Op-Ed

A Rant For All Occasions:

I have to start by saying that I believe that a lot of right wing extreme “Rags” that try to pretend to be conservative are anything but and that one of the main secrets about them is that they sometimes get so irrationally paranoid in the things they say that there is a good chance ( in my opinion) that only folks who are just as inclined toward paranoia as they are provide the audience for them.

I have absolutely no issue with American Conservatism if it is legitimate and authentic traditional Conservatism – - the kind that one might associate with a Lincoln or a Reagan for example.  That kind of Conservatism was rational, ordered, sane, productive, inclusive, creative, unifying and knew how to govern.

But in the past few years, I am afraid that I have witnessed the rise of something else that calls itself “Conservative” and tries to hide under the guise of Republicanism, but because it seems to tend to drift so very far to the right as to be far removed from the thinking of the average American it has, in my estimation, taken on more of a mantle of some kind of extremist, insurrectionist, anarchist, revolutionist, anti-american, neo-christianized  religionist,  and occasionally even racist fascism than of either true conservatism or traditional Republicanism as we have known it since the 1800s.

I have noted an especially worrisome rise of this kind of phenomenon since the election of our first African-American president and the intensity seems to me to be increasing and getting louder and louder as time goes by. I think whoever embraces such a philosophy ( or should I call it an ideology) ( or should I call it “gross neglect of intellect )  has been on an anger kick – - in a real state of rage since the election of 2012 and now it seems to have evolved into some kind of national hysteria concerning the need to purchase guns in order to prepare for some paranoid version of some kind of imagined “take over” by the legitimate government of more and more individual freedoms and liberties until  the paranoids believe nothing will be left except an oppressive tyranny of some sort.

Whatever this imaginary beast really is, I think the far rightists who are pushing this manure are trying to paint Liberals, Progressives and Democrats as the villains while, all the time, it looks to me like it is the right wingers who are pushing to dismantle the established government, to revise the constitution, to rewrite History to suit themselves, and to undermine the economy and strip away all the social safety net programs and a host of other nightmares they seem to be endlessly hatching among themselves and peddling to whoever will lend an ear.

It hasn’t been too long since one seemingly incorrigible right-winger I know  informed me that one of the flawed character traits of us Liberals is our propensity ( our penchant if you will) for what he dubbed, “Name Calling.”  This purveyor of pusillanimous punditry seemed to me to be beside himself with shock and awe at the way  he  somehow perceives us Liberals as taking to the exercise of calling those who we do not agree with names.  I had to remind this genius that I have been called a lot of names by psuedo-conservatives myself – -  such names as “Communist Comrade, Nazi, Filthy Hippy Scum, Unwashed, Idiot, Homo – - you name it.  So I don’t know where some of these guys get off accusing Liberals of being the originators and progenitors of name calling.  But maybe that is beside the point.  Maybe all that does is illustrate what ignorance really might look like.  Remember the old childhood chide that went, “Takes One To Know One?”

I guess I might have gotten off the track a little here.  I was discussing some of the characteristics that I believe mark a whole lot of far right wing radical “rag” sites that  seem intent on peddling some kind of hatred against the president, the congress, Real Americans, American Traditions and maybe even America Herself.  (Some of them seem really intent on remaking this country into an image other than what it is already – — some of them seem to want to simply tear Her down and start all over again to build something that suits what I view as their own narrow-mindedness and which, I fear, would exclude one helluva a lot of people if they are allowed to have their way.

I have seen some extremist blather-rags that I believe to be hate mongering that seem obsessive about such notions as the president and/or all our elected officials are, somehow, by some strange yet undefined ways, actually nothing but frauds and imposters – - or sometimes even “criminals.”

Unless I am going absolutely bonkers, there has been more reference in these kinds of online publications to skin color and nationality and heritage of some of our primary elected leaders than almost anywhere else and sometimes it gets really down to what I consider to be sewer-worthy  raunchy and yet when confronted,  the authors of  some of this shit are quick to deny any hint of racist intent in their drivel.  It is gut wrenching sickening sometimes. But they appear to me to do it under cover of The First Amendment and I guess that makes it alright somehow from a technical standpoint ( in their way of looking at things )  even if I do not accept it as a worthy moral imperative.

Some of these  things that I consider to be hater-rags  seem to me to go to great lengths to catalogue what their authors evidently believe are endless lists of “crimes” perpetrated by the president, the congress, state legislators and even little village mayors sometimes – -  dreadful “crimes” against both Humanity as a whole and individuals as citizens or the constitution in particular and I wouldn’t have a problem with a lot of that either if it weren’t for the fact that some of these kinds of  propagandists  simply cannot seem to resist the temptation to saturate almost every post they put up with some kind of  offensive and politically incorrect stinking, accusing, attacking guile.

I am particularly amused by the childishness of some of their claims such as the one they seem to love to repeat and repeat that the Presidency of These United States was  - – “stolen” – - the last time around.

Forget, for a moment, that their own propaganda machine had convinced  many of  them beyond any reasonable  shadow of doubt that they would sweep that election in a landslide  and in their own heads there was no disputing the “fact” they would win and that they deserved to win and that was all there was to it.  They were so convinced of this implanted, manipulated and manufactured lie that they didn’t even take the time and trouble to prepare a concession speech in the event their dream scheme failed…. which it did actually!

So I guess in their dreams, there was something going on in the background – - – something underhanded on the part of the Liberals – -  and that their rightful glory was “stolen” from them.

I find it kind of amusing that some of them would think that way since the airwaves were rife with all their own little schemes to suppress the vote in ways that were supposed to give them unusual advantages at the polls.  But, you see, America saw through all the voter ID crap and beat them at their own game by standing for hours waiting to vote and by jumping through all the hoops that rightie could throw at them – - and still righties lost the election and went into hyperbolic shock or something and as far as I am concerned, hasn’t recovered even yet.

So now, I guess they might think they are going to “get even” by allowing the economy to tank again so they can blame Liberals and show up in the midst of another crisis they are even now in the midst of creating and show themselves to be saviors of the nation.

Horse Sh**t  is what I say about that!

If some of these insignificant little propaganda-pushing tabloid wannabes  I have been talking about weren’t so obviously paranoid, impulsive, obsessive, juvenile, childish and amateurish, I would say they would be a formidable force for gaining the high ground for their adoring hangers-on.

But their potential audience is usually reportedly  such a minority that I doubt if they are ever heard in very many places and the results of the last election certainly do not demonstrate their ascendancy to me in any way, shape nor fashion.

The statistics I have read tell me there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 million of this kind of thinker in The United States and that is in comparison to an overall population of more than 330 million and that puts both them and their ideological machinations in a definite miniscule minority.

Once in awhile you might hear one of these air heads make the claim that “America” is a Center-Right nation but if you look at it closely you may soon discover that when a lot of these folks speak of “America” or “Americans” they are speaking exclusively of their own and have been conditioned to automatically disregard anyone who does not think the way they do as somehow “The Other” or “Non-American” or something on this order. I first encountered this exclusionist perspective among them when I first heard the terms, “Red States and Blue States.”  Red States, you see, were being sold to them as “Real America” and everything else was somehow not considered among many of them as American at all.

I have a personal suspicion that is how some of them get their tongues tangled around their arithmetic sometimes.

I think that is why a lot of the things they believe are “Facts” are really skewed.-

Maybe they will get better as time goes on.

In the meantime, I find some of them to be entertaining diversions  - – and little else – - – and of course, good reason for me to remember to vote Democrat in 2014.

Posted by John at 12:58 PM

The illustration in the header of this blog post is used with very great gratitude to MARIO PIPERENI.