...about the fallout from Cliven Bundy's speech on The Negro and his condition. The rightblogger reaction was varied and hilarious, but I explain how in the end this is good news for John McCain.
One thing I didn't have room for was the conversion of Ed Morrissey of Hot Air. Once the Bundy tape came out, Morrisey decided that "the federal government may own too much land, but that’s an issue for the states to fight in court, not ranchers with guns."
Yet less than a week earlier, Morrissey was arguing that Harry Reid was a "demagogue" because Reid said threatening force against the United States, as Bundy had, was terrorism.
"Primarily, no act of violence took place, although some of the protesters were armed," said Morrissey. "In the end, this was a non-violent action, although still dangerous for those involved." By this definition, any armed robbery in which nobody actually gets shot should be downgraded from a felony. Morrissey did generously allow that "one could make the argument that the armed faction at the Bundy ranch was a show of force that coerced the BLM into retreat, and that would meet that definition... in a strictly literal sense."
Remember when conservatives were law-and-order types? No? Well, it was a long time ago, before The Negro became President.
There's an unfortunate Sterling override here. It's like the GOP's holding a White Fool Festival without letting the rest of us know. Fool on, GOPpers, fool on.
ReplyDelete"Starting in the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan," Huston explained, "Americans began a long process of falling out of love with Obama-styled communism."
ReplyDeleteThe election of Ronald Reagan was a response to the left-wing extremes of Barack Obama. Got it. So wingnuts are Timelords now?
So although I fell out of love with Obama-style communism in the 1980s, I keep voting for it now? This may 'splain my attraction to zoot suits if we can extrapolate even further...
ReplyDeleteIs there anything as seductive as "one other person is typing?" Well, maybe toe cleavage in tight red shoes...
ReplyDeleteSounds like a job for the Department Of Temporal Investigations.
ReplyDeleteSterling who? Is there some juicy stupidity I managed to miss this week?
ReplyDeleteBecause if you're an NBA owner, you MUST insult African Americans being allowed into games...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2014/04/27/us/nba-team-owner-alleged-racist-remarks/
Remember when conservatives were law-and-order types? No?
ReplyDeleteNo, I do! I didn't like those days. Conservatives marketing themselves as the law-and-order types meant that liberals were marketing themselves as the fuck-the-law types, which I found very stupid given that they were the ones actually trying to create more rules and laws while the conservatives were all about running around and doing whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted.
Now conservatives are open and honest about being a bunch of bomb-throwing anarchists, so liberals have to at least grudgingly admit that a law or two might be a good thing. And thus, order is restored to my personal universe.
Allowing The Negro into basketball games? Now, I'm no racist, but surely this is going too far.
ReplyDeleteI love the "Wait, you weren't supposed to see that!" argument. Does anyone think that's ever going to work? This isn't a formal debate where one side has to pretend that they didn't hear something they heard - this shit went out to the public. It's a little late for that, fellas, they know it all. Reminds me of one of those situations where an actor or director makes a terrible film, then spends the runup trying to dissociate himself from it once it becomes obvious that it's going to be a bomb.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm saying is that Cliven Bundy is the Leonard Part 7 of the contemporary political press.
Just the ones in the Celestial Intervention Agency.
ReplyDeletehttp://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Celestial_Intervention_Agency
I saw a cartoon once (and I would embed it here, if I could find it) that depicted a Tea Party activist and a Far Left Anarchist bumping up against one another at a political rally.
ReplyDeleteThey both had a disgusted look on their face... because they were both carrying a sign that bore the exact same message: "DESTROY THE STATE."
In case anyone was thinking "Hey, I wonder what Disinfo.com is up to these days besides Trutherism?", one of the things they're up to is saying how Bundy can't be racist because he said some additional garbled but vaguely positive things about blacks and Mexicans, and anyone who's unconvinced by this is a statist boot-licker.
ReplyDeleteSo the Celestis were formerly conservatives? Looking at Mictlan, that makes perfect sense.
ReplyDeleteJust one at time! Two at a time would be stereotyping.
ReplyDeleteWe may have already mocked it in the comments here, but the Anarcho-Capitalism subreddit is one of the most hilarious things on the internet. The intersection of those two circles is a very weird place indeed.
ReplyDelete"Expect progs who read this post to ignore the previous sentence."
ReplyDeleteIt's funny to hear "the progs" used as an epithet by a guy who clearly has no objection to the ten minute organ solo.
Hoo boy! more fun in the air as Tea Party darling Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods proudly endorses torture!
ReplyDeleteOh, great. The torture issue is where the wingnuts really jumped the shark in the Bush era, not that they weren't clearly lunatics for decades before that. But once it went from "Saddam's sons had torture rooms, you knucklehead libs" to "if you hate torture you hate freedom" I knew for sure they had no principles at all.
ReplyDeleteIt was pretty obvious where they were going with the "Obama's lawless administration" stuff. They're just the victims as usual, bravely trying to fight back against the lawless Washington Leviathan.
ReplyDeleteThought I strongly oppose it, most conservative arguments in favor of torture go something like "it's a terrible thing to do, but it prevents an even worse thing from happening.
ReplyDeletePalin has gone that one better; not only is she enthusiastically endorsing the use of torture, she's promising that she would totally do it if she were in charge. It's a goddam campaign promise for her!
Which makes every thinking person who isn't a monster thank their god that she isn't ever going to be in charge.
Indeed, the ticking time bomb theory *sounds* much better than just asserting torture = good, even though all the evidence gathered by intelligence and counter-intelligence experience argues that it doesn't have any real value.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to Palin to yank off even that fig leaf.
During her speech, Palin criticized the Obama administration's national security policy, which she said pokes, "our allies in the eye, calling them adversaries, instead of putting the fear of God in our enemies" according to CBS News.
