The Antiwar Movement Needs A New Playbook

If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.


-Sun Tzu


To fuck your enemies you’ve first have got seduce your allies


-Saul Alinsky

Tired of having your faces rubbed in shit? The antiwar movement is spinning its wheels while being outflanked by the bipartisan, international war machine – a juggernaut with limitless financial resources, millions of shock troops, a corporate controlled pocket media and generations of successful propaganda already deeply imbedded within the national psyche. Despite repeated poll numbers showing the American public turning against Bush’s wars and the increasing pressure being applied to lawmakers up for reelection the current antiwar surge is doomed to failure because let’s face it, what has really changed? Much lip service is paid but the body count in Iraq mounts, our moral standing continues to deteriorate with the ever more frequently emerging accounts of the brutality of an occupying army, the nation heads towards bankruptcy and the neocons continue their instigation in order to escalate the conflagration by attacking Iran (or Pakistan for that matter if you listen to neocon ideologue and top media shill William Kristol) while the Armageddon choir shrieks in adulation and anticipation of their next mainline hit off of the Rapture crack pipe.

It is time for a reality check and a realization that in order to have any chance at fighting the authoritarianism of the militarist war machine the left-right paradigm and the my team vs. your team politics needs to be discarded for a movement that unites rather than divides, and one that is able to identify the true enemy which is the cancerous system itself – a system that has come to poison our national mind with the big lie that war itself is as American as apple pie. I don’t have the time to go into a rant on the longterm effects of the incessant barage of violent, pro war, nationalist propaganda that Americans are bombarded with from their earliest days of cognition through television, movies, video games and in a less technologically advanced time toy guns and miniature plastic soldiers but it is a good topic that I will address in the future, this post is about the ability of the antiwar movement to adapt to an increasingly hostile battlefield environment.

I recently read former Marine officer, UN weapons inspector and principled conservative Scott Ritter’s new book: Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement and I would strongly recommend that every American who is truly serious about saving this country take a look at what he has to say. I realize that many who read this post will not be down with it as Ritter recommends using military style tactics and the teachings of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz to in effect wage war against the war machine. This may fly in the face of certain aspects of modern liberalism but with the crisis rapidly worsening, our democracy sold to the highest bidder and the constitution in tatters it is now crunch time and dearly held principles need to be chucked in the name of the greater need which is that of survival and the only way that survival is possible is to take the battle right at the motherfuckers but more on the book in a little while.

With the complete betrayal of the Judas Democrats on bringing about an end to Bush’s war or to otherwise throw up adequate roadblocks towards an escalation into Iran that culminated in antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan’s arrest in the office of John Conyers ( a sad betrayal by a longtime fighter, a former lion turned lamb who is now in his old age kept on a short leash by party ‘leadership’) it is well past time for the antiwar movement to look for other alternatives to ending this madness before the entire world is aflame and Der Homeland is turned into a repressive police state due to Richard B. Cheney and his ultra slick legal eagle David Addington’s barrage of Executive Orders, the latest one arming the unitary executive/dictator/fuehrer with the power to seize property and to confiscate the assets of war protestors who dare to question the king’s divine providence to pillage, rape and plunder for the sake of expanding the empire. The complicity of the Democrats in the actions of the Bushreich to dismantle constitutional democracy are louder than bombs and exemplified by their silence and in their failure to halt the junta have ensured that their own fingerprints are on the dagger that has been planted in our backs.

In recently denouncing the Democrats as the collection of war addicts, abject failures, duplicitous backstabbers, bald-faced liars and pathological cheats that they truly are Sheehan has dealt a staggering blow to the DLC wing of the war party’s cloak of legitimacy and it is triggering an exposure and closing of ranks for the establishment with denunciations by fake left poseurs like the bastard snake Zuniga of the internet disinformation clearing house and vacuum cleaner operation Daily Kos (Sheehan was banned from posting there but hey, so were hundreds if not thousands of others who weren’t party hacks including myself twice) and a made into a mockery among the so-called anti-war progressives but it will soon reverberate, spread and with any luck at all go viral so that a chain reaction will be set off where a new awareness of the Democratic party complicity in this fucking bullshit war, the destruction of the middle class and the corruption of the system will deal a hopefully mortal blow to the entire rotten establishment. There is already a growing Hillary resistance movement on the ‘left’ along with a conservative backlash against the neocon invasion of the party snatchers that see the stars aligning for that rarest of things – common ground among Americans who have been pitted against each other over absolute bullshit wedge issues for far too long now and who are only now beginning to realize that they have been played for fools.

When it became obvious that the Democratic party as it exists today is more concerned with aligning itself with a foreign interest (AIPAC) operating within our borders than in doing what is right for America the deal was sealed. When you come right down to it the six-year reign of terror in Bush’s war on America wouldn’t have been possible. First they rolled over on the war by giving the emperor a blank check and they have been rolling over ever since. Nothing more exemplifies the unwillingness of the Judas Democrats than their shameless ability to pander to the lowest common denominators and ensure that they will never have to address any real issues than their appearances in fucking ridiculous farces like the recent faith forum and the upcoming gay rights forum which serve only to further cement and reinforce the right wing frames that have been so damaging to this country since the seizure of power by the Bushreich.

