by Ugh
I have here in my hand* a list of military units that are known to the Secretary of Defense as being involved in the upcoming annexation of Texas and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the invasion inside the Defense Department.
Pay no attention to the Defense Department officials standing in front of the curtain! Amerika!
I mean, a "military takeover of Texas"? In what world does this have any purchase at all, much less have a couple senators, the Governor of Texas, and muthafncking Chuck Norris join in? Don't answer that!
But how about this: can anyone point to a left-wing equivalent of something similar? There must be something. Or treat this as an open thread and have a margarita.
*He even looks like McCarthy, no?
A fair number of people on the far left think 9/11 was an inside job. I don’t know what fraction. The planes didn’t do it, the towers were brought down by explosives, etc…
Those, of course, are not people holding public office. If anything, I think lefties in public office are probably too reluctant to criticize the government for its actual wrongdoing. But anyway, no, my commenters on websites aren’t the equivalent of a Texas governor.
Jesse Ventura was a Truther, wasn’t he? But not a lefty, afaik.
Jesse wasn’t really lefty, wasn’t really righty, sort of off in his own dimension.
See? It always comes back to the Quaternions.
IMO, the USA should absolutely NOT annex Texas, and any paperwork to that effect should be voided.
Doesn’t the 9/11-truther thing have adherents in the anti-government far right, also? If so, is that a matter of right and left losing their meanings when taken to their extremes?
Is there much of a right/left complexion to lunar-landing hoaxers?
It seems anti-vaxers come from both sides, AFAICT.
Obviously it is a pre-emptive strike.
No doubt the DoD has heard folks proclaiming: “Hang onto your Confederate money, boys! The South will rise again!”
“Hang onto your Confederate money, boys! The South will rise again!”
Even more amusing from a paper vs. gold money point of view.
people sure are working hard for the low-IQ conspiracy-theorist vote. is it really that big of a constituency?
Lyndon LaRouch claims to be a “New Deal Democrat”.
A fair number of people on the far left think 9/11 was an inside job.
That particular conspiracy theory is not specific to the left.
Conservatives often say that liberals support redistributive programs because it buys them votes.
I often think that conservatives pander to Hofstadter’s paranoid stylists for the same reason.
I have no idea how the country is supposed to function when people are this afraid of their own government.
I have no idea how the country is supposed to function when people are this afraid of their own government.
What I’d like to know is, is there there some other country whose government they would trust (more)? If so, shouldn’t they just go there? If not, maybe they should be developing a colony in space. (To become a member of that colony, you must first believe the colony is a hoax.)
Dennis Kucinich famously introduced a bill involving chemtrails.
Kookiness (even only the apparent kind) isn’t monopolized by the right.
But the party in power is smug; the party out of power is insane. Expect it.
If so, shouldn’t they just go there?
Love it or leave it baby! 😉
“In power” vs. “out of power” may be purely subjective on the part of the parties in question, I admit.
From the left, there was California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who was out in front pushing Jim Webb’s Dark Alliance scandal/conspiracy re: CIA involvement in the crack cocaine epidemic.
That falls well short of this, yeah.
Kucinich believes in several kooky ideas, some of which appear in the Consitution. He was pretty much the only Congressman or Senator who wanted a vote on the US’s involvement in Libya.
Rick Perry!
“I think it’s OK to question your government — I do it on a pretty regular basis,” Perry said. “The military’s something else.”
If the military’s something else, maybe they’ve already taken over!
Remind me of what was kooky about Gary Webb?
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/09/26/the-ciamsm-contra-cocaine-cover-up/
The Nation had a piece that dealt in part with Maxine Waters and Gary Webb–
http://m.thenation.com/blog/190193-racism-drove-backlash-against-gary-webb
I’ve found that Ted Cruz makes more sense if you think of him saying “you rubes!” at the end of most of his sentences.
Same with Rand Paul except it’s “Zoinks!”
At least Obama isn’t trying to nuke Texas, like he did Charleston.
I’ve found that Ted Cruz makes more sense if you think of him saying “you rubes!” at the end of most of his sentences.
Cruz makes the most sense to me when I imagine him saying everything he says while gazing raptly into a mirror.
Lot of that going around, though.
russell – why not combine the two!
From one of ugh’s links:
Lindsay Graham:
“Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Bloomberg on Saturday that he was unaware of any conspiracy theories or fear surrounding Jade Helm 15.”
Also, Lindsay Graham:
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/11/8193751/lindsey-graham-military-coup
Seems like the murderous, fascist Republican vermin in Congress and the Texas State House would find right now a good time to demand deep budget CUTS in the military budget, specifically a line-item veto of funds for Operation Neuter Texas Conservatives, or whatever it’s called.
But no, as you can see from Perry’s and others comments, they express solidarity with our boys in uniform even as our boys in uniform mass in their midst to arrest and execute every conservative Texan (there are two, maybe three, who will be spared) they can apprehend and shackle inside the Nation’s railroad cattle car fleet, which has been quietly moved into position as well in recent months, one hopes.
Ya know, Ma, the elevation of credence in paranoid cockamamie horsesh*t, like this latest, in this country to influential members of our political elite, almost exclusively on the conservative side, as much as we feel the need to reference outliers like Kucinich and Waters, I guess, to help us believe EVERYONE is f*cking nuts, and to the mainstream media is …. corrosive to what’s left of civility, a nice way of saying why don’t the Governors of Texas and their panderees go f*ck themselves once and for all.
“I have no idea how the country is supposed to function when people are this afraid of their own government.”
Dear Mom:
Bingo! The entire point of the conservative bowel movement is to make the country ungovernable.
Scuttlebutt has it that once we’ve cleaned out this multi-million person rat’s nest of conservatives in Texas, we’re deploying north, east, and west to liquidate conservative elements in the rest of the country.
Frankly Mom, I haven’t seen anything quite like the reception we’re receiving down here south of the real border of the United States.
On the one hand, prominent conservatives claim publicly that they respect we, the military, as the bulwark of the nation against its enemies, foreign and domestic, and yet that have little inkling that they are the sworn enemies of everything good this country stands for, as we know from their treatment of immigrants and the 25% of their populace who are virtually shut out of the healthcare market by decree of those inside the Texas State House and the Governor’s Mansion, which by the way, I guess I can now divulge, we will be soon razing like so many Taliban strongholds.
I mean THIS is a former Governor of the place who out of one side of his mouth can’t stop drawling his devotion to the military, but out of the other refuses to comply with military orders to disarm and desist from his attempted ruination of the country:
http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/rick-perry-sean-hannity-patrol-border/
Perry and Hannity have no clue of what the military faces in warfare, but they are about to find out.
The two of them had to be outfitted with butt plugs and frequent changes of trousers while on that gunboat, which by the way was on the border between Oklahoma and Texas, not on the Mexican border.
Every time the border Patrol gunned that boat, the two of them shat their pants, thinking it was Obama clearing his throat and getting ready to jump out from behind a cactus and yell “Boo!”
They don’t understand the position they are in this here Operation Sphincter Fisting.
They are in harm’s way.
And my middle name is “Harm”.
In 1988, the Anti-American terrorist and guerilla leader Newt Gingrich formally declared War on more than half this country’s people, its government, and its way of life.
“This war has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars”, he puked.
This Operation is just a skirmish in that Civil War.
Gingrich doesn’t know what true savagery is, but he is about to find out.
He and his counterparts had better hide like Saddam Hussein in his hidey hole.
Here we come, motherf*ckers.
No offense, Mom, I don’t mean you, but you need to know the stakes in this Civil War declared on US by THEM.
Say Hi to Pop and tell Sis that, yeah, that WAS a human ear in the package I sent.
Let’s just say Sean Hannity is going to need some plastic surgery to hold his shades and backwards ball cap on next time he wants to mess with the U.S. military.
Like the man said: Savagery
But anyway, no, my commenters on websites aren’t the equivalent of a Texas governor.
This is the link to the governor’s letter, fwiw:
http://gov.texas.gov/files/press-office/20150428125759.pdf
Honestly, the entire thing seems a little exaggerated to me. Yeah, I get there are some conspiracy nuts out there (*cough* infowars *cough*) calling the governor’s office, but his response seemed fine.
Maybe major metropolitan police departments could send out letters similar to the Texas Governor’s to every resident in their cities, say, daily.
Let me get this right, the Governor of Texas is alarmed enough by his madhatter constituents’ “concerns” about the threat to their precious bodily fluids by the largest, most powerfully armed military in the history of the world doing maneuvers in their midst, but he falls all over himself butt-licking the same military his constituents are wetting their pants over because the boys in uniform either might be, or might “not” be imposing martial law in the State of Texas.
I expect him to dispatch similar letters welcoming and praising the deep humanity, heroism, and patriotism of EPA and HHS employees armed with little more than clipboards who do maneuvers in his state to try to save his fellow Texans’ lives by providing them access to healthcare and maybe keeping the joint a little cleaner than it might otherwise be.
He’s a mealy-mouthed coward, afraid of his own shadow, who can’t stand up to ignorant sh*theads because sh*thead ignoramuses make up the base of his political support.
He’s a murderer to boot.
As a patriotic American, I demand we send our boys and girls in their to take him out, feet first.
in “there”!
Dismissed, Mandrake!
his response seemed fine.
If this whole thing is a “little exaggerated”, no response is necessary.
I have no vested interest in the career of Dennis Kucinich, past or present (or future?), but it appears his “chemtrail” connection has been significantly over-rated
I don’t think there is any doubt that all corners of the political spectrum have their resident kooks.
But, is there any disagreement? The righties do it best.
The only time leftwingers were even competitive with RW kookery was in the 60’s when (some of) the Gummit was actaully out to get (some of) them.
But the kooky LWers lose interest: smoking some pot, play with the dog, have some casual sex, and *what was it, again?*. NOTHING like the work-ethic of your RW kook.
Now here’s my kind of take on the recent civil unrest in Baltimore.
You may continue on with your regularly scheduled programming.
“I have no idea how the country is supposed to function when people are this afraid of their own government.”
Well, keeping in mind that the country DNE the government, maybe the government could try backing off a bit? Resign itself to doing less? Make fewer things crimes? Not pass laws by one vote margins that set to massively change entire sectors of the economy?
Perhaps admit that the 4th amendment applies to the NSA? Abandon the practice of parallel construction?
People don’t trust the government, because it gives us too many reasons not to trust it.
DNE?
A bit of disrespect is useful.
Paranoia at the Texas takeover level, stoked by lunatics – what was that one-vote deal? – is not.
The one vote thing was the ACA.
My God, why WOULD people trust the government? With the NSA siphoning up every bit of electronic data it can, 4th amendment be damned? The IRS and other government agencies turning themselves into partisan weapons? Laws accumulating faster than a human could read them? The people running the government being so crudely lawless?
Trust is earned, not the government’s by right.
If this whole thing is a “little exaggerated”, no response is necessary.
Actually, I think it’s good form for elected officials to be responsive to their constituents. People contacted the governor, he responded with a ‘no need to be concerned, but I’m making sure everybody knows what’s going on’.
One vote?
Actually, blowing off the people concerned about this, no matter how irrational they might have been to be so concerned, would be the most effective way to help spread the concern. It would be perceived as a cover-up.
The most effective way to deal with paranoid concerns is to take them seriously, and patiently, sympathetically, refute them with relevant evidence, on their own terms, carefully NOT dismissing them as paranoid. And I say this as somebody who has dealt with an actual, diagnosed paranoid, over a long period of time.
One vote?
And on cue the government is proving Brett correct:
What Shayne’s online rumination helped unveil was a previously secret, multi-day campaign of overhead surveillance by city and federal authorities during a period of historic political protest and unrest.
One vote. Must have really burned Politifact to have to rate this one mostly true.
Really not a good idea, if you want both parties to trust government, to go around massively altering whole segments of the economy by party line votes.
“And I say this as somebody who has dealt with an actual, diagnosed paranoid, over a long period of time.”
