tossed out the window. Plenty of democrats disillusioned with Obama will stay home in November and it’s likely the republicans will pick up a few seats, but if their angry base pushes their candidates too far to the right—threatening not to vote for them unless they pass an ideological purity test—the 60 to 70 percent of the population who are not crazy won’t vote for them.

But as much schadenfreude as I derive from seeing the Republican Party reap what it’s sewn, there are negative consequences for the country as a whole that can’t be overlooked. If democrats do indeed maintain large majorities after this Fall’s mid-term elections, they’ll know that catering to corporate interests at the expense of the public has no real electoral cost. Because the opposition party is so ridiculously far to the right that it’s teetering on the brink of the ideological cliff, the Democratic Party is free to move as far to the right as it likes, as those on the left will have no other real choice. That’s the way it’s been for quite some time and thanks to Tea Party rage, it’s going to be even worse. Which candidate will you vote for? The conservative or the ultra-conservative? Do you want a corporate sell-out or a bat-shit crazy fundamentalist? Take your pick.

The system is so horribly broken that change can’t come from within it. If progressives want change, they have to get loud and angry and demand it. But with conservatives already so loud and angry that it looks like the kettle is boiling over, progressives are forced to take the moderate position, and basically say “Calm down, it’s not that bad. Let’s go about this in a calm and orderly fashion and work within the system to slowly bring about the changes we need.” We should be just as angry as the wingnuts, and many of us are, but if you’re shouting next to someone who’s screaming his head off, your shout will sound like a soft whisper.

Over the next few months the wingnuts will no doubt be surprised to find that nothing has happened to their health insurance, that their doctor is still around, grandma is alive and well, and no government bureaucrat is showing up at their doors to kill them. Some of this rage will undoubtedly subside. But the anger goes far deeper than the fight over health reform, and as Frank Rich pointed out in his column in the New York Times, we’d have seen the same thing had the legislative fight been over financial reform or climate change. Whatever Obama does is going to be seen as Armageddon, and wingnuts will never let reality stand in the way of their delusions. If there are no death panels it’s only because they fought hard to keep them out of the health care package, but Obama will just find a way to stick them in the immigration bill.

Meanwhile, republicans will continue along with their doomed strategy, unable to change course because they’ve tied their hands and feet to the base they’ve allowed those in the conservative media to rile up so effectively.

The big winners are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Fox News. As long as the republicans are out of power, their ratings will continue to soar as they prey on the fear and anger of those who can’t stand the sight of a democrat—let alone a black one—in the white house. As Frum pointed out, Fox News used to work for the republicans, but now the republicans work for Fox News. Sadly for them, Fox News does better when the republicans are out of power.

They went with a colossally bad bit of strategery, and now they’re stuck with it. And so are we.

Much has been written this past week about the recent incidents of violence performed by a few right-wing wackos, and many have placed the blame squarely where it belongs: with the mainstream media, particularly Fox News. Normally the commentary of right-wing bloviators wouldn’t be much of an important issue, but it has become so due to the current political climate in which a black democratic president is actively trying to implement a progressive agenda. So although I can’t say much that hasn’t already been said, I might as well add my own little rant to the chorus.

Naturally, those at Fox News who have been gleefully fanning the flames of hatred and paranoia—such as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly—not only believe they bear no responsibility for the violence, but they actually see themselves as the victims in all of this. Fingers are only being pointed at them because others in the media are jealous of their high ratings, and it’s all part of some secret plot hatched by the government and the liberal elites at MSNBC to take down Fox News, the only network honourable enough to report the truth without a radical left-wing bias.

