That Most Precious Thing

“In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can’t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can’t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line.”

-Earling Carothers ‘Jim’ Garrison

JonBenet Ramsey suspect cleared after DNA test!

So the whole thing was a big fucking hoax. Yet another hoax on us all or more appropriately a tragic comedy for sardonic cynics. Once again Karl Rove plays the media like a Stradivarius and the media plays everybody else for chumps. The swarm and rush to be the first to ‘break’ the story is yet another embarrassment for this pathetic excuse of a news media. Remember the feeding frenzy over the Sago Mine disaster back in January when cable networks in their rush to beat each other to the punch for the prized recognition of breaking the story prematurely jumped on inaccurate snippets of overheard conversations to report that in the true feel good tradition of our Pollyanna nation that all of the coal miners had indeed been spared from a lonely death in a dank and cold place for a company with an equally dank and cold heart, a company that piled up safety violations as quickly as greedballs in the Republican Congress piled up illicit money from Jack Abramoff and other corporate graft. Once the overwhelming cheer went up for the triumph of the great American spirit and the accompanying faith in the almighty that had saved so many from death the inconvenient truth emerged as it so often does that the celebration was premature and that all of the miners had died with the exception of one survivor. As a wise man named Winston Wolf once put it “let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet” and although painful, Sago was not a lesson well learned by the shills.

Cable and network executives were as happy as pigs rolling in shit when the Karr fraud erupted, they must have been clicking their heels over the good fortune in finding a story that would finally provide the much needed juice that could dominate news cycles for days. Hell, if was lurid enough there would be a long trial and enough newly minted ‘legal analysts’ to milk the sleaze for months and maybe even into the new year or longer. Nothing like a child-murdering pederast to keep that bummer of a war in Iraq and the egregious criminal behavior of the Bush administration relegated to its rightful place as an afterthought while they pimped sleazy tabloid scandal. Then there was always the new fall season would begin and the newest version of that insidious reality television spectacle ‘Survivor’ starts – this time there will be an additional allure as the contestants will be broken down into teams according to their race. The new format is thoroughly appropriate to the divisive times in which we now live and it will likely be bigger than the Dukes of Hazard and an event equal to Southeastern Conference football down south of the Mason Dixon Line.

There is one thing that Americans have come to hold most dear and precious of all. It is sweeter than mothers milk, more important than breathing, more desirable than such abstract concepts as freedom and liberty, more precious than life itself and more thirsted for than salvation. It is the all-encompassing allure of tabloid trash, glorifications of wealth and superficiality (Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and The Apprentice), the culture of celebrity and the soothing narcotic of living vicariously through entertainment that provides both an escape from the ugly and inconvenient intrusions of reality. There is nothing like a nice big hit off of the electronic crack-pipe to ensure that all is right for most in Der Heimat and the fear can remain at bay while the consumer crawls into a cocoon of denial and the exploits and exploitation of others.

The outrageous saturation coverage of the alleged killer that rejuvenated the dormant JonBenet Ramsey media circus is the perfect example of how beloved that scandal and tabloid sleaze have come to be prized in our tawdry,gauche and narcissistic post-industrial culture. John Mark Karr instantly became a household name as the nutty Ramsey case obsessive allegedly ‘confessed’ to the heinous child murder of the one time beauty pageant princess when he was nabbed by authorities in Thailand set the stage for a mass media bonanza that would have provided cover for the Republican mafia in the run up to the mid term elections. In an amazing testimonial to the power of scandal the Karr apprehension even knocked the fear mongering over London ‘Airplane Plot’ out of the headlines. Now that was truly an accomplishment in a land where fear and dread are so predominant that even terror is trumped by trash and the stimulation of subconscious prurient interests.

Never mind that Karr’s ‘confession’ and caveat that it was an “accident” were vague and unsubstantiated the jackals in the paparazzi swarmed much like they did during the Sago Mine fiasco once again stirred up a tempestuous freak show with misleading and inaccurate information in a race to be first to break the latest lurid developments. If it bleeds, it leads as the saying goes and call me a conspiracy theorist but it was yet another fortuitous coincidence that the coverage and resulting media swarm came just in time to downplay Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling that George W. Bush had violated the law by using the NSA to illegally conduct sweeping surveillance on American citizens for reasons that have never been honestly explained. And there was the strange detail that was largely passed over and unexplained of the involvement in the Karr matter by the Department of Homeland Security.

To further interject celebrity into the national discourse Paramount Pictures also cut ties with the much maligned although once adored Tom Cruise although it still didn’t knock John Mark Karr out of the news although it did further relegate war coverage to the back burner again. Maybe people are pissed off over Tom and Katie’s selfish desire to their privacy over the mysterious baby Suri. Maybe it’s because Cruise practices the much maligned and mocked religion of Scientology which arguably is no more of a cult than Tim LaHaye style Rapture Christianity is, or was it when he dared to defile the temple of Oprah last year or to suggest that feeding Ritalin to children therefore creating lifetime pharmaceutical industry consumers as well as nurturing a generation of doped up little zombies wasn’t exactly the best idea. Who the fuck knows and really quite honestly, who the fuck really cares? It’s only more tabloid trash that distracts from the real problems of the country and the world and provides another hit of e-crack.

The blowback resulting from the failure of the mainstream media to present an accurate and relevant storyline on issues that truly affect issues of true importance is only now becoming evident. The emergence of an unbelievably dumbed-down populace – or at least the majority of it that chooses to live vicariously through television, sports and celebrity – are primarily the ones who are responsible for the crimes of the despotic Bush regime, the growing losses in the relentless but undeclared class warfare that the wealthy have been waging for the last quarter century and the ruinous war in Iraq and god forbid, the glorious appearing of the upcoming one in Iran that the neocons and the Rapture ready lumpen Republicans so heartily advocate and live for.