There you go talking about me on the internet again.
Humoring paranoids is one thing.
Electing them, or their enablers, to high office, as has become the custom way too often in recent years in Texas and elsewhere, is yet another.
Arming them to boot is paranoia-inducing for the rest of us.
But these are my people, says Louis Gohmert.
How do you know?
Because the pelicans sitting on their heads said so, replies Gohmert.
To paraphrase Joseph Heller, Woody Allen, and Kurt Cocaine, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t finally tell you to shut your mouth.
“One Vote”
It takes two parties to tow the party line.
In more amenable, less mean-assed times when moderates were accepted into the Republican Party instead of tossed aside by the paranoid base, there might have been a few courageous souls would who would break party ranks for the good of the American people.
It’ll be a party line vote when Obamacare is repealed as well. It will be a party line one vote majority if the Court throws the subsidies out.
Murder by one vote.
There will be no military that can protect what will be coming to the majority in that case.
That a 60-39 super-majority is being characterized as passing by “one vote” is ridiculous. What happened by one vote was the motion to end debate on the bill, based on the Senate rules.
Last 9 comments, 4 are Brett’s. DNFTT please.
Trust is earned, not the government’s by right.
And since the government is us, I guess that means that we cannot trust ourselves.
(Sorry, LJ, I just couldn’t resist.)
de-annex TX. give it back to Mexico
I’m actually pretty unclear on why Texas joined the US in the first place. They’ve never seemed to be particularly happy about it.
What does DNE mean? Does Not Exist? Do Not Eat? Dance Now, Edward?
I appreciate that the governor of Texas wants to address the concerns of his constituents, but perhaps a more useful response might have been a simple “The federal government is not planning to impose martial law on the entire Southwest”.
Although Brett’s right, that probably would have been interpreted, more or less immediately, as proof of his collusion in the whole thing.
When I talk about distrust of government getting in the way of government being effective, I’m not talking about reasonable skepticism, or concern about demonstrated abuses.
I’m talking about people who think a Walmart closing for remodeling is clear evidence of the imposition of military rule.
I’m talking about bat-shit nutty buddy delusional paranoia.
How was your experience dealing with a clinical paranoid, Brett? Was it difficult to get that person to basically function effectively at a simple workaday level?
That’s what I’m talking about.
Too many people are straight up nucking futs. The rest of us, who are just trying to get the bills paid and the roads paved and the lights kept on in the libraries, can’t get anything done.
If you think the federal government is conducting secret military exercises to impose martial law on the entire southwest, you don’t need to have your concerns addressed by the governor of your state. You need to adjust your meds.
Corporations, on the other hand, are not us. So we can distrust corporations with a clear conscience. Some of us can, anyway. Others claim that we (i.e. The Government) cannot be trusted to limit the power of corporations, even though they are creatures of The Government (i.e. us) in the first place. Nobody trusts anybody it seems.
–TP
Cleek, what injury did Mexico ever do to you???
what about Business Plot ? it seems good left equivalent of conspiracy theory.
Women in Washington D.C. have reason to be paranoid about their jobs if they use birth control:
http://blogs.rollcall.com/hill-blotter/paul-weighs-in-on-cruz-effort-to-block-d-c-law/
Yet another Texan and the son of a Texan mucking about where pig filth ought not to.
I encourage D.C. women to become appropriately and heavily armed to protect themselves from this further example of the Federal Government attempting to declare martial law and conduct maneuvers in their vaginas.
I suppose Cruz and Paul will next want to quarter federal troops in D.C. vaginas.
Then we’ll have to order in the National Guard to keep an eye on the troops.
It could get very crowded and once the gunfire starts, as surely it will among dumbass Americans, think of the fetuses in the crossfire in such a small space.
One wonders if Cruz and Paul will fire their call girls, I mean, their wives, if the latter use birth control while shacking up in the District of Columbia.
Certainly condoms must be on the list of reasons for dismissal, aren’t they?
Speaking of the Wal Mart closings, the employees at those six stores who engaged in pro-union activity are the ones who should be justifiably paranoid.
What plumbing issues?
http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigates/i-team-wal-mart-stores-that-were-suddenly-closed-for-plumbing-issues-havent-sought-permits
More conservative filth at work ruining people’s lives.
Actually, I think it’s good form for elected officials to be responsive to their constituents.
Oh, really? What has been the governor’s response to poor women in rural areas desiring a legal abortion? It has been to ignore them.
Instead he wastes tax money pandering to far right politically motivated paranoia.
Clearly, the voices of some concerned citizens carry more weight than others, but let us laud him for showing “concern”.
While this might make some kind of sense in your world, it certainly does not in mine.
http://gawker.com/governor-vows-to-defend-texas-against-insane-imaginary-1702015620
Clearly, the voices of some concerned citizens carry more weight than others
How could it be otherwise. Since (per the Supreme Court) money is speech, those with more money speak louder . . . and therefore more effectively. The voices of the rural poor are simply too soft in comparison for politicians like Perry and Cruz to notice.
“Does Not Equal”
What does DNE mean? Does Not Exist? Do Not Eat? Dance Now, Edward?
Pretty sure it’s meant as “≠” (Does Not Equal).
I’m actually pretty unclear on why Texas joined the US in the first place.
Mexico outlawed slavery.
That’s an oversimplification, but the basic facts are there: Texas broke away from Mexico to maintain slavery. Texas joined the US to make it easier for slavery to grow.
The past isn’t dead.
“Oh, really? What has been the governor’s response to poor women in rural areas desiring a legal abortion? It has been to ignore them.”
That’s just being responsive to the constituents they’re killing.
“And since the government is us, I guess that means that we cannot trust ourselves.”
And, since the government is us, I guess Freddie Grey committed suicide. So, what’s the fuss?
Government is just the name we give to what some of us do to others of us.
As a European I find it very strange how distrust of authority/government has become monopolized by the right/libertarian wing of the political spectrum. Of course there have always been some statist lefties over here, but generally speaking the right was and is authoritarian and it is a defining feature of the left to question all authority.
the first sentence refers to the US of course, sorry
I don’t give a FF about the vote to end debate. The bill passed by 60-39.
And it would have gotten one or two Republican votes if McConnell had not been determined that no GOP senator vote for it.
In other words, the unanimous Republican opposition wasnot based on a unanimously held view that ACA was bad policy. It was based on pure partisanship – the kind that you are criticizing Democrats for. The partisan split was an artifact of Republican opposition, not an expression of honest differences.
Indeed, had the GOP sentors who had previouyslt supported the bll or something similar voted for it the margin would have been even greater than 19, which, you may recall from your math courses, is greater than 1.
Don’t piss on our shoes and tell us it’s raining.
that’s not rain, that’s government mind-control serum, distributed by black helicopters of the US Govt anti-Freedom Corps. duh.
“The most effective way to deal with paranoid concerns is to take them seriously, and patiently, sympathetically, refute them with relevant evidence, on their own terms,”
As opposed to telling them their fears are justified, I suppose, which is what Cruz and others are doing.
So how about a word on that?
it’s almost as if people like Cruz and Paul find pandering to the wingnut rubes to be a better use of their energy than actually trying to appeal to the rest of the country. and that makes me think they’re really just auditioning for Fox News or Newsmax jobs.
“And it would have gotten one or two Republican votes if McConnell had not been determined that no GOP senator vote for it.”
And it would have lost several Democratic votes if Reid hadn’t determined that no Democratic Senator could vote against it. Such is the nature of party line votes.
Frankly, I think Obama’s MO would have ordered the military to suddenly and mysteriously close Costcos, instead of Walmarts, to temporarily house Texas conservatives for some rough, shackled interrogation as they await their train rides to oblivion.
At least the displaced former Costco workers re-employed for the ghastly, but patriotic work would have been paid a living wage and provided health care coverage to rout out right-wing terrorism along our Southern border, rather than summarily dismissed on short notice for dubious reasons.
Maybe, as a byproduct, we’d find out who really shot John F. Kennedy.
By the way, along with abortion services, some women and their fetuses in states that are hostile to legal abortion and do everything in their power to make those services inaccessible, also make fetal care to mothers and babies inaccessible as a result, along with the strenuous efforts to halt the expansion of Medicaid and Obamacare, without replacing those schemes with conservative alternatives to insure that all people can afford medical care, other than a nickel and a f*ck-off.
I’m surprised at the designation of fetuses as “constituents” with, I presume, voting rights now, considering that they don’t speak or read English, presumably work in the underground economy and take the jobs that able-bodied unemployed Americans of working age would and should have, and to boot have no ID for voting purposes.
But I guess this explains why Ted Cruz, the entire Paul family, and Louie Gohmert always seem to be speaking to constituents with only partially-formed brains who can’t raise their hands to throw in a discouraging word.
I suppose they are expressly suitable for hand-harvesting root crops like onions for below market wages, especially before they learn to walk (no stooping, everything is at eye-level), and they are not apt to provoke union-commie talk among their fellow laborers, because they can’t talk yet.
Feeding breaks and nap times might be a burden on their employers, so there is that for conservative, market-oriented legislators to deal with, or not, probably not.
The fetuses will take the jobs and damned well like it.
Oh, you’re teething? Let me play a little violin for you as you fill onion bag number nine, sorry, we’ve raised it to ten, for your piece-work wage.
Are they not immigrants and anchor babies by any other name, probably Gertrude or Randall?
At least in Chicago, you have to have lived a full life and paid taxes for years before dying and then being placed on the voting rolls to vote in perpetuity.
And it would have lost several Democratic votes if Reid hadn’t determined that no Democratic Senator could vote against it. Such is the nature of party line votes.
Yes. Are those goalposts heavy?
Why are you complaining about “one vote?” Balance the Republicans who cast partisan votes against with the Democrats who cast partisan votes for and you end up with a substantial majority for the bill.
In other words all the “rammed through by one vote” is utterly dishonest BS. I’m surprised a hard-nosed “nothing but the facts” guy you pretend to be falls for it. Yet you consistently do.
novakant: the US RW goes completely authoritarian when they are in power, but goes anti-government when out of power.
IOW, “authoritarian, when THEY are the authority”.
Actually, blowing off the people concerned about this, no matter how irrational they might have been to be so concerned, would be the most effective way to help spread the concern. It would be perceived as a cover-up.
The thing is, this is probably exactly right. Which is sort of my point.
Want to run a military exercise? First you have to talk all of the people who assume it’s a covert op to impose martial law down off of the ledge.
Lather rinse and repeat for nearly every aspect of normal government operations.
The most effective way to deal with paranoid concerns is to take them seriously, and patiently, sympathetically, refute them with relevant evidence, on their own terms, carefully NOT dismissing them as paranoid.
Again, you make my point.
To get anything done, whatsoever, we first have to calm the fears of the fairly significant portion of the population whose understanding of things is founded in fear-mongering lies.
What you are recommending here is therapy at a mass scale, not the operation of a polity.
If we have to handle double-digit percentages of the population as if they were clinical psychiatric patients, we’re screwed.
The correct, sane, and normal response of a governor of a state to widespread fears that a military exercise is a secret putsch to impose martial law is “No, actually it’s just a military exercise”.
When a response like “I understand your concerns, I will direct the National Guard to observe the exercise” is required to keep everybody from flying off the freaking handle, you are in fact operating a clinic, not a state.
Next week, county sheriffs will be required to follow postal carriers around to make sure they aren’t compiling classified dossiers on our magazine subscriptions.
Such is the nature of party line votes.
If I may offer an editorial comment:
If there is one thing in the entire planet I am not interested in, it is hearing anyone who identifies, however remotely, as a conservative, of whatever stripe, b*tching about party line votes.
Seriously, it’s either a joke, or trolling.
I appreciate that the governor of Texas wants to address the concerns of his constituents, but perhaps a more useful response might have been a simple “The federal government is not planning to impose martial law on the entire Southwest”.