To a certain extent, they’re right. When you get right down to it, the primary responsibility lies purely with the shooters themselves. Glenn Beck didn’t specifically tell Richard Poplawski to fire an AK-47 at a bunch of police officers in Pittsburgh—he only gave him the idea that Obama was trying to take away his guns. A completely false proposition as Obama hasn’t even touched second amendment issues since taking office, but how could Beck have known anyone would start shooting police before running a careful fact-check? Bill O’Reilly didn’t tell Scott Roeder to murder abortion doctor George Tiller—he just repeatedly called the doctor a “baby-killer” with blood on his hands who for $5000 would kill anyone’s baby for any reason, even just for being depressed. A ridiculous charge seeing as how most of Tiller’s clients were women at risk of harm or death, but how could O’Reilly have possibly imagined that anyone would take his words so seriously? And finally, the slew of right-wing radio talk show hosts who continue to deny the Holocaust and insist that the Jews are running a worldwide conspiracy have absolutely nothing to do with James Von Brunn walking into the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. and opening fire. They obviously never actually wanted any actual Jews to be killed…right?

A few months ago, the conservative news pundits were all up-in-arms over the fact that the director of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, issued a report warning of a rising threat of right-wing extremism. Never mind that the report also warned of the threat of left-wing cyber-terrorism, or that the DHS under Bush was also keeping tabs on right-wing extremist groups—this was all the proof they needed that Obama really is a totalitarian communist fascist Nazi dictator hell-bent on going after anyone who disagrees with him politically.

To be fair, it’s not like anyone suggested that he was building concentration camps or anything…oh wait…Glenn Beck did. He just said he “couldn’t confirm” if it was true, so it’s not like you can blame him if anybody believed it.

Napolitano apologised for the language in the report, thus making it clear that right-wing extremists are not a danger—they are our friends and neighbours who just happen to have a few simple differences with the president in terms of policy. It’s the president’s spending that they hate, not the fact that he’s black. They would have been protesting against Bush if he had spent the country into unprecedented levels of debt…oh wait…he did? And none of them were protesting? Well, I’m sure it still has nothing to do with race.

The point is, there are a lot of right-wing wackos out there who are already going nuts over the idea of a black president, and if you get them angry and paranoid enough, if you keep reinforcing this idea that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim sleeper agent sent by terrorists to destroy American values, take money from successful white people and give it to poor black welfare queens, strengthen affirmative action laws so that businesses may only hire people of colour, redefine marriage as a union between any two physical objects (man and man, man and child, woman and horse, fetus and microwave, etc.), and make late-term abortions mandatory for all women, then maybe, just maybe a few of these nuts will get the idea that they ought to take matters into their own hands and start firing shots in defence of their country.

Of course, no conservative would ever go so far as to make any kind of suggestion that political change should be brought about by any means other than legal, democratic processes. Michele Bachman may have said she wanted people “armed and dangerous” over Obama’s tax plan, but this was just a figure of speech. Sure, Rush Limbaugh may have said something like, “If al-Qaeda wants to demolish the America we know and love, they better hurry, because Obama is beating them to it” but this was merely a substantive critique of the new administration’s foreign policy. And yeah, Glenn Beck may have had an entire special program called the “War Room” in which experts speculated about how an army of survivalists might take up arms against a communist Obama government, but that was all just hypothetical.

In all seriousness, there is plenty to criticise Obama about. He’s letting the Wall Street bankers continue their shenanigans at the expense of taxpayers, compromising our civil liberties by continuing some of the most egregious Bush-era policies with regards to detainees, continuing to enforce the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy which he promised to repeal, and letting the health insurance special interests have a seat at the table to negotiate over his already heavily-compromised health-care bill. Perhaps if there were people on the left willing to pick up a gun and open fire on the headquarters of a big Wall Street bank or a health-insurance company, one could justifiably claim that there are crazies out there willing to act on any biased reporting, and Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are just as much to blame for their impact as O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck.

But the thing is, while Olbermann and Maddow do have a clear leftist slant in their reporting, they actually report. They present the facts and then have a discussion about those facts. O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck, on the other hand, first spew out their opinions and then back them up with whatever facts they feel might be relevant, and if there are none they just invent some, like the fact that Obama is coming after your gun and might be building concentration camps for political opponents.

