Donald Trump Orders His Followers To “Knock The Crap” Out Of Protesters

The hate-filled rhetoric of Donald Trump long ago crossed the line of decency. The record of his overt racism, rancid misogyny, and puerile insults is well documented. He regularly employs a form of vile demagoguery to incite his glassy-eyed disciples into fits of fury. And today he extended his campaign of bullying tactics to an explicit call to violence.

Donald Trump Fascism

At his final rally for the Iowa caucus, Trump addressed the crowd to encourage them to go to their neighborhood caucus and support his candidacy. During the speech he veered off subject to announce that his security was on the lookout for hecklers. Then, assuming his phony facade of machismo, he issued this directive to the jackbooted thugs that make up his audience (video below):

“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell…I will pay for the legal fees. I promise.”

That is literally the same message that was often sent to supporters of Nazis in pre-war Germany. Protesters were frequently subjected to beatings with the encouragement of the Party’s leaders. This is something that Trump must regard as a model for his brand of American supremacy.

However, there are a couple of problems with that theory. First of all, it is illegal to incite violence in this country. Trump’s exhortation to such brutality is well outside the bounds of the law. And what’s more, he knew it when he said it. That’s why he added his assurance that he would cover any legal consequences of the unlawful behavior. That offer of indemnity is evidence of unlawful intent as well as malice aforethought. Even worse, it is also a solicitation to commit a crime. If anyone ends up getting hurt, Trump should face both civil and criminal charges.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has goaded his followers into committing acts of violence. On prior occasions he has threatened hecklers by shouting commands from his podium to “get them the hell out of here.” He justified beatings after the fact saying that the protester “should have been roughed up.” He even advised his supporters to assault a protester saying “Confiscate his coat,” adding “You know, it’s about 10 degrees below zero outside.” That’s an unambiguous acknowledgement of intention to cause harm.

This is simply unacceptable in a civilized society. Donald Trump’s bullying and vulgarity is not only illegal, it’s an embarrassment to decent Americans. And yet he is the leading candidate in the Republican primary. That tells you something about the modern GOP. And what it tells you is that it isn’t all that modern. It is following in the boot steps of an older regime that reveled in brutality and oppression and also idolized a megalomaniac with bad hair and designs on world domination. That will be the legacy of Mein Trumpf.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

On Fox News: Misinformed People Should Not Vote – And Obama Is Just Like Hitler

With the methodical precision of the German train schedule, Fox News has come out with their regular feature arguing that the fewer people who participate in America’s democracy the better. They seem to trot out this theory before every election, along with efforts to slash democrats from the voter rolls, in an obvious attempt to exclude those they regard as unfit to vote. This year’s version features right-wing economist, and frequent Fox News guest, Thomas Sowell.

Thomas Sowell

Appearing on Neil Cavuto’s program on the Fox Business Network (video below), Sowell elaborated on an article he published that made the case for shrinking the electorate so that only the “right” people voted. In response to Cavuto’s brazenly leading question, with the premise that voting “is not necessarily a birthright,” Sowell said that…

“Elections are not held just for social participation. They’re not held just to vet our emotions. They’re held to elect people who will hold our lives and the lives of our loved ones in their hands, as well as the fate of the entire nation. To go out as if we’re voting for homecoming queen is madness. I advise in that column that people who really haven’t had a chance to study these things and know much about it, their most patriotic act would be to stay home on election day, rather than vote on the basis of their whims or their emotions, which is really playing Russian roulette with the history of the country.”

The arrogance of Sowell’s perspective is both wrong and dangerous for two reasons. First, he fails to define what he regards as “whims” and “emotions.” It would be way too easy to label anyone who disagrees with him as emotional and, therefore, unfit to cast a vote. What’s more, emotions have always been a part of the democratic process and should continue to be considered by a compassionate electorate. And secondly, Sowell’s advice that allegedly uninformed or misinformed voters stay home is more of an avoidance of the problem than a solution. How about educating the voters so they can make informed decisions? Apparently Sowell and Cavuto would prefer to just exclude them.