He issued a one page letter to the Texas state guard to monitor the exercise and ensure local residents and governments are informed, and said there is no risk:
“U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has assured Texas that each location selected for training exercises will pose no risk to residents or property and that they will coordinate with local residents via verbal and written coordination.”
Perhaps its not as minimal a response as you would like, but its a fairly minimal response. And I think the response to it has been exaggerated. For example, the Gawker headline ‘Governor Vows to Defend Texas Against Insane Imaginary Obama Invasion’, that bobbyp linked.
The Gawker link above also includes lines such as: Rand Paul recently warned that the operation is “the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany.” …which doesn’t seem to be true, or supported by the link Gawker provided.
which doesn’t seem to be true, or supported by the link Gawker provided.
that “Nazi Germany” quote was from Bob Wells. bobbyp’s Gawker link misattributed it to Paul. they got it right in the other Gawker article that it links to.
looks like a case of sloppy reading on writer Sam Biddle’s part, because the very next line after the “Nazi Germany” block quote is:
he apparently assumed the preceding quote was also Paul’s.
When a response like “I understand your concerns, I will direct the National Guard to observe the exercise” is required to keep everybody from flying off the freaking handle, you are in fact operating a clinic, not a state.
Alternatively:
“There was, frankly, an overreaction to the simple fact that someone has to be in charge with gathering and disseminating information,” said Abbott, speaking to reporters for the first time since sending the letter. “We stepped in to play that role, which is a role to be applauded.”
When asked whether addressing the issue legitimized fringe theories, Abbott said no. He said he was responding to citizen questions, which he said the government has an obligation to answer.
Some at the Bastrop County meeting questioned a U.S. Army commander about whether the government was planning to confiscate guns or implement martial law. Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape, who has thanked Abbott for his letter, said “conspiracy theorists” and “fearmongers” had been in a frenzy.
“I’ve seen nothing that would cause anybody to worry about what’s going on,” Abbott said.
http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/Texas-Governor-Criticism-to-Army-Training-Order-Overblown-302455951.html
as a resident of Pineland, let me reassure the dim-witted Infowars-addled rubes of Texas that they have nothing to fear from special forces training exercises.
“To get anything done, whatsoever, we first have to calm the fears of the fairly significant portion of the population whose understanding of things is founded in fear-mongering lies.”
A good deal of our law and policy is based on fear mongering lies. The campus rape “crisis”, for instance. The fight against concealed carry reform. You’re pissed off because somebody is taking the trouble to calm unjustified fears?
troll harder
The campus rape “crisis”, for instance. The fight against concealed carry reform. You’re pissed off because somebody is taking the trouble to calm unjustified fears?
Yes, let’s conflate things reasonable people can disagree on with outlandish nuttery.
“Hmmm, I’m not sure GMO-based food sources are safe for my family” (not something I would say, personally, mind you) and “My dog told me my next-door neighbors are space aliens plotting to destroy the earth and that I must kill them to save the planet” are equally ridiculous, I guess.
I think that to say that reasonable people can disagree on the campus rape crisis renders the term “reasonable” void of meaning. Rape is actually LESS common on college campuses than in surrounding communities. And yet absurd lies about the prevalance of rape on campus are being used to push the abolition of due process.
“There is a crisis with the way that police relate to the various communities they serve”
That’s a concept on the Left that hits the Righties the same way the Texas Invasion does for those who don’t think that way.
I mean, it won’t hold up to logic, but nothing from the Left is as illogical as the US Government invading Texas. This is a close as I can come.
Try again, Brett. Women aged 18-24, who are enrolled in a a post-secondary program (full- or part-time college or university, trade school or vocational school), are less likely to be sexually assualted than women aged 18-24 who are not enrolled in a post-secondary program.
That’s not the same thing, and it doesn’t mean there isn’t a specific and addressable problem with rape on campuses. I might not agree with every action universities have taken against accused perpetrators of sexual assault, either, but that’s not the same thing as saying the concern over campus sexual assault is unfounded.
All of which demonstrates that you and I can reasonably disagree about the magnitude of this particular problem.
Never fear, hairshirtperidonist, your space alien neighbors perceive you and your family as an organic, non-GMO-based food source, suitable for snacking.
But just in case, the Governor of your state is sending out reassuring notes to the canine population to nip their paranoia in the bud.
Dogs, like paranoid constituents ripe for the humoring, tend to scrape their butts along the thick-pile carpet when they need attention and deworming.
By the way, there are 10 to 12 million constituents and their fetuses out there in the country who are getting a might bit paranoid about losing their health insurance coverage should all 35 right-wing Republican presidential candidates become President all at once.
That’s a lot of new patrons down at the old shooting range.
A marketing opportunity there for the savvy entrepreneur.
A good deal of our law and policy is based on fear mongering lies. The
campus rapevoter fraud “crisis”, for instance.You’re pissed off because somebody is taking the trouble to calm unjustified fears?
Well, no. Amused? Yes. Next question.
He issued a one page letter to the Texas state guard to monitor the exercise and ensure local residents and governments are informed, and said there is no risk
I appreciate what you’re saying here, and I appreciate your desire to not make this a bigger thing than it needs to be.
All of that said, the second paragraph of the one-pager to the TX Guard says:
I think it’s fine for the governor of TX to co-ordinate with USSOCCOM, via the guard or otherwise, to make sure that everyone knows what they need to know and to provide whatever guidance is needed to the military to make sure everything goes safely.
I think referring to possible infringements of constitutional and civil liberties is kind of wacky.
Maybe it’s just optics, as they say, but that’s how it looks to me.
Perhaps there is some history of the US military violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of US citizens in the course of carrying out training exercises that I’m not aware of, in which case I’ll be happy to say that I stand corrected.
But in general, I’d assume that assurances of that type would hardly need to be made by someone like a state governor.
YMMV
I suppose in the sense that any rate of rape higher than zero qualifies as a problem, sure, there’s a “problem”. Just less of a problem than everywhere else.
But that’s not the same as saying that there’s a crisis, or make the absurd lies about the rate of rape on campus reasonable. Look, at some point you have to be able to notice hysteria on your own side, or you’ve no standing to complain about it in opponents.
bobbyp,
The very fact that there is no evidence of a vote fraud crisis just proves what a brilliantly executed conspiracy it all is.
You just don’t understand.
Just less of a problem than everywhere else.
Did you read the article you linked, Brett? (And, is it at all possible that people might expect college campuses to be safer than “everywhere else”?)
“… at some point you have to be able to notice hysteria on your own side, or you’ve no standing to complain about it in opponents.”
Pot. Kettle.
I think referring to possible infringements of constitutional and civil liberties is kind of wacky.
right. it’s pandering. saying he’ll get the state guard to “monitor” the actions of the US special forces just gives credence to the delusions of fools. because there’s nothing to monitor.
Here is the difference between concerns about campus rape, however overblown, and concerns about secret military takeovers of entire geographic regions of the country:
Rapes on campuses actually occur.
That is the difference. In case it wasn’t clear, to anyone.
I’m not sure, but I suspect that dragging in unrelated topics, whether intended to derail conversation or not, qualifies, as a practical matter, as trolling.
when all else fails, change the subject
“The fight against concealed carry reform.”
I presume you mean the fight against the fight for further concealed reform in the direction of open-carrying of weapons in public places.
As a card-carrying member of the Piscottaway Plenipotentiary Paranoids for Hysterical Paizogony, here’s what I do when I see a bunch of dorks waving weapons around at Chili’s while I’m dining on my fajitas.
I push my chair back, carefully refold my napkin, take that swig of beer, pick up a chair, and then I kick their f*cking asses before then can shoot me, because I don’t pause to inquire about people’s intentions when they brandish weapons in inappropriate venues, not knowing who the f*ck they are.
I’m a little jumpy that way. I’m not too calm either about some whack conceal carrying one pew over missing his left testicle and shooting me during the effing Doxology because he left the safety off and reached for the hymnbook.
What do you do?
Well now, if we require “standing” to wax hysterical about our opponents’ hysteria, let’s pull the plug on this internet thingy all together.
The entire country could use a hysteriarectomy.
I think referring to possible infringements of constitutional and civil liberties is kind of wacky.
Maybe it’s just optics, as they say, but that’s how it looks to me.
Yeah, I don’t know that I would disagree with ‘wacky’, I just think the coverage has been exaggerated.
I imagine that phrasing was a way for the governor to indirectly acknowledge and dismiss the more ridiculous concerns with dignifying them with a direct response. Maybe that’s charitable of me.
Keep in mind that, mixed in with the crazy, there were some (imo) reasonable concerns about property damage, loud noises, accidents, who coordinates with who, what is the point of contact for civilian or local emergency services questions, etc, that were raised at the now infamous Bastrop town hall meeting.
There was also a lot of crazy, don’t get me wrong.
I think referring to possible infringements of constitutional and civil liberties is kind of wacky.
Well, you might feel differently if you live within 100 miles of the Mexican border.
You just don’t understand.
My pretending to not understand is all part and parcel of the real conspiracy. I may be in deep doo-doo for just bringing it up.
Well, Britain kept the witch laws on the books long after (real) witch trials ended in order to assure the population that the government was still prepared and ready to react in case. We know that because that reason was given in disputes about striking the statute and prevailed. The state knew that its citizens still believed in witches and would see it as dereliction of duty, if the state struck the law. On the other hand the absence of rampant witchcraft could be sold as merit of constant state vigilance.
The same logic can be applied to the Texas governor. He wants to assure the paranoid that he is vigilant, so he can later (if the opportunity arises) claim that it was him (and only him) who protected them from them wicked Northerners.
Personally, I find the British example reasonable (for its time) but the Texan one as opportunistic and cynical.
Wait for anti-bear patrols on the Gulf coast.
Perhaps there is some history of the US military violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of US citizens in the course of carrying out training exercises that I’m not aware of, in which case I’ll be happy to say that I stand corrected.
Russell, what else do you call President Eisenhower sending in the Army to enforce unconstitutional court orders to desegregate various educational institutions? (OK, it wasn’t billed as a “training exercise”. But still….)
Seeing how I live in Texas, and my Facebook feed consists of a surprisingly high number of conservative Texans (relatives, for the most part), let me make something clear:
There is a non-trivial number of people absolutely flipping the f*ck out over this.
People who should darn well KNOW better are, at best, of the mind “Nothing about this sounds good.” and a number of people who are, shall we say, somewhat low-informed voters are absolutely terrified.
In such an environment, what a responsible state official would DO is say — in polite, diplomatic words — “Stop being crazy. It’s a regular military exercise, happens all the time, get a grip.”
Instead, what he does is validate their fears. “We’ll make sure people watch them” which sends the paranoid a message “Because they might do those things. We should be careful”.
Abbot fed the delusion instead of starving it.
*sigh*. I’ve had it up to here with my fellow Texans and their stupidity. The stupid secessionists (seriously, guys, have you actually THOUGHT about how that would work? For starters, you can kiss your low taxes goodbye. Also, the US Army won’t let you keep the tanks) and the moronic paranoids and ESPECIALLY the idiot suburbanites terrified of black thugs and government helicopters clutching their 9mm like an ‘effing teddy bear.
This “OMG OBAMA SO SCARED OF TEXAS INVADING US” crap is just…good lord, I want to smack half my freaking relatives with a clue-by-four. Jesus Christ, it’s like I’m surrounded by children. Inbred children. Inbred children barred from school, raised in a dark closet by insane people, and then let loose on the internet. And I don’t even HAVE relatives in East Texas.
Yeah, when has the US military ever been turned on US citizens?
In a case of ridiculous conservative paranoia?
That was on Hoover’s watch, secret Dhimmicrat, no doubt.
And I’m sure, yes, that’s what’s got Texans all freaked out about this particular military training exercise – the Bonus March.
There are a number of cases where US military force or the threat of US military force has been directed at US citizens.
Notable examples are the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, and the period of violent labor unrest around the turn of the 20th C.
Note that the first example followed a real live civil war, and the second was in response to literal warfare between labor and industry.
