Having watched the replays of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring America” rally, let’s start with what we didn’t see. Glenn didn’t bring his chalkboard to the rally this time. He didn’t bring up his conspiracy theories and left his Malia and Sasha impressions back on his radio show. The tea-partiers in the audience played along and left their signs home for the most part, so we didn’t get to see pictures of President Obama with a Hitler mustache. After all, with the amount of publicity this rally generated, Glenn had to keep his act clean.

So what did we see? Glenn Beck has seen religion. That’s nothing new, but he put a lot of emphasis on it in this rally; the subject brought him to tears (I know, shocking.) There was the usual flag-waving and adulation of the military. Also, there were heaping helpings of stories and quotes from the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and other historical figures.

But the thing I noticed the most, which gets the hair standing up on the back of my neck, and should be getting yours standing up as well, was the heavy dose of palingenetic rhetoric.  Follow me to find out why…

So what is palingenesis?

While Sarah Palin may be using palingenetic rhetoric, the term actually has nothing to do with her.

Palingenesis is a Greek term that means “rebirth”, and in political science circles, refers to a narrative of bringing a nation or state through a Phoenix-like process of rebirth from its ashes. The story of palingenesis has the country in a state of decadence, corruption and decline, then shows the country being “reborn” and being returned to an idealized state of former glory through the actions of patriots and warriors fighting to defeat the decay and destruction wrought by whatever unpopular out-groups are convenient scapegoats.

When tea-partiers shout “I want my country back!”, that’s a direct product of palingenetic thought.

When Glenn Beck talks about “Restoring America”, that’s palingenetic rhetoric. In fact, since “Restoring America” was the name of his rally, the entire theme of it was palingenetic.

Why does palingenesis make me nervous? This is when I go Godwin. Given Glenn Beck’s tendency to go Godwin, I’d normally have cause to hesitate. I prefer to have something more than my own ranting and raving to back me up when I use the Nazi card, which is more than can be said about Glenn Beck when he slings swastikas.

Let me bring up the research of Roger Griffin of Oxford University. Dr. Griffin spent a great deal of his career researching fascism, and he created a definition of fascism, which is “palingenetic, ultra-nationalist populism.”

Dr. Griffin justifies his definition here. Also check out David Neiwert’s book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right for more discussion of palingenesis and fascism.

For full disclosure, I should point out that not everyone in academia agrees with Roger Griffin’s definition of fascism. Others have built lists like the 14 Points of Fascism, or emphasized things like the alliance of big business and authoritarian government, or the advocacy of inequality and construction of hierarchies. I think that a lot of the problems with defining fascism exist because fascism doesn’t really have a coherent ideology like Marxism, progressivism or libertarianism does. Fascism is an ideology of raw emotion. Adding to the confusion is the popular abuse of the term, especially by characters like Glenn Beck.

But I digress… Regardless of the definition of fascism, palingenesis is a powerful recurring theme that appears in fascist movements. Or to put it succinctly…

Palingenesis is fascist mythology.

That’s why hearing the words “I want my country back!” makes my skin crawl. And I get even more concerned when I see “Take our country back!” rhetoric coupled with jingoistic flag-waving and large, angry mobs. As Roger Griffin called it, “palingenetic, ultra-nationalist populism…”

Glenn Beck and the Tea Party should not be dismissed as being merely stupid or crazy or ignorant. This movement is very dangerous for America, and if the Tea Party gains significant political power, they can lead America down an unimaginably destructive path. Many people make the mistake of thinking that characters like Adolf Hitler were near-mythical aberrations that couldn’t take control of American democracy. Hitler was a real human being, and wasn’t especially unique. He was far from the only person on Earth with fascist ambitions and the political talents to achieve power.  In fact multiple countries from Germany to Spain to Italy to Argentina have fallen victim to fascism. It can happen here in America, and if we’re not sufficiently vigilant, it very well might happen here. American democracy is more fragile than we think.

