The time is out of joint
Jan. 11th, 2011 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fr_defenestratoLike everyone else, I've been observing (without really trying) the media hoo-ha surrounding the attempted assassination of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder and maiming of a bunch of people in her vicinity. Colbert ran a single (and disappointingly safe) joke on the subject last night, insisting that 'Now is not the time to play the blame game' and immediately running a news clip montage of everyone and her Aunt Myfanwy doing just that. 'Oh. I guess I'm wrong. Have we picked someone to blame? Well, get on it, I look like an idiot out here!'
The usual suspects in my own blogosphere—Joe. My. God., Americablog, et al.—have spend the last four days rending their garments and tearing their hair over the likes of Sarah Palin, whose vacuity, blithe viciousness, and amorality have somehow gotten her promoted to a job she's even less fit for than Governor of Alaska: revolutionary visionary. Foundering Father, or, I suppose, Foundering Mother. Mother Jones, in fact, reincarnated on the side of fascism. You betcha she can raise hell, darnit!
And make no mistake about it, Palin's a fascist. She never equivocates when it comes to the sole natural and acceptable role of government: partnering with industry to facilitate the enrichment of rich people. We use 'fascism' now almost exclusively to mean 'totalitarianism' but that's a lamentable lexical drift: historically, all fascism was was the formalized clusterfuck of government and industry with its aggregate tongue way, way up the asshole of Mammon, who squirmed dutifully.
So I'm sure we've all seen by now how Minuteman Palin put rifle crosshairs on a map showing 'targeted' Democratic congressmen and women. B'ar-skinnin' Sarah (and others) long ago adopted the rhetoric of armed militias ('Don't retreat—reload', etc.) resisting a government that no longer serves the interests of the people.
(One thing, and let me just get this out of the way first: I don't care the shooter was a bugfuck, drug-addled tweaker with delusions of deity. You (we) do not get to chalk up any and every such massacre as an oddity, an outlier, the work of a certifiable loon. By that sort of system one could discount the entire presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Listen: When political rhetoric is involved and invoked, political rhetoric counts. Crazy and sane people both abound like lice in the crotches of this planet; public prescriptions for Lindane do NOT happen in a vacuum.)
But back to the main point: the handgun rhetoric of Palin et al. has the liberal end of the spectrum apoplectic and crying about blood on people's hands. And there's been a clambake-sized clamor out of quarters I seldom if ever hear from—foundations and institutes and think tanks for peace/non-violence/a modicum of civility/can't we all just get along/WWJAHLSID1. Misanthrope that I am, I'm not quite prepared to claim that these folks' heads or hearts are screwed up; that they're part of the problem; that their righteous indignation is just the bleeding-heart-socialist flipside of the Palins and Becks. No, I do not believe that to be the case.
Nonetheless, in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, something still seems... off with the tenor of the debate. In simplest terms, it's the fact that Sarah Palin is, in some essential way, correct—in form if not in content. The architects of this country did fully recognize that independence from Britain would not manifest without taking up arms and risking life and limb. Jefferson did talk about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants. He did say a little revolution every so often was a good thing. Hifalutin revolution rhetoric sounds good on paper, but it's not particularly pleasant to ruminate their showing up at our doorstep—nobody really wants to imagine bloody revolution, civil war, or terrorism across their own country. Still, I can't think of a more indisputable proposition than that humans have always, always, always needed to employ aggressive if not forthrightly violent means to secure their freedoms from other humans who consider them chattel. Anyone who thinks the humans they're making today are different is a fucking idiot.
Granted, I couldn't be more ideologically opposed to Ma Palin. In this crazy age, she and her companions have pulled off an astonishing feat: convincing the citizenry to shoot the Minutemen and invite the Redcoats in for a cup of increasingly expensive tea. She rails against the evils of a government empowered to protect its citizenry. Individual liberties are government overreach; corporate liberties are sacred and must be preserved at gunpoint.
Codgers like me will realize this is just down the rhetorical road apiece from Ronald Reagan, who (fittingly in 1984 and thereabouts) convinced America that penury (for regular Americans) is prosperity (for armorers, financiers, etc.—which of course meant eventual prosperity for all); that lawlessness is legal—e.g., true patriots like Ollie North are not subject to the rule of law; that cruelty (of Jim Crow laws and socialist witch hunts) is kindness (of Donna Reed and June Cleaver and your very own mumsie-wumsie in her mythical, pastoral American farm kitchen).
So here's the Tea Party Revolution, convincing a scarily large number of citizens that the very persons in the federal government most likely to have their interests in mind are not just their enemy, but an enemy purgeable with Second Amendment remedies. Shooting Rep Giffords and the crowd around her had zero to do with 'taking back the government'; it was a warning shot (another one; not the first) from a steamrolling coup of American billionaires who are not going to get their tongues out of Mammon's ass without a bitter fight.
