Sign of the Times: Glenn Beck to address the Knesset

David Seaton's News Links

We do live in a society in which things have become almost inscrutably complex. (...) I think the rise in autism diagnosis has a lot to do with children coming into a society that no longer makes much sense socially and contains within all the incentives for behavioral meltdowns, social misunderstanding and anxiety. When you consider high unemployment, high divorce rates and general unhappiness in the culture, the complexity that we've accepted and nurtured as somehow being representative of a more advanced and healthy society seems much less so. Orion

“In the quest for growth, many countries have neglected to build a reliable system of social security that will help citizens buffer the market's volatility.(...) Democratic capitalism’s greatest problem is not that it will destroy itself economically, as Marx would have it — but that it may lose its political support.” Raghuram Rajan  

Despite so many ethnic, religious and social conflicts, over the years America has plowed on in reasonable harmony because the economy provided jobs and a reasonably predictable outcome for anyone willing to work hard... That has ground to a halt and now, in America, like at some family dinner from hell, when much too much has been drunk, all the built up spleen and resentment is spewing out and things are said that can never be taken back. 

With jobs disappearing for months beyond any unemployment coverage and with health insurance coverage dependent on having a job, out, Americans live with an intolerable level of anxiety, complicated, as Orion points out, by an enormous, tectonic shift of ever increasing social changes that shake up the familiar relationships of the generations, the ethnic groups and the sexes.

This is the perfect time for someone like Glenn Beck and he knows it... In a horrible sort of way he is a genius, someone who was just waiting to happen... he doesn't need Fox or any other network or master: all he needs is to channel America's mood and it to make it his bitch. 

To take the temperature of that mood, have a look at the following from the BBC:

The difficult truth for Spokane, for Washington State, for neighbouring Idaho and for all of the US, is that hate groups - anti-black, anti-Jew, neo-Nazi - are on the rise again. And nearly everyone, including members of those groups, agrees that the election of Barack Obama has been a catalyst for the increase in support. "I wouldn't say it surprises me," says Spokane's mayor Mary Verner, "though it is alarming to me". "We are seeing a resurgence in hate groups because we are seeing democratic activity and empowered citizens who are not Anglo-Saxon Protestants." There was the same sort of reaction from the local sheriff, Ozzie Knezovich, when he heard that a bomb had been left beside the route of the Martin Luther King Jr Day march. "Surprised? No," he says. "We live in a different world now - hate seems to be a widespread phenomenon right now." And there are ordinary citizens - and their children - who are at the receiving end of hate group activity in Washington and Idaho. A sign questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president Barack Obama has faced repeated questions about his legitimacy as president Rachel Dolezal, who teaches art and African-American studies, has been repeatedly harassed since word got out about what she taught. Her homes - she has moved several times - have been broken into. Nooses have been left for her, and a swastika was left on the door of her workplace. And she has acted to protect her son. "I actually bought him a pair of earphones for the bus," she says, "because he hears the word 'nigger' every day. "It seems things were kind of hush and sanitised and cleaned up, or something, and then Barack Obama just brought things to the surface that were already existent within people."

Now one the most curious manifestations of Glenn Beck's peculiar genius is to appeal simultaneously to both antisemites and to the Zionist right. You may remember this news item from back in January:

Four hundred rabbis, including the leaders of all the main branches of Judaism in the US, have signed an open letter calling on Rupert Murdoch to sanction the head of Fox News and one of the channel's most famous hosts for frequent inappropriate references to the Nazis and the Holocaust.(...) In the letter, the Jewish coalition calls on Murdoch to take action against Roger Ailes, the bombastic president of Fox News, as well as against Glenn Beck, the channel's most notorious rightwing commentator. "We share a belief that the Holocaust, of course, can and should be discussed appropriately in the media. But that is not what we have seen at Fox News," the letter says. Guardian

And now, only a few months later, this:

News Item: Glenn Beck to address Knesset panel in July - Jerusalem Post
Conservative pundit Glenn Beck will advise MKs on fighting the delegitimization of Israel abroad during a trip to Israel in July. Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee chair MK Danny Danon (Likud) invited Beck, a Fox News and radio host and an outspoken supporter of Israel, to address the committee on how to recruit friends of Israel in the US to defend Israel’s right to exist. “When we face an international wave of hatred of Israel and Jews – which is expressed in Facebook pages and films calling for our destruction – it’s good that Israel has talented friends that can contribute to our public-relations efforts,” Danon said.