Note that the Pelosi-Reid-Hoyer triad has done absolutely fucking nothing to roll back the USA PATRIOT act, restore habeas corpus, ban torture, close the gulags, stop the illegal spying on American citizens or take a stand against the creeping fascism and are now using the trumped up “war on terror” for their own means. The establishment Dems are thoroughly corrupt, rotten to the core and have already accepted their thirty pieces of silver to shank the American people in the back in the name of perpetual war for perpetual peace. The failure of the Democrats should be a wake up call to any and all who had some faith, however naïve that the existing system can work as intended to maintain a system of checks and balances as envisioned by the founding fathers because it is all just too far gone. The pitter patter of the little cat feet that fascism creeps in on is getting more audible and the transformation of America into the Homeland becomes more obvious by the day. As Milton Meyer famously wrote in his study of Nazi Germany They Thought They Were Free:

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it – please try to believe me – unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, “regretted,” that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these “little measures” that no “patriotic German” could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

The Democrats have even less interest in bringing about a halt to the wars of empire than they do in impeaching the criminals in the White House and the Pentagon who have done so much damage to America over the past six terrible years. AIPAC tool and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was the latest to unequivocally state that impeachment was “off the table” during a recent appearance on the syndicated Ed Schultz Show meaning that the jackass party are now co-equals with their more thuggish and overtly fascist counterparts in ensuring that the war machine keeps running at all costs and to hell with Sheehan or the law because they sense that they will inherit the keys to the kingdom along with the dictatorial powers that the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil have imbued the executive branch with very, very soon. Never mind that impeachment and removal is an absolute necessity to allow such a transfer of power to occur despite the false façade of legitimacy in the national dog and pony shows that our elections have become. In their short-sightedness and their lust for power the Democratic establishment perilously and repeatedly fails to understand exactly what they are dealing with.

What if the current junta has no intention of leaving and is only buying the necessary time until the next 9/11 takes place and the full provisions of NSPD-51 are implemented? Bush’s martial law master plan is so secretive, so onerous and so terrifying that Oregon Congressman and Homeland Security Committee member Peter DeFazio was denied the chance to examine it in a secure “bubbleroom” leaving him to say “Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right”. In their raw lust for power, their insatiable greed and their pathological desire to control the money spigots of the spoils system the DLC Democrats are making a grave strategic blunder that could be the final dagger in the back of the American people, the demise of the republic itself and the last nail in the coffin holding the constitution. They are allowing the neocon hydra to fully regenerate and to bring down the entire fucking house to ensure that their crazed global agenda is fulfilled. Israel has the Samson Option and the Bushreich has NSPD-51, the bastard love child of the authoritarian fascist military industrial complex and the next generation of Colonel Oliver North’s REX 84.

Conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts who has become one of the most outspoken critics of the fascist strain of Republicanism nails it dead on in his most recent column entitled My Wake-up Call: Watch For Another 9/11-WMD Experience where which he predicts such an event:

The Bush administration is preparing us for more terrorist attacks. The latest intelligence report says that Al Qaeda has regrouped, rebuilt, and has the ability to come after us again. “Al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here,” says the report.

Security operatives, such as Michael Chertoff, and various instruments of administration propaganda have warned that we will be attacked before next year’s election. Chertoff is not a person who wants to be known as Chicken Little for telling us that the sky is falling.

Bush has the Republican Party in such a mess that it cannot survive without another 9/11. Whether authentic or orchestrated, an attack will activate Bush’s new executive orders, which create a dictatorial police state in event of “national emergency.” [See here. ]

And most chillingly –

The Democrats’ strategy of doing nothing except making sure Bush gets his way will produce the landslide that they expect.

However, this assumes that Cheney, Rove, and their neoconservative allies have lost their cunning and their manipulative skills. It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous assumption for Democrats and the American people to make.

Once the US experiences new attacks, Bush will be vindicated. His voice will be confident as he speaks to the nation:

“My administration knew that there would be more attacks from these terrorists who hate us and our way of life and are determined to destroy every one of us. If only more of you had believed me and supported my war on terror these new attacks would not have happened. Our security efforts were impaired by the Democrats’ determined attempts to surrender to the terrorists by forcing our withdrawal from Iraq and by civil libertarian assaults on our necessary security measures. If only more Americans had trusted their government, this would not have happened.”

There is no such thing as politics as usual in post 9/11 Amerika and time is running out. The longer that the Democrats continue to fuck around and the antiwar movement is stuck in neutral the more emboldened that the cornered animals that are the neocon coup plotters will become and our worst fears will become reality as the final pieces of the fascist master plan lock into place with another attack. With a lawless administration and several influential Republicans now on record as eagerly awaiting the next ‘terrorist’ attack and Israeli mole Joe Lieberman uniting with the equally maniacal Reverend John Hagee to openly lead the cheers at the recent Christians United For Israel freak show for hitting Iran and therefore trigger Bush’s martial law enabling acts it is imperative that Americans begin to unite behind a rallying cause against the empire and it’s wars. This is where Scott Ritter’s little playbook for fighting back comes in and in the author’s own words:

This book is not for everyone. There will be those among the antiwar movement who will, out of misguided sense of principle, be repulsed by the notion of their movement embracing something as noxious as the Art of War.

In short, the antiwar movement has come face-to-face with the reality that in the ongoing war of ideologies that is being waged in America today, their cause is not just losing, but in fact ins on the verge of complete collapse.