What those were *not* was a secret plan to impose martial law on people going about their normal daily business, conducted under the guise of military training.
Dear Mom:
We took a suspicious-looking Texan, code-named Morat20, into protective custody while my unit was on patrol today in Austin.
While at first we thought he was a local hostile, it didn’t take long for us to discern that he was in fact one of us and indeed was under harassment and threat from the real troublemakers down here, who are off the scale paranoid, and in fact refer to family members who don’t share every bit of their right wing fantasies about our President and his intentions and provenance as FINOs (Family In Name Only)
I haven’t seen this sort of behavior, countryman against countryman, family against family, since my deployment in Mosul.
We let him go of his own recognizance to mingle among the population with the hope that maybe some sense can be talked into these people, so we can wind down this urgent and dangerous operation in defense of the country against right-wing revolutionaries, who you’ll recall, one of their early leaders, Newt Gingrich, set in motion in the late 1980’s on their savage and malign course to destroy half the country.
A Civil War he called it.
Anyway, this Morat20 is one of Five Texans I’ve come into contact with, including cousin Jeb, who seem to be decent, reasonable people.
I’m sure there are more good sorts out there, if we only look, while we search and destroy that is.
We’re not here to mess with their parking meters, but we will interdict their leaders with extreme prejudice, unction, and Vaseline.
I also wanted to point out that several other more hostile Texans have approached our unit to rant about our presence here during Jade Helm, and the common theme seems to be that they wouldn’t mind so much us being here if our only task was to root out, arrest, and if need be, kill commie/muslim/Mexican outside agitators who cause trouble and seek justice because of unemployment, poverty, and the lack of affordable medical care, in fact demonstrating in the streets like them protesters some General took on in the early 1930s to preserve the bodily fluids all of us hold precious.
Otherwise, we could get the Hell out a here — their words – or they may have to go loco on us.
They “whoop” like Comanches and then run like hell.
Welp, Mom. that’s about it now from the front. Tell Pop I hope his lumbago is lifting with the weather and remind Sis that after the hostiles are neutralized down here and I get my discharge papers, she and I will get married and settle down with a couple of kids.
just wait till they figure out that the real purpose of the border fence they’ve been told to clamor for isn’t to keep Mexicans out, it’s to keep Texans in.
not that Jeb
“Jade Helm” clearly refers to Aztec royal military gear. While the Texans are wetting themselves about a US invasion, the Californians will sneak in from the west and steal all the water.
It’s just revenge for Enron.
I suppose that since Brett has cited a traditional lefty cause celebre that he now expects us to cite, say, Waco in return.
Ain’t gonna’ happen.
Countme-in: Hey, I love my family. There’s a reason I don’t talk politics on Facebook (I can’t stop them, obviously — both those I agree with and those I don’t) and try to avoid the topic whenever possible. 🙂
But seriously, I’ve been a little shocked at some people’s responses. Seeing the sitting Governor pretend they have a legitimate complaint was pretty shocking too, even for Texas.
Ain’t gonna’ happen.
too late. you already said it.
the summoning is complete.
It is a trial when one’s friends (not, thank God, family) are conspiracy nuts. Mostly, one can avoid mentioning their usual hobby horses. But sometimes they self-start anyway.
“I suppose that since Brett has cited a traditional lefty cause celebre that he now expects us to cite, say, Waco in return.”
I would never be foolish enough to expect that sort of reprocity. No, I was just looking for an example of the military attacking US citizens that you wouldn’t dismiss out of hand, which required that the victims not be somebody you’d dislike.
“But the party in power is smug; the party out of power is insane. Expect it.”
Posted by: Slartibartfast
I’m curious – how long does it take to recover from an 8 year coma?
Either way, examples of past out-of-nowhere impositions of martial law seem to be lacking.
anything is possible when the president is a Muslin antichrist son of the well-known Kenyan, Malcom X, who wants to impose gay Sharia law and imprison all Christians in FEMA camps guarded by an army of aborted Mexican fetuses.
Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish between “occasions when the government uses military force domestically” and “occasions when the government employs subterfuge to subvert civil authority and impose martial law”.
There are a number of occasions when the government has employed military force, against US citizens, in the US. In most but not all cases, that has been in the form of the guard. In all cases that I am aware of, it has been in response to civil war or some form of public violence or disorder.
Some of those examples were appropriate. Some were not. None of them were weird secret power grab attempts to override an existing, functional, legitimate civil authority.
There are, to my knowledge, zero cases where the federal government has either intended or attempted, covertly or otherwise, to subvert civil authority or impose any kind of martial law in the US during peacetime or in the absence of some kind of extraordinary public violence or disorder.
It hasn’t been 8 years yet.
Wake up and go to sleep.
That damned muslin antichrist and his evil woven cotton fabrics! I hate him!
felt or death
“There are, to my knowledge, zero cases where the federal government has either intended or attempted, covertly or otherwise, to subvert civil authority or impose any kind of martial law in the US during peacetime or in the absence of some kind of extraordinary public violence or disorder.”
I think that’s putting it too strongly. The federal government regularly attempts to subvert civil authority at the state and local level. Succeeds, even. It just does so by financial means, rather than military. Tax the local economy to the point where the local/state government would destroy it’s economy if it tried to raise enough taxes to finance it’s own government, and then buy obedience to unconstitutional orders by returning some of that money.
The feds won’t attempt military means until the financial means fails.
The feds won’t attempt military means until the financial means fails.
Ergo, rumors of an impending suspension of civil authority and imposition of martial law in the southwest US are without merit.
Right. Which is not to say that a healthy level of distrust isn’t in order. But this particular abuse doesn’t strike me as imminent.
It just does so by financial means, rather than military.
change the subject!
Well, I suppose you’d figure it was a change of subject, but I don’t. Perhaps you’ll change your mind when the Walker administration cuts off revenue sharing to states that don’t crack down on abortion…
I’ll change my view that Texas (and those states with lots of people of similar mindset) are paranoid delusionals when an administration (and administration) adjusts its policies so that the amount of money each state receives, net, from the Federal government is proportional to the amount that its residents pay in Federal taxes.
Of course, that means that Federal spending in red states will drop substantially. But at least then they will have some legitimate grounds for complaint . . . except for the fact that they asked for less government spending.
spin, wildly! spin! spin, always spin!
That parenthetical was suppoed to be “any adminstration”
i’d love to see a poll of people who think TX is in danger of military takeover vs people who think spending $18,000/second on the DoD isn’t enough.
“adjusts its policies so that the amount of money each state receives, net, from the Federal government is proportional to the amount that its residents pay in Federal taxes.”
I would rather just end revenue sharing. States have taxing authority, there’s no good reason they should be receiving any federal funds at all in the first place.
States have taxing authority, there’s no good reason they should be receiving any federal funds at all in the first place.
That is, unless you want to avoid regional economies in ruin. But who cares about that?
(Dammit, with the subject-changing!)
Tax the local economy to the point where the local/state government would destroy it’s economy if it tried to raise enough taxes…
Yes. I am always dumbfounded by amount withheld on my pay stub for “federal taxes due and payable from this, and only this unique local economy for ulterior motives that are none of your business.”
can we be sure?
Obama is always one step away from imposing martial law – at least he is in eyes of the very deep thinkers of the right.
Obama is always one step away from imposing martial law…
Yes. Here’s a part of the intricate puzzle even you, a confirmed insider, may not be aware of: He replaced revenue sharing with block grants well before he was elected (har, har) President.
Beyond devious I’d say.
“Beyond devious I’d say.”
It’s that Obama Time Machine. There’s no telling what shenanigans he’ll get up to, when he fires it up.
Why, he might go back and start a fake war in 1812, just to see if anyone notices….
Here’s a link embedded in Cleek’s link to that fluffer of fundamentalist paranoids, Brittany Morgan, or is it Morgan Brittany — I always get female porn stars names backwards, but maybe backwards is how they like it, what do I know .. at World (Throw A) Net (Over Them) Daily to one Eric (the Other) Rush.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/baltimore-and-obamas-masterful-manipulation/
Those two articles are the biggest bunch of ignorant ahistorical nothing I’ve read for awhile, actually since just this morning, but never mind.
I always know that when a guy whose dice obviously are a few dots short of craps asks me to connect the dots that I need to start humming “Get Up Offa That Thing And Dance Until You’ll Feel Better” to myself and head for the door while checking to see if my wallet is still in my pocket, but the delicious “at the appointed time” at the very end of the article to describe WHEN Sheik Shabazz Obama is going to raise his arms and summon all of his vast diabolical plots together and release a sh*tstorm of universal community organizing hellfire down upon his poor put-upon victims really takes the cake, but not to the gay wedding it is necessary to add in these a here latter end days.
But, just for sport, I’ll play along and assert that I wish Obama would hurry up and declare martial law coast to coast and arrest, jail, and execute these dumbasses, because I haven’t the patience any longer to ask the Governor to write them a soothing letter showing his concerns for their concerns and that he’s looking out for any wrong moves from Obama, so come on down off the ledge folks, put that gun away, and have some potato salad.
Be fiscally responsible. Save money on stationary and letterheads.
F8ck you, you dangerous anti-American pimping peddlers of paranoia and sadism! Jump! Or shoot yourselves.
Or both.
Just don’t land in the potato salad.
“just to see if anyone notices….”
One of my favorites was when he deliberately did not enforce the 14th Amendment after the Civil War and instituted a regime of terrorist racial segregation in the South, thus enabling the Democratic Party to pass New Deal legislation (teh socialism), and then forced many blacks to move north to create new Party plantations in major metropolitan areas (where The Party already had huge majorities thanks to Boss Tweed and Al Smith, but I digress) thus tying the black vote to the Democratic Party in perpetuity and enabling white assholes to move to the suburbs where they could riot in peace and tranquility and vote for the GOP, yet another Obama subsidiary.
Mindblowing in its deviatude.
Off topic, but hey, connect the dots. The don’t connect themselves.
Mike Huckabee came out against cutting Federal SS Disability Programs, one of the latest bugaboos of the Sultans of Sadism in Vlad Putin’s favorite American political party.
I applaud if you can hear the sound of one hand clapping.
But I’ve wondered if the scalawags at the Social Security Administration looking into alleged disability fraud spend any time attending or viewing on the telly those faith healing big haired pastor shows where folks hobble onto the stage propped on two canes and a neck brace have the hand of God placed on them and straighten up, toss the canes away, rip off the neck brace, and cartwheel across the stage like Donald O’Conner in Singing In the Rain (maybe run up a wall and flip back on to their feet), yell hallelujah, and put a hundred in the collection plate .. and maybe the investigators start cross-referencing the newly healed with the disability rolls and pay a little visit to the faithful to see what’s up fraudwise.
It would be funny if Huckabee’s constituents, the newly-healed people of faith, made up the majority of disability fraud.
Think of the paranoia induced there.
I loved this suggestion to help Texans sleep calm in their beds. There are close to a dozen plus Army and Air Force bases in Texas (and a couple of Naval bases as well). Shut ’em down. Shut all of them down.
No doubt there are other states which would be delighted to gain the boost to their economies. And Texas could stop worrying about a secret military takeover. Problem solved.
I do love hearing about wild conspiracy theories, and the RWingers have the bestest ones, by far.
It’s just like reading Science Fiction, but without the veneer of plausibility.
Here’s teh Venn Diagram.
Still don’t know where the “j” is.
🙂
SPREAD THIS: 17 Different Videos Showing Military Preparations for Obama’s “Martial Law” Exercises
I like the ad along with the videos showing Obama taking over the Southwest that says bacon is better for you than broccoli.
That’s good news, unless it’s some sort of government ruse.
Is it? I can’t tell. There is something fishy, if not baconey about it.
I’ll need a letter from the Governor of my State to confirm this claim.
Furthermore, I live in Colorado, one of the Jade Helm states and convoys of heavily armed troops are shutting down the main thoroughfares in Denver and taking up positions and establishing checkpoints.