ReplyDeleteHalf term governor piece of white separatist trash says "allies"?
Just who the fuck would that be if she were in charge?
Bundy? Frazier Glenn Miller? Pat Buchanan?
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Celestis
ReplyDelete-For the (obscure Dr.Who spinoff fiction) win!
"If you run a red light and hit a pedestrian, it makes no difference whether the pedestrian you hit is Nelson Mandela or Cliven Bundy."
ReplyDeleteSweet bleeding Jesus but that's got to be the stupidest goddamn statement I've ever read in my . . . wait - has Goldberg weighed in on this yet?
Well Steyn has to make some weird claims about the way the rule of law functions, given he's currently claiming there's nothing unlawful about asserting that a scientist deliberately and fraudulently misrepresented research data.
ReplyDelete"Remember when conservatives were law-and-order types?"
ReplyDeleteSure I do! I'm old enough to remember that. They were law-and-order types when racial segregation was the law.
You're not just whistlin' "Larks' Tongues In Aspic" there.
ReplyDeleteDisqus is a tease.
ReplyDeleteOh, they're still law'n order types---whenever it's hippies or people of darker-hued skin breaking' the law, breakin' the law.
ReplyDeleteTechnically speaking, can stating something that's utterly obviously true be stupid?
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for Alan Smithee's political blog.
ReplyDeleteThe best takedown of the Bundy supporters was Rachel Maddow on Thursday night. In a nutshell: when someone says they don't recognize the existence of the federal government, you should have enough fucking sense to to be curious about what other horrible shit they believe in.
ReplyDeleteLink please?
ReplyDelete(oh, dear jesus, I have lost my mind.)
Hot Air Guy:
ReplyDelete-----"This has always been a tricky case, one where sympathies and the law go in opposite directions, as John Hinderaker noted at Power Line last week. Legally, Bundy doesn’t have a leg on which to stand, and his weird insistence that the federal government has no jurisdiction on federal land has no basis in law or reality. Having the BLM show up with a small army to collect a debt made it easy to sympathize with Bundy and to call their actions into question, but they’ve been pursuing this case through the courts for more than two decades, too, while Bundy grazes on federal land. The federal government may own too much land, but that’s an issue for the states to fight in court, not ranchers with guns.
----"Bundy doesn’t have a legal case. And it looks like sympathy just ran out for him, too."
----Well then, given all that, what was "tricky" about the entire affair in the first place? Bundy has no legal case, his claims are frivolous, and has been using Federal property, for free, for decades. And that statement (which is true) is according to his conservative "sympathizers." But why would anyone "sympathize" with a scoff law of this proportion? Even assuming (which I don't, but let it go) that the BLM overreacted in some way, why should Bundy not simply have done then what he should have done, again, according to his own supporters, in the first place, ie pay his bills?
----Other conservaguy quoted by Hot Air Guy:
----"Cliven Bundy has broken the law to get what he wants. He should fight within the system to change the law. If he was going for an act of civil disobedience to make a statement, he should be prepared to accept the consequences. One of the consequences is confiscation of property including Elsie and all the other cows. But Mr. Bundy is trying to have it both ways, break the law but face no consequences. Beyond that I am not aware of any attempt of his to try and change the law, just his refusal to follow it.
---"In the end Cliven Bundy’s actions are indefensible from a conservative point of view while the federal government should not be owning the land—they do. In the end the govt. was protecting its property rights however unjustified they are."
----Again, all true. (And notice, as an aside, how the refusal to take the consequences for his act of "civil disobedience" ((among other things)) rather distinguishes Bundy from Gandhi and MLK, the NRO Corner's view to the contrary notwithstanding.)
-----But my question is why did it take Bundy making completely indefensible (and more or less irrelevant) racist statements to prompt these sort of admissions from the conservaguys? Why did they "sympathize" with him in the first place? If, by some miracle, he wasn't a racist, wouldn't Bundy still be a two decade scoff law? Wouldn't he still be challenging property rights, and in the most self serving way (ie property rights for he, but not for thee)? If Bundy was the Black Man's Best Friend, wouldn't it still be the case that he was "trying to have it both ways?" That what he did, broke the law and then resisted law enforcement, can't be called principled civil disobedience? And that he made no efforts to work through the system either, ie to work to change the laws which he claims are offensive?
----One cheer (maybe make that one half a cheer) to the conservaguys for not defending the blatant racism. But why did it take that to make them back off? Why did they defend and "sympathize" with Bundy in the first place?
Yes, if you think it means something, constitutes a persuasive, or even relevant, argument, or is worth saying or otherwise meritorious in any way.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the car that hit Cliven Bundy? I thought he shot himself in the foot. In the case of self injury is the government which Cliven Bundy doesn't recognize supposed to step in and arrest Cliven for self harm? Or is this really Nelson Mandela's fault?
ReplyDeleteAll of 'em, Katie.
ReplyDeleteRemember when conservatives were law-and-order types?
ReplyDeleteNo, they were always power-worshipping authoritarians, they only used law-and-order posturing as a cudgel against black people and hippies.
I do not recognize the inherent authoritative stoppyness of red lights. Were there red lights in the Bible? In the Constitution? I "rest" my "case".
ReplyDeleteHe only recognizes the Bundysrepublik.
ReplyDeletebravely trying to fight back against the lawless Washington Leviathan.
ReplyDeleteThe Harlem Globetrotters always made it look so easy.
I'm waiting for Alan Smithee to win the Iowa straw polls.
ReplyDeleteWell, to be fair, there ain't a whole lot of Crim songs one *can* whistle...
ReplyDeleteBundysrepublik Duhshitland?
ReplyDeleteYep, it was only ever about their laws, and them barking the orders.