After hearing Sowell’s theory that misinformed citizens should abstain from voting, Cavuto offered a typically snarky response saying that “By that measure I think it’s safe to say that every MSNBC viewer should just stay home.” Very funny, Neil. But actually Cavuto has a point, just the wrong one (as usual). If anyone should refrain from voting based on the cable news network they watch it should be Fox News viewers. Numerous studies have shown that Fox viewers are consistently the most uninformed. Even among Republicans, the ones who watch Fox have the worst grasp of reality.

The political bias in Sowell’s article was starkly evident in his deranged assertion that Obama is the same sort of “glib egomaniac” as Donald Trump. He provided no examples to support that absurd claim. Certainly Obama has never engaged in ludicrous boasts about how he is the greatest, smartest, bestest at anything and everything the way Trump does. But where Sowell goes completely off the rails is when he makes this disgusting comparison between Obama and Hitler:

“No national leader ever aroused more fervent emotions than Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s. Watch some old newsreels of German crowds delirious with joy at the sight of him. The only things at all comparable in more recent times were the ecstatic crowds that greeted Barack Obama when he burst upon the political scene in 2008.”

See? Obama is just like Hitler, according to Sowell. And all because he attracted large crowds. You know who else attracts large crowds? Donald Trump. The difference is that Obama’s crowds represented the diversity of America and never devolved into insults and hostility. Trump’s crowds, on the other hand, are predominantly white and they are openly hostile to Latinos, Muslims, and gays. So which crowd is more like the Nazis? And which party, with it’s demagogic appeals to American Exceptionalism (aka American Supremacy), is more aligned with Hitler’s mission? I’m just sayin’…

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

By Rush Limbaugh’s Logic George Bush Should Be Executed As A War Criminal

This is one of those rare moments when we are compelled to thank Rush Limbaugh for settling an argument that liberals have been making for years. Specifically, that Bush has escaped accountability for gross malfeasance in office. Of course, Limbaugh doesn’t know what his remarks portend and would deny it he were told, but we’ll take what we can get. If Obama is guilty of political mischief, Bush’s guilt is of a far more deadly variety.

Rush Limbaugh
Have You Liked News Corpse On Facebook Yet?

On yesterday’s radio broadcast, Limbaugh went full-on Godwin as he tried (for the umpteenth time) to compare the Obama administration to Hitler’s Nazi regime. This time he inserted a brief disclaimer stating that he wasn’t saying Obama was Hitler, then went on to finish his lecture about how Obama is so much like Hitler. The inspiration for this rant came from a former Reagan national security adviser, Herbert Meyer, whom Limbaugh cited as his source for this extended bit of nonsense:

“[W]hether you believe it or not, there is not one document linking Adolf Hitler to the holocaust. Adolf Hitler never put it on paper what he intended to do. There is no smoking gun. And yet what happened? We know that the Nazis engaged in the Holocaust. Herb Meyer’s point was that the people Hitler hired didn’t have to be told. They didn’t have to be given instructions. All they had to do was listen to what Hitler was saying. All they had to do was listen to what his objectives were. And he said the same thing’s happening here with this administration.”

See? Exactly the same thing is happening now as happened with Hitler (minus the millions of corpses). Obama is deploying coded messages to his minions who will carry out the secret assignments that all two million federal employees know via telepathic transmission and, of course, the ObamaPhone.

The problem with this conspiracy blathering is that the central premise is utterly false. There were numerous documented links between Hitler and the tactics used by his regime to exterminate millions of people. The Wannsee Protocols and the doctrine of the “Final Solution” were explicit instructions to engage in mass murder. The Nuremberg Trials also made public documentary evidence of Hitler’s direct participation in the Holocaust. So right off the bat Limbaugh is revealing nothing other than his own ignorance of history, as well as his gross insensitivity to the victims of the Nazi horrors.