I’ve seen pedestrians sucked into gigantic hoovering vehicles with mechanical teeth masticating poor conservatives as they are inhaled into the machines with “Operation Obama is Going to F*ck you Up AND Wait For It, Pay Your Medical Bills” emblazoned on the sides.
These things are like gigantic mobile juicers with probing suckers that make their way into apartment buildings and workplaces and sniff out conservatives and, well, oh the humanity!
The air is thick with drones, large and small.
Tiny ones buzz about your head like mosquitoes, like they are sizing you up, getting a read, sniffing out your political persuasion, maybe.
I think they leave liberals alone, at least they have me so far, but I saw a guy I know, one of those dudes who quotes Rush Limbaugh at length unsolicited when you’re sitting next to him in the bar minding your own business, running hysterically down the street swatting at hundreds of them as they dive bombed him, nibbling at him like those tiny reptile dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that gang-nibbled one of the supporting actors to death.
I’ve underestimated Obama. I didn’t think he had it in him to do what’s needed to be done to protect us from the sadist conservatives who have been walking among us these last thirty years plotting ways to kill us, but it seems he’s found his inner angry black man.
The American Military machine is now his righteous Luther come to do the right thing.
I’m impressed, but I can see why some of you are scared.
I’d run for it if I were you.
Get outta town.
I think they are missing the point; the object should be to seal off Texas, moving quickly to put up one of those stupid walls around it (like we have done with the US/Mexico border).
“There are close to a dozen plus Army and Air Force bases in Texas (and a couple of Naval bases as well). Shut ’em down. Shut all of them down.”
See, what I love, is being told that conservatives should trust the government, the bureaucracies are not politicized, it’s all paranoia. And in the next breath it’s proposed that a policy be adopted for no other reason than to punish a region for political purposes, and reward other regions for the same reason.
humor is a liberal conspiracy
Riiight. Just humor, like the President ‘joking’ about siccing the IRS on his enemies just before the IRS started targeting his enemies.
Sure, it’s just humor.
Wait, those “Social Welfare Organizations” were actual political enemies of Obama? I thought they where supposed to be non-political benevolent clubs.
No WONDER they were so pissed off about getting their paperwork held up until after the election.
what I love, is being told that conservatives should trust the government
A reasonable suspicion of government is a good thing. Everyone should be held to account for how they do, or don’t, fulfill the responsibilities they have been given.
Pandering to delusional paranoia, and having to coddle the fears of the delusionally paranoid in order to simply go about the business of governing, is kind of a different kettle of fish.
You say you have spent time dealing with a clinically paranoid person. What I’ve said above should be simply and plainly obvious to you.
It’s freaking nutty to believe that a military exercise is a secret plan to overthrow the civil government of a generous handful of US states and impose martial law. It’s not a belief that is grounded in reality.
And yet, the governor of TX is obliged to issue reassuring statements, and commit the resources of the TX national guard, to get folks to calm down.
There is nothing unusual about this.
Public discourse in this country is turning into family dinner with crazy uncle Bob. You ask Bob to please pass the salt, and then everyone has to spend the next ten minutes persuading Bob that there isn’t actually a tripwire attached to the salt shaker that is going to set off a bomb if he moves it.
And, while the rest of us are waiting for Bob’s meds to kick in, our unsalted dinners grow cold.
Crazy people are running this country into the freaking ground.
Waiting for Benghazi.
They were both, two, two, two mints in one. Any social welfare organization that has a vision of social welfare that differs from the Democratic party’s is a political enemy of the Democratic party, and social welfare organizations are not prohibited from having opinions about parties and candidates. They just can’t make politics their primary end.
But, thanks for admitting what the IRS was doing.
“And, while the rest of us are waiting for Bob
meds to kick into pass out in a drunken stupor, our unsalted dinners grow cold.”Just a good thing you didn’t ask for the salsa.
They just can’t make politics their primary end.
Which is exactly what the Tea Party organizations were doing. Anyone who thinks they were not primarily political organizations is out of touch with reality.
Almost forgot.
One vote?
This has been another edition of Today’s Breitbart Talking Points, brought to you by Brett Bellmore.
Actually, not just today’s.
Brett, do you think that the belief that Jade Helm is actually a plan to overthrow the civil government of several southwest states and institute martial law is reasonable? Or, even plausible?
Sufficiently so that national guard minders should really be tasked with monitoring the exercise, so that people’s constitutional and civil liberties are not abused?
That’s the topic of the thread.
there is apparently nothing the right does that Brett won’t go to the mat for (or at least try to distract liberals from talking about).
it would be harder to get crazier than this TX stuff. and yet here he is, throwing all the chaff he get his hands on, launching flares in every direction, trying everything he can to keep the mean old left from noticing out that the right has lost its fncking mind.
“Brett, do you think that the belief that Jade Helm is actually a plan to overthrow the civil government of several southwest states and institute martial law is reasonable? Or, even plausible?”
Pretty sure I’ve already stated it wasn’t.
Any more than there’s actually a rape crisis on campus. And how much effort is being put into presuring universities to violate the due process rights of their students?
You’re sweating a trivial expense to calm some irrational fears, while blowing off an immense effort to use a fake ‘crisis’ as an excuse to violate people’s civil liberties. Just because the irrational fears are on the part of some of your opponents, and the fake crisis is being ginned up by your allies.
Mote, meet beam.
Surprisingly, there are some conservative/libertarian politicians in surprising places who are getting a little sick of right-wing “social welfare” (murder syndicates) groups:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/koch-brothers-tennessee-medicaid
The Uncle Bobs running the Koch Brothers influence peddling operation require something along the lines of Operation Jade Helm to crawl up their murderous butts and take them out.
And since someone the other day declared fetuses to be constituents with full voting privileges but, natch, afforded no access to prenatal care for their trouble, I give you this ghastly piece of vermin, again in Texas.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/texas-republican-wants-women-carry-deceased-fetuses-full-term
He believes suffering is the human condition.
With a passing nod to Flannery O’Conner, and some personal sympathy in the direction of mitigating the need for abortions (but keeping abortion as a legal right), this pinched, detestable, little Texas Torquemada and disburser of subhuman suffering needs to be paid a visit by heavily armed pregnant women on their last legs from septicemia so they can adjust the condition his condition is in.
I mean, he didn’t even offer the dead fetuses and their mothers scholarships or burial insurance for their votes.
I suspect if they bled all over the carpet in the lobby of his legislative office, he’d have then tossed to the curb and tell em to get a job, hopefully one with a chance of even more OSHA-free suffering.
like the President ‘joking’ about siccing the IRS on his enemies just before the IRS started targeting his enemies
change the subject! quick!
And yet, the governor of TX is obliged to issue reassuring statements, and commit the resources of the TX national guard, to get folks to calm down.
State guard. But more to the point, what resources have been expended? Are a couple of officers in the guard having phone calls with USSOCOM asking for updates?
Or is Texas state guard calling up units to follow around the spec ops guys during training?
Because the first I have no real problem with. At best, its a relatively reasonable measure to ensure a point of contact if there is a problem. At worst, it’s some mild pandering which is going to cost the state of texas a couple of man-hours from the desk-jockeys in the state guard.
In other words, more molehill than mountain.
The second would be pretty stupid, and a waste of Texas taxpayer money. But, I don’t see any indication that’s the case.
Just pointing out how pathetic the “humor” excuse for advocating wrongful governmental acts really is. It’s all fun and games until the humorous suggestion gets implemented.
I realize the subject of this thread is “Republicans are idiots”, so any comment not supporting this, or pointing out that Democrats are no less idiots, is in some sense “changing the subject”. So what?
Admit it: Without me here, your self-contragulatory and entirely unreflective indugences in mocking the other would get tired fast.
I think I’ve spotted a compromise here.
Even military leaders admit they have a rape crisis among their ranks.
Therefore, to assuage the fears of crazy people about military maneuvers in their states, remove the Jade Helm operation from their present locations and point the convoys at college campuses, which they can occupy and begin the wholesale cossacking of the coed population therein.
That should do wonders for ROTC enrollment when the frat boys see that the military is really the place to be if you want to engage in rape, not this piddling, amateurish groping of unconscious women that goes on on college campuses.
Let the real men have a go.
Everybody’s happy.
“You’re sweating a trivial expense to calm some irrational fears,”
Mobilizing the TX National Guard is a ‘trivial expense’? If you mean ‘trivial’ = ‘inexpensive’, then we should jettison all that DOD stuff and let the TNG handle it all; much more cost-effective.
Or, more likely ‘trivial’ = ‘Brett is okay with it, no matter the cost’.
“.. while blowing off an immense effort to use a fake ‘crisis’ as an excuse to violate people’s civil liberties.”
Yeah, Dubya, 9/11 and the GWOT was really shameful. It’s really awful how the liberals just cheered and cheered as Bush/Cheney did that stuff…Oh, WAIT!
“Admit it: Without me here, your self-contragulatory and entirely unreflective indugences in mocking the other would get tired fast”
You can check the archives and see for yourself.
Snarki:
Mobilizing the TX National Guard is a ‘trivial expense’?
Again, State Guard, not national. Also, can you find any evidence that TX state guard was “mobilized”? Every article I’ve read ultimately points back to the one letter…that asks the head of the state guard to ‘monitor’ the situation.
Have you heard of any state guard units being called up? Deployed? I’m honestly curious. Every headline I read suggests that, but every attached article ultimately leads me back to that one letter.
Whatever the label, if they have to get their gear and go out in the field to tag along with Jade Helm, it’s not going to be a ‘trivial’ expense.
Take the DOD budget for ‘Jade Helm’ in TX, divide by 10. Bet that’s still in the multi-millions.
If they’re just sitting on their butt watching CNN/FOX to ‘monitor the situation’, okay. Sorry if I was taking them at their word, that’s always a bad idea.
See, if *I* was governor, I’d tell the RWNJ’s that I have a special force of Invisible Ninja keeping watch over Jade Helm. Nobody sees them? Well, sure.
“Really not a good idea, if you want both parties to trust government, to go around massively altering whole segments of the economy by party line votes.”
Posted by: Brett Bellmore
Yes. I remember how the right was sooooo mad at that when Cheney was the tie-breaker.
Barry: ” I remember how the right was sooooo mad at that when Cheney was the tie-breaker.”
But Cheney told people to “go fnck themselves”, and that made it all okay.
if they have to get their gear and go out in the field to tag along with Jade Helm, it’s not going to be a ‘trivial’ expense.
I’d agree, I’ve just seen zero evidence that that is going to happen. If you have evidence supporting that, I’d be curious to see it.
Sorry if I was taking them at their word, that’s always a bad idea.
Did someone in the Texas government said the state guard was being deployed? Could you share a link?
OT: this is good news:
thompson, you are completely correct. It all goes back to the letter, and the letter just says “monitor”.
Which could mean deployments, or drones, or butt-sitting watching CNN/FOX with cheetos. I’m pretty sure that the TX gov would like the loons to think it’s “deployments”, while the cheetos option is what happens.
All of the links I’ve encountered say the Texas State Guard is monitoring Jade Helm, not the National Guard, whatever the difference.
Walkie-talkies, binoculars, hankies waved from a distance, I expect.
So, I’m good to go. Nothing to see here.
Unfortunately, I won’t be invited to the next fundraising fete for the Republican Governor of Texas as a reward for my calming influence in the face of events.
You can be sure, however, that Chuck Norris, Rick Perry, Louis Gohmert, and company will have seats on the dais with the Governor for their efforts to milk the paranoid for every last shekel now that everyone is good and juiced.
Take it up with them.
Pretty sure I’ve already stated it wasn’t.
Thank you.
Meanwhile, thompson raises some questions of actual substance.
State guard. But more to the point, what resources have been expended? Are a couple of officers in the guard having phone calls with USSOCOM asking for updates?
My guess is that, net/net, having the TX state guard (thanks for the correction) monitor the exercise will likely not involve a whole lot of effort or expense.