ReplyDeleteWith the possible exception of the election of that George W Bush guy (where there were not-ridiculous reasons for concern), progressives generally don't attack the legitimacy of a conservative government, merely their competence, integrity, sanity and whatnot.
Which are, of course, mostly "own goals" caused by the wearying incompetence, dishonesty and insanity of the dashing grifters that conservatives invariably elevate to rule them and us.
In contrast, conservatives really seem to believe that they are born-to-rule, and therefore any non-conservative in power is, for that reason, illegitimate, and every action of a progressive president is, for that reason, an act of treachery-most-foul.
Real dipshits, in other words. I've often thought that conservative politics is where ex-shool bullies, and their bitter. damaged, "I'll get the cool kids back one day" playground victims find unlikely common ground in adulthood.
.
Shirley it was the Obamacar? No, of course it doesn't exist. It doesn't have to. In fact, it would probably ruin the whole thing for the Righties if it did. Their instinctive denial of reality kind of gets in the way...
ReplyDeleteOhhh yeah, that "how we baptize terrorists" line is gonna go over real good in the mosques. This woman had a PhD in Not Having a Clueology...
ReplyDeleteAgree. It is, however, unsurprising that the RWNJs try to spin it as "the left are cheering about Bundy's racism", precisely because it deflects the argument away from the bleedingly obvious fact that Bundy's main case is a total crock of shit.
ReplyDeleteInstead, the Nut Job Narrative becomes, as always these days, "dummycraps play the race card." Rinse-repeat.
.
I went to an basketball game once and there was a whole bunch of The Negros just sitting court side on chairs not working or anything. They were wearing coordinated colors, too. Probs a gang or something. . .
ReplyDeleteLawn Order: Get off it!
ReplyDelete"The point is Mr. Bundy is no Rahm Emanuel, Al Gore, or Jay Carney," sighed Hanson. "He is no Jay-Z or Sean Penn. He is a world away from the Kardashians and the BMW meets Mercedes crowd of the California coastal corridor," etc.
ReplyDeleteVDH is the nattiest nativist of all.
"If you run a red light and hit a pedestrian, it makes no difference
ReplyDeletewhether the pedestrian you hit is Nelson Mandela or Cliven Bundy. Or at
least it shouldn't: one of the basic building blocks of civilized
society is equality before the law..."
If anyone out there was still wondering why we call him Shit Steyn, this should make it all clear...
ut he did tweet, "Actually the grazing rights/BLM story hasn't changed at all. But it certainly helps the Left that he turned out to be a racist."
ReplyDeleteAnd so is born a new meme. "Much to the NON-dismay of some on the left."
Well I guess if you carry the analogy, Steyn, A. Jones et al are the Hollywood executives who actually would have greenlit a "Leonard Part 7".
ReplyDeleteI want to share my sandwich with this comment, and then play kickball with it all through recess.
ReplyDeleteI think it was Gavin at Sadly, No! who dubbed him "the Human Steyn."
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that she's never made any serious move to run for higher office since she and the limelight had that first blind date in '08. She won't, either. She's got too good a thing going now to risk it on a quixotic White House run. Basically she's just teasing her fanbase to get stuff from them.
ReplyDeleteStill, what an unholy way to get in touch with the masses.
The BMW meets Mercedes crowd of the California coastal corridor reminds me of this (March 1972 Nat'l. Lampoon):
ReplyDeleteHow to Pick Up a Chick in L.A.
Shriners Take Note!
1. Picker-upper sights pick-uppee in rear-view mirror.
2. Picker-upper guns motor, discreetly tailing her to
next stoplight to make sure she isn't Robert Young in
drag,
3. Picker-upper screeches to a halt on her left ("Sunny-
side, not Suicide") and yawns, racing the motor rhyth-
mically.
4. If the liaison has been established (signaled by
emptying the ashtray at the next light), the two then
proceed side by side to the next stoplight. Another ex-
change of yawns and bored looks indicates acquiescence.
5. The picker-upper then takes the lead and drives to
his place in Laurel Canyon, followed by the pick-uppee.
6. They park and go up to his bedroom,
7. Then the cars fuck.
I'm not exactly sure what that was, but it was beautiful.
ReplyDeleteA documentary, really.
ReplyDeleteProbably because Bundy has benefitted from the exploitation of undocumented Mexicans' labor at some point in the past.
ReplyDelete----Right. And if Nelson Mandela shot himself in the foot, that would be no better than if Bundy did it.
ReplyDelete-----That is the basis of the "argument" here. That Bundy is/should be no different than Mandela, when it comes to the law. It's true, but stupid.
----It also part of the conflation effort involving Bundy and various "liberal" icons, Mandela, MLK, Gandhi, etc. Before, the claim was that Bundy was just like them, because they too broke the law. Now that Bundy has been exposed as a racist, they don't want to go that way (although, as I explain in my long posts yesterday and today, it really has nothing to do with the racism...Bundy is not, and never was, like MLK and Gandhi, because he is not anything like them, not in his actions and not in his motives, even if you throw out the racism). But this guy didn't get the memo, I guess, and is holding out for the notion that Bundy has somehow been oppressed. The problem is, sure, it would be wrong to oppress Bundy, just as Mandela's oppression was wrong, the only thing hitch is that, duh, Bundy is NOT being oppressed. Not like Mandela was, and not at all, actually.
Pore Victorious Hansonius Daviditis is all weepy about the olden days when men were men and ate the wrong food. Plus people stole some copper wire from him.
ReplyDeleteJesus he is pathetic.
---Agree. Totally unsurprising. Just as it was not all that surprising that this guy was a racist. As Maddow pointed out, people who spout the "sovereign citizen" non sense tend to be of a piece with neo Confederate ideas about race too.