It is high time for the antiwar movement to take a collective look in the mirror, and be honest about what they see: a poorly organized, chaotic, and indeed often anarchic conglomeration of egos, pet projects, and idealism that barely constitutes a “movement,” let alone a winning cause. I have yet to observe an antiwar demonstration that has a focus on antiwar. It often seemed that every left-wing cause took advantage of the event to promote it’s own particular agenda, so that “No War In Iraq” shared the stage with the environment, ecology, animal rights, pro-choice and numerous other causes that not only diluted the antiwar message that was supposed to be sent, but also guaranteed that the demonstration itself would be seen as something hijacked by the left, inclusive of only progressive ideologues, and exclusive of the vast majority of moderate (and even conservative) Americans who might have wanted to share the stage with their fellow Americans from the left when it comes to opposing war with Iraq (or even Iran), but do not want to be associated with any other theme.

The antiwar movement, first and foremost, needs to develop a laser-like focus on being nothing more or less than antiwar.

On a common cause – upholding the constitution.

It is now time to begin to look at things from a different perspective, to reach out to those who at one time were on the other side but who now have common cause in defeating a shared enemy. The fact that the one great rallying cause that should unite Americans is purely one of class and economic fairness has been essentially nullified by the concerted effort by the establishment that stretched from what Harry Truman referred to as the “slave labor” bill in the Taft-Hartley Act to the organized pogroms of McCarthyism to the Powell Memorandum to Reagan’s war against the middle class is other than the Israeli issue the one place that Congress will absolutely not go so as to not jeopardize the rigged game is at this point not feasible any efforts to attack the system as it is will have to be on those that utilize the anti-war, reinstate the constitution ideals as those that will be the most effective in halting the looting spree and ending the lopsided class war.

While not explicitly stating it Ritter references elements that the mainstream of America may have problems with when accepting a progressive agenda. He uses what he calls “the firefighter standard” and as he states “if you are trying to market something to mainstream America, if you can sell it to firefighters, whose profession is ranked number one in terms of jobs that garner the respect of the general public, then you can sell it to the majority of Americans as well”. In correctly identifying the major problem that plagues the current antiwar movement “While never shy when it comes to criticizing politicians who fail to do their jobs, firefighters bristle when the criticism crosses the line into what they feel to be an attack on their own values, which tend to revolve around love of country and community.” Ritter also assails the bullshit that is the impenetrable force field of the extreme right “Guns, God, and Gays” and while acknowledging its effectiveness as a rallying cry for the worst and most intolerant elements of society he offers up what is potentially the silver bullet to use against this ungodly monstrosity – the Constitution (which is included in a appendix along with the United Nations Charter) because what could possibly be more patriotic and American than honoring it.

Rtter is absolutely right on this point and my moment of clarity occurred when a local antiwar activism group who I frequently interact with called to recruit me to hold up signs at a gay rights parade where our local version of the reverend Fred Phelps had organized a flock of the usual sort of phony ‘Christian’ haters to harass and harangue the participants. While I personally find the scapegoating of gays to be reprehensible and on a par with the same sort of hate mongering that allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to power, the inconvenient truth is that much of the American mainstream is still at best wary of gay issues and often revolted by such parades. The local news media outlets always pick the most over the top characters to feature on television and in the morning papers in an effort to deliberately offend as many people as possible and one of our Tampa Bay area nespapers, the St. Petersburg Times took the dark art of yellow journalism to a new low with their dispicably biased coverage of transexual Largo City Commissioner Steve Stanton and the ensuing witch hunt that culminated with his firing (the local rag also inflamed readers with their Mother’s Day front page story on Susan Stanton – his new identity. The other problem with such parades is that as they face increasing persecution from the theocratic dead-enders and hateful lemmings is that the participants who are the most exhibitionist justifiably choose to dress to the nines and really put on a show to rub the faces of the haters in it all but this ultimately results in providing fuel for the fire the fascist right, it is like the saying cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. There are still reverberations that Susan Stanton was the Grand Marshall of our local parade and the hateful lemmings are keening at the top of their lungs while ignoring more important issues like the poor local bastards coming back from Iraq with their limbs blown off or in body bags. Such is life in a rotting empire.

The lamentable fact that the antiwar movement has so often chosen to take their focus off of what should be their sole defining reason for existence – halting the forces that have created the empire and will be increasingly upping the repressive tactics necessary to ensure that it continues to exist and to bring death to brown people while turning ‘the homeland’ into a police state confirms Ritter’s ideas on organizing against them and why the progressives have failed. I realize that this is anathema to those liberals who have come to represent the left now that the real left, organized labor has been eradicated but it is what it is and a new game plan is badly needed. And there must be a movement that arises without the insurmountable burdens of the twin millstones: abortion and gay rights and is able to counter the mantra of “Guns, God and Gays”.

And the new left (since labor was shanked in the back and tossed away by the DLC) is too pacifist, let’s face it the majority of the people involved abhor conflict, do not own guns and are so idealistic about ensuring that their own preferences are included in the anti-war movement that they have absolutely no chance whatsoever in fighting the entrenched culture of war, greed and death that have brought this country to the brink of destruction from within. I couldn’t possibly put it more succinctly than Mr. Ritter does:

Bear in mind that in conflict you are in almost all occasions confronting an opponent who is determined to win as you should be. This opponent is looking for any sign of weakness on your part, and will be certain to exploit this weakness with as much decisiveness and ferocity that can be brought to bear. If you are not prepared to confront such an opponent, then don’t enter the field of battle. Conflict is not for the faint of heart. In conflict you must be prepared to knock your opponent down, and then, instead of offering a helping hand, hold your opponent down with the heel of your foot while you plunge a bayonet into his or her heart. You can be assured that your opponent would do the same to you.

