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silveradeptSaw something on the back of someone's truck a few days ago as a back window decal. Up top, it said "Liberalism is" and then proceeded to spew several nouns and adjectives such as:
"Domestic terrorism."
That's right, liberalism is domestic terrorism. My first response to such a thing is, I would like to think, what sane people would do when confronted with such a claim: *thfffffffffthahahahahahahahahahahaha* This person needs a visit from the Inigo Montoya School of Linguistic Meaning.
And then I thought about the implications of what such a thing entails, and what kind of world you have to live in to believe that liberalism is the equivalent of people creating explosives out of vehicles and detonating them in crowded areas, people deliberately sabotaging and/or destroying infrastructure or property to send a political message, or doing harm to people to hold them in fear of your organization. So I put on my thinking cap and started a metaphorical journey. My starting point was Tea Party Land, because they seemed to be the best fit for coming to that conclusion. They have a built-in fear of governmental mechanisms and have been successfully inculcated with the idea that liberalism is able to resolve entirely contradictory philosophies and meld them into some sort of whole, control the airwaves through the mainstream media and silence anyone with the truth, and are actively working to undermine the religious and constitutional foundations on which the country and its government rest so they can enrich themselves and take greater control over the life of someone else. As I spent time there, though, I realized that most of the Tea Party residents would be totally fine if the debts were backed off on and some sort of fiscal responsibility came into play. They don't think of liberals as terrorists, just big spenders.
So I moved on, a little further to the right, and stopped off at the Church of Religious Fundamentalism. After all, sin and abortion had been mentioned. Listening to the sermon on repeat, I heard about the evils of liberal government trying to push religion out of the public sphere, fund the murder of innocent children, teach other children that heterosexuals are only one of many orientations, and otherwise drive America into moral ruin. I thought they would be a good fit, considering many of them have endorsed or participated in acts of domestic terror, especially when it came to clinics that provided abortion services. But I couldn't find a match. They thought liberals were the agents of Satan, or satans themselves, but they didn't think of them as terroists, excepting perhaps to the unborn. So I left the church and continued on my way.
I thought I would go visit the compounds of the survivialists, convinced the government is already illegal and has been for a while, and their uneasy-but-useful allies, the Galts of the world, sitting in their countinghouses, reveling in their Objective superiority, and likely providing a slightly more legitimate front group for the survivalists as the people who will do enough damage in trying to realize the Randian vision that they'll start the cascade that results in the governmental collapse and the survivalists sweeping into power so they can remake the country in their idealized anarchic vision. I notices a lot of trip-wires and pits along the path, and I was certain at least once in my approach that I saw a familiar red dot on something near me, as if to point out the obvious - I was being watched. After politely asking permission to come in, I chatted for a while and listened to the theories in play at the moment, but I quickly realized that this was not the place to find my "Liberals are domestic terrorists" viewpoint. These people thought government was oppressive, regardless of who was in charge, and would give the same hearty Frak You to any government agent that came near them and looked like they wanted to enforce a law.
But in listening to all of those viewpoints playing out in my head, I realized that I did know who would think of liberals as domestic terrorists after all. I just didn't have the perspective I needed. After making polite goodbyes and putting as much distance between myself and them as I could without seeming like I was trying to run in a hurry, I headed straight toward the place that I had initially overlooked - The City of the Big Tent, the place where Republicans venerate the Great Saint Reagan at the Temple of Conservatism. I had a sneaking suspicion about the place that I hadn't noticed before. Having stocked myself with a sweater with a loose thread, I tied one end to a rock outside the city, and while signing a refrain snippet from a Weezer song, I walked the main drag of the city, with their giant billboards, flashing inert gas signs, and gilded, opulent (and occasionally tacky) building fronts. I got glared at for singing off-key, so I just kept walking, stopping occasionally to tie a new knot from the sweater to a yarn ball of the same color, and then one yarn ball to another, looking for the secret that I thought I had grasped. After quite a while, though, I found what I had sought - the thread I had started with. The City of the Big Tent was a Moebius strip - one surface, folded back in on itself, that you could traverse endlessly without having to pick up your thread.