When the media corporations began to focus on profit at the expense of news and more frequently cave in to right-wing activist pressure to present public relations spin under the guise of providing balance and the reduction of information to product they failed and failed spectacularly in providing the free press that is instrumental to a functional democracy. Video News Releases (VNRs) and public relations are present in nearly every newscast, the sound byte has replaced reporting and stories are condensed into smaller chunks for our chronically attention deficit affected citizens. CNN headline news in my personal opinion was one of the worst of all possible things to have emerged from the cable-satellite boom of the 80s as it boiled down complex stories into bits easily processed by the brains of Americans who could then feel informed and free up time for more important pursuits like working, being good consumers and being entertained. Hey it was the American way, leave the heavy lifting to our benevolent and well-intentioned corporations and public servants.

Providing product selling ‘infotainment’, manufacturing news and providing diversions are now the primary function of the mainstream media, a modern day form of bread and circuses that will serve to distract, divide and conquer the masses and enable the looters and hegemons to go about conducting business as usual. If there was any one event that would provide the metaphoric final nail in the coffin or the jumping of the shark it is arguably the elevation of ‘America’s Sweetheart’ Katie Couric to fill the seat once occupied by truly dedicated and legendary newsmen the likes of Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. The ascendance of the fluffy and unthreatening Couric and the imminent race to the bottom once the other three major networks inevitably look to follow the ‘visionary’ actions of CBS in overhauling their evening newscasts to more resemble their morning infotainment shows does not bode well for any who hope for a resurgence in real journalism that informs the public and holds power accountable. Those days are rapidly receding into the rearview mirror as America progresses along the highway to hell that is to be our destiny unless a mass awakening occurs and occurs soon.

The dumbing-down of the population with sound bytes and McNews makes us a joke throughout the western world. Has anybody ever taken the time to watch or listen to the BBC? My God the depth of actual news coverage outside fortress USA is mind blowing in comparison to the crap that passes for news here. Other than miniscule snippets of spin delivered by bobble heads as well as the constant flow of lurid sex offender tales, child abductions, weird ‘news’, fantastic pet feats, animal attacks and celebrity gossip that isn’t real news at all our media is a disgrace. Our networks routinely broadcast in the guise of ‘news’ nothing but tabloid fare so foul and cheesy that to say that it more fittingly belongs in grocery store checkout stand racks is a disservice to the National Enquirer, National Star and World Weekly News. Even these publications have some small degree of redeeming social value or merit mainly as parody and satire to those who are on to their jokes or are avidly into following astrology and let’s face it, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile as the Enquirer did in striking gold with their Rush Limbaugh drug peddling scoop.

When the rapacious pursuit of profits trumps the duty as serving as guardians of the public trust the institution itself has lost any legitimacy that it once had. The fear of offending the wrong people and subjecting sponsors to economic terrorism in the form of boycotts (the zealots of the ‘Christian’ right are masters at this tactic) drives coverage away from important and provocative issues like war, rumors of war, the uninsured, the collapsing housing market, global warming, the destruction of the domestic manufacturing sector and the cancer of corruption that eats away at our political system and selling ad spots keeps profits healthy and the stockholders satisfied while maintaining the stupor of the electorate.

Advertising functions on the maxim of being able to reach the largest possible amount of potential purchasers for any given product or service that is being hawked either through print ads in the nation’s newspapers or in commercials on the electronic crackpipe. In order for this to happen the programming in the given medium must be specifically targeted towards the individuals who would be most likely to be tuned in at the time that a commercial, VNR or product placement insertion is aired. Given that the majority of the public in current post 9/11, cable television saturated America are to be kind, not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer then it is only logical that programming content must be of a nature that they are able to understand or would otherwise attract them.

Therefore you have at least some reason for the general dumbness of television content, it is the classic bell shaped curve and much to the misfortune of all non-idiots, the vast majority of Americans fall into that extremely large pregnant portion of the graph that represents the dumbed down mentality that is so prevalent throughout the land. Therefore programming must be directed at ignorant, easily amused doofuses with the attention spans of gnats and the cognitive abilities of a retarded turnips because that is where the money is at! And that is what it is all about when it comes to advertising and keeping those stock values high. Combine this pursuit of advertising dollars with a secretive and repressive government with an agenda and there you have it: 2006=1984+22.

The problem of media consolidation made possible by deregulation as well as an increased rightward drift into an incredibly narrow minded and short sighted focus on laissez faire neo-liberal economic policies of the mythical ‘free market’ which is in actuality only free to the extent that the bigger fish are able to freely feast on the little fish who are in increasing danger of becoming. The ultimate result of deregulated and unaccountable markets are monopolies of the sort that would not be possible with the presence of an informed and active public. Therefore it is essential for those conditions to cease to exist. It’s not necessary to completely eliminate an educated populace only to make it increasingly difficult to stay informed.

This has led to not only the ascendancy of the infotainment industry but also to the near complete elimination of any sort of real investigative journalism that would offend advertisers and politicians who write favorable legislation to perpetuate the ongoing media power grab as news organizations are forced to cut back on actual journalists in favor of the charlatans needed to transform legitimate operations into brothels of the bogus. The great 1976 movie Network was absolutely stunning in it’s visionary ability to predict the future of news and television and I would strongly recommend that everybody see this, it is truly a masterpiece! Don’t bother to look for it on television though, it is far too uncomfortably close to the truth to merit taking a risk that viewers might be able to break through their immersion in the electronic fantasyland in order to bother to take their brains out of the dusty old box in the cranial attic in order to jump start the critical thought processes that have been abandoned.