Sinclair Lewis wasn’t far off the mark. When fascism comes to America, it might be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross, wearing a silly hat with dangling teabags, and led by a demagogue with a chalkboard. Don’t laugh, because they’re not laughing…

On March 5, 1770, Boston was under military occupation.  Chafing under British repression, an angry young American got into a verbal argument with a British sentry.  The argument escalated.  The sentry got reinforcements from a squad of Britsh soldiers, while the American was backed up by fellow angry Americans.  Heated words were exchanged, followed by thrown snowballs and rocks; they were beaten back by butt-strikes from British muskets.

One of the Americans threw a club, striking one of the soldiers.  The soldiers opened up with volleys of musket fire.  Three people were killed immediately.  Two more died later of their injuries, and eleven more were wounded.

Sound familiar?

James Zogby: Frightening GOP Behavior

Before dashing off to celebrate a hard fought victory in achieving health care reform, it is important to reflect on a deeply disturbing aspect of the debate that I believe spells danger ahead.

A Republican talking point repeated ad nauseam during yesterday’s debate pounded on the theme that they, and they alone, had the right to speak for “the will of the American people.” This took different forms: “the American people have spoken,” or “you (Democrats) are ignoring/imposing your views on the American people” or “the American people have sent a message,” etc. All making the same point — that the GOP speaks for the American people.

Of course, the American people have spoken, and in November 2008 elected a Democratic White House and Senate and House of Representatives. But, elections and the workings of our democracy including the idea that the losing party respect the outcome of elections appear to be alien concepts to today’s GOP.

The idea that the minority party represents the “will of the people” (not some of the people, but “the people”) is the seedling of a totalitarian mindset. In this mindset — democracy doesn’t matter, ideas are not to be discussed, and opposing views are not to respected. What matters is that they alone have truth, they alone are metaphysically connected to the “mind of the people” can interpret their will, and because they have truth and speak for the people, others represent a threat and must be silenced and stopped.

OK, I’m not quoting the entire article – help James Zogby and Huffington Post make a living by clicking on the link and reading the whole thing there.

But Zogby does make a powerful point about how the GOP thinks – even though they are in the minority, as shown by them losing elections in 2006 & 2008, they seem to think that they still have the right to speak for all of us, and worse, to force their ideas upon us – if they don’t speak with our voice, they’ll make it so we speak with their voice, by any means necessary…

That is what is truly behind the spate of right-wing terrorism we’ve seen this week.

It’s also what folks like John Dean and Bob Altemeyer warn about when they discuss Right Wing Authoritarianism. You can read Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians to see some of the psychological underpinnings of the GOP and the Tea Party phenomenon.

And now: a letter, a hotel registration book, and a series of photographs, which could add up to divorce, premature retirement, and possible criminal proceedings for a company director in Bromsgrove.  He’s a freemason, and a conservative M.P., so that’s 3,000 pounds please Mr. S… thank you… to stop us from revealing:
Your name
The name of the three other people involved,
The youth organization to which they belonged,
and The shop where you bought the equipment!

Blackmail! from Monty Python’s Flying Circus

OK, So Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in the Senate knew about the torture going back to 2002. The CIA’s making a point of leaking that information so we know about this. Can I ask a question?

What could Nancy Pelosi or other Democrats have done back when Bush was in charge?

What’s funny is that it’s hard to narrow down fascism. It doesn’t have a coherent ideology – it’s based on emotion. Ever read Mein Kampf? It’s a terribly written book – not just because it has batshit psycho hate talk about exterminating Jews, but it’s flat out badly written – the grammar is terrible, even after it was cleaned up when translated to English. It consists of half-coherent rants filled with nasty broad-brush attacks that Hitler dictated to one of his flunkies while he was serving prison time after the Munich Putsch. Fascism doesn’t have coherent philosophy behind it. It rides purely on anger, hate and fear. The Dark Side of politics, if you will.