What disturbs me is that any response beyond a simple statement that no federal military takeover was imminent was needed.
If that’s what was necessary to calm everybody down and insure good public order during the exercise, then well done on the part of Governor Abbott.
It’s just disturbing that it’s necessary.
To me, anyway.
OT: this is good news:
That is good news! Thanks!
Yes, Cleek, that’s very good news. Now let’s home McConnell and Obama fail in their effort to preserve the program. A fine show of bipartisanship, that.
Has the Governor issued soporific letters to address and calm the concerns of the Texans, some of them Republican officeholders, regarding their expressed discomfort with his perceived pandering to Jade Helm conspiracy mongers?
I thought not.
See, this is just a dress rehearsal for the run up to 2016. Shadowy plots by Obama and Hillary to declare some awful thing or another to destroy the Constitution and sap the precious bodily fluids from real Americans.
Just like when Republican operatives and arsonists set all of those forest fires in Yellowstone and elsewhere back in the 1990s just in time for an election.
Don’t believe me?
Connect the dots … to your freckles and that mole on your back and see what you come up with.
It’s probably a profile shot of your crazy Uncle Bob, if you close your good eye and squint.
I wish Obama was declaring martial law in the Southwest.
But since he’s not, the piker, I guess it’ll have to be an armed mercenary guerrilla effort taking the conservative movement out one as*hole a time.
“It’s just disturbing that it’s necessary.”
Irrationality is always with us, and this is a fairly trivial exertion to deal with it.
I’m disturbed that anyone ever took that “1 in 5” fake rape statistic seriously, but far more disturbed that college students across the country are being denied their constitutional right to due process on the basis of it.
Seriously, which is worse? The Texas state guard making some phone calls, or universities across the country being pressured by the feds to adopt procedures that violate due process?
The former is a product of right-wing irrationality. The latter, left-wing. Can you seriously say that the latter isn’t objectively worse, by any rational standard?
What disturbs me is that any response beyond a simple statement that no federal military takeover was imminent was needed.
Am I disturbed that some number of people think Walmarts are being converted into detention centers or whatever? Sure. But conspiracy theories are hardly a new thing, and I doubt we are going to get rid of them anytime soon.
I am also somewhat disturbed that the governor’s response has been magnified and cast as ‘deploying the state guard to military exercise’.
People are throwing their hands up in the air saying ‘why are we deploying the state guard to cater to these nuts?’ Which would be a question I would ask if there was any evidence it was the case.
My view, FWIW, is this was magnified because its clickbait. Everybody is going to read the article associate with that headline, because its shocking.
And, yes, I think that derails public discourse. Not because there are conspiracy theorists in west texas, but because news companies find it way more profitable to talk about how crazy those people are than the budget. Or Iran. Or whatever actual issues this country faces.
And it is more profitable, because honestly, most people would rather read that story and feel vaguely superior to some guys in texas.
Should the governor have specifically addressed concerns of a military takeover of texas? I don’t know, I wouldn’t have. Maybe some people here would. Maybe he shouldn’t have said the state guard should ‘monitor’ the exercise. Of all the things he could have done, that doesn’t seem like an absurd choice to me. It’s seems like a pretty lowkey way to go.
Governments are beholden to the people, or should be. That often means they do things that are stupid, because they are beholden to people that are concerned about trivial or improbable things:
In a cartoonish example, the FBI spent nearly two years trying to figure out the lyrics to ‘Louie Louie’.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150503/22075130880/fbi-spent-years-researching-lyrics-to-louie-louie-before-realizing-copyright-office-must-have-them.shtml
Example provided just to lighten the mood.
“most people would rather read that story and feel vaguely superior to some guys in texas.”
Or, perhaps, that many people have the idea that much of what government does (federal, state, dogcatcher, whatever) is spinning wheels while wasting money?
I’m not sure WHAT political ideology would promote such an idea, but it sure has caught on.
I know – DNFTT. But I offer this for review and comment to anyone interested.
People are throwing their hands up in the air saying ‘why are we deploying the state guard to cater to these nuts?’ Which would be a question I would ask if there was any evidence it was the case.
Not exactly.
I am throwing my hands in the air wondering where such nuttiness comes from and, more important, why it is pandered to by prominent officeholders.
The problem I see is that those who dream up this stuff have effective control over one of our major political parties. And the willingness to lose all touch with reality extends far beyond this. The examples are legion. I focus on this not because I’m worried about how much Texas is spending to respond, which is likely trivial, and none of my business anyway, but because they are responding.
These people are insane.
“I am throwing my hands in the air wondering where such nuttiness comes from and, more important, why it is pandered to by prominent officeholders.”
1. Half the human race has an IQ below 100. They’re not on this basis disenfranchised.
2. Schools do not effectively teach reasoning skills. It’s questionable whether they’re even attempting to, but they’re certainly not succeeding.
Again, in terms of consequences this is a pretty trivial example of irrationality. The only reason we’re discussing it is because it provides a fine opportunity to mock conservatives.
Meanwhile, the “campus rape crisis” is no more reality based, no more rational, and a hell of a lot more consequential. Problem is, it makes the wrong party’s activists look bad, so you’re going to ignore it, and pretend conservatives are uniquely irrational.
[T]oday’s Second Circuit ruling makes clear that the executive branch’s interpretation of the statute—interpreting records “relevant” to a terrorism investigation to mean all records everywhere—is “unprecedented and unwarranted.” In light of this ruling, Congress must not proceed with the latest version of the USA Freedom Act. While limiting certain types of bulk collection, the latest USA Freedom Act would authorize bulk collection of Americans’ records for the first time, thereby undoing some of the progress resulting from the Second Circuit’s decision…
Justin Amash
Hi Brett,
Time for a time out. We’ll see you in a month (8 June 12:01 to be exact) while we try to answer the question of ‘will we grow tired of our self-contragulatory [sic] and entirely unreflective indugences [sic]’.
I’d appreciate it if the other commentators would avoid messages of a congratulatory nature or queries wondering why it took us so long.
so you’re going to ignore it
Yes, we’re going to ignore it because it’s off topic, and to pursue it will only encourage your troll-like habit of dragging conversations off onto whatever tangent strikes your fancy.
The issue of campus rape has, in fact, been discussed here, more than once, at length.
It’s not the topic of this thread, so folks are not particularly interested in taking the troll bait.
Capisce?
Cleek, with something that far off topic, maybe you could write up a post for a new thread?
If cleek has not previously been invited to post, he should consider himself invited, and any other regular as well, if you’d like to put something up, send it to the address under the kitty and I’ll run it by the hive mind.
bymotov:
First off, just a clarification if I came off as accusatory, none of what I said in my last post was meant to characterize the commenters here, or the discussion. I should have made that clear, and I hope you (or others) were not offended.
The problem I see is that those who dream up this stuff have effective control over one of our major political parties.
Infowars and chuck norris dreamt this up, as far I can see. I wouldn’t consider them as having effective control of the party.
If you want to make larger points about obstructionism in congress, I think you and I would probably find a lot of agreement (although probably not complete!). I just think that this particular meme (that is, the governor deploying the guard) got exaggerated. And a lot of people read the splashy headlines and got an understanding of the situation that was detached from reality. And I think that fed a lot of clicks to various sites, and also a lot of the ‘WTF’.
I don’t think that’s particularly healthy for the public discourse.
I think there are probably reasonable criticisms of the governor’s response (some made here), I just think its a much smaller event then people make it out to be. And, to the extent that his response was good or bad should be based on his response…not the splashy headlines.
I suspect that part of the reason that this story got so much traction is that it was just such a dramatic example of reality-challenged conspiracy theory. I mean, so much other conspiracy theory at least touchs on something that a reasonable person could consider possible — albeit wildly unlikely.
But this? Nobody even halfway sane would buy it. And an opportunity to poke fun at the self-important Texans can be hard for the rest of the country to resist. I mean, they are almost as bad as the folks in New York City, and with less cause.
i’m honored by the invitation, but i’m truly unworthy.
It probably is a “much smaller event”.
But nobody was holding a gun to the TX Gov’s head and forcing him to use the word “monitor”. At least, as far as I know. (it is TX, after all).
Watch? Observe? Observe with attitude? Stay in touch? There’s all kinds of word choices, all with slightly different shades of meaning.
He picked ‘monitor’, and as I said upthread, that could mean deployments, or drones, or watching CNN. My feeling is that ‘monitor’ means something a bit more intensive than watching the CNN Chyron. or some “Texas Man” twitter feed.
Invisible Ninjas. That’s the way to do it.
I guess we’ll just have to pull the Invisible Ninja deployment OFF of liberal japonicus, and ship them off to Texas for a while.
Good thing that the cost almost nothing to ship, and travel at near light-speed.
I think one would have to be nearly as detached from reality as the Texans in question to think there would be a significant response – in terms of people actually going out and doing things, rather than just talking – to the irrational fears of the feds imposing martial law in Texas and the greater Southwest.
Yes, the story was exaggerated, but it was still a surprisingly crazy thing, even when seen for exactly what it actually was.
And I apologize for responding to Brett’s bait. I just can’t resist the Wrong on the Internet, is all.
Mobilizing the TX National Guard is a ‘trivial expense’? If you mean ‘trivial’ = ‘inexpensive’, then we should jettison all that DOD stuff and let the TNG handle it all; much more cost-effective.
To clarify the difference, while both are formally part of the organized militia forces of the US, State Defense Forces such as the TSG are state-run and funded organizations that coordinate with the DOD National Guard command structure but are outside of it, whereas the NG is a federal organism under state command (Title 32) that can be brought under federal command (Title 10) on a piecemeal basis as deemed necessary.
Whatever expenses this entails are strictly the purview of TX.
Are a couple of officers in the guard having phone calls with USSOCOM asking for updates?
I agree that this is what is most likely and is suggested by the letter…
Or is Texas state guard calling up units to follow around the spec ops guys during training?
…much moreso than this.
Because the first I have no real problem with. At best, its a relatively reasonable measure to ensure a point of contact if there is a problem. At worst, it’s some mild pandering which is going to cost the state of texas a couple of man-hours from the desk-jockeys in the state guard.
In other words, more molehill than mountain.
Honestly, I expect the coordination would normally be the TX NG command directly communicating with their commander the governor, or Regular Army units coordinating directly with state agencies if and as needed. So this is almost certainly pure theater, and even if there are active observers, their expenses would be activation pay (~$120/day) and perhaps mileage and/or per diem coming out of TX’s budget. Essentially harmless theater, as all it’s likely doing is imposing a redundant reporting requirement for the involved agencies.
i’m honored by the invitation, but i’m truly unworthy.
So are we all, cleek, so are we all.
nobody who thinks a takeover is likely is likely to think a couple of guys making phone calls is going to stop the takeover.
What NV said.
I seem to recall a certain TX governor deploying guard members to the border, in spite of that being a federal responsibility.
Yes, in a rational world, the TX Guard would just make a few phone calls.
Whether that is, in fact, the world we (and TX) resides in, is open to debate.
I seem to recall a certain TX governor deploying guard members to the border, in spite of that being a federal responsibility.
If I’m not mistaken, the normal case is that National Guard units are under the command of the governor of whatever state they are in.
They have to be explicitly federalized to be in the federal chain of command.
Signed, your friendly neighborhood nit picker.
“Oh”, he said, as light dawned on marble head.
“You are referring to border security as being a federal responsibility!”.
D’oh.
“C’mon people, those nits aren’t going to pick THEMSELVES, you know!”
I just like saying that.
..but because news companies find it way more profitable to talk about how crazy those people are than the budget. Or Iran. Or whatever actual issues this country faces.
Pretty much always been the case. You gotta’ go with what moves the product.
What is exaggerated is a response that panders to a group of, frankly, paranoids while so many needs (in Texas and elsewhere) go unaddressed. On some rather serious issues (in my paranoid opinion) the governor of Texas is silent.