Rabid attack shows such as CNN’s Crossfire that was more about allowing demagogues like Pat Buchanan to launch into anti-liberal diatribes against his overmatched counterparts and eventually the shows of shock jocks like Morton Downey were pioneering offerings that fed simmering public rage and slowly began to transform news into freak shows and caustic, think tank distilled opinion into supposed ‘news’. In examining today’s media culture an integral part was played by the right-wingers in ensuring that their daily talking points would be disseminated over and over again, it was classic Eddie Bernays who incidentally was a huge influence on Joseph Goebbels. The witches brew of toxic invective, right wing spin and tabloid television is what the majority of Americans now have come to believe is real news.

The roaring nineties were the decade when infotainment and sensationalism finally ascended to a place above serious and honest reporting minus the accompanying spin, the post cable/satellite explosion and the MTV generation gave way to celebrity and scandal, outright yellow journalism and an array of competing tabloid television magazine shows the likes of Hard Copy, A Current Affair and let us not forget the great contribution to modern ‘journalism’ Inside Edition which served as a primary national vehicle for one of today’s loudest and most bellicose propagandists Bill O’Reilly who has the dubious distinction of quite possibly being the only man in America more full of bullshit and self righteous pomposity than even George W. Bush himself and dare I say an even bigger horse’s ass if that is possible.

The culture of celebrity reigned and there is no better example than the unbelievable orgy of live coverage that was broadcast of the police pursuit of the infamous white Ford Bronco containing alleged murderer O.J. Simpson as it wound through Los Angeles and cheering mobs lined the route. A culture of celebrity powerful enough to cut into the coverage of game five of the NBA finals provoking announcer Bob Costas to remark in disgust that the Simpson orgy of adulation was “not just tragic but now surreal.”, a very fitting statement that could also serve as a testament to the state of America itself as things began to slip away nearly six and one half years prior to the even more tragic and surreal Republican one party government that exists today.

Of course the O.J. Simpson saga and mass media feeding frenzy was not a matter of serendipity for the tabloid television culture, it had been years in the making before the former pro football hero and marketing crossover became an accused double murderer. Before the O.J. phenomenon there was Amy Fisher, the ‘Long Island Lolita’ who shot the wife of her sleazy white trash lover Joey Buttafuoco in 1992. Don’t forget Loreena Bobbitt who cut off a piece of her abusive husband John’s penis in 1993. Then there was the attack orchestrated on ice skater Nancy Kerrigan by the scheming of envious competitor Tonya Harding who orchestrated an attack on Kerrigan with the intent of disabling her during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. And of course thereafter between the glove that didn’t fit and the cigar that did there was the poor little brutally murdered child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey which brings us back full circle.

The agenda driven attacks on every aspect of the life of Bill Clinton until he finally was buried under an avalanche of sex scandals gave us the thoroughly repugnant Kenneth Starr and his relentlessly driven inquisition that was dripping with salacious details and graphic sex talk. Monica media masturbation was the rage, surpassing even the O.J. Simpson spectacle of schlock and became the magnum opus of nineties tabloid cheese media. The Starr Report was a best seller and that mysterious stain on the blue dress became the greatest matter of national import of that most decadent of decades.

A legitimate argument could even be made that ‘Monicagate’ paralyzed Clinton’s ability to function as president and as a result made the country more vulnerable. After all, when Clinton ordered a missile strike on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, a Sudanese factory in an attempt to take out Osama Bin Laden the now war mongering House of Representatives was apoplectic, chanting “No War For Monica” and damning the foreign attack with the vigor of a bunch of dope smoking Berkeley pinkos and the media swarmed like coffin flies. Had Clinton not had to worry about the incredibly trumped up impeachment spectacle then he may have been able to actually bag Bin Laden and therefore potentially prevent 9-11 and the rise of the imperial regime of Bush-Cheney. But we’ll never know will we?

The talking heads who deliver the ‘news’ on cable channels soon were transformed into eye candy as well, attractive young women with big hair, nice tits, vacant expressions and most importantly the ability to read from a teleprompter. Yet another damning example of our shameful national dumbness is that according to reports the percentage of Americans who actually bother to read newspapers is down at about 11 percent (and I would be willing that at least half of them only read the funnies or the box scores) and the freefall in circulation continues in the land of cheap entertainment forcing whatever newspapers haven’t been swallowed by conglomerates to cut staffing and to rely more on wire stories and corporate public relations puff pieces.

Who is to blame? Look in the mirror. With the bits and pieces of the crumbling and rotten to core system that are beginning to slowly float to the surface regarding the abundance of government scandals involving bribery, spying, abuse of power, market manipulation, petro-politics and war our naïve whimsical and unrealistic view of America as blessed by God and exceptional over all others could be shaken to its roots were any serious investigative journalism in the corporate media to exist.

We are being amused and distracted to death!

Gott Mit Uns

 

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” 

-Friedrich Nietzsche

The rise to power of the radical religious right in America has been a terrifying spectacle to watch. Most of the population goes about their daily lives completely oblivious to the growing malignancy of this dangerous tumor on the body of a secular democratic society that incrementally finds itself becoming less of both. This is the first of a series of posts over the coming months that I am going to use to take a good hard look at what is potentially the greatest threat that this country has ever faced and has the potential to metastasize into something malignantly evil that will change the lives of Americans forever in a way that is only too evident when reviewing history as well as theocratic regimes that are in existence elsewhere in the world today.