Anyways, the definition was originally posited by Oxford professor Roger Griffin, and he boiled it down to three words:

Palingenetic, ultra-nationalist populism.

Palingenetic is a word that doesn’t have anything to do with Sarah Palin (though she probably believes in palingenetic politics.) Palingenetic means “rebirth”. It describes a Phoenix-from-the-ashes mythology about the country being reborn. Hitler ranted about how Germany was stabbed in the back at the close of WWI, and promised to rebuild it into a new Thousand Year Reich.

I think it’s safe to say we know what ultra-nationalism is. Hitler was all about German Nationalism, and dressed it up with swastikas and speeches and marches and patriotic songs. Be wary when people wave the flag in your face too much.  Also be wary when you hear a lot of talk about cowboy-diplomacy, and attacking every country that gives your nation lip.

Oh, and there’s the populism. Fascism, when it goes into full bloom, is a popular movement, with throngs of people cheering in the streets. Or smashing the heads of the out-group of choice… Approval ratings of mature fascist movements tend to be high.

Or as David Griffin puts it:

“Fascism: modern political ideology that seeks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity. Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy. Despite the idealistic goals of fascism, attempts to build fascist societies have led to wars and persecutions that caused millions of deaths. As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism, and violence.”

Now granted, corporations have frequently gotten in bed with fascist movements. They can usually cut deals with the fascists, and get lots of strings to pull in exchange for financing and corporate backing. But fascism is at its core a populist right wing movement based on nationalism and that promise of national rebirth. Fascism gets its power from anger, hatred and fear, which is why people under its thrall go batshit and start committing acts like genocide and torture.

You want to make people fascist? Start by getting them angry.

Oh, and can I mention that anyone who calls liberals or progressives “fascist” has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

So let’s go over junior high school history again…

Yes, everyone in the Colonies was pissed off about taxes.  That’s about the only thing today’s Teabaggers got right, but they failed to grasp why they were pissed off.  The situation was that first, the tea taxes were obnoxiously high, and second, they were used to pay for a military occupation of the Colonies.  If you were in Boston or one of the other towns in the Colonies in 1773, you’d see British soldiers in the streets.  The situation was kind of like Baghdad today – gee, you think people would be a little resentful about being forced to fork over money to pay for armed troops to harass them?  That’s why there was a lot of smugglers.  The tea laws were about as well-respected as Prohibition was, which is to say hardly at all.

But that isn’t what set off the Boston Tea Party.  What happened was that the British East India Company, the mega-corporation of mega-corporations of the 18th century, ended up with a large surplus of tea that they wanted to get rid of.  They sent their lobbyists to London, pulled some strings and greased some palms in Parliament, and got a law passed exempting them alone from the taxes that everyone else was expected to pay.  By doing this, they could dump their tea on the American markets at prices far below what others could charge.  In other words, they pulled a Walmart.  They were about to undercut every mom-and-pop tea business in the Colonies, and as you may guess, that made a lot of people very unhappy.

They held huge meetings, petitioned the governor to send the East India Company’s ships away and refuse to allow them to unload their cargo.  The governor repeatedly refused – the East India Company lobbyists had bought him too.

After a few screaming matches in Boston’s meeting halls, the Sons of Liberty marched over to the ships and dumped their cargo into the harbor.  This was a rather significant act of property damage – the tea was worth close to a million dollars in today’s money.  This pissed off the British government so much that they passed the Coercive Acts, demanded that Boston repay the value of the destroyed tea, and sent warships to blockade Boston Harbor.  This caused more escalations – as a result, the first Continental Congress was convened, and before long, colonists and British soldiers were pointing muskets at each other and fighting a full-scale war.

The point is that if you want to bring up the Boston Tea Party and not have people snicker at you, you’d better be breaking things.  The equivalent act today would be something like burning down a Wal-Mart, or going to a port and dumping entire shipping containers of imported Chinese junk into the water.  If you’re too chickenshit to cause millions of dollars of property damage, you’re not holding a true Tea Party!