If you challenge any of these wingnuts, the first thing they’ll do is hide behind the First Amendment. If we criticise their speech, they say, we’re attacking their Constitutional rights! And yes, they do have a Constitutional right to spew out whatever hateful, paranoid, factually inaccurate bullshit they want. This is America, and you can’t be locked up for what you say.

But that doesn’t mean you should say it. And that’s all those on the left are saying when they criticise these commentators: You may be allowed to say these things, you may draw a large audience and generate a great deal of profit by saying this stuff, but that doesn’t mean you should fucking say it!

If these people love America even half as much as they pretend to, they might take a moment to pause and consider the genuine real-world impact this kind of speech has on society. Do they really think they’re helping the country by getting one segment of the population completely riled up, angry, afraid, and foaming-at-the-mouth-enraged over fake bullshit issues based on absolutely no substance? Do they see themselves as performing some kind of service? Perhaps they believe they are giving a voice to those disenfranchised Americans whom the black president is shamelessly ignoring on his crusade to advance the agenda of jews, gays, communists, and terrorists? If so, they would have to first believe that Obama really is on such a crusade, but if they’re that dumb they would be the ones listening to that bullshit and not the ones propagating it.

No, they know perfectly well that most of what they say is total horseshit propaganda designed to keep the established power-structure in power. They do it by convincing those most victimised by the establishment that their problems are actually caused by liberals. All they are doing is misdirecting rage.

There are two results of this: The first is that it makes it incredibly difficult for the president, who probably genuinely wants to advance a progressive agenda, to actually accomplish any progressive goals. The second is that a few crazy wingnuts start shooting people. And if the commentators insist they bear absolutely no responsibility for these acts of violence, they are simply wrong. Their speech may be legal, but it’s irresponsible and it’s dangerous. It validates ideas that should not be given any credence, and perpetuates a culture war that drives a society apart at the very moment it should be joining together.

The problems facing this country are too serious for this kind of shit to be tolerated. We should be worried about environmental degradation, climate change, nuclear proliferation, the collapsing economy and so on, but instead we’re all running around like chickens with our heads chopped off over the very idea that dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo might actually be allowed on U.S. soil! Never mind that they’d be held in supermax prisons from which no one—including the terrorists already confined in these places—has ever escaped. The liberals would make sure they get released so that they are free to hang out by school playgrounds and terrorize our children.

The debate in this country used to be between the left and the right. Now it’s between the center-left and the far far faaaaaaaaaaaaar right. The truth does not lie somewhere in between, but often way to the left. Right-wing commentators, and the mainstream media that enables them, shove the debate from the rational end of the spectrum to the batshit crazy, so we’re no longer debating any actual merits of any actual policies, but instead arguing over baseless accusations as though they are one of the legitimate sides of a two-sided argument. There are often several legitimate sides to an argument, but the far-right position is never one of them, and it’s being treated as though it is. This is poison for the national discourse, and as long as our discourse continues to be poisoned by these irresponsible propagandist bloviators appealing to the worst impulses in the worst members of society, the entrenched interests and the army of ignorant gun-toting racists they’ve got backing them up will continue to hold the rest of society hostage.

The tax-day tea-parties of the past week have really bothered me, enough to the point where I feel I can actually write another journal entry of pure political commentary around it. I’ll do my best to say something other than what every other liberal blogger in the world has already said millions of times.

In just about every poll regarding an issue dividing the far-right from everybody else, the percentage falls somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. That was Bush’s approval rating during the better part of his second term once it was obvious to all but the most hardcore conservative Christians that he was an incompetent fool who was doing serious damage to the country. That’s how many people agree with Dick Cheney that torture keeps Americans safe and that Obama is making us less safe by ending this policy. That’s how many people believe that Armageddon is coming within the next decade, that Obama is the Anti-Christ, that God spends all of His time up in heaven worrying about abortion and same-sex marriage, that evolution is a myth promoted by sinful scientists rebelling against God, and so on. So it would seem that 20 to 30 percent of Americans are what many of us would identify as “right-wing nut-jobs”.