There is something fundamentally wrong on the most basic of levels with a society in which much of the raw political power rests within a fanatical segment that rejects any reality other than the one that they have been misled and indoctrinated into being truth. These people believe that the Earth is only in the neighborhood of 4,000 years old despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise, they believe that the Grand Canyon was created by the same flood in which Noah once cruised around for forty days and forty nights in a giant wooden ark filled with animals (can you imagine the stench?) and that they will one day be lifted out of their clothes and transported en masse to the heavens where they will sit at the right hand of God himself to watch the rest us be tortured, torn to bits and to suffer unspeakable acts of violence along with plagues and pestilence.

It is a very dangerous group that is already so completely delusional (check the DSM IV) that they find it easy to swallow lies that grow bigger and more brazen as the false prophets who call their cadence rise to national prominence, positions of influence and celebrity in their own right. They believe that God chose George W. Bush to rule and to fight a holy crusade against Islamofascism (what a bogus word but the linguists in the GOP had to appropriate the word fascism for themselves lest a connection be made to their own means of true fascist rule and the leaders and thinkers who champion it) and that the founders of the United States had every intention of creating a government more along the ideological underpinnings of Cotton Mather rather than of Thomas Jefferson.

They also are led to believe in the nefarious threat of the dreaded ‘homosexual agenda’ and that gay marriage is such a grave threat to the very existence to their family and their institutions that they can always be counted on to march to the polls and to vote against their own self interests as well as the best interests of their very children, often preferring to send them to bed cold and hungry so that total war can be waged on science, tolerance, liberty and the progressive society that they so vehemently deplore. It is unfortunate that their children will likely never understand the damage that is being done to them by their parents who are under the sway of the snake handlers for they will have been reduced to borderline retarded drones who advocate fascism and renounce science while having to view history through a kaleidoscope due to the regressive home schooling that they have received due to the movement’s pathological hatred and shunning of public education.

This is exactly why they will go hook, line and sinker for the poison bait of the latest and greatest Joseph Goebbels style television extravaganza called Darwin’s Deadly Legacy that makes the astounding claim that it was Darwin’s theory of evolution that served as the inspiration for the demonic monster Adolph Hitler and effectively served as the blueprint for the Holocaust. This turgid, fallacious piece of folderol was delivered from on high to the masses over the weekend (and also available on DVD or book for any of the semi-literate miscreants who have been weaned on Timothy LaHaye’s pulp fiction trash) via the Coral Ridge Ministries high-tech electronic pulpit featuring frothing Christian Reconstruction honcho and resident lunatic Dr. James Kennedy who has long been training and mobilizing his forces for an overthrow of the existing United States government to install a theocratic new order.

To promote this leap of revisionist history and logic and to apply it to further eroding faith in the real Christ Kennedy has even retained the services of that Godless whore herself: Ann Coulter. She who is the object of depraved sexual fantasies to millions of frustrated white male losers despite looking more like a haggard, horse-faced, crack whore (at least to me) will appear in Darwin’s Deadly Legacy which is being heavily promoted in the sinister realms of the alternative phony Christian media where she can denounce liberals until her head begins to spin in circles and produce torrents of pea soup green colored vomit. Kennedy, his evil ministry and their Republican servants in the Rove propaganda shop are definitely hoping for the crossover appeal that the appearance of the demented harlot of hatred will generate.

And while I am on the subject of screeching harpies it was at the same viper filled snakepit of the Coral Ridge Ministries’ high profile Reclaiming America for Christ orgy of intolerance where none other than the American Jezebel Katherine Harris attempted to drum up support for her flagging Senate campaign back before it became such an embarassing lost cause unless she can engineer another stolen election come November. Now she has gone totally off the deep end in her shameful pandering to the knuckle dragging regressives as is evident in her recent comments that the separation of church and state was “a lie”. Religion, much like patriotism is certainly the last refuge of scoundrels and Harris upping of her demagoguery in an attempt to pander to the same segment of rubber fetus waving, foam decalogue totin’, rapture watching parasites who leeched onto Terri Schiavo reeks of desperation as much as it reeks of the pungeant scent of the horseshit in the stables on the animal deck of Noah’s Ark.

The theocrats have had a colossal bug up their asses ever since the junk science of Intelligent Design was exposed as the Trojan Horse for good old fashioned fire and brimstone style creationism that it truly is. These bible thumping, Jesus juicing yahoos never have been able to get over that day eight decades and change ago when Clarence Darrow made a mockery out of William Jennings Bryan in a Tennessee court of law and exposed the superstitions of simpletons as so much drivel. The great columnist H.L. Mencken wrote extensively on the trial and I would strongly recommend his classic stories on this historic period that are available at this website. The spineless media would never allow for a Mencken today or for that matter any outspoken individualist voice that would dare speak out against a vicious bloc of activist consumers whose massive, well financed organization and their bloodthirsty relish in bringing down the economic terrorism of targeted boycotts and individualized harassment allow it to continue to conspire largely in secrecy.

“What was behind that consuming hatred? At first I thought that it was mere evangelical passion. Evangelical Christianity, as everybody knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love” 

 

And that is a great albeit very short analysis by a die hard skeptic, a journalistic giant and a man whose eloquent cynicism is sadly missing in these darkest of all times. And what truly is behind that all consuming hatred that burns as incandescently hot as a funeral pyre for post-Enlightenment society?