To be specific, I want three conditions in exchange for the bailout money.

One.  I want to own them.  Wait.  Scratch that.  In many cases, we DO own them.  The government now owns about 80% of AIG’s stock.  It’s high time we acted like we owned them.  B-b-but, they say, the government doesn’t do a good job running banks and big companies!  The executives that just ran these companies into the ground, and are now on bended knee in front of Congress shouldn’t be talking!  When a company is run into the ditch by incompetence, fraud and malfeasance, that’s precisely when the government needs to take over.  As a taxpayer, I’m forced to fork over my money to clean up these fuck-ups.  I want my elected officials to be the ones making the decisions.

On top of that, I want in on the upside.  There will come a time when the toxic paper is removed from these banks, when they become solvent again, and they start becoming profitable again.  When the economy comes back and those banks are on their feet, I want a piece of those profits.  Maybe through selling the shares of the banks and companies back to the market after they’re profitable, or maybe through the dividends being used to replenish government coffers, I want in.  Don’t tell me we have to bust our butts to clean up your messes, but we don’t get a piece of the pie when times are good.

Two.  I want regulation. I want Glass-Steagall back.  For thirty years, the prevailing mantra on Washington has been deregulation, and where did that lead us?  Bubbles and busts, Wall Street sharks robbing our retirement funds of billions, $4/gal gas, Enron, AIG, Madoff, etc. etc. etc.

We’re being mugged.  And the way to get the muggers in handcuffs is through regulation.  I want an SEC that actually sets and enforces rules that prevent fraud.  I want investment banking and commercial banking and insurance and all the different sectors of the financial industry separated and simplified so rules can be enforced.  The next time I see some company issue million-dollar “retention bonuses” to employees who are no longer working for them, I want people to go to prison.

Glass-Steagall enforced rules that kept the gyrations of Wall Street under control, left fewer places for the fraudsters to hide, and made Wall Street into a place where all of us could invest, build a retirement nest-egg or a down-payment for a house, or save for education, and have some assurance that that money, plus some profit, will be there when they need it.  Since it was repealed, a few sharks have eaten all the other fish in the tank.  Wall Street is no longer a place to put your retirement money.

I want the regulation back.  I want rules of the road back.  I want basic fairness back.

Three. Fix “Too big to fail!”  If a company’s so big that its failure will cause the entire economy to blow up, it’s too damned big.  It’s time to break these monsters up.  Dust off the Sherman Antitrust Act and bring the anti-monopoly hammer down on these guys.  Force them to sell off assets.  Force them to split up.  Make them spawn spin-offs so we don’t have our eggs in one basket.  And this needs to go across multiple industries.  Don’t stick to the financial industry, or banks.  Split up GM into several smaller car companies.  Split up the phone companies.  Split up the media companies.  Split up all the big financial monoliths, and we’ll have a much healthier, more diverse marketplace.

Is it really too much to ask?

It all started after the Oxycontin Comedian made his keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  It was your typical right-wing red meat speech, again touching upon his wish that President Obama and his policies fail (never mind that such a failure would also be a disastrous failure for the entire country, resulting in economic misery for millions.)  Naturally, Democrats have been making hay using Rush’s statements.  For example, Rahm Emanuel openly stated on Face the Nation that Rush Limbaugh was the de-facto leader of the Republican Party.

Michael Steele ended up on this bandwagon when he was interviewed on CNN, and called Rush an “entertainer” and said his comments were “incendiary and ugly”.  Of course, Rush retaliated by ranting for 20 minutes on his radio show, saying “It’s time, Mr. Steele, to go behind the scenes and start doing the work that you were elected to do instead of trying to be some talking head media star.” and “If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it’s in, I would quit. I might get out the hari-kari knife because I would have presided over a failure that is embarrassing to the Republicans and conservatives who have supported it and invested in it all these years.”  His dittoheads followed his lead and started making angry phone calls.  Suddenly, there was any ugly catfight in the GOP, and Steele was about to be hit with a backlash.