This golden advice is absolutely when it comes to first slowing and then with any luck and a lot of hard work, eradicating the warmongering neocon cabal along with anti-American special interest groups that support it and the most extreme elements of the Christian right and without using economic inequality as a base with organized labor as footsoldiers then other methods need to be taken into consideration in forming that broad based coalition against the blood barters, looters, fascists, neocons, theocrats and imperialists. Again I refer to Ritter:

The American progressive movement has not always been this devoid of leadership and structure. One only need to study the life and achievements of Saul Alinsky, a Chicago-based former criminologist who revolutionized the grassroots movements of the 1950s and 1960s into genuine political movements possessing real political power.

And…

Simply put, if the antiwar/peace and justice movement can attract more people to its cause than their opponents can to theirs, then the antiwar/peace and justice movement will emerge victorious. Therefore, a governing principle when waging peace is to creadt an ideological foundation that is capable of appealing to the broadest possible segment of a given democratic society.

If his advice is taken then what will emerge will be a diverse coalition of interests who now finally understand that the system as it exists is run by global criminals who have no loyalty to America and actively have attacked everything that was great about her while usurping our democracy and undermining our freedoms and economic prowess. Wall Street looters and industrialists have always hated America because there was a system of governance here that afforded rights to all people and not only those with money. It has been a long time coming and the time to act is yesterday.

Essentially I am fucking sick of all of the fake left all-inclusive bullshit, not that these people don’t have valid reasons but they are an impediment to the mass movement that is so sorely needed to drive these rapacious, fascist motherfuckers from power. I challenge anybody who disagrees with this to put aside their ego, swallow their pride – as Bob Dylan once sang “it’s not poison” and grab a ride on the riverboat because it’s time for some fucking unity and these bullshit wedge issues and pet projects have got to go because let’s face it – America has been under assault for far too long and the old girl is ready to buckle without a renewed focus on a unified attack on the bastards who have put us in this position.

Hey, I’m not asking you to love those who you have differences with but this is a far bigger threat and it demands unity – we can bicker about all of the other bullshit after we can unite against the common enemy that is the globalist corporate hostile takeover and the neocon militarist push for world domination. They work hand in hand, a bastard fuck of an unholy alliance and make no mistake, IF we are smart enough to unite it is going to take every goddamned bit of our efforts to beat it back – or at least slow it enough so that saner elements can use the political process to marginalize it until it can be eradicated once and for all. Our very survival depends upon it.

The Bushreich Battle Of The Bulge

All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.

-Adolf Hitler

 In late 1944, battered and on the brink of defeat due to the failed delusions of global domination by an extremist right-wing megalomaniac and his one party state, the German regime in a desperate attempt to regain their mojo and turn the tables on the advancing American armies threw everything but the Berchtesgaden kitchen sink into a massive counteroffensive famously known as the Battle Of The Bulge. It is no slight coincidence that the similarities between the playbooks of both Rove era Republicans and that certain twentieth century European regime of the mention of which is verboten in many areas of the liberal and progressive blogosphere but they continue to manifest themselves in the tactics of this rogue regime that has hijacked America and is once again reverting to their bread and butter strategy of going back to the future. The stench of fetid sauerkraut and charred flesh will be wafting in on the early September breezes emanating from the think tank kitchens where the bitches brew of anti-American warmongering propaganda is concocted. The Pentagon has even set up yet another of their psyops chop shops to pimp the war and keep the killing machine in overdrive.

A relentless propaganda campaign of extreme right-wing nationalism swaddled in the stars and stripes, yet another ripping of the scab from the festering wound of Vietnam for political advantage, exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 and going to the ‘we cold have won but the liberals and media stabbed us in the back’ card will soon be jacking up the pro-war fervor of an ignorant and pathologically angry base of dead enders as the Bush-Cheney junta seeks to prolong the escalation of his war of civilizations and bludgeon all opposition into submission no matter what the consequences are. From all indications there is going to be a huge Republican neofascist counter attack against the thoroughly lame Democrats, war critics and civil libertarians that will be so savage and vicious that it will be a wonder if there aren’t mass pogroms with blood running in the streets by the time that it is all over and the motherfucker brigades have been mobilized. Soon the screaming heads on FOX and CNN will be braying accusations of treason at the top of their diseased fucking lungs and the pocket media will provide cover for the warmongers. Longtime establishment shill George Will has already started with his recent Washington Post column that goes so far as to actually invoke Weimar entitled What September Won’t Settle:

Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable.

After the First World War, politics in Germany’s new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power.

And

When Gen. David Petraeus delivers his report on the war, his Washington audience will include two militant factions. Perhaps nothing he can responsibly say will sway either, so September will reinforce animosities.

One faction — essentially, congressional Democrats — is heavily invested in the belief, fervently held by the party’s base of donors and activists, that prolonging U.S. involvement can have no benefit commensurate with the costs. The war, this faction says, is lost because even its repeatedly and radically revised objective — a stable society under a tolerable regime — is beyond America’s military capacity and nation-building competence, and it is politically impossible given the limits of American patience.