More to the point, the notion that Obama is somehow responsible for what has occurred at the IRS because his agenda was being carried out by underlings who just absorbed his intentions through intuition, is ludicrous. Furthermore, Rush’s twisted logic has repercussions that he may not have considered. During the Bush administration there was an abundance of initiatives that were carried out by people under his authority that were unambiguously illegal. U.S. attorneys were fired for their political affiliations. Covert CIA agents were outed in the press. Lies were used to justify military invasions of countries with whom we were not at war. Prisoners of war were tortured in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

At the time, there were no documentary links definitively tying Bush to these activities. There were also no investigations conducted to ascertain the facts. But by Limbaugh’s reasoning, none of that is necessary. Bush is obviously guilty because the perpetrators worked for him and thus were aware of his unspoken approval for what they did. And since some of those actions are war crimes, then according to Limbaugh, Bush should go on trial ala Nuremberg.

Where once there was a requirement that a “smoking gun” be found to seal the guilt of a criminal defendant, Limbaugh has literally said that such evidence is no longer needed. But the lunacy of his legal ramblings went even further:

“You don’t need to link Obama to it. He hired these people. Lois Lerner and everybody at the IRS who’s doing this is doing everything they can to please Obama.”

Limbaugh might have a point except for the fact that Lois Lerner and IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman are both Republicans who were hired by George Bush. There has not been a single person affiliated with this so-called scandal who has been identified as a Democrat or was hired by a Democratic political appointee. The IRS line workers are either career employees or were hired by the GOP managers at the tax-exempt organizations division (i.e. Lerner).

So if Limbaugh wants to blame everything that happens at the IRS (or the DoJ, or the State Department, or Benghazi, or Sandy Hook, or the JFK assassination) on Obama, then I say we send Bush to the Hague. What do you say, Rush?

Whose Side Are You On? Reagan Or Hitler?

The conservative extremists seeking to attack working Americans and bust unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and really everywhere, need to understand with whom their philosophy is shared. Then they need to decide if that is acceptable.


So choose a side:

“We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike” ~ Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933

Or…

“Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.” ~ Ronald Reagan, September 1, 1980

It doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult choice to me. I was not a supporter of Ronald Reagan. In fact, I think he did considerable harm to the country. But he was the first and only union president to be elected to the presidency of the United States. The fact that his conservative credentials are so well established makes his views on unions all the more significant and non-partisan.

Unfortunately, the knee-jerk right-wingers who profess to idolize Reagan either dismiss his support for collective bargaining or they are too ill-informed to know about it. With regard to the latter, that would be an intentional result of the media they favor. Do you think that Fox News would ever broadcast these quotes? With regard to the former, it is still intentional in that they are willingly hypocritical and obedient to the special interests who have fooled them into thinking that the welfare of billionaires is superior to their own. Just look at what they regard as Shared Sacrifice:


At some point the rank-and-file Tea Baggers need to wake up to the fact that they are being used. Corporations want to end collective bargaining so that they have a free hand to exploit and abuse their workers. The politicians, who are bankrolled by those same corporations, want to disrupt fundraising and support for progressive candidates and policies.

None of this is accidental. And the people who will get hurt the most are those who are following the conservative disinformation blindly with the pathetic impression that it makes them patriotic. They should ask themselves if they are really advancing the cause of freedom. They should ask Ronald Reagan.

Jon Stewart: A Pawn Of The Insurance Lobby?

Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart let down his guard and revealed that he is not the independent voice of reason that he would like everyone to believe. He is not the beacon of truth who slays the hypocrites and deceivers of the international media conspiracy. No, he is just another lackey of powerful corporate interests that want to take over your life. The shocking evidence of this followed a segment wherein he mocked Fox News’ CPO (Chief Paranoia Officer), Glenn Beck:

At the end of this innocuous (and hilarious) comedic skit, Stewart’s true colors were shown. As he announced that the program would be back after a commercial break, a graphic appeared on screen, accompanied by a voice-over, divulging that the Daily Show was brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

PROGRESSIVE Insurance? If you were not previously convinced of Stewart’s complicity in the clandestine plot to destroy America, well, you can no longer feign ignorance. This is an overt admission of his membership in a cabal that hates the principles that made this country great. It is a cabal that includes one-world government advocates and global industrialists like Warren Buffet and Rupert Murdoch. This covert coalition is so thoroughly ingrained in our culture that it brazenly plays both sides of the fence as it seduces and perverts our country, our neighbors, and even our children. If you think you are safe from this threat, think again. Even Glenn Beck has fallen into its web. Pay close attention to his own words:

Beck, 02/20/10: “Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution. And it was designed to eat the Constitution.”

