“Ahh, but that’s the point!  If you don’t think, you shouldn’t talk.”
—The Rabbit

HERMOSA BEACH — The irony of protesting wasteful government spending by purchasing a million tea bags and throwing them in various bodies of water is lost on teh protesting Tea Baggers.  Which “grass roots” group came up with those bucks?  Then there’s the sheer craziness of middle class Republicans protesting the end of tax cuts for the wealthy (the way the Republican controlled Congress under Bush wrote the law in the first place) after the passage of the largest tax cut for the rest of us, in our history.

Indeed, there seems to be no rhyme or reas0n to the Party of Tea, but a closer look might begin to explain the crazy inconsistencies which try to pass for reason.

Drew Westen. (Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”)

. . .the modern conservative movement, which eventually came to define the GOP (to its benefit for many years), was built on an ideological foundation— and a coalition—  that was fundamentally incoherent. It took a charismatic leader to bring it together (Ronald Reagan), a tacit agreement among its coalition partners to give each other what they wanted, and a message machine to start selling the idea that that there was coherence to a conservative “philosophy” that was anything but coherent.

Modern conservatism wove together five discrete strands and interest groups that couldn’t coexist. What is remarkable is how well it held together despite the fact that those strands were actually difficult to interweave.

The first strand is libertarian conservatism, reflected in leaders from Barry Goldwater to Ron Paul. Libertarian conservatives believe government should be small and weak and kept that way through low taxes. From their point of view, the primary role of government is to police the streets, protect private property, and protect the country from external threats (although at times they can get a little histrionic about internal threats as well).

The second strand, with which libertarianism is entirely incompatible, is social conservatism, particularly Christian fundamentalism. Fundamentalists of any sort believe that they have privileged knowledge of God’s Will and hence have the right to use whatever methods available— including the instruments of state— to impose that will on others.  It is one thing to believe, as many democratic (and increasingly Democratic) evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics do, that life begins at conception.  It is another to believe that because you believe that, you have the right to impose your interpretation of the books you consider holy on others who may not share your faith or your interpretation of Scripture.  The fundamentalist politics practiced by the likes of Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson over the last 30 years should have been anathema to genuine libertarians, because they run against everything libertarian conservatives believe in vis-à-vis intrusive government. However, the two groups lived happily together as long as libertarians got to keep their taxes low and their rifles loaded and fundamentalists got to keep their kids from learning anything about birth control (leading the Bible Belt to have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and abortion anywhere in the country, although Sarah Palin seems to be leading a one-family crusade to recapture for Alaska the title of Miss Teen Pregnancy).

The third strand of conservatism is old fashioned fiscal conservatism— the kind that once led Bob Dole to garner his party’s nomination for president but would make him unwelcome in the contemporary GOP.  Fiscal conservatives are essentially soft New Dealers, who accept the premises of the New Deal— that we need a safety net, that when people lose their jobs because of economic downturns they shouldn’t lose their homes, that people deserve some minimal degree of dignity in old age if they worked hard for 40 years—but prefer the safety net and tax codes to be thin. Fiscal conservatism bears no logical relation to social conservatism, and although it bears a superficial resemblance to libertarian conservatism, the two are fundamentally at odds, with one accepting the premises of the New Deal and the other rejecting them.

The fourth strand, national security conservatism, is a different breed. National security conservatives tend to be hawkish (although they have a curious habit of evading military service when it comes their turn), and they are generally quick to accuse others of being soft on the threat du jour (unless the other side happens to be in an interventionist mood, in which case they often morph into isolationists just for sport, as when George W. Bush attacked Clinton and Gore for “nation building” and then went on a six year binge of it). The militarism of national security conservatism is as far at odds from evangelical Christianity (and hence social conservatism) as it could be, given that Jesus preached most about the evils of war, poverty, and public expressions of piety, but somehow Christian social conservatives have found a way to rationalize militarism (not to mention ignore the plight of the poor or blame them for their poverty and build crystal cathedrals). Indeed, fundamentalist Christians were the strongest supporters of the Iraq War of any demographic group other than the Bush and Cheney families.

The final strand of conservatism is the one Nixon exploited with his Southern Strategy and the Republicans have exploited ever since, whether the issue is voting rights, “welfare queens,” affirmative action, or the fate of “illegals”: prejudice, whether conscious (as when Reagan and Nixon used, let’s say, “colorful” terms, to describe those on welfare) or unconscious (as when Bob Corker ran a race against Harold Ford, a black Congressman from Tennessee, asking, “Who’s the real Tennessean?”, when what he was really activating in the back of voters’ minds was, “he’s not really one of ‘us,’ now is he”?).