Present day fundamentalist political movement based ‘Christianity’ is a virulent strain of social virus, determined to infect every organ within the body politic and the power brokers who are behind this movement have made an astonishing amount of progress in laying out and executing a very well planned and financed agenda. It is an agenda that has been enormously successful due to their ability to work with other groups with seemingly conflicting interests that are able to assist the theocrats in bringing about their ultimate goals:

Military Industrial Complex War Profiteers: The ability to bring about the war that is necessary to kick off Armageddon as well as the crusade to ‘Christianize’ the globe while waging endless against Muslims and Islam. It keeps arms shipments flowing and defense industry stocks up (not to mention corrupt members of Congress in office) and the trading of money for blood is as institutionalized and entrenched as it has ever been. The GWOT makes for very, very good business.

The Israeli Lobby: Christian Zionists need partners in their quest to unify the Holy Land in preparation for the return of Christ, never mind that in order to fulfill their fever dream prophecy that the Jews will have to either convert or die. This symbiotic relationship is tolerated and even encouraged by many hard core Israelis and their domestic agents who wish to gain sufficient regional dominance and ‘Liebensraum’ by using American as a Golem with which to smite Iran and Syria.

The Neo Cons: For their staunch support of the state of Israel over the best interests of the USA as well as their ability to influence foreign policy to fulfill the goals of crusade and war. CUFI (Christians United For Israel) and the crazed Pastor John Hagee who is the author of ‘The Jerusalem Countdown’ and who is outspoken in his intent to work to bring about a conflagration that will jump start the apocalypse has been a very useful tool for the neocons and hard core Christian Zionists as he organizes and leads the cheering for what would be a catastrophic escalation of violence in an attack on Iran.

Wall Street Uber-Capitalists: Despite all of the rhetoric of Christ being king even God himself knows that in this society that the true king is cash. The ability of the megachurches to mobilize voters keeps politicians friendly to corporatism in office.

The Wealthy Elite: As with the looters of Wall Street these people benefit financially from having a savage, Social Darwinist, tax slashing beast of a government in power. Many may have hold their nose while supporting the theocrats but as the saying goes “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and the enemy is progressive government and liberal society. To the elites who tolerate these people so as to personally profit I offer one word of advice and that is simply beware. Beware because when you stoke the fires of hatred in others and nurture their ignorance so as to gain you are only empowering those who one day will become powerful enough to turn on you as well. The ignorance of the red state evangelical movement only ensures one thing, that on the day that your common enemy is neutralized and YOU become the next enemy there will be no reasoning with the hordes that will be laying siege to your gated communities.

Through mutually beneficial alliances the ideologues have been able to build a coalition that has effectively seized control of the American political system. The rise in power of the theocrats has coincided with the spread of neo-liberal, Social Darwinist ‘free-market’ capitalism that exploits the most poverty-stricken countries of the third world, the same impoverished and downtrodden masses that Christ himself championed. The ascension to the pinnacle of power of the American ayatollahs and their armies of converts has not surprisingly coincided with the rise of the empire of satellite television and the ability to mass disseminate propaganda in their alleged mission to spread the message of Christ. This wonder working power has instead been used to not only transform the message to be more capitalist friendly by eliminating the emphasis of all of that bothersome stuff about ministering to the poor and downtrodden but to co-opt Jesus as a brand name for theocratic moneychangers. You see, in post-Reagan, Bushist America they are the ones who have run his longhaired liberal ass out of the temple.

The electronic pulpit and the application of sophisticated business marketing techniques to Christianity has allowed the cash spigot to be opened with millions of television viewers being implored to give and give generously to the of the temples of the modern Sadducees and Pharisees who were all to willing to at least partly forsake the gospels of Christ for the gospels of the money changers like the Wall Street Journal, the Gideon’s trumpet of the ruinous globalist economics that are so devastating to the hopes of billions but as the Roman Catholic church has repeatedly proven through history any attrocity no matter how heinous or cruel can be justified if it is rubber stamped by the almighty.

The Republican party has been particularly successful in using religion to its advantage by gene splicing it with southern hostility, fear and outright bigotry. There are those who actually have been led to believe that George W. Bush is God’s man in the White House and the votes of thousands of blacks that put him in office magically disappeared through a divine miracle. The RNC and Karl Rove have so effictively used this to ensure one party rule for the long term future that irreversible damage to the system is imminent. The monster that the Rove led subliminal message machine has midwifed is growing stronger and straining against it’s bonds, all of the phony and carefully constructed speeches laced with religious references that would escape the cognitive abilities of the unindoctrinated have hit home with their intended audience and they are growing stronger by the day. With all monsters they also become more venomous, militant and willing to do whatever it takes to prepare for the rapture and kingdom come, the biggest lie they say that the devil ever told is that he didn’t exist but that whopper is topped by the lie that our domestic ‘Christian’ extremism is any different than the militant Islamic extremism that resulted in 9/11 and never ending war.

Here is a quote from the highly influential Republican radical cleric Pat Robertson:

“It is interesting, that termites don’t build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into (our) institutions (today) are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have…. The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation.”

 

If you believe that this is nothing other than bombastic rhetoric on my part then I would highly suggest that you take a good look at their ideology as espoused in writings, radio programs and rains down from the pulpits their flag-draped megachurches and the filth that emanates from the Coral Ridge Ministries is a damned good place to start. Just as ‘Intelligent Design’ has lost some degree of credence of late this very dangerous piece of propaganda is nothing more but the same re launching of a failed product with new packaging and slick public relations. This is the proven formula in a land of mindless consumerism ruled by cheesemongers and mean spirited fanatics.