In comparing the America that awaits the bogus Patraeus Report written by White House flacks with Weimar Germany Will also sees the all too obvious analogy – only this time with history as a guideline as to what happens when an angry, rogue element is allowed to wave the bloody flag to marginalize, dehumanize and ultimately destroy those who have betrayed the glory of the state and the “November Criminals” while building a totalitarian death machine that was doomed to self destruct but not before claiming millions of victims it is essential that the brownshirts be put down like the rabid dogs that they are.

Something is in the air right now, that much is for sure and this is not the same country that it was six years ago that is evident from the crazed screed of neocon operative Michael Savage wanna be cocksucker named Stu Bykofsky that proclaimed that America NEEDED another 9/11 to among other things “quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America’s righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail”. What sort of a rancid and filthy goddamned place has this become when it is acceptable to openly advocate for the murders of thousands of innocents for the sake of rank political expedience for entrenched criminal sacks of shit and their miserably failed war that never should have been started in the fucking first place?

Extremist red state fascist sleeper cells are now being placed on full alert, treasonous fifth columnist apostate scum the likes of Pastor John Hagee along with that duplicitously rotten little dual loyalist bastard Joe Lieberman are out rousing the rabble of the Christian Zionist warmongers for yet more war against the enemies of God’s chosen land of Israel. Baring his fleshy butt cheeks as if to say “kiss my ass” at the contemptuous Vichy Democrats on his way out of Washington Karl Rove is now free to run amok. Now even veteran rat fucker Ari Fleischer is back with yet another of those swift boat style Orwellian named front groups called this one unbelievably named Freedom’s Watch that is going to launch a $15 million dollar blitzkrieg of slander, sewage and hate mongering just in time for that holiest of all holies -September 11th our great day of national fucking glory when the reset button was hit on the great experiment called democracy. I don’t make this shit up although it seems like such daredevil freefall leaps of faith down the rabbit hole just can’t fucking be real.

The Freedom’s Watch website not surprisingly features lots of American iconography straight out of Frank Luntz’s playbook with flying flags, a glowering eagle and enough ‘patriotic’ fascist style horseshit to ensure wavering red staters and raptureheads that the Republicans are REAL Americans not those limp wristed, terrorist symp, faggot worshipping, defeatist enemies of America whose logo is a freaking donkey for God’s sake! The Fleischer spots are among some of the most shameless and dishonest moments in the history of American marketing. They are so thoroughly vile in nature that the only comparison that I can come up with was the ploy from the movie Used Cars where one of the lot lizards had Toby the dog play dead under a vehicle that was being test driven to lay a colossal guilt trip on the sucker inside to buy the lemon. The trick worked, the rube signed the dotted line and when the tailgate fell off on the way off of the lot Toby was wagging his little tail as the commission was booked. These damned Republicans remind me of the same sort of disreputable cheapjack swindlers who manned the Fuchs Brothers’ dealerships with the sole intention to prey on any moron who was credulous enough to be easily gypped and fleeced. They prey on weakness and have a sixth sense that gives them an uncanny, almost supernatural ability to smell the blood of the vulnerable upon which they feed just like the worst that nature has to offer like feral garbage rats, ravenous wolves and degenerate pederasts. The Democrats are on their heels now and the scent of desperation is in the air.

None of this of course would be happening were it not for the doublecross of voters by the new Democratic Congress who given power last November with a crystal clear mandate to ring down the curtain once and for all on the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil’s bloody damned wars – both on Iraq and on civil liberties in ‘the Homeland’ a fucking stinking term of totalitarian language that is the antithesis to everything that America is supposed to stand for. Not once did the disgusting excuse for leadership exemplified by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer and the too smart consultants already triangulating while running for 2008 draw a serious line on ending the madness and the death.

No, scratch that – not once did the gutless, contemptible charlatans in the Democratic Congress take a stand on ANYTHING! Impeachment was immediately taken off of the table, a smirky criminal Attorney General still is the nation’s top law enforcement official, illegal spying on American citizens has now been codified AGAIN, habeas corpus is still gone, this is still a torture state, the Fairness Doctrine has not been restored, corporate greedheads still have carte blanche to screw the middle class whenever they damned will please which is every day while the Wall Street looters are allowed to suckle at the government teat whenever their schemes unravel, millions are still uninsured, subpoenas are openly mocked and ignored, the same neofascist Supreme Court justices that were green-lighted by a Senate too timid to use the filibuster (which I might add is now loved by Republicans) to essentially overturn Brown v. Board of Education and I just don’t have enough time to keep listing the failures of this most disappointing and cowardly of Congresses. The spin can go on until Hell itself freezes over and the fingers can be pointed at the “Blue Dogs” but the fault lies with a party leadership itself that continues to piss on America and then claim that it’s raining.

It is no wonder that their popularity rating is only slightly higher than colorectal cancer and they are about to be torn to shreds by a vile hydra that has regenerated itself because the timorous jackasses couldn’t close the deal and drive a stake through it’s heart when it was on the ropes.

The Sweltering Summer Of Fear

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America’s righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

-Stu Bykofsky

Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and jackbooted government thugs kicking down your door after your name turns up on the hit list after the illegal spying and data mining just given a seal of approval by the Vichy Dems, this is the vision of the grand experiment of the dismantling of democracy in the post-9/11 through the looking glass world of The Homeland. It is now mid-August, the sweltering heat and dread of the summer of fear combine to choke off reason and logic as the grand house of cards that is the stock market teeters precariously and those strange words of Rick Santorum that “a lot of things are going to happen” resonate with each and every terror warning like the latest threatening a reported plot that there is chatter about a pending dirty bomb attack in New York City.