Given that most white Americans no longer see themselves or want to see themselves as racist, and that they actually consciously eschew racist sentiments and actions such as overt discrimination against people because of the color of their skin, emotional appeals to this segment of the conservative population tend to be strongest when a conscious “text” with some merit (e.g., we can’t simply open the floodgates to all who would want to enter the United States and become citizens) is superimposed on the unconscious “subtext” of prejudice (the people flooding in happen to have dark skin). Although it’s easy to localize this strand of conservatism as Southern, given that the GOP has become a regional party, it is important to note that had the Presidential election only included white voters (the Republicans’ fantasy), McCain would have won in a 63-37 landslide over Barack Obama. But conservatives don’t have much on their side on this one either, except to the extent that they can block the vote, because demographics are running in the wrong direction for them over the next 50 years.

I would never underestimate the ability of the right to find a way to stitch something back together, for two reasons. First, they’re good at it. They’re short on ideas, but they’re long on selling ideas, however vapid. Second, Democrats are exactly the opposite: They’re long on ideas but short on the ability to bundle them into coherent, emotionally compelling narratives that make people want to buy them— except when the GOP is so corrupt, inept, and/or bankrupt (or causing bankruptcy) that even moderate Republicans jump ship.

And all of that is producing the tipping point that will ignite a new awakening into the ideals of the new paradigm of politics that Obama has insisted must be found.  And those ideals must cut across party lines to re-define Americanism— once again— as government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The reality is that it’s going to be difficult to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and it’s going to take someone with vision and charisma to figure out which aspects of conservatism to bring back into the center and which to catapult without losing a base that is now seriously out of step with mainstream America.

It’s not just that they’re “out of step with mainstream America.”  It’s that they have no longer have legs.  When “truth” is dogmatized— whether by political or religious ideology— it speedily dies.  Truth is alive, and must be lived.  Fossilized values will be destroyed simply by the passage of time— and no longer relevant in a new paradigm of new and emerging truth, beauty, and goodness. America and the world are marching to a new planetary destiny, and there is no turning back to the dead ideas of the past.

In my post, The Obama Zeitgeist, I wrote:

Barack’s message of Hope and Change found greater resonance in the Democratic electorate than Hillary’s message of Experience and Leadership.

I suggested that this turn to hope and idealism found resonance in the teachings The Urantia Book re its depiction of The Seraphic Planetary Government, and in its distinction between ideas and ideals.

Now that the Dem primary is over, it is fair to ask whether this hypothesis has relevance to the general election between Obama and McCain. I submit that today’s joint poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News answers that question in the affirmative. The Journal reports :

Asked to respond to two statements, 59% of voters said they believed “This is a time to have a president who will focus on progress and help move America forward,” while 37% of voters favored the statement, “This is a time to have a president who will focus on protecting what has made America great.” Just 4% said they weren’t sure.

What’s more, 54% said the statement that “This is a time when it is important to look for a person who will bring greater changes to the current policies even if he is less experienced and tested,” identified more with their personal view, while 42% said the statement that “This is a time when it is important to look for a more experienced and tested person even if he brings fewer changes to the current policies,” was more in line with their view of the race.

That’s a 12% differential between the past and the future.

The Zeitgeist rules!

HOLLYWOOD, CA (C.U.News) The godfather of Republican dirty campaign tricks, Lee “Willy Horton” Atwater, revealed through one of the world’s most respected psychics today that Billary would be the stronger candidate against John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview granted to this reporter, the medium (who insisted on anonymity, and only after she was satisfied as to my claim of being one of the world’s most diligent vagitarians) said that despite the difficulty in penetrating the third circle of hell, where Mr. Atwater currently resides, her confidence in the accuracy of the transmission was “very high.”

In a related development, Hillary Clinton, out on the campaign trail today in Prestonburg, Kentucky, cited Atwater’s former apprentice Karl Rove as confirming the psychic’s pronouncement:

“There has been a lot of analysis about which of us is stronger to win against Sen. McCain, and I believe I am the stronger candidate,” said Clinton, repeating a line from her stump speech. Then she veered from her usual argument.

“Just today I found some curious support for that position when one of the TV networks released an analysis done by – of all people – Karl Rove, saying that I was the stronger candidate,” said Clinton. “Somebody go a hold of his analysis and there it is.”

Yes, there it is. Rove joins his current employer, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, and former Billary basher extraordinaire, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, as Hillary BFsF.

Anyone who hasn’t noticed the rabid up-tick in the perceived toxic ties between the presidential candidates and their religious affiliations gets a sincere “get well soon,” because you have to be in some kind of coma. The only one who appears to have escaped the holy vetting is Mrs Clinton, which may speak more to the fact she has no real religious associations outside of the little prayer circle she attends in the Senate.