The importance of all this? Well, you don't notice a chameleon unless you know what to look for. What I had seen on the back of that truck was the smokescreen of a bog-standard Corporatist Republican. To the Tea Party folks, he appeared to be someone concerned about the debt and the inclinations of the country to be moving away from founding principles they cherish. He could wink knowingly about how White People Had It Tough in the era of the Black Man In Charge, and how much better it was when minorities and women knew their place. He looked like one of them. To the fundamentalist religion folk, he seemed concerned about the moral and spiritual health of America, ready to crusade against a thousand wrongs done against God and the unborn, a foot soldier in the War against Christians, clad in the Armor of God and ready to give preferential treatment to his fellow believers and return the country to its Christian glory. He looked like one of them. To the survivalists, well, they wouldn't trust him farther than they could shoot him, but to the Galt guys, he looked like someone ready to decry government in whatever form it might appear and advocate for its privatization and dismantling wherever it would make sense. He'd be a useful idiot for them, because only True Believers would get through unscathed, but he could certainly serve his purpose by getting things going. He looked enough like one of them that they'd let him tag along.
Really, though, the people who would think of liberals as "domestic terrorists" are people with a stake in the things that liberalism tends to dismantle, like absolute corporate control over the hours, wages, and conditions of their workers, or the idea that the market should be the only force for quality control and safety, or the idea that profit should be the sole concern of any corporation and any other considerations are distantly secondary at best. The idea that government and law should be decided by the rich, written by the rich, and enforceable by the rich against the poor, without leniency, without mercy, and definitely without anyone stopping to ask whether or not the laws are just or the rich should be given all of these breaks and advantages so as to make themselves richer at the expense of the poor. They are the people who are at the top of the pile, who actually control the capital, try to control the politicians, exert their influence on the media, and wish for nothing to ever be known about how they conduct their business. From that perspective, anyone claiming that the poor should be helped, the rich taxed progressively, the minority protected from the majority, and that corporations need to have someone more powerful than them to keep them in check and prevent them from simply chewing everything up and spitting it back out when it's no longer profitable is a direct threat to their way of life. The truly liberal inspire fear and terror in the rich and the corporate, because actual left-liberals will cheerily pick apart the structure they've carefully built in the name of things like fairness and justice and demand that they turn their profit-making, self-enriching enterprise to a profit-making, everyone-enriching enterprise. They'd probably even offer them fair market value for their stuff, while requiring them to pay a wage that would let their workers potentially afford their stuff. It would undermine the system and stop them from being able to use their excess wealth to drive war and conflict with other places so as to keep the people faced outward and scared of The Other, instead of turning inward and seeing how the show is actually run. They are, in two words, "domestic terrorists", inspiring fear in the hearts of the people who believe that they are the only people that (should) matter.
What I saw on the back of that truck was a Corporatist Republican hiding behind the rhetoric of conservatives. He succeeded in making me laugh at the dopiness of the messenger he was using as his front, but he hoped that I wouldn't notice the wire that pulled the messenger's strings as effectively as any puppeteer. I wonder who that Corporatist Republican is that came up with the message now being disseminated by the Tea Partiers and the religious fundamentalists, he who courts the Galts while giving them the finger when their backs are turned. If only I knew who the donors were, but they rigged it so they can pull the strings anonymously.
This ended up in a lot darker place than I had imagined. I was going to swing for incredulity and a good laugh at the person who could be so deluded as to believe this, and maybe riff a bit on how far beyond the pale we've gone that people are leveling these charges in a serious manner, because they actually believe it, but then one thing led to another, and here I am, wondering whether the "takeover" of the Republicans by the Tea Party isn't an attempt at obfuscating the clear corporate-over-people attitude of the Republican Party of these last few decades, with the brass good-naturedly going along with the removal of the "moderates" by the Tea Partiers to take the heat off, only to plan on putting the hammer down if and when they get enough power to go back to what they were doing with vengeance. That's...depressing. Can we has real liberal candidates in office nao, not corporatists and their centrist allies?
- sin,
- treason,
- spiritually deficient,
- racist,
- murder,
- socialism,
- fascism
"Domestic terrorism."
That's right, liberalism is domestic terrorism. My first response to such a thing is, I would like to think, what sane people would do when confronted with such a claim: *thfffffffffthahahahahahahahahahahaha* This person needs a visit from the Inigo Montoya School of Linguistic Meaning.