Dick Cheney and the neocon junta are also ratcheting up the rhetoric and pushing their plans for the looming attack on Iran that will take the bastard conflagration that is the wet dream of madmen global and turn the United States into pariah of Nazi like proportions. Hitting Iran would be like Hitler invading Poland and you can bet that any justification such as a false flag attack will be just as steeped in utter bullshit as the Gleiwitz incident was back in 1939. The PNAC boys and Clean Breakers have obviously studied Operation Himmler and how in your face would it be if the next ‘terrorist’ attack to take place within the borders of Der Heimat were to occur on August 31st? Then again, who would care because in a nation of mindless drones and hateful lemmings it is incomprehensible that anything resembling recall of history extends past the latest bust involving Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or the most recent winner of the American Idol.

Many Republicans are already on record longing for another terrorist attack with the same sort of uncontrollable lust that drives degenerate pederasts, the same sort of bad wiring in the head that drugs just can’t cure and nothing short of removal from civilized society (or this mortal coil itself for that matter) can remedy. The latest example of this sort of mass dementia is exemplified in the recent column of one Stu Bykofsky entitled and I shit you not –“To save America, we need another 9/11”. Sweet Fucking Jesus, what has happened to us as a country when these sick, demented ghouls can wrap themselves in old glory and openly cheer for the deaths of thousands of innocent people for the sake of political expediency and some twisted version of nationalism that more fittingly belongs in the Weimar Republic than in the sad mockery of the remnants of what was once the land of the free and the home of the brave.

One of the most often misquoted and abused statements in the brutal word wars that pass for political discourse these days is that of Carl Schurz who in 1872 said:

“My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right”

Of course in the attention deficit disorder afflicted land of suckers that is the post 9/11 wasteland that is mid-2007 America it is much more familiar in its shortened form-“My Country, Right or Wrong” and is regularly bandied about for political purposes. This has become a standard denunciation for the extremist right in its diluted form and serves the same purpose as the standard “Love it Or Leave It”. Either one is absolutely guaranteed to get the backs of ‘patriots’ up and the red, white and blue blood flowing for another round of rousing demagoguery. If the nationalist ranting of our beleaguered national fascist party in this latest round of bunting draped vitriol is any indication the Republicans won’t be satisfied until there are brutally violent pogroms being conducted and the blood of liberals and gays is flowing in the streets.

There is something very dark locked away in the American psyche that makes for fertile territory for sick fascist fucks like Bykofsky seeking to catch that good ole 9/11 style lightning in a bottle for a renewal of the foaming at the mouth, dissent quashing, authoritarian tyranny that ruled the land in the direct aftermath of that day of infamy now nearly six years past. Those were the good old days when rallies were held to destroy Dixie Chicks CD’s and every home was festooned with American flags (many made in China) that were the requisite talisman to prevent the owners from having visited upon them a terrible pox of ‘unpatriotic’, it was as necessary as the blood of the lamb on doorposts in biblical times to keep the angel of death at bay. There has always been a considerable segment of the population susceptible to the siren song of authoritarianism, a good study on this is John Dean’s outstanding book Conservatives Without Conscience” which examines the mutant strain of virulent ‘conservatism’ that exists today. From the days when Father Charles Coughlin railed against the New Deal to the heir to his throne of hatred Rush Limbaugh who has the benefit of high technology and a king hell infrastructure to back him the need for scapegoats and a return to days of yore have hooked those that I refer to very easily.

A childhood friend who I will call ‘Rocky’ fell under the spell of the grand poobah of white populist propaganda years ago. The last times that I talked to him was immediately after the news of his hero’s taste for Vicodin and Oxycontin had broken and Rocky this with a line of crap along the lines that at “any given time that at least half of the population was high on something or the other”. He of course became quite angry when I told him that thrice divorced, racist, drugged out hypocrites who hold others to higher standards by proclaiming that they are morally superior deserve exactly what they get. Then again Rocky never really did get it. He always was dumber than a bucket of shit and to borrow a line from Matt Taibbi was “a total zero, a loser and 200-odd pounds of the world’s purest pussy repellent” although in Rocky’s case it was far closer to 300.

‘Rocky’ always had a low sense of self esteem as well as a wide yellow streak bordering on neocon chickenshit and had an irrational fear of dogs. When we were going around door to door soliciting donations for whatever charitable cause we were tasked with doing by our school (which we did quite often as kids) he could be confronted by a toy poodle and would practically shit in his pants out of pure primal fear, he acted as though it were the crazed, rabid monster canine ‘Cujo’ himself bearing down on him with a blood scent. It was a good thing that he had the fear though because it made for good exercise both for myself and the little pudgeball who would often make us walk blocks out of our way so as to avoid any yards where there were barking dogs.

After about thirty years of cowardice and shame ‘Rocky’ found Rush in much the same manner that some diehard losers turn their lives around by finding Jesus. It was as though he became possessed by an evil spirit because practically overnight he was transformed into a blowhard, ditto-head bully, parroting Limbaugh in going off on anti-liberal, Clinton bashing diatribes and visiting the gathering places that were then known as ‘Rush Rooms’ that were areas set aside in local dining and drinking establishments where fans of the great one with borrowed talent from the heavens could gather and network while his radio show was played every day to the cheers of the aspiring beer hall putschers. As it is with other conscripts in ditto head angry army, my buddy was a mass of contradictions, a bigot of immense proportions both in girth and flawed ideology, you see he became one of those angry white man without a clue as to the true reason for their anger but the big fat bastard who was of Hispanic descent really wasn’t white at all.