ReplyDelete----And it is amazing how the fact that their guy, the guy they chose to support, turning out to be a racist, so much so that even they can't support him, is the fault of, or is to be blamed on, somehow, the Democrats. As you say, they are all about decrying the playing of the "race card," even when that "card" was put in play by their own hero.
Palin & Putin. I can see the two of them in front of an apocalyptic wasteland of flaming oil refineries & fracked-out wastelands screaming "Drill baby drill!!"
ReplyDeleteBundy was just like them, because they too broke the law.
ReplyDelete... Except for the "willingness to face imprisonment" part.
Whoever gets there first is prototyping.
ReplyDeleteHoly Shit, the Lampoon is online??
ReplyDeleteAwww... its the watermarked versions. Dang.
But still!
Palin: "Nooooooo! We go in!!!! WE KILL!!!"
ReplyDeletePutin: "Be still my dog of war!"
Toe cleavage? Toe cleavage?!?!
ReplyDeleteToe cleavage is the camel toe of footwear.
The difference between the two is that the Tea Twit only wants to destroy the state when someone they dislike is in charge. And even then, they want the apparatuses of state that they like (the military, mainly) to stay intact regardless.
ReplyDelete"Impale me, Vlad! Impale me NOW!!!"
ReplyDeleteI have never understood why anarchism is considered a leftist thing. To me, capitalism is anarchy with a gentleman's agreement of not being the first to directly harm the other (indirectly harming the other is okay. So is responding to a slap in the face with a nuclear strike). What do anarchists want, if that's not enough for them? Having no rules against harming others?
ReplyDeleteI dimly understand that no, anarchists think that without laws we would somehow not be running around acting like the violent, moronic apes that we are, but would in fact start being spontaneously nice to one another for the first time in history. I... just don't see how anyone could think that was possible.
"As you say, they are all about decrying the playing of the "race card," even when that "card" was put in play by their own hero."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, although the way they see it, calling a black person a "ni**er" isn't playing the race card. Calling them racist for doing it is.
When you or I might read The Emperor's New Clothes as a tale about (i) vanity and (ii) group-think, Conservatives look at it as a tale about a powerless little shit who opened his yap disrespectfully about a Great (ie born-to-rule) Leader.
.
Note to all political bloggers everywhere: people will react to the gist of your post. They do not care what caveats and disclaimers you put into it, because they (usually correctly) assume that those are just things you said because you know you're supposed to say them, whereas the main topic of your post is you saying what you really feel. Please just accept that and stop whining.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe no one has brought this up over the course of the past week, but can I just say how perfect it is that this guy's name is Cliven?
ReplyDeleteI mean, really, the only way it could be better would be if he was Cletus.
I'm pretty sure the cowboys in that cartoon are the ones who lynched the guy who brought the picante sauce what was made in NOO YAWRK SITTY!?!
ReplyDelete"Showdown at Spuckler Ranch"
ReplyDeleteAs always, you want to be careful not to confuse anarchists with glibertarians. Read Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Proudhon, then read Ayn Rand, FA Hayek, and Milton Friedman. the difference will become very, very obvious.
ReplyDeleteI posted at the end of the last thread about my adventures needling Matthew Continetti and his readers in the comments for his article on Thomas Piketty's new book. I mean, he opened with an Orwell quote that just made it impossible to not respond. What unfolded from there was a couple of days of back and forth with commenters who thought it was clever to avoid trying to answer how exactly our consumer economy was ever supposed to thrive again if most of the people in it have no money. None of them attempted to actually answer that question, but there were plenty of attempts to lay blame, and quite hilariously, they chose to simply pretend that forcing taxpayers to subsidize low-wage employers is a less offensive redistribution of wealth than a progressive tax system. I say this because I brought it up twice, and both times, no one even attempted to respond.
ReplyDeleteWhich is actually a little like what you've said about The Emperor's New Clothes. I go and point out the obvious - the economy sucks because people got no money, and it ain't gonna get better until they do, and how this represents the central problem for conservative economic theory, and they go immediately to attacking higher taxes. Which I hadn't brought up, but since they did, addressed it. I told them a tale about the big hole in the middle of the story they tell themselves about how the economy works, and they look at it as a tale from a liberal elitist progressive trust funder crony corporatist Marxist hippy who's just unfairly attacking our financial betters, who have earned every penny they have thank you very much...and deserve your pennies as well.
I'd say "Snopes Ranch," but he's no Flem.
ReplyDeleteIf they're Quebecois war-bloggers, it'd be daguerrotyping.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes a difference is how much money the driver controls.
ReplyDeleteAfter which they enjoyed a salsa made at a ConAgra plant in Buttholeville Township, OH.
ReplyDeleteRight. I get that. and even some of the conservaguys are now admitting it. Why it took revelations of racism to make them see it, they have no explanation.
ReplyDeleteAs a bitter, damaged playground victim, I would love to contradict you. :P Sadly, I have this libertarian douche in my office who whines that the kids in school bullied him because he was "asking questions and stating opinions." I didn't know him back then, thank heavens, but given what he's like now, I assume that that's self-indulgent smug-bastard code for "spent every class yelling and shouting and making it all about me and how smart I am." After all, that's what he spents every meeting doing as an adult. Seriously, five minutes with this fucking little egomaniac, and I want to give him a wedgie. >_<
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do want to state for the record that some of us playground victims spent our school days sitting down, shutting up and doing what we were told, and that the lesson we learned from the abuse we put up with is that it's bad when people are mean to each other, not that it's bad when the wrong people are mean to the right people.
I have read Ayn Rand, God help me, and I have read enough about Friedman to know what he was about even aside from the fact that I'm living in the world he made... but it's true that I haven't read any real anarchist authors. It's kind of never been an issue - anarchism isn't really a politically relevant thing nowadays.