Do you hear that Jon Stewart? Progressivism was built from the ground up to be hungry for parchment made of – can you believe this? – HEMP! Progressivism just wants to get stoned by consuming the document that enumerates our great nation’s values as if it was a batch of Alice B. Stalin brownies. And after you’re shit-faced (that’s a medical term – look it up), the forces of evil are free to feed you any ludicrous notion that suits their whim, i.e. social justice:

Beck, 11/03/09: “Progressives think they know better than you and they want to control every aspect of your life. […] They like to call it “social justice” or fairness; I like to call it Marxism.”

And with that, Beck prevailed upon his disciples to abandon their corrupt churches for ministering to the poor. With regard to the progressive obsession for control, Stewart ridiculed this threat last night with obscene references to self-gratification. But this threat is all too real. Witness the remarks Beck made on the subject earlier this month:

Beck, 03/12/10: “So here is the deal, if you don’t have insurance and you need to take the government insurance, then the government has the right to regulate every aspect of your life.”

There you have it. When even Glenn Beck can declare publicly that the government has the right to rule over you like a slave master, then you know the risks are deadly serious. And notice how Beck wavers between a complaint that progressives want to regulate “every aspect of your life,” to an assertion that the government already has that right which he regards as entirely appropriate. This is all carefully designed to freak you out!

It is no accident that Jon Stewart is sponsored by Progressive Insurance. And it ought not to surprise you that Beck was once sponsored by GEICO (but they recently left him along with 100 other advertisers).

Note that GEICO, which is owned by billionaire and Illuminati lord Warren Buffet, was originally known as the Government Employees Insurance Company.” That’s right! It was a state takeover of insurance by government union thugs. Today GEICO is supposedly engaged in fierce competition with Progressive. This may explain why Beck is so adamantly opposed to the Progressives who are sponsoring Stewart. Or maybe not. In the end they are all a part of the same congregation of villainy and much of the contentiousness may be staged to throw us off.

But whatever you do, don’t be mislead. They are coming after us. They are determined and relentless and, in addition to that, they just keep going and going (which reminds me, watch out for that cap and trade Energizer bill, and take your Avodart). And don’t let the veneer of comedy seduce you into submission. This is not about rodeo clowns and satirists. It is not about laughter and wackiness and goofballs who act like they’re crazy. Never forget these words from someone who knows what it means to be presumed to be nuts:

“I have been laughed to scorn as a prophet; for many a year my warnings and my prophecies were regarded as the illusions of a mind diseased […] I appear in the eyes of many bourgeois democrats as only a wild man.”
~ Glenn Beck Adolph Hitler, September 1936

Fox News Poll: Obama Beats All Republicans In 2012

All it takes is a fluke victory in Massachusetts for Fox News pundits predict the demise of the Democratic Party. In the days since Scott Brown won the special election for the Senate the conservative press has been unreservedly giddy. They have proclaimed the end of everything from health care to the Obama presidency. The only problem is that nobody told the voters.

A poll from that bastion of socialist twaddle, Fox News, shows that Barack Obama is preferred over every Republican they surveyed against him.

By 47 percent to 35 percent Obama bests former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The president has an even wider edge over former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (55 percent to 31 percent), and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (53 percent to 29 percent).

On top of that, the Tea Bagger phenomenon is turning out to be the biggest bubble since the tulip mania. As I wrote in The Tea Party Delusion, the popularity of the movement is largely a mirage created by the media (i.e. Fox News). Almost half the country doesn’t even know they exist. In this new poll from Fox, they match Obama against a generic candidate from the Tea Party and Obama wins by more than two to one (48% to 23%). Even amongst Republicans a majority (54%) reject the Baggers.

Perhaps the rumors of the President’s demise are highly exaggerated. The significance of these results in a poll from an overtly hostile source cannot be understated. By the same token, the lesson of the Massachusetts race is that overconfidence is a dangerous extravagance.