In retrospect my old buddy was a latent dittohead from his earliest days. He once tried to coax me into participating in a mutual jack-off session back when we were in our early teens one night when I was sleeping over at his house which was something that I did often due to the fact that my parents were going through a very ugly divorce and it was a refuge from their fighting. So there you have the latent homosexual tendencies that drive many of those angry Alpha males into outwardly projected self-loathing and ripe for the picking for the high and mighty Limbaughs and lesser stooges like Bykofskys of the world. I know that his parents who are devout Catholics would be absolutely horrified at this revelation so hopefully they will never read this blog. They are really very nice people who still send me a Christmas card every year and I certainly wouldn’t ever want to give them any idea that their son may in fact be a repressed closet queen who may have been far more qualified for the priesthood than they ever would have otherwise imagined. Given the mass appeal of Limbaugh it is an absolute certainty that there are millions out there just like ‘Rocky’ who are all too easily ensnared by their tentacles.

Author Kevin Phillips is a longtime conservative whose most recent book American Theocracy is a must read as it offers an excellent analysis of the triple threat that radical religion, foreign oil and massive debt pose to our nation’s future. This is his follow-up to the equally excellent American Dynasty that stripped away the veneer of respectability and shined a light into the foul den of iniquity that is the House of Bush and the family ability to discard that pesky morality which far too often serves as an impediment to the accumulation of wealth and power. Phillips wrote another book back in 1982 that accurately and prophetically forecast many of the contributing factors to today’s poisonous political environment.

Post Conservative America was bold and daring in the examination of the caustic effects of the triumphal ascendancy of Ronald Reagan as the heir to Barry Goldwater style conservatism and made the comparison between the U.S. in the 1980’s and the Weimar Republic of Germany that preceded the rise to power of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. Phillips noted that there were certain similarities in the legacy of a nation reeling from the effects of a “lost war, diminished faith in institutions, the gap between an elite ‘cabaret culture’ and the beliefs of the more traditional masses”. The combination of these as well as the Reagan political machine’s reliance on the seductive siren song of nostalgia that fed off of a longing for a better time that although itself a myth was widely accepted due to the fantasy world of television. For years there were shows and movies that presented a distorted version of white picket fenced, small town Americana that was overly simplistic and totally lacking in the portrayal of the complexities and contradictions of life itself in regards to human history in general and our own revisionist American history in particular. Phillips theorized that such mass misconceptions as well as their cynical exploitation by amoral political operatives could potentially result in an “apple-pie authoritarianism” in our society.

Phillips stated that such fantasy and a growing influence of the south in the political arena could result in a country in which:

“Corporatist policies would manage the economy more than is being done today, mobilizing a U.S.A. Inc. to cope with France Inc. or Japan Inc. The morality of the majority would be upheld and enforced, though with politically convenient lapses; “The Star-Spangled Banner” would wave with greater frequency and over many more parades; increased surveillance would crack down on urban outbreaks and extreme political dissidents”.

Sound familiar? I find it strange that some of the biggest defenders of American liberties are disenchanted principled conservatives like John Dean, Kevin Phillips, Vic Gold and the spot on Paul Craig Roberts among others. In Post Conservative America the author also addresses the foul aftertaste of Vietnam that has lingered in the mouths of so many whose bitterness at the first lost war in American history would remain so firmly lodged in their exceptionalist craws and be embodied as huge chips on their shoulders that the propagandists could exploit to the maximum value when it came to promoting the ultra-right movement’s agenda. Phillips very accurately predicted not only the increasing radicalism of the religious right (which is covered in depth in American Theocracy) and the backlash against the perceived excesses of the 1960s but he also warned of the open wounds left by the lost war in Vietnam. These wounds have lingered, never being able to completely heal due to their value to certain elements of the political realm who relish not only tearing away the scabs but in rubbing salt into them for good measure as well as added impact. He warned of revisionism in re-fighting this war, a devastating blow to the national psyche and never a political party to continue to exploit divisive tactics like the infamous Southern Strategy the Reagan administration wasted no time in capitalizing on simmering resentment when the ‘Gipper’ himself stated in a speech shortly after taking office:

“Several years [ago], we brought home a group of American fighting men who obeyed their country’s call and fought as bravely and well as any Americans in our history. They came home without a victory not because they had been defeated but because they had been denied permission to win”

The war was then re-fought at cinemas with vengeful fantasies like Rambo II, Chuck Norris’ Missing In Action series, Uncommon Valor and a number of lesser films all featuring the same theme…winning it this time! Vietnam era resentment is still alive and well, ready to be sprung like a bouncing betty from the subconscious whenever the Republican party needs to tap into it. And when our loss in Iraq is firmly established in history then Karl Rove and his minions will use the exact same tactics to blame the loss on the clueless and cowardly Democrats who can only be counted on to roll over repeatedly while Americans are stripped of their civil liberties and a dictatorial police state becomes more deeply entrenched.

It has already started, don’t take my word for it though. Just look around.