Creationism wrapped in Nazism should be a perfect bookend to the anti-Semitism that is so often pinned on Iran as justification for the escalation of the war and the rallying of support for a deluge of fire from the skies above Tehran to kick off the Armageddon that is so lusted and hungered for by so many.

Start Taxing the Goat Barn Megachurches

 

“Don’t stay away from church because there are so many hypocrites. There’s always room for one more.” 

-Arthur Adams

A California church was recently ordered to turn over records to the IRS for an anti-war sermon delivered in 2004 which should evoke the very important question on whether the Bush administration is using the agency for Nixon style harassment of it’s critics. Just what in the hell kind of a down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, bizarre country do we live in where a sermon denouncing war and violence can have the church in which it was given in face the treat of losing tax exempt status for engaging in politics while the reactionary religious right flagrantly act as nothing more than a subsidiary of the Republican party and not only are not held to the same standards but are actually encouraged through the funneling of tax payer funded graft under the guise of the administion’s prized Faith Based Initiative programs.

As the biblical parable states, Jesus will divide his sheep from the goats amongst them, he also dispenses some very good wisdom about prayer:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say to you that they have their reward.”

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly”

That’s Matthew: 6, Verses 5; 6 – so go and look it up.

While I not a theologian, I do understand very clearly that the true message of Jesus Christ does not happen to include advocating for greed, bigotry, war, murdering brown skinned children or neglecting the poor which are all not coincidentally some of the traits of the mutant fundamentalist version of Christianity that is pimped by false prophets in three piece suits and a card in Karl Rove’s rolodex. Christ seemed to think that it was not necessary to be seen amongst others in order for the worship of the lord to be legitimate, in fact the verse that I referred to above states exactly the opposite.

But in America today it is obvious that those goats that brayeth the loudest have replaced the humble sheep in the grazing order, especially when it comes to feeding at the public trough and most specifically in the taxpayer subsidized ‘goat barns’ that are the huge mega-churches that are popping up along thy fruited plain nearly as rapidly as Wal Mart superstores.

Of course in order to get the money for one of these great and shiny temples where concerts and light shows extol the ‘virtues’ of God, capitalism, militarism and nationalism there as always is a quid pro quo. They must in return disseminate and perpetuate the message of Republican party propagandists in order to keep the flock focused on the true task at hand which is to attack phantom enemies like gays, judges and liberals while acting as a proxy army for corporatism and the agenda of the wealthy.

This brings to mind the following dialogue from the movie Pale Rider between Clint Eastwood’s ‘Preacher’ who champions the poor local miners and the corrupt town boss ‘LaHood’ (obviously a Republican) who is trying to screw them by initially trying to swindle them and then ultimately hiring his thugs to force them to leave their gold rich land so that he could bring in his strip mining operation.

LaHood: “It occurred to me it must be difficult for a man of faith to carry the message on an empty stomach, so to speak I thought why not invite this devout and humble man to preach in town? Why not let the town be his parish? In fact why not build him a brand-new church?”

Preacher: “I can see where a preacher’d be mighty tempted by and offer like that.”

LaHood: “Oh, indeed.”

Preacher: “Then he’d be thinking about getting himself a batch of new clothes..”

LaHood: “We’d have them tailor made”

Preacher: “Then he’d start thinking about those Sunday collections.”

LaHood: “Hell, in a town as rich as this one that preacher’d be a wealthy man.”

Preacher: “That’s why it wouldn’t work, can’t serve God and mammon both. Mammon being money”
 

America’s mega-church moguls have no such qualms over taking mammon, in fact the more mammon the more message that the GOP can expect from the grand temples that serve as political halls. Unlike Clint Eastwood’s humble preacher the pastors and preachers of the religious right and it’s affiliates perform astride stages in venues the size of small arenas to the accompaniment of light and special effects shows that would be the envy of a heavy metal rock band on a world tour. They adorn themselves with the finest in tailored finery and wallow like hogs in pools of taxpayer dollars funneled in by Bush’s programs. If more on the right had some consistency in their ideology they might come to call this for what it is: Christian Socialism.

This politicizing of the churches ends up driving the smaller houses of worship out of business due to their inability to compete with the extravaganzas presented by their competitors in the well-heeled and not coincidentally much whiter suburbs. The ones that suffer most are the residents of the inner cities and the poor whose lives depend on the organizing power and moral examples of the small churches that truly seek to perform humanitarian deeds in the name of the lord while preaching the real gospels of Christ and don’t demand their congregation to make calls or write letters to their congressmen threatening retaliation if they don’t discriminate against others or take stances that further contribute to the corrosive corruption and coarsening of our society.

Well, here’s a great idea to cut into massive national debt as well as to allow all who benefit from citizenship to have the great feeling of contributing their fair share: start taxing the churches. Not all churches of course but the `tax cheat’ false churches that serve as political organs of the Republican party need to be immediately stripped of their tax exempt status. By using their pulpits as a forum for polemics, making congregation lists available to party operatives, laundering money and waging war on the concept of the separation of church and state, therefore becoming political organizations and they should render unto Caesar that which is his or if we are to believe that we still live in a functional democracy more precisely ours. Tax breaks for biblical theme parks like the massive abomination called Holyland where according to a St. Pete Times story one can experience:

“A biblical theme park in Orlando where guests pay $30 admission to munch on “Goliath” burgers and explore reproductions of 2000-year-old tombs and temples could get a property tax exemption written into state law”

 

The owners of these all too common turnstiles to apostasy also need to be kicked off of the government dole, how hypocritical that the same moneychangers who seek to eliminate the hated welfare state sing a different hymn when the entitlements are being funneled into their pockets and not the pockets of the poorest and the most disadvantaged amongst us who Christ himself championed.