ReplyDeleteMind giving me a hint? ;)
Well said, and a good point - I know plenty of people who were bullied (usually decent people bullied for their percieved dweebishness or thick-lensed glasses or somesuch excuse), who came out of it wanting nothing but to make sure it doesn't happen to others.
ReplyDeleteI also know several people who were obnoxious, self-centred little shitheels then, who have grown up to be, at best, nothing better. Conservatives, every one of them.
.
You put the perve in Pervitin, Vlad.
ReplyDeleteAs Lee Atwater famously put it, you start out in 2014 by talking about land use fees and BLM overreach, and you're hoping that people somehow pick up on the dogwhistle, though it seems so abstract and coded. But if that works and you get enough people winking along you can go on to talking about affirmative action and dependency and the inner city and all that stuff. And pretty soon, it's okay to go back to saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger."
ReplyDeleteI have no hints to give, but I can tell you that anarchism is most definitely a politically relevant thing right now. You have one of the only two political parties in this country running on a bedrock principle that there should be no government except for the military. This party takes active steps to hobble, destroy, dismantle, and defund the government at every chance. and their only proffered alternative is to let "the free market" run rampant.
ReplyDeleteTHAT is anarchism with a GOP face.
Even worse, if there could be such a thing, she referred to waterboarding as a kind of baptism.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, it's funny because power differentials don't exist.
ReplyDeleteHey! I've got friends in Butthole Township!
ReplyDeleteBut DocAmazing just told that that was not anarchism.
ReplyDelete"… it may be that with Bundy's fall they actually dodged a bullet."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
They did this shit with that racist murderer G. Zimmerman, too. When the "you can murder non-white people if you shoot first" laws, like the one in America's dangly state, were suddenly exposed to the majority of stunned Americans, the conservatoids went all-hands-on-deck to shift the public argument into the "Zimmerman is a racist" territory.
So, instead of an honest public debate about evil laws like these, we got to hear lots of "Zimmerman is a racist prick"-"no, he's not even white, how can he be racist, you stoopid libtard" discussions.
This really disappoints me. Bundy IS a racist piece of ignorant cow pie, but I wish he and his bully friends egging him on to say ridiculous shit in school were made to defend their statements, rather than getting a big old "RACIST" label slapped on the fool while the rest of the nation shakes their heads and turns back to Ow, My Balls!
Anarchists of the left tended to be sort of utopian types, yes. But the thing to remember is that the etymology of anarchy isn't "no law", it's "no ruler". The anarchist vision (well, the anarcho-syndicalist vision, which is the only one I know anything about) was for everything to be self-organized into an interlocking web of worker-owned factories, cooperative farms, community policing, direct democracy...How this was supposed to work was kind of left as an exercise, although as I understand it they managed to put up a fight (for short time anyway) during the Spanish revolution.
ReplyDeleteThe anarcho-capitalist model (which is the only kind of anarchist that really still exists) thinks the only legitimate exercise of state power is to protect his stuff.
Putting Words Together =/= Coherent Thought
ReplyDelete"Forget it Jake, it's Metaphors Gone Wild."
ReplyDeleteScheissland Schiessland uber alles
ReplyDeleteHaving crazy loudmouths be crazy loudmouths in public NEVER hurts the Masters of the Universe.
ReplyDeleteThey sit back and see how much of the crazy shit the scapegoat gets away with, and they make their notes for next time.
If it goes far, great! If the Crazy Loudmouth gets slammed, then the just "disavow" the craziness (but not the "principles" involved--wink wink, nudge nudge).
Either way, they get to wear down normal people a little bit more with the incessant gibberish and ranting, until what was once considered inconceivable becomes familiar, and therefore closer to mainstream acceptance.
I think the Doc's slightly off in this diagnosis because of the masking symptoms (i.e., the reliance by so many Teahadists on government handouts in the form of everything from Medicare to Social Security to grazing rights to drilling/mining/extraction rights).
ReplyDeleteEver since Reagan said "government is the problem," the brighter conservatives saw an opportunity to rid themselves of any state constraints on grifting the sheep and taking rent-seeking to unheard-of heights. The dimmer conservatives (upon who's votes the brighter ones rely) only heard the sweet siren song of "if we get rid of government, then I won't have to pay taxes!"
And so we come to present-day Republican Anarchism with one party bent on destroying the government so that its grifter class can rape, pillage, and loot with impunity.
The "law and order" trope, as I remember it, began with Nixon/Agnew in the anti-war Sixties. It was the true birth of "hippy punching," because hippies were really being punched--and beaten with nightsticks, etc. Nixon brought out the "I've got your freedom of fucking assembly right here!" atavism of authoritarian America, and it has never really gone away. Since Reagan, we don't literally punch hippies anymore (although we do pepper spray them from time to time); mostly we just reflexively piss and shit upon anything that a left winger might actually believe to be true.
ReplyDeleteYES. This.
ReplyDeleteThese eel-slimy fuckheads change their subject In an instant.
Everything, of course, except their subject....
As with Zimmerman, when they rEALISE they are on a loser, they play the "dems are the REAL racists" card and, on-being-racists they go....
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If Atwater were alive, he'd be spinning in his grave . . . with laughter!
ReplyDelete"I support them, I give them food, etc." Thanks, Massa! Now hows about we cotton-pickin' ball-handlers jus' sit down and quit makin' money fo' yo' skinny white ass?
ReplyDeleteRacism: Behold the stupid!
I think that's the kind of anarchism that Noam Chomsky believes in, if I'm not mistaken.
ReplyDeleteor Doucheland?
ReplyDeleteI disagree somewhat. The GOP are not true anarchists, they merely object when Dems, or more to the point, liberals, hold the levers of power. If/when they ever get full control of those levers, their version of government... the one that exists to grease the skids for and increase the power of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, will come roaring back with a vengeance, and they'll take additional steps through their pet Supreme Court to armor plate it so that it will be very difficult to undo even if Libs should ever manage to sneak back into power.