And then I thought about the implications of what such a thing entails, and what kind of world you have to live in to believe that liberalism is the equivalent of people creating explosives out of vehicles and detonating them in crowded areas, people deliberately sabotaging and/or destroying infrastructure or property to send a political message, or doing harm to people to hold them in fear of your organization. So I put on my thinking cap and started a metaphorical journey. My starting point was Tea Party Land, because they seemed to be the best fit for coming to that conclusion. They have a built-in fear of governmental mechanisms and have been successfully inculcated with the idea that liberalism is able to resolve entirely contradictory philosophies and meld them into some sort of whole, control the airwaves through the mainstream media and silence anyone with the truth, and are actively working to undermine the religious and constitutional foundations on which the country and its government rest so they can enrich themselves and take greater control over the life of someone else. As I spent time there, though, I realized that most of the Tea Party residents would be totally fine if the debts were backed off on and some sort of fiscal responsibility came into play. They don't think of liberals as terrorists, just big spenders.
So I moved on, a little further to the right, and stopped off at the Church of Religious Fundamentalism. After all, sin and abortion had been mentioned. Listening to the sermon on repeat, I heard about the evils of liberal government trying to push religion out of the public sphere, fund the murder of innocent children, teach other children that heterosexuals are only one of many orientations, and otherwise drive America into moral ruin. I thought they would be a good fit, considering many of them have endorsed or participated in acts of domestic terror, especially when it came to clinics that provided abortion services. But I couldn't find a match. They thought liberals were the agents of Satan, or satans themselves, but they didn't think of them as terroists, excepting perhaps to the unborn. So I left the church and continued on my way.
I thought I would go visit the compounds of the survivialists, convinced the government is already illegal and has been for a while, and their uneasy-but-useful allies, the Galts of the world, sitting in their countinghouses, reveling in their Objective superiority, and likely providing a slightly more legitimate front group for the survivalists as the people who will do enough damage in trying to realize the Randian vision that they'll start the cascade that results in the governmental collapse and the survivalists sweeping into power so they can remake the country in their idealized anarchic vision. I notices a lot of trip-wires and pits along the path, and I was certain at least once in my approach that I saw a familiar red dot on something near me, as if to point out the obvious - I was being watched. After politely asking permission to come in, I chatted for a while and listened to the theories in play at the moment, but I quickly realized that this was not the place to find my "Liberals are domestic terrorists" viewpoint. These people thought government was oppressive, regardless of who was in charge, and would give the same hearty Frak You to any government agent that came near them and looked like they wanted to enforce a law.
But in listening to all of those viewpoints playing out in my head, I realized that I did know who would think of liberals as domestic terrorists after all. I just didn't have the perspective I needed. After making polite goodbyes and putting as much distance between myself and them as I could without seeming like I was trying to run in a hurry, I headed straight toward the place that I had initially overlooked - The City of the Big Tent, the place where Republicans venerate the Great Saint Reagan at the Temple of Conservatism. I had a sneaking suspicion about the place that I hadn't noticed before. Having stocked myself with a sweater with a loose thread, I tied one end to a rock outside the city, and while signing a refrain snippet from a Weezer song, I walked the main drag of the city, with their giant billboards, flashing inert gas signs, and gilded, opulent (and occasionally tacky) building fronts. I got glared at for singing off-key, so I just kept walking, stopping occasionally to tie a new knot from the sweater to a yarn ball of the same color, and then one yarn ball to another, looking for the secret that I thought I had grasped. After quite a while, though, I found what I had sought - the thread I had started with. The City of the Big Tent was a Moebius strip - one surface, folded back in on itself, that you could traverse endlessly without having to pick up your thread.
The importance of all this? Well, you don't notice a chameleon unless you know what to look for. What I had seen on the back of that truck was the smokescreen of a bog-standard Corporatist Republican. To the Tea Party folks, he appeared to be someone concerned about the debt and the inclinations of the country to be moving away from founding principles they cherish. He could wink knowingly about how White People Had It Tough in the era of the Black Man In Charge, and how much better it was when minorities and women knew their place. He looked like one of them. To the fundamentalist religion folk, he seemed concerned about the moral and spiritual health of America, ready to crusade against a thousand wrongs done against God and the unborn, a foot soldier in the War against Christians, clad in the Armor of God and ready to give preferential treatment to his fellow believers and return the country to its Christian glory. He looked like one of them. To the survivalists, well, they wouldn't trust him farther than they could shoot him, but to the Galt guys, he looked like someone ready to decry government in whatever form it might appear and advocate for its privatization and dismantling wherever it would make sense. He'd be a useful idiot for them, because only True Believers would get through unscathed, but he could certainly serve his purpose by getting things going. He looked enough like one of them that they'd let him tag along.