And I would like somebody to tell me just how biblically correct that chowing down on a fucking Goliath Burger is.

Rove’s Tingler

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave”

-Roy Batty 

One of my all time favorite horror movies is William Castle’s 1959 classic The Tingler starring the great Vincent Price. The Tingler is a large, ugly centipede like creature that lives inside a victim’s body as a parasite and grows larger as it is fed by fear, attaching itself to the spinal cord. The Tingler literally becomes stronger as the fear level is ratcheted up. The studio even had a promo gimmick where at the end of the flick when the creature is on the loose in a theatre that certain seats in the real theatre had electric devices implanted that would then activate for an additional scare value to moviegoers.

Karl Rove has his own Tingler and it’s name is 9/11, ready to be loosed upon the American subconscious at any time and on days like today with the breaking up of the latest and greatest alleged terrorist plot (and one day after the national release of Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center – what wonderful serendiptiy or was it just another convenient coincidence?) this time ten planes departing from Britain to blow up while traveling to various U.S. destinations. Whether legitimate or another phony, overhyped conspiracy designed to invoke fear like the Miami ‘Cornrow Qaeda’ and their ridiculous plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago the timing of this media fed monstrosity is suspect to say the least. According to an article on the website of the London Guardian Bush’s ‘poodle’ Tony Blair had reportedly informed our hallowed king of the coming crackdown on the plotters as early as Sunday. “Yo Blair”…Thanks for the assist….again.

The terrorists have obviously become more sophisticated since dipshit loser Richard Reid tried to light his shoes on fire and this time they were allegedly going to use a liquid explosive that was cleverly concealed in a sports drink bottle. Der Department of Homeland Security honcho that is the Boo Radley lookalike Michael Chertoff (the same guy who only a bit less than a year ago presided over the monumental fuckup in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which was briefly an American outrage until the new season of American Idol premiered) flew into action announcing our first ever national RED ALERT terror warning and babbling on incoherently that it was ‘Suggestive of an al-Qaida plot’ despite having at the time no official linkage from the Brits who did the actual police work. In Chertoff’s case this was just likely more of the same idiotic incompetence that has marked his tenure but it served the purpose of sending an alert to the Rove psychological SWAT team that immediately flew into action to work on pounding out the talking points that could once again elevate George W. Bush to stature of the man that stood on top of the rubble of the WTC with a bullhorn while the smell of rotting flesh hung in the New York City air mingling with the fetid musk of Rove’s own ambition.

Airports went into full panic mode. Any sane society would have used far more discretion in putting the out the news but in the empire that is Bushland they just threw the bloody chunks of meat into the feeding pit prior to dusk when full spectrum dominance of the news cycle for at least 24 hours and with any luck the entire weekend would be ensured. The renewed push for the latest re-launch of 9/11 would completely blow away any serious coverage of the civil war in Iraq, the Israeli murdering of Palestinian children with American bombs, the growing hissing sound coming from the housing bubble and the smackdown of DLC kingpin Joe Lieberman by the increasingly aggressive bloggers who are kicking the living fuck out of the MSM cocktail party pundits. Flights were cancelled, airports are jammed with stranded travelers and all liquids and gels are being confiscated from passengers. Note to Rush Limbaugh, you had better chuck that tube of KY Jelly into a wastebasket before passing through security if you plan on visiting the Dominican Republic again this week in order to have sex with poverty stricken third world persons forced into prostitution. Another ugly public incident may dethrone you from being the self- proclaimed champion of values with “talent on loan from God” that you would probably gladly swap for the ability to get an erection without the little blue pill.

The utterly worthless sacks of shit in Congress sought to redeem themselves for their most pathetic tenure during which only coming to the rescue of poor Terri Schiavo was a sufficient reason for them to move with any sense of urgency interrupted their vacations today to run for the nearest cameras in front of which they would issue their rhetoric and sanctimonious statements in well prepared sound bytes. They pandered and pontificated and waved the flag tarring each other as traitors or terrorist collaborators and thanking God and Karl Rove for the fortuitously timely change of subjects with the all out terrorism onslaught by the Republicans, the oligarchy and their state controlled media today as they sought to regain the initiative.

“Freedom is never free, and we must never be complacent in defending it,”

-Fat Denny Hastert

“We must be on alert so that our nation does not suffer another attack like 9/11.”

-Bill Frist -the Peckerwood Pimpernel

“should serve as the latest, most serious evidence that we are in a war against a brutal enemy that intends to attack us over and over again in the most indiscriminate way.”

-Joe Lieberman – Loser, AIPAC mouthpiece and Bush administration shill.

 

And of course Bush himself used the bully pulpit set up on the tarmac of a Green Bay airport to say:

”The American people need to know we live in a dangerous world, but our government will do everything we can to protect our people from those dangers”

Now call me a cynic but I just watched the movie V For Vendetta over the weekend and this is amazingly similar to the rhetoric of the fascist chancellor Adam Sutler as his repressive rule was beginning to crumble under the inconvenient truths that facilitate totalitarianism:

“I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want everyone to remember why they need us!”

Incidentally I hope that all free thinking Americans will see this movie now that it is on DVD, it’s a good sign that it was selling like hotcakes at my local Wal Mart last week.

We have come a long way since 9/11 and today is unequivocal proof of just how far so. Now nothing even has to fucking blow up in order to cause a mass panic, a sensationalist media spectacle and an opportunity for politicians and pundits alike to make hay. The pathetically timorous, fearful, sheeplike drones who watch far too much television revert to their basest primal instincts of cowering in abject horror, quivering and whimpering for protection from their strong daddy leader. The bewildered herd are no more capable of controlling their innermost dread than Pavlov’s dogs were able to keep from salivating when they heard their master’s bells.