The 2012 election is still 34 months away and the stable of potential opponents have a not-so-secret weapon: Fox News. Yes, the network that commissioned this poll actually employs four prospective GOP candidates. In addition to the two surveyed here, Palin and Gingrich, they also have Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum on the payroll. It is unprecedented that a so-called news enterprise would actually employ so many electoral adversaries from the same party, or for that matter, any party. You have to wonder if Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Bobby Jindal feel left out.

The association with Fox could prove valuable over the next two and a half years. The Fox Farm Team will have an opportunity to rack up a lot of free practice time on the air. That exposure, along with the rest of Fox’s advocacy for the rightist agenda, is an expensive asset that will only be afforded to members of the team.

Fox Nation HitlerAnd the coaching staff at Fox is already preparing the field. Fox Nation took the occasion of Brown’s victory to promote a video that portrays Democrats as despondent Nazis being berated by their leader, Adolf Hitler.

In the run up to the 2008 election, and in the year that followed, there were many complaints about the right-wing’s hyperbolic attempts to associate the President with Hitler, Stalin, or Marx, and despite the documented evidence of it, Fox always tried to dismiss it as overzealous opponents. But this video is unambiguously making the Nazi correlation and it is prominently featured on the Fox Nation web site. And it’s not the first time:

Fox Nation Hitler

The campaign for 2012 is clearly in progress and Fox is implementing their most aggressive and dirtiest game plan. But according to their own poll it isn’t yet having much of an effect. The operative word there is “yet.” If there is one thing that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, et al have in abundance it is patience. This is just the bottom of the second inning and they have plenty of pine tar left to apply extra spin to the ball.

Falling Out Of The Crazy Tree: Glenn Beck Loses Friends

“Please talk me out of the crazy tree, America.”
~ Glenn Beck, July 2009

It must be hard to be Glenn Beck. And not just because you would be perpetually burdened with nightmarish delusions of demons and communists conspiring against you. He must have abandonment issues on a grand scale. Perhaps it all goes back to having lost his mother to suicide when he was a teenager. His holiday story, “The Christmas Sweater” is largely centered on that relationship.

Exacerbating this problem, Beck is losing support from many of the folks he would ordinarily rely upon. For instance, Charles Johnson, the proprietor of the right-wing web site Little Green Footballs, just enumerated the reasons that he is parting ways with the right. Two of his top ten reasons explicitly cite Beck due to his support for anti-government lunacy, conspiracy theories, and hate speech. When you’ve lost LGF, you might really want to commence some serious self-examination.

Beck also lost Eric Burns, former host of Fox News Watch. Burns was a relative moderate on Fox News, which may explain why they fired him (watch your back, Shep). Burns has kept a low profile since leaving Fox, but now he opens up about his former haunt. And the first thing he wants to convey is his gratitude that…

“I do not have to face the ethical problem of sharing an employer with Glenn Beck.”

Ouch! Burns says that Beck is “an embarrassment” and likens him unfavorably to some rather unsavory characters from the past: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and John Birch. Remember, these criticisms are coming from a former Fox News anchor. This is how far Beck has wandered from even conservative convention.

None of this, however, will phase Beck. He is confident in his confusion. He has knowledge that transcends the capability of mere mortals. He said so:

6:1) I’ve been talking for several years now – two in particular.
6:2) Because I know what our country is headed towards. I know the struggles that are ahead in my life and I know the struggles that are ahead in your life.
6:3) It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s going to be good.
6:4) We are going to again transform the world. We are going to have a miraculous rebirth. Things are all going to change.
~ More Beckisms in The Gospel According To Beck

Glenn Beck sees our future. His omnipotent vision will shield us from harm. Or at least it will be good harm. But when he speaks of miracles, I wonder if he is aware that Hitler also campaigned on a message of rebirth. It is also interesting to hear Beck say that “we are going to transform the world.” When President Obama said before the election that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” Beck replayed the comment over and over again, insisting that there was something sinister in it. The same is true for his declaration that “Things are all going to change.” When Obama says the same thing, it is cause to hoard guns and ammo and gold and our precious bodily fluids.