You’d think that if Michael Steele had any self respect at all, he’d continue to trash-talk for a few days, or clarify his remarks, or make a non-apology just to show he had some game.  Nope, instead, he folded immediately, calling Rush a “national conservative leader” and saying “To the extent that my remarks helped the Democrats in Washington to take the focus, even for one minute, off of their irresponsible expansion of government, I truly apologize…  I was maybe a little bit inarticulate… There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership…  I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking…”

Wow.  Michael Steele and Harry Reid need to get together and form a support group for spineless jellyfish.  Rush hit Steele with one of the most spectacular political bitchslaps I’ve ever seen!  This smackdown came right after Steele spent so much time trying to cultivate his “street cred” with black voters.  It’s safe to say that any credibility Steele had with the black community has completely evaporated.

But the most lasting effect isn’t the humiliation of Steele, but the coronation of Rush as the de-facto leader of the GOP.  President Obama, his staffers and allies, and other Democrats have been insinuating for a while that the GOP was being led by Rush Limbaugh, but Limbaugh’s bitchslap of Steele has confirmed the power he holds over the Republican Party in the worst possible way!  Nobody in the GOP dares cross Rush, for fear of being ripped up on his show and mobbed by his dittoheads.  They’d rather be seen planting their lips on Rush’s boil-infested ass.  For the Democrats, this is the best possible outcome – the GOP’s public face is an extremist lunatic who happens to be one of the few people in American politics that is actually less popular than George W. Bush.  Rush Limbaugh is going to be the GOP’s Moses – under his leadership, the Republicans will be lost in the wilderness for 40 years!

Michael Steele, and Rush Limbaugh, your actions have made my life as a Democrat much easier and far more pleasurable.  Please keep doing what you’re doing.  No, please.  Keep going.  I’m addicted to schadenfreude, and I need another fix!

Won't you be my neighbor, Mister Jindal?

Let me tell you a secret.  I wasn’t always as liberal as I am today.  I used to be a libertarian, and I used to vote for Republicans at least as often as I voted for Democrats.  Now I won’t vote for a Republican for dog catcher.  What happened.  What drove me away from the GOP?

Let’s start with the delusional, inflexible ideology.  It wasn’t always this way.  We used to have a saner, more reasonable GOP.  We didn’t used to have the monomaniacal focus on the God, guns & gays style wedge issues.  Fiscal conservatism used to mean something – the Republicans used to fight for a lean, efficient government that provided essential services from Social Security to national defense at a cost which was reasonable.  Today, “fiscal conservatism” means a government that cuts all services and leaves them to the private sector, leaving ordinary people out in the cold.  Follow that up with an ideology which pushes a “Taxes are Bad!” message through mindless Pavlovian conditioning.  You can stop drooling now.  I hate paying taxes as much as anyone else who works for a living, but I’m not so inflexible in my thinking that I refuse to recognize that taxation at a reasonable level is necessary for paying for government services we all need to live in a civilized society.  The rejection of programs like unemployment insurance and infrastructure construction in favor of tax cuts is another sign of the inflexibility that has permeated the GOP.  Even in the face of depression, caused by eight years of the wasteful spending, tax cuts and deregulation that the GOP has advocated and implemented, they still refuse to change their policies or adapt to the times.

Moving on, we get to the flagrant lying, cheating and stealing that has become standard operating procedure in the Republican Party.  Maybe it’s because the politicians in the GOP have become greedy, or maybe it’s because the ideology of the GOP has become so warped that they can’t sell it if they’re honest.  Either way, there is a long-established pattern of bad behavior.  Bobby Jindal’s speech is but an example.  Bobby Jindal’s response to Obama’s address, on top of being insultingly condescending, contained a story about Bobby rallying rescuers with boats in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but as it turns out, that story was a lie.  That is but a recent example.  Our nation has been subjected to eight years of an administration that spewed a constant stream of lies, corruption and destruction that left our economy in the ditch, left our cities, schools and infrastructure crumbling, and entangled us in two wars with nearly incalculable cost in blood and treasure, for ends which benefit only a privileged few.  We’ve become wise to those games, and we’re sick of the crap.