Really, though, the people who would think of liberals as "domestic terrorists" are people with a stake in the things that liberalism tends to dismantle, like absolute corporate control over the hours, wages, and conditions of their workers, or the idea that the market should be the only force for quality control and safety, or the idea that profit should be the sole concern of any corporation and any other considerations are distantly secondary at best. The idea that government and law should be decided by the rich, written by the rich, and enforceable by the rich against the poor, without leniency, without mercy, and definitely without anyone stopping to ask whether or not the laws are just or the rich should be given all of these breaks and advantages so as to make themselves richer at the expense of the poor. They are the people who are at the top of the pile, who actually control the capital, try to control the politicians, exert their influence on the media, and wish for nothing to ever be known about how they conduct their business. From that perspective, anyone claiming that the poor should be helped, the rich taxed progressively, the minority protected from the majority, and that corporations need to have someone more powerful than them to keep them in check and prevent them from simply chewing everything up and spitting it back out when it's no longer profitable is a direct threat to their way of life. The truly liberal inspire fear and terror in the rich and the corporate, because actual left-liberals will cheerily pick apart the structure they've carefully built in the name of things like fairness and justice and demand that they turn their profit-making, self-enriching enterprise to a profit-making, everyone-enriching enterprise. They'd probably even offer them fair market value for their stuff, while requiring them to pay a wage that would let their workers potentially afford their stuff. It would undermine the system and stop them from being able to use their excess wealth to drive war and conflict with other places so as to keep the people faced outward and scared of The Other, instead of turning inward and seeing how the show is actually run. They are, in two words, "domestic terrorists", inspiring fear in the hearts of the people who believe that they are the only people that (should) matter.
What I saw on the back of that truck was a Corporatist Republican hiding behind the rhetoric of conservatives. He succeeded in making me laugh at the dopiness of the messenger he was using as his front, but he hoped that I wouldn't notice the wire that pulled the messenger's strings as effectively as any puppeteer. I wonder who that Corporatist Republican is that came up with the message now being disseminated by the Tea Partiers and the religious fundamentalists, he who courts the Galts while giving them the finger when their backs are turned. If only I knew who the donors were, but they rigged it so they can pull the strings anonymously.
This ended up in a lot darker place than I had imagined. I was going to swing for incredulity and a good laugh at the person who could be so deluded as to believe this, and maybe riff a bit on how far beyond the pale we've gone that people are leveling these charges in a serious manner, because they actually believe it, but then one thing led to another, and here I am, wondering whether the "takeover" of the Republicans by the Tea Party isn't an attempt at obfuscating the clear corporate-over-people attitude of the Republican Party of these last few decades, with the brass good-naturedly going along with the removal of the "moderates" by the Tea Partiers to take the heat off, only to plan on putting the hammer down if and when they get enough power to go back to what they were doing with vengeance. That's...depressing. Can we has real liberal candidates in office nao, not corporatists and their centrist allies?
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-09 04:26 pm (UTC)He's a Reaganite. Lies are its language, hatred its reason for being.
Destroy them all.
Now, don't misunderstand my intentions. I don't believe a word of the junk I post in this study's capacity, and I do not want to start some sort of massacre on the behalf of one side or another. I just want to see the reaction...and lately, to my dismay, I've received upvotes instead of downvotes. Plenty of them. The above example has 8 points and counting. Used to be that these kinds of posts got downvoted harshly.
When even the nonviolent portion of the population starts buying this sort of rabid hatred, your country is in trouble.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-09 06:50 pm (UTC)Th reaction you're seeing from Reddit, though, might be an increased perception that fighting dirty and fighting to annihilate is going to be the only way to get the people on the other side to stop what they're doing and think for a minute instead of being led around by their nose rings.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-15 07:20 pm (UTC)