And these are the nut-jobs who came out in droves this April 15th to protest Obama’s 3% tax increase on the rich. The idea that this Barack Hussein Obama, this black muslim liberal fascist socialist radical nazi non-citizen communist would have the audacity to make the rich people in this country pay the same amount of taxes they paid in the 1990s (less than they paid under Reagan in the 80s) is just too much to bear! A line has to be drawn in the sand somewhere, damn it, and these people are not going to sit idly by as their taxes get cut while the wealthiest 10% have to make up the difference. That’s spreading the wealth! That’s punishing rich people for their success! How are they supposed to become millionaires when Obama and his team of liberal communist fascists are just going to take that money away from them as soon as they start to earn it? Clearly it’s not their stupidity, incompetence, laziness, or ignorance that’s preventing them all from becoming hugely successful entrepreneurs. It’s those damned tax-and-spend liberals (who are also communists and fascists) who won’t let them!

It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic, and what makes it tragic is that you just can’t explain to these people how badly they’ve been duped. They think that you’re opinion is automatically wrong because you’ve been brain-washed by the liberal media while their point of view is right because their opinions come from the Church (which has never been associated with brain-washing) and from Fox News (which is the only fair-and-balanced news network on television). If you try to explain that Fox News is nothing more than a profit-driven business that consistently promotes right-wing ideology in order to boost their ratings with the sizable “right-wing nut-job” demographic, they’ll laugh at you for buying into the lies of the left-wing propaganda machine. To them, the idea of a right-wing propaganda machine is completely absurd.

The whole thing is so frustrating to me because I would like to live in a world governed by reason, where if one side of an argument is clearly right and the other is clearly wrong, that you’d be able to explain it to someone, to just present them with the clear facts of the matter, and they’d understand their mistake and change their opinion accordingly. But the hardcore right-wing nut-jobs seem to have a mental-block which renders them completely unresponsive to reason.

It’s one thing for issues like abortion and the death penalty, where there are good arguments on both sides and where you stand is just a matter of whether you’re coming from the liberal or conservative end of the ideological spectrum. If someone believes that abortion is wrong in all cases and that it’s the government’s duty to protect the lives of the unborn, you can’t make a rational argument against that. You can merely assert your position that “abortion may be wrong but women ought to have the right to make the wrong decision without the government’s involvement,” but beyond that there’s nothing you can do.

But it’s a completely different matter when it’s a question of facts and all of the facts indicate that one side of the argument is right and the other is dead wrong. The issue of torture, for instance, is the best example of a one-sided issue. The moral argument is against it—it’s simply wrong to cause suffering. But the practical argument can be made that it’s justifiable to cause suffering if by doing so you’re preventing even more suffering. But study after study, account after eyewitness account, have demonstrated quite conclusively that torture is not an effective method for gathering intelligence. Furthermore, by torturing suspected Arab terrorists we’ve enraged the Arab world and allowed the extremists to recruit far more insurgents and suicide bombers than they would have otherwise been able to. As a result of these policies of torture, not only have we most likely caused unimaginable suffering to—in at least a few cases—completely innocent people, but American soldiers have DIED as a result of bombs detonated in retaliation for our policy of torture. It’s a policy that causes ONLY suffering. By any rational interpretation of the facts, absolutely no good whatsoever has resulted from this country’s use of torture. And yet these people STILL defend it.