That is what is so irksome. But the comedy aspect of it is rather priceless.
thompson,
I was not offended. Not at all.
I do think the right has a greater tendency than you think to tolerate and pander to lunacy. That’s part of what I meant when I said they were insane. It wasn’t all about Texas. I include in “lunacy” a number of policy positions and ideas that get vastly more respect than they deserve, as well as birtherism and other plainly deranged notions.
it’s as if GOP politicians have decided that they need to sound like “conservative” radio hosts in order to get votes. the more outlandish the better. and maybe they do – it’s not like they’re brimming with great policy ideas.
To be fair, I think that a lot of GOP politicians find themselves riding the tiger, and would like to get off but can’t figure out how.
For example, I lived in TN for a long time, and I can assure you that Lamar Alexander is no idiot. He was a decent governor (I actually voted for him), and is in the Howard Baker line of TN Republicans. Corker, I’m told, was a good mayor of Chattanooga and is no fire-breather. He essentially won the Senate nomination because two ultra primary opponents split the far right vote.
But the strong far-right presence in TN, along with general partisan polarity, keeps them from really playing the role of the right-moderate.
possible adders?
The Daily Sift
MaxSpeak! (yes, he’s back)
Mike the Mad Biologist
bymotov:
I include in “lunacy” a number of policy positions and ideas that get vastly more respect than they deserve, as well as birtherism and other plainly deranged notions.
I think birtherism is a good example of what (I think) you are talking about. It’s a stupid conspiracy theory that was given FAR more credit by mainstream news sources and political leaders than it deserved, which was very little.
And I think it is right and proper to criticize the leaders that let it live for so long.
However, I think there are a few differences between birtherism and the current situation. Foremost of which, birtherism lasted far longer. At the moment, this could either be the kind of conspiracy theory that sticks, or it will (imo, far more likely) fizzle and fade away as the new shiny comes along. If it’s still around in a couple of months and Abbott is issuing vague responses about monitoring, I would join you criticizing him. As it stands, I see his response as a cheap way to basically ignore the crazy.
In comic form:
To be fair, I think that a lot of GOP politicians find themselves riding the tiger, and would like to get off but can’t figure out how.
I think that’s probably true. I think, hopeless as it may seem, that the only way we get rid of the tiger is to ratchet down the rhetoric and stop focusing on the crazy. I think by focusing and amplifying the crazy, we give an enormous about of airtime and relevance to the very people we should be ignoring.
Sorry, that ‘In comic form:’ referred to a paragraph I deleted.
thompson,
I mentioned birtherism, but a far more serious threat, IMO, is stuff that gets treated seriously by way too many people, and seems to be core GOP thinking. Taken a look at GOP budget plans lately? Climate change non-policy? Tax proposals?
I’m trying here to stick to things that simply don’t make sense, rather than policy disagreements.
“I think, hopeless as it may seem, that the only way we get rid of the tiger is to ratchet down the rhetoric and stop focusing on the crazy. I think by focusing and amplifying the crazy, we give an enormous about of airtime and relevance to the very people we should be ignoring.”
What do you mean “we” Kemosabe? I personally give zero airtime to anyone. Or even watch what airtime they get.
In fact, even all of the crazy was cleansed from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, WaPo and the NYT, they’d still have Fox.
Now, if you’re saying “Let’s burn Fox News to the ground!” then just come right out with it, and we’ll all subscribe to your newsletter.
it’s times like this that i miss the fairness doctrine.
just saying.
… they’d still have Fox.
Not to mention the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Or the right-wing nut-job blogs.
I disagree with thompson on a fundamental level. I don’t think you tame The Crazy by ignoring it. I think you tame it by pointing at it and laughing. That’s not a moderate attitude. It’s a brazen, cocksure attitude, based on the notion that there’s The Crazy on one side and reality on the other, and sane people can tell them apart.
It’s entirely possible that the people who can’t tell the difference between The Crazy and reality, combined with the people who decline to notice the difference on the grounds of moderation or bipartisanship or kumbaya, add up to a majority in this democracy. If so — if sane people are outnumbered — then it seems to me that the good ole USofA has had its heyday.
–TP
It’s the quiet ones you gotta watch. I don’t think so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeo_Ypmba70
The Republican Party has deliberately recruited crazy, racist, war-mongering haters for political office at all levels of government modeled after crazy, racist, war-mongering haters in the talk radio realm and the lot of them pander to the lowest common denominator, crazy, racist, war-mongering haters (the below 100-IQ crowd) among the population.
Crypto-religious demagogues, economic predators, heavily armed wackos who are just itching to start killing, who train daily to butcher liberals and immigrants and inner city blacks, all of them are ushered to the front of the line and celebrated by the Republican Party.
Steve King pukes the worst kind of demagogic horsesh*t and the Republican elite rush to kiss his hem.
Ditto any number of right-wing political celebrities.
We are aware, aren’t we, of the powerful brand that Chuck Norris is. He can swing more aggrieved armed as*holes to show up to vote and legislate policies that will literally kill millions of Americans.
We should ignore him? Fine, there’s millions of ignoramuses, many among the political elite, who will take up the slack.
Compared to him and the rest of the cadres, monied or not, in this violent revolutionary demagogic monstrosity called the Republican Party, deliberately fashioned to be so over the past 35 years, our paltry mewling at this little our post on the blogosphere is spitting into a howling wind.
“We will not try to reform existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them and eventually destroy them” – The manifesto of the Paul Weyrich-inspired New Traditionalist Movement
“This war [between liberals and conservatives] has to be fought with the scale and duration and savagery that is only true of civil wars.” – Newt Gingrich
“We’ll defeat them [the democrats] and crush their institutions…a cornered rat fights. The left is playing for its life and will fight harder than anyone on the right sees”. – Grover Norquist
what the hell, here’s more:
“There is a cultural war going on for the soul of this country…the issue is making this God’s country again” Ralph Reed
“Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty; we are called by God to conquer this country.” Randall Terry
Will you join me in a Declaration of War?” “There is no middle ground… the church is marshalling its forces.” – Fund Raising letter from Jerry Falwell
” We are involved in a “cultural war” for the very soul of America… [We are] recruiting “soldiers in the army of Christ… [There are] “five key fronts in the modern-day culture war”– Rev. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries
It is dominion we are after, not just a voice. It is dominion we are after, not just influence. It is dominion we are after, not just equal time. World conquest. That is what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish — George Grant, former executive director of D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries.
“Man your battle stations. Ready your weapons. They say this rhetoric is so inciting. I came to incite a riot…Man your battle stations. Ready your weapons. Lock and Load.” Rev. Rod Parsley
“We’re on the beaches of Normandy and we can see the pillbox entrenchments of academic and media liberalism. We’ll take back our country for Christ” Rev. Russell Johnson, head of the Ohio Restoration Project.
Ignore them? Reason with them? Compromise?
Really? With who? Any conservatives with a lick of sense have been run out of the party.
The only reason conservatives stick with these pigs is because they want their f*cking taxes eliminated.
They declared war on us on American soil.
They are a disgrace to this country.
Bring it the f*ck on.
There’s only one thing these people will understand.
And Gingrich is right. It’s going to be on a scale seen only once before in this country.
along with Tony P, I agree that until “the appointed time” pointing and laughing at them is good strategy.
The more I point and laugh, the more elections they win.
At some point we’ll point and fire because that’s what really want.
bymotov:
Taken a look at GOP budget plans lately? Climate change non-policy? Tax proposals? I’m trying here to stick to things that simply don’t make sense, rather than policy disagreements.
I appreciate that.
First off, I’m not going to defend the GOP budget, etc. They aren’t my positions. While I wouldn’t describe them as “lunacy” I think they are wrong.
Second, I think that’s a very nebulous line. I know reasonable people that hold views that, imo, ‘don’t make sense’. I can either engage with them as reasonable people and have a slim chance of giving them something to think about, or I can try to change minds by, in Tony’s words: “pointing at it and laughing”.
I’ve had far more success in changing minds by treating people as reasonable. YMMV.
Snarki:
In fact, even all of the crazy was cleansed from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, WaPo and the NYT, they’d still have Fox.
If media outlets spent less time focusing on the crazy, they’d have more time to focus on policy. But ‘crazy thing Bachmann said’ gets far more clicks. It’s a business, I get that, it’s just a problem as far as I can tell.
And if you got rid of fox, they’d still have infowars? You aren’t going to get rid of conspiracy theorists. That doesn’t mean its pointless to try to engage respectfully with people you disagree with. And it doesn’t mean media outlets should focus on fringe theories.
Now, if you’re saying “Let’s burn Fox News to the ground!” then just come right out with it, and we’ll all subscribe to your newsletter.
I’m not. That’s pretty much the opposite of what I’m saying. The burn it to the ground approach is pointless and counterproductive.
Count:
The more I point and laugh, the more elections they win.
Interesting strategy.
At some point we’ll point and fire because that’s what really want.
You know, you put up a lot of quotes demonstrating the violent rhetoric of the other, but you undermine any point you might have had when you engage in…violent rhetoric.
Just my two cents.
thompson:
I appreciate your patient evenhandedness in all things and your ability to tweeze out the constructive meat of any topic and direct our attention to it around here.
Regarding my rhetorical sabotage of my own points, I expect that is so, among good people.
However, I think even a cursory glance at history and the world around us shows that any time an individual engages in peaceful rhetoric/action, that’s the first person rank radical conservatives in any country or society bring down one way or another, most probably with bullets of the non-rhetorical variety.
MLK, Gandhi, Lincoln (his hand was forced into violence, but conservative Confederates would have killed him anyway, probably sooner), Yitzhak Rabin, any Muslim figure who speaks out against the minority radical Islamists among them.
Or you have conservative Putin arresting Pussy Riot, NRA bullies threatening peaceful unarmed parents of kids murdered at Columbine or Sandy Hook who show up with bullet-less signage at NRA fetes, Tiananmin Square protestors who stand in front of conservative government tanks, conservatives brandishing weapons and violent rhetoric at political forums to discuss providing healthcare to larger portion of the citizenry, etc.
Your method is better and more constructive than mine no doubt, but on the ground in the here and now instance of making the slightest dent in violent conservative rhetoric and as far as I am concerned, the murderous policies of the conservative self-proclaimed revolutionaries in the Republican Party, we’ve both us produced bupkis.
We have four cents between us and there’s not a conservative coffee shop in the country who will serve the either of us.
Keep on keeping on.
we’ve both us produced bupkis.
Fair.
Keep on keeping on.
Best advice.
As a note on this:
However, I think even a cursory glance at history and the world around us shows that any time an individual engages in peaceful rhetoric/action, that’s the first person rank radical conservatives in any country or society bring down one way or another, most probably with bullets of the non-rhetorical variety.
You listed a number of examples of that. I would note, however, that the examples you listed all had a profound positive impact on the world.
I’m not saying they were met with only reason and respect. I’m saying they left the world a better place for engaging in “in peaceful rhetoric/action”
Last word is yours.
I’m giving the last word to the Secretary of Defense.
thompson,
I think that’s a very nebulous line. I know reasonable people that hold views that, imo, ‘don’t make sense’. I can either engage with them as reasonable people and have a slim chance of giving them something to think about, or I can try to change minds by, in Tony’s words: “pointing at it and laughing”.
Yeah. You’re probably better at that than I am. I haven’t had much luck either way myself, but then I’m an impatient sort.
Also, I probably spend too much time on blogs, where the comment threads are often not inducive to calm, reasoned discussion.
I don’t think pointing and laughing is intended to change the minds of those you’re point and laughing at. It’s to marginalize them, so their laughable views don’t gain further traction.
That’s not to say you have to agree with it, but at least understand what it is before deciding. And depending on how slim “slim” is, as far as the chances that you’ll get a loon to think about something, pointing and laughing might well be the least bad option.
And sometimes (sometimes!) blogs are for venting. We’re not writing theses or testifying in court here. On this particular blog, it seems almost everyone plays a reasonably worthwhile role, even if (or maybe because) some are in tension with each other.
