Sarah Palin, discussing the conflict between North and South Korea on Glenn Beck’s radio Show. Beck interjected, telling her, “South Korean.” (via officialssay)

And there are people out there who think she would be a great Commander-in-Chief…WTF

The Dumbest T-shirts at the Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” Rally

It was hard to decide which was the most asinine with so many in this collection of photos to choose from.

Writer Will Wilkinson deconstructs the notion of a cohesive American identity and American-ness that is consistently used by conservatives to brow beat and divide for socio-political gain:

…Americans certainly aren’t “a people” in the sense that the Japanese, the Kurds, or the Jews are a people. There is no American ethnicity; the U.S. is a resolutely multicultural (and multilingual) country. The usual idea is that American identity is creedal, or organized around a distinctively American set of ideas and values.

[…]

Take the belief in individual freedom. Some Americans have understood individual freedom as freedom from all non-defensive physical force and fraud. Some Americans have understood individual freedom as implying roughly equal voice in the democratic process, which straightforwardly requires the redistribution of resources and state regulation of spending on political speech. Some Americans have understood individual freedom as a condition of robust autonomy or self-governance that requires universal government-financed education and a minimum of material resources necessary to ensure that individuals are able actually to exercise their liberty and are not caged-in by necessity. And none of these are the conception of individual liberty that prevailed among the Founders. Anyway, there was heated disagreement among the Founders, too. Some them took the ideal of individual freedom to be consistent with chattel slavery while others correctly found human bondage obviously at odds with liberty. Some defended a robust conception of freedom of conscience while others wished to ban the practice of certain religions for freedom’s sake. And so on.

Not only do appeals to the values of the Founders fail to settle anything, many such appeals are simply ignorant of what this or that Founder actually believed.

[…]

[I]ts [sic] misguided to appeal to the American creed as the basis of the American identity of the American people. There are multiple conceptions of American creed equally consistent with American history. That’s why movements to glorify, elevate, and honor a particular conception of American identity based on a particular conception of the American creed necessarily marginalize equally or more historically plausible conceptions and therefore tend to suggest that citizens who favor those conceptions are less or even un-American. It seems pretty clear to me that this is exactly how the conservative politics of American identity works.

…I guess I don’t think it’s entirely preposterous for Americans to see themselves as a people. But any conception of the American creed sufficiently general to encompass most widespread American conceptions of individual freedom, equality, tolerance and so on is going to be so general that it will do very little to distinguish American identity from, say, Canadian identity. And that’s clearly not what Glenn Beck or the staff of National Review have in mind when they talk about American values, promote a conception of American identity, or encourage Americans to see themselves as a people…

The conservative conception of American identity is so selective and so specific that it tends to suggest to its adherents that many (maybe even most!) Americans aren’t real Americans, or are Americans who betray real American ideals. Birther and Muslim Obama memes crudely reify the logical upshot of the right’s fixation on its favored version of American identity. Most conservatives don’t need to believe that Obama is literally an un-American non-Christian. They’re just content to nod along with Glenn Beck when he implies, or outright asserts, that a guy who adheres to a mundane version of liberal politics slightly to the right of the typical “This American Life” fan is hell-bent on destroying the special Americaness of America.

(source)

Fools Gold: Inside the Glenn Beck Goldline Scheme

Also check out Mother Jones’ great cover story on this topic here.

[via:azspot]

In last week’s “The Queer Issue” of the Village Voice, writer Trenton Straube poses the question (in the subhead actually), “Is it possible that Republicans could prove to be a closer ally?” Before I read the article, I could see where this was heading, and it didn’t disappoint.

Step #1 - Point out the failings of the Democratic Party

An easy task really, since the last year hasn’t been kind for gay rights legislation in New York and New Jersey where Democratic-majority legislatures could not get same-sex marriage bills passed. Moreover, the Obama administration had been more rhetoric (read: hot air) with regards to their support to LGBT issues, especially with the volleying of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) repeal from executive to legislative and back to executive branches of government and the defense of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), which Straube notes, “the Department of Justice compared gay marriage to incest and boasted that denying gay nuptials helps conserve Social Security funds.”

Step #2 - Prop up high profile GOP support of gay marriage

Meghan McCain and former First Lady Laura Bush are good with gay nuptials, which is easier because they aren’t distracted by the electability of their positions, and Senator Scott Brown got voted in by a constituency that has already “settled” the issue in state of Massachusetts.

But most unsurprising and problematic aspect of the article is the gay myopic sense of social justice that makes such a consideration of switching to the GOP possible. Only if gays turn their backs on the poor, the educationally marginalized, immigrants, refugees, women and reproductive rights, the uninsured, the incarcerated, the differently-abled, the gender-queer, only when gays abandon the notion that it is the duty of the government to the ensure the rights of its citizens, to rectify inequality, to prevent the exploitation of the disenfranchised, only when gays prioritize the generation of wealth and the prerogatives of corporations over people, and only if gays become totally self-involved in our own access to hegemonic privileges could we entertain becoming Republicans. 

It is in this impoverished view of equality for all that a contemptible organization like the GOProud could co-sponsor the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this past February that hosted right wing luminaries/imbeciles/despicable human beings Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Dick Cheney, Michele Bachmann, and their teabagger and birther followers.

But if one’s definition of social justice can accommodate the likes of those mentioned above, then be my guest, s/he should join the GOP ranks. They just shouldn’t believe they are making a better difference.

The Tea Klan

“Didn’t you get the word? Glenn Beck on Faux News said this time not to wear our robes, carry placards or pack heat!”

And image that those outfits on the left aren’t even for the Fourth of July, but rather, everyday wear! “Patriotic” assbags.

[via:azspot:Bill Day]

Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America and Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, writes an eye-opening essay on the Christian Right’s veering toward fascism and indicts the Left for their failure to take seriously the political threat they pose, and the Democrats who have “refused to repeal the gross violations of international and domestic law codified by the Bush administration.” Subsequently:

This means that Christian fascists who achieve power will have the “legal” tools to spy on, arrest, deny habeas corpus to, and torture or assassinate American citizens-as does the Obama administration.

The Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of the country are no doubt their mouth pieces and instigators, and engagement is discourse is a futile endeavor, for “Ideological, theological and political debates are useless with the Christian right. It does not respond to a dialogue. It is impervious to rational thought and discussion.”

But it isn’t okay to let their willful ignorance and rage stew or brew. They are playing to win a political and cultural war.

Read Hedges’ full piece here.

(Art by Gary Martin: source)