ReplyDeleteWell, I was kind of hoping he'd be run over by his own cattle on their way to that sweet, sweet free Federal grass.
ReplyDeleteJeez... when did it become legal for Negroes to own BMWs and Mercedes? Is NOTHING sacred??!!??
ReplyDeleteDo you remember when the Islamic Courts Union was starting to patch together some kind of functioning government in Somalia back during the Bush administration, and the Bushies decided they'd give a bunch of money/military aid to Ethiopia if they went in and knocked them over? One of the justifications they used--and I swear I am not making this up--was some young guy who said that the ICU tossed him in jail and cut off his dreadlocks 'cause they didn't meet the Islamic dress code. This wasn't exactly an uncommon practice here in the US back in the sixties. If only they could figure out how to send some helicopter gunships back there...
ReplyDelete"As with Zimmerman, when they realise they are on a loser, they play the "dems are the REAL racists" card and, on-being-racists they go...."
ReplyDeleteWell... give them credit for doing the best they can with what they've got. It's the same as when they try to sidestep Bundy's lawless grazing with the "Well, The Fedrul Gubmint Shouldn't Own Public Land Anyway" gambit, hoping all the while that sane folks will be so flummoxed by their word blizzard that they won't make the counter argument that "Yes, Federal Ownership And Management Of Public Land Can Be A Good Thing." For example, here in New England, fishing boat owners bitch about regulations meant to preserve and rebuild fish stocks that were once thought to be inexhaustible but have been shown to be anything but. If they had their way, they'd all end up in a competition to catch the last fish in the North Atlantic, at which point they'd all be out of business. This point, sadly, never seems to register.
Man, Disinfo.com has really gone downhill since the days they were mainly just shilling that Matt guy's list books.
ReplyDeleteWhat if he joined the navy and was given the rank of Seaman?
ReplyDeleteshorter ed morrissey: hey shut your mouths/how can you say/that cliven bundy went about things the wrong way?/everything the federal government does needs to be loathed/and that armed rancher is just like mlk
ReplyDeleteGood on ya. And it's that--asking a simple question, having it ignored, and getting instead a rant about something untrue or, at best, irrelevant--that makes me constantly reach for the vocabulary of psychological dysfunction, or religion, when talking about these people's politics.
ReplyDeleteYou say "potato," and they say "Benghazi." All that's left to respond with is ridicule. (Except for the professional liars and shills--e.g., Peggy Noonan: "There is a feeling across the nation. You sense it in the Starbucks and the Stop-N-Shops and the restaurants. America is tired of being sold 'potato' by the same group who, it seems only yesterday, were trying to sell us 'Benghazi.'")
Holy Carp! I thought I was the only one who remembered that item. I'm probably the only one who still remembers that awful joke about St. Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus.
ReplyDeleteWhy, a friend was remarking to me, only this Saturday, that by the time you get out of high school "you're pretty much baked". We sure as hell were.
ReplyDeletethe kevin smith of the political right.
ReplyDeleteHuh huh huh, uh huh huh huh
ReplyDeletehehehehe
Huh huh huh
/Beavis/Butthead/
And BTW, never forget the neat little inversion that conservatives use; they posit segregation, discrimination, or even slavery as 'the natural order of things' and therefore outlawing segregation, discrimination or even slavery becomes an tyrannic intrusion!
ReplyDeleteWhen, in fact, it is lawful S.,D. or even S. which is the greatest intrusion on and abrogation of rights, for everybody.
O hai Jenn! Please forgive me for going off topic here, but you and (I hope) yours are okay amid all the tornado uproar? I mean, you're typing and all so that's good. I has been worried.
ReplyDeleteWow. If I feel like I earned some sort of merit badge for reading that entire thread, then you deserve a meritorious award for perseverance and patience under moronic fire, Jenn. I'm fascinated by willful ignorance and self-delusion, but jeezus, it's like religion to those people. Whatever they don't like is the work of the collectivist devil, so the capitalist oligarchy we endure must be "progressive" or a result of "progressive corporatism,"whatever the hell that is. It's as if the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an arm of MoveOn.org or pulling the masks off the Koch brothers will reveal Ben & Jerry.
ReplyDeleteJust nuts. But bravo! for the attempt to get them to think beyond their name-calling idiocy, hopeless as it may be.
I did, too, but they got sick of all the jokes and moved to Hairy Anus, Nebraska.
ReplyDeleteI thin it might be a borderline case between feudalism and anarchy. Their love of the cops (or any other manifestation of state power) is highly conditional: When that power is clubbing Blacks in the streets, or pepper-spraying Occupy hippies, or incinerating darker-hued foreigners, it's a good thing. But when that power is keeping Ralph Reed from simply stealing his followers' money directly from their bank accounts, or keeping Exxon from erecting a drill rig on the Mall, or helping a poor person to become financially solvent through education, then the power of the state is evil and needs to be destroyed.
ReplyDeleteIt's a highly schizoid relationship that they have with power. I guess it reminds me most of Gollum's relationship with The Ring: We hates the Precious, we does; but we can't lives without it, can we, Precious!
I want to have sex with this comment, but it would probably be construed as assault, so I won't.
ReplyDeleteUpvote for "stoppyness."
ReplyDeleteUrsula K. LeGuin's great novel "The Dispossessed" is set on an anarcho-syndicalist planet which coheres partly because of internal social pressure and partly because it's a satellite of a more or less capitalistic planet which it fears and keeps itself walled off from. LeGuin never falls into the trap of making the anarchist world a lovely utopia without any problems, or the capitalist world an evil empire fixated on conquest. It's a good place to start reading about anarchism -- although of course you should read Bakunin and Goldman (and George Orwell) too.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's the free market at work, no?