This is not quite so mysterious as it might first appear.  Glenn Beck is someone who spots all the fault lines in American society... even the Jewish ones.  Right wing Zionists are quite ambivalent about antisemitism, they always have been: obviously more antisemitism leads to more people emigrating to Israel.  Also, the Zionist right wing of Israel, would like to put pressure on progressive or liberal American Jews, who are getting rather lukewarm about Israel of late. Beck is a "wild card", the joker in the deck for them to play. Glenn Beck, knows what he is doing and so do they.

Really, Glenn Beck is nothing more than a symptom, like toadstools are a symptom of a wet spring. When the conditions are right both the Becks and the toadstools pop out of the ground overnight. The true dilemma is to face and  to overcome those conditions. DS

What the hell is Rupert Murdoch up to?

"Der Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle"
"Antisemitism is the socialism of fools"
August Bebel

David Seaton's News Links

I am coming to the conclusion that something very strange is going on. 

I come to that conclusion merely starting from the simple premise that a central reason for the world's most powerful media lord being so rich and powerful is that employees of Rupert Murdoch's vast empire are not allowed to do anything that is not productive for Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch, who besides owning Fox, owns The Wall Street Journal,The Weekly Standard,and many other assorted media in America and abroad, is consciously permitting his employee, Glenn Beck to tread rather heavily upon the toes of Jewish feelings; allowing him to cross red lines of perceived antisemitism, to commit transgressions that today would be career breakers for anyone without Murdoch's powerful backing. Following my original premise, Glenn Beck is no more responsible for the harm he does than a pit-bull is for mauling a child... it is the pit-bull's owner's fault, for unmuzzling him.  Beck's master is Rupert Murdoch.  

An example of how powerful the taboos that Beck is breaking are could be the nearly instantaneous defenestration of the fashion designer, John Galliano. 

Galliano is considered one of the world's most talented designers, credited with singlehandedly saving the house of Dior from oblivion, but a private, drunken, antisemitic diatribe in a Paris nightclub was enough to send him packing. Here is how a commentator on a NYT article about Galliano compared the two cases:

Too bad that doesn't get Glenn Beck fired here, where he doesn't just say anti-semitic remarks in a bar, but broadcasts them via television and radio to millions of people. We tolerate hate speech when the network has a highly rated host who is a puppet for the views of his bosses. No matter that he is a hate-monger teetering on the edges of sanity. Dior is more responsible than Fox or the FCC. -  "Ground Control" (commenting in the NYT about John Galliano's firing)

The people lining up against Beck are not chopped liver, here is a sample:

Prominent US conservatives have begun to distance themselves from Glenn Beck, the radio and television host, after outbursts warning of a looming caliphate in the Middle East and likening Reform Judaism to “radicalised Islam”.(...)  Mr Beck, a broadcasting and publishing phenomenon with an annual income estimated at $32m, was dubbed “the most disturbing personality on cable television” last week by Peter Wehner, who served in the last three Republican administrations.(...) Jennifer Rubin, who writes a Washington Post column called Right Turn, urged conservative groups and candidates to disassociate themselves from Mr Beck. “If they host, appear with or defend him they should be prepared to have his extremist views affixed to them,” she wrote. The comments follow an article by Bill Kristol, the conservative editor of the Weekly Standard, warning that Mr Beck’s “hysteria” in seeking to link “caliphate-promoters” with figures on the left of US politics was unhealthy.(...) “He’s marginalising himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s,” Mr Kristol wrote. Mr Beck dismissed Mr Kristol’s remarks as evidence that a Republican “fiefdom” had lost touch with conservatives and was set on preserving its own power. - Financial Times

But Glenn Beck keeps pushing the envelope. Murdoch has got Beck's back and Beck is as cool as a cucumber. Why?

Off the top of my head I can think of two reasons for Murdoch's evident blessing of Beck's flirting with antisemitism and I would love to hear other opinions, but these are the first two that occur to me for the moment. 