Perhaps what makes this entire discussion uncomfortable is not so much that we can't believe what happened in Tucson, but the fact that, with every such incident, it seems less and less likely the rest of us will get through our lives without having to defend ourselves and our liberty at peril of shedding some of our own red, red Miracle Gro.
——
1 'What Would Jesus and His Long-Suffering Ilk Do?'
The usual suspects in my own blogosphere—Joe. My. God., Americablog, et al.—have spend the last four days rending their garments and tearing their hair over the likes of Sarah Palin, whose vacuity, blithe viciousness, and amorality have somehow gotten her promoted to a job she's even less fit for than Governor of Alaska: revolutionary visionary. Foundering Father, or, I suppose, Foundering Mother. Mother Jones, in fact, reincarnated on the side of fascism. You betcha she can raise hell, darnit!
And make no mistake about it, Palin's a fascist. She never equivocates when it comes to the sole natural and acceptable role of government: partnering with industry to facilitate the enrichment of rich people. We use 'fascism' now almost exclusively to mean 'totalitarianism' but that's a lamentable lexical drift: historically, all fascism was was the formalized clusterfuck of government and industry with its aggregate tongue way, way up the asshole of Mammon, who squirmed dutifully.
So I'm sure we've all seen by now how Minuteman Palin put rifle crosshairs on a map showing 'targeted' Democratic congressmen and women. B'ar-skinnin' Sarah (and others) long ago adopted the rhetoric of armed militias ('Don't retreat—reload', etc.) resisting a government that no longer serves the interests of the people.
(One thing, and let me just get this out of the way first: I don't care the shooter was a bugfuck, drug-addled tweaker with delusions of deity. You (we) do not get to chalk up any and every such massacre as an oddity, an outlier, the work of a certifiable loon. By that sort of system one could discount the entire presidency of Richard M. Nixon. Listen: When political rhetoric is involved and invoked, political rhetoric counts. Crazy and sane people both abound like lice in the crotches of this planet; public prescriptions for Lindane do NOT happen in a vacuum.)
But back to the main point: the handgun rhetoric of Palin et al. has the liberal end of the spectrum apoplectic and crying about blood on people's hands. And there's been a clambake-sized clamor out of quarters I seldom if ever hear from—foundations and institutes and think tanks for peace/non-violence/a modicum of civility/can't we all just get along/WWJAHLSID1. Misanthrope that I am, I'm not quite prepared to claim that these folks' heads or hearts are screwed up; that they're part of the problem; that their righteous indignation is just the bleeding-heart-socialist flipside of the Palins and Becks. No, I do not believe that to be the case.
Nonetheless, in the wake of the Tucson tragedy, something still seems... off with the tenor of the debate. In simplest terms, it's the fact that Sarah Palin is, in some essential way, correct—in form if not in content. The architects of this country did fully recognize that independence from Britain would not manifest without taking up arms and risking life and limb. Jefferson did talk about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants. He did say a little revolution every so often was a good thing. Hifalutin revolution rhetoric sounds good on paper, but it's not particularly pleasant to ruminate their showing up at our doorstep—nobody really wants to imagine bloody revolution, civil war, or terrorism across their own country. Still, I can't think of a more indisputable proposition than that humans have always, always, always needed to employ aggressive if not forthrightly violent means to secure their freedoms from other humans who consider them chattel. Anyone who thinks the humans they're making today are different is a fucking idiot.
Granted, I couldn't be more ideologically opposed to Ma Palin. In this crazy age, she and her companions have pulled off an astonishing feat: convincing the citizenry to shoot the Minutemen and invite the Redcoats in for a cup of increasingly expensive tea. She rails against the evils of a government empowered to protect its citizenry. Individual liberties are government overreach; corporate liberties are sacred and must be preserved at gunpoint.
Codgers like me will realize this is just down the rhetorical road apiece from Ronald Reagan, who (fittingly in 1984 and thereabouts) convinced America that penury (for regular Americans) is prosperity (for armorers, financiers, etc.—which of course meant eventual prosperity for all); that lawlessness is legal—e.g., true patriots like Ollie North are not subject to the rule of law; that cruelty (of Jim Crow laws and socialist witch hunts) is kindness (of Donna Reed and June Cleaver and your very own mumsie-wumsie in her mythical, pastoral American farm kitchen).
So here's the Tea Party Revolution, convincing a scarily large number of citizens that the very persons in the federal government most likely to have their interests in mind are not just their enemy, but an enemy purgeable with Second Amendment remedies. Shooting Rep Giffords and the crowd around her had zero to do with 'taking back the government'; it was a warning shot (another one; not the first) from a steamrolling coup of American billionaires who are not going to get their tongues out of Mammon's ass without a bitter fight.
Perhaps what makes this entire discussion uncomfortable is not so much that we can't believe what happened in Tucson, but the fact that, with every such incident, it seems less and less likely the rest of us will get through our lives without having to defend ourselves and our liberty at peril of shedding some of our own red, red Miracle Gro.
——
1 'What Would Jesus and His Long-Suffering Ilk Do?'