Beck must feel awfully alone. Along with those mentioned above, he has lost upwards of eighty advertisers. And more recently, the Harlem Gospel Choir backed out of performing with his theatrical release of The Christmas Sweater. He is rapidly becoming segregated from the world of rational thinkers. He is devolving into a cartoon of himself. He already admitted that he is just an entertainer, a rodeo clown, and a worthless loser. And he beseeches America to talk him out of the crazy tree. In this self-appraisal he has a comrade:

“I have been laughed to scorn as a prophet; for many a year my warnings and my prophecies were regarded as the illusions of a mind diseased […] I appear in the eyes of many bourgeois democrats as only a wild man.”
~ Adolph Hitler, September 1936

We would be wise to remember history. Beck’s friends may be falling from the crazy tree like autumn leaves, but Beck is climbing to ever-higher branches that can’t possibly sustain his weight. He is going to come down from the tree, but not because he was talked down. Perhaps that is what he means when he says that “It’s not going to be pretty.”

Glenn Beck Idolizes Adolf Hitler

Tonight, more truth. More truth that I, quite frankly, am shocked by. I’m going to show you a quote here in just a few minutes, something that will melt your brain. If you’re a regular reader of this web site, you are going to say, “You got to be kidding me!”

There is information that you’re just not going to see anyplace else. I have to first give you a little bit of history, because the context is so important. So, if you just bear with me for a few minutes, I have to tell you a story.

I don’t want to believe that these things are true. I would love to be wrong. I love my country. I think you do, too. I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat. It’s not about party. It’s about our country. What I am telling you now is that there are Marxist revolutionaries who have dedicated themselves to principles that will destroy our nation as we know it! Now, that is a heavy charge, granted. That’s why I put the phone there.

That phone is directly to Glenn Beck. He is the one that Rupert Murdoch has put in charge to lead the campaign against Barack Obama and this web site.

Call me, Glenn. Call me! I’m begging you – call me, correct me. Tell me what I post here is not true. It would help me sleep at night. It would.

…..I haven’t received any phone calls…..

There was a controversy because people said, “You’re going to put Adolf Hitler up there?” Yes, Adolf Hitler. That’s a pretty hefty charge that people in America, in our media, listen to Adolf Hitler. Well, this person is in love with Adolf Hitler. These are Glenn Beck’s own words:

“Oh, you know who my favorite political philosopher is? Adolf Hitler.”

This week, I pointed out that Beck was a fan of the socialists and of the Marxists. Ask yourself, America, please ask yourself: If I am wrong, how is it possible he has not called? You’d think being labeled a fan of a guy who killed millions of people would make you pick up the darn phone. Don’t you think?

So, the reason why this phone hasn’t rung all week is because the most important political philosopher, for Beck is Adolf Hitler. The guy responsible for more deaths than almost any other 20th century leader is his favorite philosopher. How can that man be your favorite anything? He killed millions of people! It is insanity! This is his hero’s work! Millions dead. His favorite political philosopher. That was a quote.

America, how many radicals is it going to take? How many radicals surrounding our media will it take before you understand that when Rupert Murdoch says he wants to “shape the agenda” of the news – oh, he wants to shape it, all right.

[Editor: With a very few modifications, the preceding are Glenn Beck’s actual words regarding White House Communications Director Anita Dunn]

Fox Nation Declares Victory: Death Panels And Hitler Edition

This is the fourth time that the Fox Nation has declared a “victory” on their web site that is not attributable to Fox Nation nor even a victory:

Quoting me: Fox Nation has decided to make a habit of these “Mission Accomplished” moments. That stance in and of itself is evidence of Fox’s bias. They have ceased to even pretend to be a neutral news enterprise. They are now openly admitting that they have a stake in the outcomes of political affairs. And when they think their side has won, they won’t hesitate to declare victory and commence a celebration.

However, on this occasion there was an even worse display of the repugnant character of Fox Nation. Accompanying a link to a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, Fox Nation selected an image that illustrates perfectly the Fox doctrine of division and hatred:

Take a good look at that picture. It is no accident that the Obama as Hitler poster is the first thing that draws the eye. Yet there is no editorial connection to that visual cue. The graphic links to a poll conducted by Fox News with predictably negative results for President Obama. But the revolting context suggested by the image is affirmed in the caption:

“FNC Poll: America Sides With Town Hall Protesters.”