ReplyDeleteOh, Gavin. I miss him so.
ReplyDeleteIs one of them Biggus Dickus? Wait till Biggus hears of this!
ReplyDeleteThere are always the classics.
ReplyDeleteIf/when they ever get full control of those levers, their version of government... the one that exists to grease the skids for and increase the power of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, will come roaring back with a vengeance
ReplyDeleteBecause that's so different than the version of government we have now.
Right--the GOP as currently constituted is not in favor of anarchism at all. They are infavor of lower levels of extreme authority practiced by classic authority figures such as sherrifs, mayors, and fathers-of-families.
ReplyDeleteYes, Jenn, let us know.
ReplyDeleteNothing lifts my spirits like a quick whistled rendition of "21st Century Schizoid Man", but maybe that's just me.
ReplyDeleteOr "Klavern"...
ReplyDeleteI said "full control". We still have four putative liberals on the Supreme Court who can sometimes mitigate the damage being done by Roberts and his majority. We still have a Dem-controlled Senate, which can deep six the more batshit legislation coming out of the monkey house known as the House of Representatives, and if all else fails, Obama still has the power of the veto. I know there are a good number of people, some of whom hang out here, who swear that Obama and the Dems are no better than were Bush and the Pugs. Anyone who thinks that's true will be in for a shock when control of the Senate reverts to the Pugs, and President Jeb Bush gets sworn in.
ReplyDeleteprogressives generally don't attack the legitimacy of a conservative government, merely their competence, integrity, sanity and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteAs evidenced by the things they do, not who they are. Something the right will never, ever get, because it goes against all their beliefs. Which, being realityphobic, are all they have.
Cloven "The Hoof" Bundy
ReplyDeleteDaniel Plainview should've bought the Bundy tract when he had the chance.
ReplyDeleteI really need to get my "Objectivist Morrissey" groove back.
ReplyDeleteI've told Gulf of Maine fishermen that they were like Clovis people arguing over who got to kill the last giant ground sloth but this argument got me nowhere.
ReplyDeleteSholy.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking, if Palin can see Pootie-Poot from her house, does it occur to her that maybe he can see her? And now I'm thinking, does she slip out on the sun porch when the old man and kids are gone, perhaps in something from Victoria's Secret?
ReplyDeleteI gotta say, the rightwing love affair with ol' Vlad is getting just a wee bit off-putting.
ReplyDeleteLarry Niven wrote a story years ago (Anarchy Park? Been a while) to illustrate why he wasn't an Anarchist. In this park, unlimited, unsupervised anarchy was accidentally allowed one day, and... duuh, people got hurt.
ReplyDeleteI'll give Larry that, he has a better grasp of Human nature than most Glibs. Still an asshole, though. And if a loved one is stricken by a preventable disease, Lar, please do your best to "think of it as evolution in action"...
I am pleased to learn that my long-lost and longed-for The Girl Issue is #2 on the most downloaded list.
ReplyDeleteIt was hotter than Hooker in Heater today, and hotter than Heater in Hellmouth. It was hotter still in Buttholeville.
ReplyDeleteOh, thanks for asking.
ReplyDeleteNo, the tornado came through about 25 miles NW of here. I'm embarrassed to say, but I didn't even know about it until I heard about it on the radio this morning. Our sirens went off around 7 yesterday evening, and immediately my phone started ringing. My mom and my sister and her kids live about 75 miles away, and every time they hear there's a storm in my area, they start calling. Because they know I don't pay much attention to it, and also, I don't get the local TV stations on my satellite package. Anyway, since the sirens were already going off when they called, I knew there was bad weather in the area, but really I knew that anyway. The air looked bruised and it was muggy out - LittlePig can tell you that spells trouble in our neck of the woods.
In any case, I still haven't even seen photos of where it came through. But the town hit the hardest was hit - in pretty much the same area - just 3 years ago. They had a brand-new middle school they were going to move into next fall, and it was flattened. Also, and worse, 16 deaths that they know of so far.
But they probably know some a' the Clovis family up to Pahtland...
ReplyDeleteIn East Germany, you get paid in marks. In Bundysrepublik, marks pay you!
ReplyDeleteBill,
ReplyDeleteYou might like the following, from the Wikipedia entry on the delightful Lee:
"Ed Rollins, however, stated in the 2008 documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, that "[Atwater] was telling this story about how a Living Bible was what was giving him faith and I said to Mary (Matalin), 'I really, sincerely hope that he found peace.' She said, 'Ed, when we were cleaning up his things afterwards, the Bible was still wrapped in the cellophane and had never been taken out of the package,' which just told you everything there was. He was spinning right to the end."
Cheers,
-dlj.
Matte Kudasai is kind of catchy.
ReplyDeleteBut the grazing rights story always was "Hey, don't Fox get it that this guy is an obvious mooch?"
ReplyDelete-dlj.
I think the phrase you're looking for is "calling a black person a nigger."
ReplyDeleteIf the original intent of the first person to use the phrase "n word" was to somehow imply their own superiority in liberality, all they managed was an insipid display of sanctimony.
Two flying prunes.
Granny Grammar
Prune-Faced Grammarian.
Please please please let me get what I want.
ReplyDeleteBig mouth strikes again, and I've got no right to take my place in the human race.
ReplyDelete-- words that should be, but never will be, spoken by a lot of people.
No sanctimony intended. I just prefer not to write the word, out of respect for those folks about whom it is so often flung as a hateful epithet and, frankly, because the thought of my hand writing it causes a visceral reaction in me that I find wholly unpleasant.
ReplyDeleteProbably the only word I can think of that does that to me.
.
Who, it seems, is a real piece of work. Any of which he's probably never done in his life...