But look. As Clinton thrashes wildly in dead air preparatory to plunging to her political death, Obama and now McCain are getting the religious scrubbing of a lifetime because they’re going to be the nominees. The reasons the electorate is finally paying attention to their religious ties however, run a lot deeper than Fixed Noise’s manufactured crisis ‘o video loops of Jeramiah Wright, or the totally whacktard theologies of the neocon nutballs associated with McCain.

Like it or not human beings are hard-wired to long for something higher, deeper, and more profound than material reality; a higher universe reality— the world of spirit. Religion is a personal and real reality for most of humanity. But when institutionalized religion becomes sanctioned by the state, tacitly or overtly, we’re all in danger of policies being directed by the personal interpretations of the religion-specific values held by a small number of people. Remember: the last time we tried mixing government with religion, we wound up burning people at the stake.

The recent erosion of the fragile wall between church and state produced by policies and attitudes of the Cheney-Bush debacle, which either directly or indirectly facilitate the bizarre theories of a coming apocalypse, are unfortunately only one of several afflictions currently threatening our liberty.

Here’s a check-list of a dozen things, in no particular order, that lovers of freedom and liberty should monitor as frequently as they would a weather station— with constant vigilance. . . followed by examples of how they are threatening our liberty right now, every day.

Usurpation of unwarranted power by either the executive or legislative branches. Signing statements— what, 157 at last count?

Machinations of ignorant and superstitious agitators. Rush Limbaugh; Anne Coulter; Shaun Hannity; Bill O’Reilly; Glen Beck. . .

Retardation of scientific progress. Stem Cell Research; Terri Schiavo. . .

Stalemate of the dominance of mediocrity. “Stay the course” Bush; health care crisis; no energy policy; no higher moral vision. . .

Domination by vicious minorities. Swift boat morons; Fox News. . .

Control by ambitious and clever would-be dictators. George Bush ala Dick Cheney. . .

Disastrous disruption of panics. Global War on Terror; Gasoline prices; subprime lending crisis. . .

Exploitation by the unscrupulous. Haliburton, KBR, all other war profiteers. . .

Failure of social and economic fairness. Toleration of poverty; no higher education for the poor; ridiculous minimum wage; no health care; no working immigration policy; unfair taxation. . .

Union of church and state. Neocons and Bush on a mission from God; “In God we trust” on our money; paid Christian ministers in the House and Senate. Every elected senator or Congressman knows how to pray, and they certainly can pray on the record if they want to. But there’s no place for paid or voluntary professional clergy of any religion to be in our House and Senate, leading our elected representatives in prayer or worship.

Loss of personal liberty. Habeas Corpus; NSA spying; Fear mongering government regulations.

And now, because I follow Jesus,

let’s close with a short prayer, shall we?

Both energy-things and spirit values are colored by their interpretation through the mind media of consciousness. —The Urantia Book

[T]he content of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. – Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

In the clip below, Dan Abrams takes a Repug congressman to task for questioning Obama’s patriotism. But it’s what happening on an unconscious level that concerns me here.

Notice that in the first few seconds of the set-up, Abrams mis-characterizes what’s going on in the picture. Obama, Richardson, and Clinton are standing in front of a US flag,* the latter two standing behind Obama with their hands over their hearts. Abrams says that Obama had “his hands down when the pledge of allegiance was being played.”

Wrong. It was the National Anthem that was being “played.” Putting one’s hand over one’s heart during the anthem is not a matter of convention at all, as anyone who’s ever attended a professional sports event can testify.

Let’s give Abrams the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t consciously sabotaging his own argument here. What he did accomplish, at an unconscious level, was to propagate an element the right wing smear meme that Obama can’t be trusted because he’s not patriotic. And nothing the silver tongued Abrams can say subsequent to the set up is going to displace the symbolic impression of a presidential candidate who won’t place his hand over his heart when saying the pledge of allegiance.

This plays right into the Repugs media strategy of defining a candidate in the media before he can define himself. Witness what they were able to do to John Kerry in the 2004 election.

Kerry’s greatest strength was his status as a decorated Vietnam vet who had volunteered for duty. In contrast, one of the greatest weaknesses of his opponent was the latter’s own “service” record, which included being placed by his rich daddy into a champagne unit of the Air National Guard ahead of far more deserving candidates (and from which he was AWOL much of the time); opting out of a voluntary assignment to Vietnam; and forfeiting his million dollar taxpayer funded pilot’s by refusing to take a medical exam that, had it come back positive for drugs, would have resulted in his immediate transfer to the Army and to the front lines in Vietnam. Despite all this, by the time the Rovians were done sticking their propaganda needles into their Kerry voodo doll (with a huge assist from the MSM), he had become the villainous zombie and Bush the conquering hero.