So let’s return to the tax-day tea parties. Every single thing the protesters are speaking out against can be refuted with cold hard logical facts. First of all, they’re against a crushing tax-burden imposed by the federal government. Well, for one thing Obama is CUTTING taxes for 95% of Americans, for another thing his tax-rates for the rich will be lower than they were under Reagan, and for the final thing the United States has one of the lowest tax-rates in the entire world. And it’s not like tax money just goes straight to Barack Obama’s personal bank account (which he no doubt uses to finance Muslim terrorist groups in their plots to destroy Christianity), but it actually goes to things like INFRASTRUCTURE. If you don’t want to pay any taxes at all, that’s fine, but then you have to give up roads, police forces, public schools, and the military.

So they’re against taxing. And they’re also against spending. When the economy is in free-fall, they now profess to believe, the right thing to do is to freeze all unnecessary spending and buckle down as a nation until the crisis is over. Never mind the fact that without government spending the hole just gets deeper and deeper, that a spending-freeze is exactly what Herbert Hoover tried at the beginning of the Great Depression and it royally fucked things up afterwards. The facts don’t matter here. If Obama wants to do it, it must be wrong. After all, he is the anti-Christ.

Which brings me to the real heart of the matter. These people are not opposed to any particular ideology. They don’t have a strong enough understanding of economics or history to make a solid argument for their case against taxing and spending. They simply hate Barack Obama because he doesn’t look like them or talk like them and it seems like the “Other” that they fear so much is now driving this precious “Christian-nation” of theirs straight down the secular-progressive path to Hell. Whatever Obama does must be wrong. Even if Bush did the same exact thing, like bailing out the banks.

Is there any route around the impenetrable wall these people have built around their beliefs? Or must we accept that there will always be nut-jobs on the far right (and to be fair, there are those on the far left as well) who will never listen to reason no matter how compelling? I don’t know the answer to that, but perhaps a change in the tone of our discourse is what’s required. It seems to be the one thing we liberals haven’t seriously tried.

It’s extremely easy to laugh at these people or get angry at them for calling the president a baby-killing Nazi or what have you, but once we perceive them as the eternal “Other” we’ve made the same mistake as they have. As difficult—indeed as impossible—as it may seem to be at times, I believe we have to approach them with sympathy and respect. To see deeper than their politically-misinformed and misdirected anger and recognise them as real human beings with hopes and fears and dreams just like everyone else.

It all boils down to a question of identity. These people have been tricked into identifying themselves with their own political beliefs. They will not listen to reason because their gut tells them what is right and they trust their gut more than they trust their brain. “I am a conservative. That means I vote republican, I’m against abortion, I support the use of torture, etc.” Today, thanks to Limbaugh, Beck, and the others from whom they get their opinions, it also means “I oppose tax increases for the wealthy, I support a spending freeze, and I believe Obama is a communist and a fascist who is trying to destroy America.”

They will not alter their beliefs because among those beliefs is the very dangerous idea that one’s own beliefs should never be altered. To change my mind about an issue, I have to recognise that my previous position was wrong. But to them it’s not just “my position on an issue” that would be wrong, but their “self”. There is no difference in their mind between saying “My opinion was wrong” and saying “I was wrong.” They make no distinction in their minds is between their true essence, the conscious awareness looking out from behind their eyes, and the neurons firing through their brains whenever a word like “taxes” or “immigration” is uttered. Someone needs to help them understand that reconnecting those neural pathways does not destroy their identity. Conscious awareness will continue to permeate their bodies and the brain will continue firing neurons just as before, and they may even feel all the wiser for having had the strength to adopt a new, more factually-harmonious perspective.

At least that’s how I’ve always felt every time I’ve changed my mind about something, which is often. I grew up as a conservative Christian republican, and didn’t start seriously re-examining my beliefs until high school.

Finally, if we want those on the right to cease identifying themselves with their political beliefs, we must stop identifying them with their beliefs as well. That means resisting the urge to laugh at or attack them, to abandon terms like “right-wing nut-job”, and to always keep in mind that had we been born and raised under the same exact circumstances as them, we would be just as tragically wrong about so many things as they are.