They don’t even know what the American people want of their government anymore, and even if they do know, they’re so consumed by corruption and hubris that they won’t change course even if they knew they could.  Their current strategy comes from game theory.  As their analysis goes, if Obama succeeds and they support Obama, they lose.  If Obama fails, and they support him, they lose.  If Obama succeeds and they oppose him, they lose, but if Obama fails, and they opposed him, they win.  Thus, by their logic, the only course of action is to oppose Obama.  Except there’s a problem with their analysis.  They assume that we’re not wise to the fact that they’re putting their political gain ahead of the welfare of the country and the American people.  Jindal talked to us like we’re four years old, and that reflects what the Republican party thinks of us.  But we’re not children, and while we don’t always pay attention, the current economic crisis has left many of us out of work, and the rest of us wondering if we’ll still have a job tomorrow, and demanding action from our elected officials.  We’re waking up to the fact that we’ve been screwed for at least the past decade.  We’re seeing right through their patronizing gimmicks, and no longer behaving as their theory states we should behave.  Two elections in a row, we’ve tossed the Republicans to the curb.  They’re still going by a game theory that does not reflect the reality of how the country has changed and how the American people perceive them, and until they change their game, they will continue to be defeated.

In other words, the Republicans are out of touch.  Governor Jindal’s speech can be used as a metaphor for the troubles that plague the Republican Party.  They’re trapped in a web of bad ideology and deceit of their own making, and the strategy they think could help them in 2010 is actually entrapping them even further.  They try to use buzzwords, fads and gimmicks to get traction with the public, but they’re finding that it’s not helping.  The audience has changed.  We’ve grown up, and find the old ways to be wrong-headed, offensive and absurd.

Could the GOP go the way of the Know-Nothings?  Who are the Know-Nothings?  Most people who haven’t studied history much haven’t heard of them, because they’ve been extinct for more than a century.  They were a political movement of the 1840′s and 1850′s known primarily for nativism and intolerance (mostly against immigrants and Roman-Catholics).  When most people learn about them, the reaction is usually “What a bunch of jackasses.”  If the Republican Party does not change its ways, it risks going the way of the Know-Nothing movement.  Most political parties, when they face electoral defeat, moderate their positions and retool themselves so they can adapt to new political realities.  The GOP has utterly failed to do that.  Instead of moderating, the GOP has driven out moderate folks and turned to extremisms.  They’ve become like the Know-Nothings in that they’ve adopted nativism, and taken an anti-intellectual stance, choosing people like Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin as their standard-bearers.  As long as they continue doing this, they will continue to lose support.  Will they disappear entirely?  Probably not, but they’re likely to spend a couple decades wondering in the wilderness as little more than a regional party with no power in the Beltway.  At the same time, the odds of them disappearing entirely as a political force in the United States is greater than zero.  The very survival of the GOP is now not entirely certain.

The GOP needs to adapt to survive.  Maybe in the future, they’ll moderate their positions and bring a new generation of leaders that will win the support of the American people.  But in the meantime, expect more of the condescending, out-of-touch behavior that Governor Jindel’s speech has shown to be emblematic of the GOP.

And then, just when you think you’re too jaded to take offense at anything anymore, there’s this…

There are just so many things that are wrong with this cartoon.  There’s the flagrant racism.  There’s the veiled call to violence – specifically, a veiled call to assassinate the President of the United States.  What’s most disgusting is that so many people, including influential people in the media and government, think this should be a legitimate part of American discourse, and think we should “go there” all the time.

Let me add to the chorus of Americans who are saying WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!!!

New York Post, Sean Delonas, and Rupert Murdoch, you’ve taken vileness to the next level.  This is despicable.