This is all part and parcel of what cognitive scientist Dr. Drew Westen, author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,” describes as “a network of associations, bundles of thoughts, feelings, images, and ideas that have become connected over time.” In Westen’s terms, Rove succeeded in altering the components of the network of associations from which the candidates’ respective narratives were derived. Negative feelings that should have been directed at Bush were displaced and transferred wholesale to Kerry.

The same thing is happening to Obama now that he is emerging as the likely Democratic nominee. (For other components of the “network of associations” being used to define his “character,” see my previous post “The Manchurian Muslim Candidate.”)

It’s only after the virus of disinformation slips past the watchdog of the mind that its pernicious effects can be seen in the body politic. By then, it’s usually too late. As Foucualt would have put it, the representation of the reality displaces the reality itself.

The medium is still the message, Dan.

*The photo itself is almost certainly photochopped; Clinton was made to appear midget-sized next to Richardson, much more size distortion than could be reasonably assigned to a wide angle lens.

According to the tireless efforts of patriots like Matt Drudgery and Rush Limpbot, a political catastrophe of the highest order can still be avoided.

In a scoop that left the MSM swooning with envy, Drudgery uncovered Barak Obama’s middle name.

“Hussein. Hussein!,” thundered Limpbot in an exclusive interview I had with him today.

“I mean, they don’t even try to hide the fact that his last name rhymes with Usama,” he said, wiping a flek of spittle from the corner of his mouth.

When I pointed out that Middle East expert Professor Juan Cole stated that Hussein is an honored name in Semitic cultures, shared by individuals like staunch US ally, King Hussein of Jordan; and that 14 of 43 U.S. presidents have Semiitc names, and that Barak means “blessed,” Limpbot grew visibly angry.

“Juan Cole? That anti-Armageddon Islamofascist terorrist sympathizer? Don’t you be quoting the likes of him around me, or you’re outta here.”

“Okay,” I said, looking down at my notes. “Perhaps you could clarify for my readers just who “they” are.”

“The fact that you even have to ask makes me wonder about where your own loyalties lie, buddy. Say, I don’t see you wearing a U.S. flag pin,” he said, suspicion evident in his tone.

After I explained that, like Obama, I don’t believe in wearing my patriotism on my lapel, and besides, the pins are made in China and probably contain heavy doses of toxic lead enamel, Limpbot sneered:

“Always an excuse with you people. I suppose that like Barak Hussein Usama, you don’t hold your hand over your heart when you sing the national anthem, either.”

Ignoring the taunt, I asked whether his overt racist characterizations of Obama as “Barak the Magic Negro,” and a “Half-rican” (white mother, black father) wasn’t getting enough traction, and perhaps that was why he was now employing the Barak-as-undercover-terrorist meme. Limpbot replied:

“Look. That picture of him wearing the turban was leaked to Matt by someone from within the Clinton campaign. Did you hear her on Meet the Press last night, qualifying her statement that Usama Obama isn’t a Muslim, as far as I know? Even the Clintonistas suspect something is not right with this guy.”

“And, and– then there’s the fact that this guy was sworn into the Senate on a Quran; a freakin’ Quran, for Chrissakes! And that as a kid in Indonesia he went to one of those madrass-ass terrorist training schools. And that his so-called Christian pastor thinks Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakan is some kind of George Washington!”

After pausing to catch his breath, he continued his rant.

“And then there’s that slip up by that radical black activist wife of his about her being ashamed of being an American. Well, why don’t they just both move to Iraq and live with all those other America haters? Hell, I’ve got people who know where they can get themselves a couple of brand new suicide vests, cheap.”

After I pointed out that he was confusing Obama with another black legislator, Keith Ellison (aren’t all Blacks the same?), who happens to be a Muslim and was sworn into his House seat using Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Quran; and that CNN had debunked the madrassa story by actually sending a reporter there to investigate; and that his wife’s words were taken out of context, Limpbot got red in the face. Cutting me off with a wave of his meaty hand, he railed:

“Don’t go messin’ with my narrative, mister. There’s an election coming up and Hillary is fading fast. We spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars defining her as a conniving, femma-nazi bitch. We spent less time defining John Kerry as an anti-war coward, however…” he said, his voice trailing off.

Shaking his head violently and reconnecting with his lizard brain, he continued.

“But there ain’t a whole lotta time left to define Barak Hussein Usama as someone equally as loathsome.”

“Barak to the Future,” I quipped, trying to regain his confidence.

But it was too late. Rising angrily out his chair, he grabbed a handful of Oxycontin and Viagra pills from a candy dish and threw them at my head.

“Get the hell out here before I call my Blackwater guys and have you escorted out of the building. Hell, out of the godamnned country!”

I got up, switched off my recorder and left.

Note to self: Never try to humor a corporatist, race baiting, fear-mongering, right wing authoritarian reactionary.