The inescapable conclusion is that town hall protesters regard Obama as equivalent to Hitler and that the rest of America concurs. This is not merely a snapshot of a vile assemblage of ignorant hate mongers, it is confirmation that Fox is amongst those who side with the Hitler-invoking protesters. It was Fox editors who made the decision to publish this photo that was deliberately cropped to deliver a visual message.

What makes this even more repulsive is that Fox persistently denies the allegations that the Tea Baggers who populate these town halls are racist. Yet here they plainly flaunt the transparent loathing that infects these objectionable objectors and furthermore, they exalt them as the essence of American values.

Were this just an example of photojournalism capturing a real moment in the quilt of characters that make up our nation, it would be appropriate and enlightening. But to deploy this image in this context is simply disgusting, but not surprising coming from Fox.

If You Believe This Country Is Great, But…

Glenn Beck, who has been reduced to tears more often than Tammy Faye Bakker, says that it’s because he loves this country – and fears for it. Apparently he feels that the country he loves is dangerously weak and will collapse, but for his weepy entreaties.

However, his expression of that love always seems to have a disclaimer attached to it. He only loves America if it conforms to his delusive vision. And it isn’t just a few principles or values. In fact, he adds new criteria every day. Here is how he opens every episode of his Fox News program, along with some of his qualifications for loving his country:

If you believe this country is great, but…

  • …progressive fascists are trying to destroy it, this is your wake-up call!
  • …you believe these weasels are really only as trustworthy as far as you can throw ’em — then your voice needs to be heard.
  • …you feel like the government is trying to steer us to mob rule lately, then it’s time to get back on the road.
  • …our government is trying to demolish everything that our founders stood for, it’s time to take our country back.
  • …fear the tyranny that’s starting to take hold, don’t stay silent.
  • …the government is clamping down on your freedom, now’s the time to throw the shackles off.
  • …the government’s solutions are the problem, what do you say we get the government out of the way.
  • …the government is putting our lives, liberty and fortunes in jeopardy, it’s time to say enough is enough.

That’s just a sampling of the many flaming hoops America must jump through to earn Beck’s affection. And it is no coincidence that most of them express an overt antagonism and require some sort of adversarial activism on the part of Beck’s disciples.

So what does Beck love about America? Well, on his program yesterday he hosted Burton Folsom Jr., a revisionist historian who believes that robber barons were beneficial to the country, and that FDR exacerbated the Depression. In the course of the dialogue, Folsom and Beck praised Henry Ford for opposing labor unions and refusing to participate in FDR’s National Recovery Administration. Of course, it was the labor movement that rescued America’s work force, and FDR’s recovery program that restored economic stability.

What Beck didn’t mention is that, at the very same time, Ford was helping to finance Hitler’s rise to power. While American workers were desperate for jobs, Ford opened a new plant in Germany. His anti-Semitic tract “The International Jew” was a Hitler favorite. And the Nazi regime awarded him the highest honor that a civilian can receive.

What, then, is the message that Beck intends to convey? Is it that we should turn to corporatist (i.e. Fascist) policies to allow the robber barons to return and save the nation? You would think so by his defense of AIG executives’ salaries and bonuses. Beck’s personal interest in this was obvious. Despite the fact that he makes tens of millions of dollars a year, he likes to pretend he’s a man of the people, and he had the gall to articulate this stuporously insensitive complaint:

“As a small businessman, I don’t know what they’re going to do next. I don’t if they are going try to come after me, if they are going to raise my taxes, if all of a sudden I’ve got to pay a new carbon tax, or I’m an unpopular… So you don’t know.”

That’s right, Glenn. You’re a small businessman, they’re all out to get you, and you’re an unpopular…(?). Thanks for enlightening us.

After all that, all I can say is … if you believe this country is great, but wealthy blowhards who produce nothing but hostility and division are distorting American values with their self-centered griping … Come on, follow me.