Rove has this down to a science now and his fat ass is atop the bell tower pulling the cords with all of his might.

One more thing about ‘The Tingler’ the host could kill it by screaming and releasing the FEAR once and for all and therefore destroying the destructive parasitical creature.

So why do so many choose to remain silent in the face of duplicity and demagoguery while a tyrannical junta dismantles the very constitution that serves as a guarantor to their rights and freedoms?
Don’t fall victim to the propaganda and mindset of:

Remember, Remember the Eleventh of September

that will perpetuate itself throughout the land in the next three months as the immoral war criminals and their illicit regime desperately seek to retain their positions of power lest they face an accountability moment for their own negligence and complicity in the same terrorist acts which they so decry.

Fuck Newt and Other Ruminations

If you notice a foul and fetid stench in the air it is that of Newton McPherson Gingrich running off at the mouth again. First it was taking to the airwaves to pontificate on the coming of World War III and dispensing tips on how exactly the Bush administration and the neocon fascists could use Middle East unrest as a cudgel with which to bludgeon liberals and Democrats with for the coming elections.

Gingrich recently has been spouting off that the bloggers constitute an “insurgency”. Hey this isn’t entirely incorrect and in fact is rather complimentary coming from someone other than this little Machiavellian fruitbag with a worse hairpiece than fellow sexual degenerate Marv Albert. When an ideologue and FOX regular like Newton introduces language like that it is intention is to paint a Rovian picture of any dissenters as the same sort of ‘terrorists’ who are currently burning out the body count scoreboard in Baghdad. Here is the link to the post courtesy of the Progressive Daily Beacon.

As for Gingrich is an enduring wonder why this high priest in the cult of douchbaggery has any credibility whatsoever. After all isn’t this pompous piece of shit the same ‘man’ who once dumped his wife while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery? And wasn’t he actually engaged in a sexual affair with an intern of his own when he brought the wrath of the entire wicked theocratic right down upon Bill Clinton for his dalliances with chunky little Monica Lewinsky? I can easily imagine him getting a chubby while reading ‘The Starr Report’ and feeling envy that he couldn’t lick the cigar.

Newton certainly got his panties in a bunch after Clinton allegedly snubbed him on Air Force One on the way back from poor Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. So Newton threw a hissy fit and teamed up with grumpy old Bob Dole to shut down the government, and when that didn’t work he jumped onto the moral outrage wagon despite engaging in his own covert sexual operations with a woman young enough to be his daughter. I wonder, did he fantasize about sloppy seconds with Monica when he was fucking her? So, Newton couldn’t close the impeachment deal and was eventually replaced in a purge that cleared the path for the totalitarianism of Tom DeLay.

He went and wrote books on revisionist history, some horseshit about the South winning the Civil War. Good politics for a yankee charlatan from Pennsylvania who had so successfully fooled the rubes and peckerwoods in Georgia that he was one of them. Then Newt became a FOX regular and plotted his return while throwing in with the neocons and their doomsday fascist fever dreams and very recently joining forces with Hillary Rodham Clinton last year in a bizarre dance that brings to mind the mating dance of poisonous spiders.

Now he is tarring Americans who dare to use their First Amendment rights to protest against the decidedly anti-American wet dreams of global hegemony and empire and a more refined version of the Third Reich’s master plan for a thousand year reign.

Little Lord Fauntleroy wants to be a player again despite that fact that he has little more credibility than the average used car salesman.

All Over But the Spinning Now:

 

Today is the big day. The vastly over-hyped Connecticut primary where the so called future of the Democratic party is up for grabs. That slimy little GOP mole Joe Lieberman is on the ropes. The Daily Kos led bloggers have been screaming like banshees for blood and the entire corporate DLC establishment and their elitist bought media mounting a furious defense of Holy Joe. The results of this first referendum on the party elite’s support of the war, unchecked Israeli aggression and across the board capitulation and boot licking of George W. Bush will soon be coming in….and then what?

Would anybody truly be surprised if ‘The Wandering Jew’ pulls off a miraculous comeback? Does anybody really think that AIPAC is going to let their favorite son be hung out to dry by Gingrich’s ‘insurgents’? Maybe, we will see if it is close enough for more election chicanery.

If not expect Lieberman to run as an independent as promised instead of being the honorable statesman that he should be expected to be. A win by the nice, family friendly and well packaged product Ned Lamont today will likely only unleash a concerted offensive for the coming steel cage death match. Rove and the GOP are certainly interested parties in the outcome and the Swift Boat brigade is on high alert..

That much is evident by Lieberman’s claims that his campaign website was hacked. This should evoke memories from any informed blogger of Karl Rove’s alleged bugging of his own office back in his Texas days prior to latching onto GWB as a meal ticket.

Joe ain’t going down quietly and there is nothing like a threat against the existing order of the protectors of the oligarchy to ensure that all hands will be on deck if and when the time comes to beat down the peasants.

FOX has been running the following as polls in Connecticut begin to close:

“HAVE THE DEMOCRATS FORGOTTEN THE LESSONS OF 9/11.”

Hopefully they have finally learned that the cynics and amoral swine who are in power will continue to feed FEAR to the masses as long as there is a vacuum that is unfilled by those who are fearlessly willing to invoke the great words of a true democrat who is reviled by the Jacobins and neocon fascists who now control all three branches of our government and the state controlled media:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

-President Franklin D. Roosevelt