ReplyDeleteOne of their prettiest.
ReplyDeleteIt's a goddam campaign promise for her!
ReplyDeleteOhpleaseOhpleaseOhpleaseOhpleaseOhplease...
Let's hear it for "CUNT"!!!!
ReplyDeleteI still think of him as Claven, as in Cliff. Read his racist rant in a Boston accent and imagine him in a postman's uniform with a draft beer in his hand and it's almost funny. "Well, Norm, the thing most people don't know about the Negro is..."
ReplyDeleteFunny, you don't seem to have any trouble with "shitheels."
ReplyDeleteHave you considered therapy for your hand and viscera? Or exorcism?
-dlj.
But it certainly helps the Left that he turned out to be a racist.
ReplyDeleteIndeed no. The only reason Bundy isn't treated as the petty criminal he is is because he's pretending that he's living in the Wild West, which appeals to all sorts of sentimental notions in his fellow Americans. So yes, it certainly does help that he managed to remind everyone of some of the uglier aspects of the Wild West and why everyone's better off living in the modern world!
I know, really. All you have to do is say it out loud a couple dozen times, walking around your apartment or looking in the mirror; you just say "Cunt! Cunt! Cunty McCuntisdottir!" and before you know it, it's just noise. Then the next time someone says "Cunt!" at you, you can't help laughing, like, wait, am I supposed to burst into tears or something? Because you're gonna have to write some new material. I don't use the word myself, feeling no need to attempt to shock anyone or make anyone cry, or to simply be hateful for any reason, nor do I encourage its use, because life/short, but I admit to having inoculated myself, in an Edward Jenner vs teh smallpox manner.
ReplyDeleteYou got me on the Aquinas joke.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a question of remembering, it's still life as lived here.
I think she was just trolling Andrew Sullivan, who rose to the bait.
ReplyDelete"Funny, you don't seem to have any trouble with "shitheels.""
ReplyDeleteNone at all, as I said. Truth be told I rarely if ever post something which doesn't include florid invective.
" I think the only thing you could be accused of, Doodles, is a pallid sort of follow-along correctness."
I shot the "pallid sort of blah", but I did not shoot the deputy.
.
Mink is the one, at least as far as the letting your cows graze on someone else's land and then losing a court judgment about it and taking to arms.
ReplyDelete"They had a brand-new middle school they were going to move into next fall, and it was flattened."
ReplyDeleteMight I suggest tunneling into the side of a hill to build the next one?
"I'll hire black players when the Harlem Globetrotters hire white players."
ReplyDelete--Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall
Sorry, but what you refer to as sanctimonious liberal political correctness--usually invoked by conservatives while looking down their noses, as if the notion of "political correctness" doesn't apply to them--is simply the respect given, as said above, to people who really fucking hate the term, especially when it's applied to them. If a bunch of black rappers want to call themselves Niggaz Wit Attitude, that's their thing, but it's not my thing. Any white person who says "I can say 'nigger' because black people do" is not--I think we can agree on this--using the term in solidarity with his black fellow citizens.
ReplyDeleteBill,
ReplyDeleteI don't think I refer to anything as "liberal political correctness." Couldst clarify please?
Most of what you say is decent and sensible, so it doesn't quite look as though you are trying to attack me on the basis of a complete invention,
However I've looked for it and can't find it. If I used the phrase it was certainly by accident. Or is it possible you were on autopilot when you accidentally attributed it to me falsely?
Cheers,
-dlj.
Davdoodles,
ReplyDeleteGood move. The damn deputy is likely to have a whole fucking SWAT squad behind him shooting back.
Cost of pensions for SWAT teams -- most of the sumbitches live long enough to collect, though they get obese enough that they don't collect for toooo long -- is probably the reason all those municipalities are going broke.
The way you know you've left Canada and entered the States is the roads suddenly go all to hell. Can't fix Eisenhower's interstates if you're spending all your time and money bombing Asia...
Cheers,
-dlj.
"If the original intent of the first person to use the phrase "n word" was to somehow imply their own superiority in liberality, all they managed was an insipid display of sanctimony."
ReplyDeleteYes, I see that I might have misinterpreted you. I doubt, however, that even the earliest uses of "the n-word" as a stand in for, well, the n-word was an instance of liberals acting superior. I have no trouble believing that people (not just liberals and not just white people) back in the day just decided that the word "nigger" is as far out of bounds in polite discourse as "fuck" used to be and that there are damn few times where the word can be used beyond sociological observations and reviews of gansta rap (where it probably still isn't used anyway). (As far as "fuck" goes, you'll see Jon Stewart use it, bleeped of course, but he will never say "nigger" on the air and I doubt he'd ever say it in private, either.)
Liberals are always being accused of being holier-than-thou, and yours would be an example of that if it were true, but I don't think it is.
I'm amused that one of the ads being served up on their page is a recruitment ad from the NSA.
ReplyDeletePoint taken, Daniel. Still, I think that when it comes down to it, few people actually care about the law. Mostly, everyone just uses it to score points.
ReplyDeleteErasmus and St Thomas walk into a bar. "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" Thomas asked. "Who gives a fuck?" Erasmus answered.
ReplyDeleteOnce a lying jerkoff, always a lying jerkoff. When you're a role model for Karl Fucking Rove, you've definitely got some 'splainin' to do to The Man Upstairs.
ReplyDeletePretty much all the schools built here in the past 10 years have included "safe rooms", which not only provide shelter for students in case of storms, but are open to all in the general neighborhood if needed in the hours when schools are closed. Doesn't stop the school from being flattened, but should help keep people from getting killed.
ReplyDeleteIt's been done.
ReplyDeleteHe really can't be blamed for being confused by anarchism. I mean, have you ever tried to have a conversation with an IRL anarchist?
ReplyDelete