I’m giving the last word to the Secretary of Defense.
And proof that we live in an not quite sane political environment. Will the president be asked next (if he hasn’t been already)?
And proof that we live in an not quite sane political environment.
That is proof 2 reporters felt compelled to ask it. I imagine neither one was a member of the lunatic fringe.
From the tone and word choice, I have my doubts they didn’t already know the answer to the questions they asked.
In short, I find it likely they were looking for clickbait.
You’re probably better at that than I am.
I appreciate the kind words.
It’s to marginalize them, so their laughable views don’t gain further traction.
Practically, I think that’s a viable strategy. I just don’t think its a viable strategy when you’re ridiculing a political party that has majorities in both chambers and control of a large number of state governments.
Ridiculing fringe groups…I think that can be effective. Ridiculing large groups…I think that just hardens the opposition.
And sometimes (sometimes!) blogs are for venting. We’re not writing theses or testifying in court here.
Yeah, I get that. Venting can be very calming. Me? I crack open a beer. 🙂
John Podesta, who was Clinton’s Chief of Staff, Counselor to the President under Obama, and is now chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, got involved in this campaign to declassify secret UFO reports in the early 2000s. It was basically a publicity stunt by the Sci-Fi Channel to promote some show about UFO abductees, but it seems to have been part of a sincere long-term effort for him. When he left office he tweeted that he was disappointed he never got Obama to release the secret UFO files.
What he actually believes about UFOs, if anything, is unclear. I rather suspect that there are some secrets, if only because a significant fraction of historical UFO reports have turned out to be things like military aircraft and treaty-violating missile tests. But there’s a lot of exceedingly strange and paranoid chatter in this area, of course.
I don’t think pointing and laughing is intended to change the minds of those you’re point and laughing at. It’s to marginalize them, so their laughable views don’t gain further traction.
I’d have to agree with thompson that ridiculing a group that isn’t widely perceived as fringe is unlikely to marginalize it, and can easily backfire by creating sympathy from groups sharing a less radical version of its POV. Depending on the political climate, it can even grant them credibility if they manage to benefit from a circling of wagons with less-fringe fellow travelers.
The other thing to remember is that there’s another reason that this sort of ridiculing occurs: as a tribal in-marker for an opposing group. That’s a lot of how I’ve seen this particular story being disseminated: as a pat on the back that liberals weren’t as paranoid and crazy as “those people”. And if perceptions are that the coverage is along these lines, it may not do near so much to marginalize the ridiculed opinion as it could to encourage tribal wagon-circling.
And sometimes the “fringe” group takes over the “mainstream” group.
Case in point: Teabaggers and the GOP.
Yes, the ‘baggers were widely mocked, but not by the MSM, who was too busy fluffing them.
I understand all of the reasons for trying to engage people wherever it is that they are at, and to try to win them over with reason and kind words. All good.
But sometimes I just find myself shaking my head and saying WTF.
I been having this friendly discussion with people who disagree with me for over ten years now, and I still find myself totally blindsided now and then with what they come up with.
Some days I just have to throw my hands up and say I got nothing.
It’s one of those days.
Me? I crack open a beer. 🙂
This, I can agree with.
The other thing to remember is that there’s another reason that this sort of ridiculing occurs: as a tribal in-marker for an opposing group. That’s a lot of how I’ve seen this particular story being disseminated: as a pat on the back that liberals weren’t as paranoid and crazy as “those people”.
Why are you trying to prevent me from feeling better about myself? It’s just mean.
On the side topic of UFOs, Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington is fascinating. I haven’t seen the show, but did read the book. He builds a solid case for the extent to which various agencies around the world fed UFO stories as cover for aviation tests and also as an all-purpose cover for any sort of governmental screw-up. This isn’t altogether brand-new territory – space historian James Oberg has written some acidic commentary on Air Force ventures in this regard. But Pilkington shows just how common a thing it’s been, and he’s pissed off about it (IMHO, with excellent reason); his stance is the straightforward view that encouraging people with a poor grasp of reality doesn’t end well.
It encourages aliens from other planets as well.
Again, what NV said. What I’m getting at, but better phrased.
This, I can agree with.
Consensus! I’ll drink to that!
thompson: Ridiculing large groups…I think that just hardens the opposition.
Birthers were (possibly still are) a large group. Nonetheless, I laugh down my nose in their general direction. I can’t imagine how that could offend “reasonable” Republicans, or cause them to harden their opposition to the Muslim Kenyan Communist in the White House. I can’t imagine how it could offend “moderates”, or cause them to think that maybe the birthers have a point. But of course I’m not a Republican or a moderate, so what do I know?
Creationists are always good for a laugh. Their beliefs may be sincere, and their numbers may be large, but if they are not ridiculous then “ridiculous” means nothing any more and should be honorably retired from the dictionary. You’re right that ridicule is not likely to persuade creationists. Certainly not my ridicule. But if they saw you pointing at them and laughing, that might do some good. Depending on what you consider good, of course.
Then there are the appropriately and ironically named Laffer-curve fetishists. Or more accurately, swindlers. The kind of people who take a trivial truism — a graph of government revenue versus effective aggregate tax rate that has a peak somewhere between 0 and 100% (well, duh!) — and pretend it’s a graph of GDP versus marginal tax rates, which (they claim, hoping the rubes will fall for the double sleight of hand) demonstrates that working people will become better off if the government would just let the rich get a little richer than they are now, for any value of “now”. One hardly knows who to point at and laugh: the transparent swindlers, or their gullible victims. One thing’s for sure: the billionaires who fund the “think tanks” that pump out such nonsense are laughing their asses off at somebody.
NV: Depending on the political climate, it can even grant them (the laughed-at) credibility if they manage to benefit from a circling of wagons with less-fringe fellow travelers.
That’s probably true. But the flip side is that the fellow-travelers expose themselves to ridicule thereby. Being “less fringe”, the fellow-travelers might believe they are too respectable to be laughed at, of course. And they may be right: adopting the Very Serious Person pose can fool a lot of people a lot of the time.
So, from a game-theory perspective, it is perhaps best to NOT point and laugh at The Crazy, because it might make Very Serious People just a little Crazier. Got it.
–TP
But if they saw you pointing at them and laughing, that might do some good.[emphasis removed]
I actually have a close friend from high school who is a devout creationist. I would say a large contributor to his willingness to entertain my counter arguments comes largely from the fact I treat him, and his views, with respect. I imagine I would lose influence if I mocked him or treated him with contempt.
Not to mention I would lose a friend, and he’s a stand up guy.
So really, I don’t know what I would gain by following your suggestion, and would lose substantially.
There is a bit of distance (perhaps not much) between “contempt” and “humor”.
Even creationists could have some mental resonance with the idea that the entire universe is just messing with your head. (this message approved by Loki, btw)
Take they’re crazy stuff as a starting point, then
“TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!!”
It’s the old mathematical technique: “Assume X..work..work..work = obviusly wrong result,
therefore NOT X”. Might make them question their
assumptions, might push them over the edge into
institutionalized mental health care, either is
good.
Birthers were (possibly still are) a large group. Nonetheless, I laugh down my nose in their general direction. I can’t imagine how that could offend “reasonable” Republicans, or cause them to harden their opposition…
I’ve got to go with Tony on this one. Indeed, I think sane conservatives (just as with sane liberals and their nut cases) laugh along. And are relieved that someone is offering the reaction that they may feel constrained from.
That said, Thompson is right that, when dealing with individuals, ridicule is not a winning strategy for changing minds. Or even just opening them up to the possibility that other views have some merit. (I have never succeeded, with this or any other approach, when dealing with devout conspiracy theorists. But perhaps they are a special case.)
If it were as simply as ridiculing, or engaging people earnestly, I think we would be living in a lot nicer world now. Plus the fact that reaction to ridicule and sarcasm is often culturally determined. The sharp observation that works on this list would fail totally here in Japan. I imagine that the same is true for different subcultures in the states.
There was something that Phil Dick wrote in his book Valis where he talks about how this therapist cured the main character (which, through the magic of google, I can actually quote)
They – note the ‘they’ – paid Dr Stone to figure out what had destroyed the patient entering the ward. In each case a bullet had been fired at him, somewhere, at some time, in his life. The bullet entered him and the pain began to spread out. Insidiously, the pain filled him up until he split in half, right down the middle. The task of the staff, and even of the other patients, was to put the person back together but this could not be done so long as the bullet remained. All that lesser therapists did was note the person split into two pieces and begin the job of patching him back into a unity; but they failed to find and remove the bullet. The fatal bullet fired at the person was the basis of Freud’s original attack on the psychologically injured person; Freud had understood: he called it a trauma. Later on, everyone got tired of searching for the fatal bullet; it took too long. Too much had to be learned about the patient.
When you can scatter bullets around, as ridicule does, you never know what is going to hit the target. You can tell when something scored a hit by the roar of the studio audience, but digging those bullets out is far too difficult a job, especially if you’ve sprayed them all over the place.
However, we spray ridicule all over because we don’t have the time nor the means to figure out where whatever previous bullet is that is making someone racist or homophobic, and if that person isn’t going to take the step forward to engage in the dialogue, the ridicule is coming from a sense of frustration.
In so far as it works, I think it does so by driving the feeling underground and making it really embarrassing to hold those feelings in public. The sad thing is that it seems like that works really well and I assume that it is because it harnesses our own desire to be part of the in group. It seems like the only tool there is for changing mass opinion, but it can be easily co-opted. It sucks to be us, I guess.
Sometimes, however, making it too publicly embarrassing to express some biases is the only way to, over the course of a couple of generations, work them out of the culture. Even then, it won’t be totally successfuly. But with deep-seated prejudices, it may be the only approach that will work — make it hard to pass them along to future generations, and then wait for those who still hold them to gradually die off.
Um. On the other hand, for more than fifteen years the primary mode of political reporting in the US has been to look at the claims of rightist Republicans and of centrist Democrats, and split the difference as evenly as possible.
The secondary mode has been to attack the center and left for not compromising.
Treating all opinions as worthy of equal consideration is not a successful recipe.
The sharp observation that works on this list would fail totally here in Japan.
Is it common in Japan for mainstream political discourse to include claims that are essentially fantasies?
To the point where extremely senior public officials have to address the issues?
Among all of the other things, noted throughout this thread, that sarcasm and ridicule can be, they can also be an expression of frustration, resignation, or even profound sadness.
Rude in many cases, no doubt, and not really welcome to the folks on the receiving end.
But to be fair, IMO they need to be contrasted with threats of “second amendment solutions” and people open-carrying knockoffs of military firearms into public meetings.
That’s also something I suspect folks in Japan, or pretty much any place with a functional government other than the US, don’t see much of.
To say that patient, thoughtful engagement is preferable to sarcasm is no doubt true. Obviously so, I would say. But to actually be of use, that bit of advice requires that some kind of candid, open-minded conversation is even available – that it’s even on offer, as an option.
It’s not clear to me that that is so.
What I’ve come to believe is that people who live in the US have profound disagreement about what they think is good and valuable. It’s not a matter of specific issues, or policies, it’s a matter of the most profound understanding of what life is about, and what the purpose of a polity is.
What I also think is that the logical result of a careful, thoughtful, and thorough conversation about all of that will probably be either some degree of dismantling of the US as a single political entity, or a significant devolution of day to day, hands-on governing to the state or regional level.
Nobody actually wants to do that, so instead we make jokes about each other and, in some quarters, threaten mayhem.
Given my druthers, I prefer sarcasm to shooting. Others, I’m sure, disagree, but hopefully they will remain a somewhat ineffective minority.
Russell, given current Japanese discourse about what actually went on in World War II, I’d have have to say that “claims that are essentially fantasies” have their spot in the sun there too. Likewise with economics, looking at their long depression and the lack of helpful response.
The armed-mobs part is (as nearly as I know) pretty distinctively American, in the industrialized world.