The summer of fear is entering the dog days now and the scent of blood is dangerously close to wafting in on the breeze much to the delight of the apple pie authoritarians and dangerous demagogues who are coiled and ready to strike whenever the next ‘terrorist’ attack provides them with the opportunity that they have been slavering for.

KOSFEST and The ‘New Rush’

Chicago (IL) – During the Kosapalooza lovefest the great one himself stood atop the dais, it was as though the savior himself was ascending the mount, the fingers of his apostles went flying in unison to their laptop keyboards, the noise was overwhelming, like that of the clacking mandibles of an advancing army of dung beetles. This was Markos Moulitsas Zuniga’s coming out party, on Friday morning he achieved crossover appeal from notorious mockingbird Howard Kurtz’ Media Notes column in the Washington Post to E.J. Dionne Jr.’s latest piece The Rise Of Kos where he was essentially proclaimed to be the ‘new Rush Limbaugh’. While I certainly would not be pleased to be compared to a racist, misogynist, drug addled, thrice divorced pig who can’t get a hard on without pharmaceutical assistance and whose sex tourist soirees of vile debauchery through the fleshpots and brothels of the Dominican Republic hardly make him a champion of ‘values’ I am sure that Zuniga is cackling with glee all the way to the bank and enjoying his moment in the spotlight as the Dems make their pilgrimage to kiss his ring. I do however give the devil his due for planting a gigantic bug up the ass of the state sponsored neocon FOX network’s chief fascist blowhard Bill O’Reilly.

While the normal tactics over at ‘Orange’ are very much like the cutting of microphones (locking of accounts), petty demagogy (troll ratings) and appeal to the same type of sycophantic retrograde morons (kossacks) that are utilized on The O’Reilly Factor the point is well made that Kos and his slithering minions are exactly the sort of squadrons of angry winged monkeys that have long been lacking as a counter to the Freepers, Dittoheads and other bullies and frustrated thumb sucking dipshits on the extreme right, as Dionne puts it:

Daily Kos is often described as liberal, but it is, more than anything, partisan. Its core assumption is that ideological conservatives made the Republican Party their vehicle and rallied in lock step against Democrats. The party of FDR and JFK needed to find the same discipline. The key litmus tests for Kos and his many allies in the blogosphere involve not long lists of issues developed by the American Civil Liberties Union or the AFL-CIO, but loyalty in standing up against Bush and doing what’s necessary to build a Democratic majority.

And just as Limbaugh aroused passionate opposition on the left, so has Kos become the object of conservative rage. In the lead-up to Moulitsas’s Chicago gathering, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, a right-wing showman who knows a threat when he sees one, has gone after Kos. “There’s no question that the most vile stuff imaginable is posted on this hate site and others like it,” O’Reilly said Tuesday.

O’Reilly is irate that the leading Democratic presidential candidates are showing up this weekend. “The far left wants a quasi-socialistic economy and a one-world foreign policy, where national security decisions are made only with the approval of other countries,” O’Reilly fumed. “So that’s the soup the Democratic presidential candidates will be dining on when they show up at the Kos convention.”

I’m not in the habit of giving advice to Bill O’Reilly, but there’s always a first time: Liberal rage at Rush Limbaugh not only was useless, but it actually strengthened his credibility with the right. (I speak from experience.) Bill, I bet Markos loves what you’re doing.

Personally, I dislike the use of obscenity on the Web, and many online posts are way too nasty. But the right wing, suddenly so concerned with the niceties of political discourse, did not worry much about what its militants said about Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry. Limbaugh even blamed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on a president who had been out of office for eight months. I’m still waiting for his apology.

I have my own documented history of problems with Zuniga and Daily Kos, many are personal and the others are because I detest electoral politics, censorship sucking up to candidates to curry favoritism at the expense of ideology or a unifying mission to take back this country from the war pigs, Social Darwinists and Rapture freaks who have taken it hostage but as the saying goes, nothing unites like a common enemy and I would encourage everybody to take some shots of their own at that loudmouthed prick O’Reilly as well as the rest of the Republican noise machine moonbats to take their raving, anti-American asses down a peg or three. It’s time for total war against the fifth columnist filth that has polluted the airwaves in this country for far too long with their Gestapo tactics and uncanny ability to rouse the rabble.

Dionne put it pretty well that Zuniga and his masses of adoring asses have actually “started to beat Limbaugh and O’Reilly at their own game” which should be good news for all enemies of the Bushreich whether they are down with DK or not. So be sure and drop by O’Reilly’s boards, or Clownhall or anyplace else where the angry armies of reich-wing mental masturbators congregate and feel free to be real trolls. The bastards are finally getting a taste of their own medicine and the pressure tactics on sponsors have been working. Home Depot reportedly will no longer be advertising during The O’Reilly Factor as a result of a deluge of protests, now is not the time for mercy or to hold back as the initial defenses have been breached and it’s time to storm the beaches. We sure as hell can’t count on the quisling Democrats to do anything other than cave in to his majesty Bush and the illegal wars for empire and against America undertaken by those who employ O’Reilly, Limbaugh and the rest of their ilk. The goose stepping morons of the reich wing noise machine are now scared shitless which is one thing that they have in common with the feckless Pelosi-Hoyer-Reid triad in this most worthless and pathetic of cowardly Congresses that will forever bear the scarlet letter of shame in American history for their quisling refusal to stand up to bullies with glass jaws.