One is "reductionist" and the other one is big and fat, but they are not mutually exclusive.

The first one is simply that the extensive market research, focus groups and private polling that Murdoch's organization must certainly do in order to stay in touch with their readers and viewers may have turned up a tolerance or even a "market" for antisemitism in the conspiracy sodden American public, addicted as they are to wild theories of every stripe. In short, this behavior is profitable. I don't think that Murdoch would ever back up Glenn Beck this way for very long if something like that wasn't already on his radar.

This brings me to something fatter and juicier: the immanent collapse of America's traditional foreign policy in the world's oil-patch, the Middle East.

Here is how Thomas Friedman describes the situation in the New York Times:

Add it all up and what does it say? It says you have a very powerful convergence of forces driving a broad movement for change. It says we’re just at the start of something huge. And it says that if we don’t have a more serious energy policy, the difference between a good day and bad day for America from here on will hinge on how the 86-year-old king of Saudi Arabia manages all this change. Thomas Friedman - NYT

Imagine if you will, that a long, hard fought, Libya-like, civil war, broke out in Saudi Arabia, and its oil fields were paralyzed like Libya's as the country imploded and then morphed from a friendly, medieval monarchy into the "Islamic Republic of Mecca and Medina". A US invasion to prevent that, with pork eating marines patrolling the Kaaba, would probably set the entire Muslim world in flames and the "cure" could be much worse than the disease.  Riots and countless acts of terrorism, all over the planet for starters, would probably just be the "good news".

Any version this scenario would send the price of crude oil into the stratosphere, cause a world economic depression, possibly set off World War Three and for sure cost Rupert Murdoch, and all those who sail in him, a lot, but a lot, of money. My feeling is that Murdoch is moving to prevent that outcome.

How might all this fit in with Glenn Beck's strange, paranoid, fantasy world and the millions of viewers who devoutly follow his every program? How might his craziness fit into the surely ice cold calculations of Rupert Murdoch?

This is what occurs to me:

It may be too late, but perhaps the only thing that could shore up the regional prestige of the Saudi monarchy save their throne (and skins) and maybe cool off and distract the Middle East right now would be if the United States could encourage the Israelis to accept the Saudi Peace Initiative. The plan is considered by most observers as the only serious blueprint for true peace in the Middle East. This the resolution that was unanimously approved by the Arab League on March 27th 2002 and re-endorsed in 2007consists of the following:

(a) Complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon; (b) Attain a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution No 194. (c) Accept the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since 4 June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return the Arab states will do the following: (a) Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign a peace agreement with Israel, and achieve peace for all states in the region; (b) Establish normal relations with Israel within the framework of this comprehensive peace. Wikipedia

Now it is easy to imagine how much enthusiasm the Israeli right, those who govern Israel, feel about a plan that would mean dismantling all the settlements, giving back East Jerusalem and permitting a fully sovereign Palestinian state to exist in Judea and Samaria... and making some sort of settlement with the refugees of 1948. Of course in theory the United States has the power to make the Israelis accept the Arab Peace Initiative, but you can easily imagine the sort of pressure that AIPAC would bring to bear on the president, the congress and opinion makers to keep the US government from ever applying anything like the pressure necessary. But, if Saudi Arabia is hanging in the balance and with it the entire world economy, this is getting really serious. America depends on cheap energy, is addicted to it. Anything like a dramatic and prolonged rise in oil prices could take us directly to Kunstler and Orlov scenarios. I don't think that some people, in whose number I include Rupert Murdoch, would stop at anything to keep that from happening.

How could Murdoch make AIPAC an offer it couldn't refuse?

At this point we should let the air out of the vicious antisemitic canard which accuses the Jews of controlling the news media. Australian born, of Scottish ancestry, Rupert Murdoch, the world's most powerful media lord, is about as Jewish as a shrimp cocktail. Any support he might have ever given the Jewish people and Israel or ever will give them in the future has been and will be entirely contingent on his interests.

In my opinion Murdoch is using his creature, Glenn Beck, to fire a shot across the Israel lobby's bow. I can think of no other reason for him to allow an employee of his to offend the Jewish people in such a gross manner with such impunity.

The deal is, again in my opinion, either they don't rock the boat in the US establishment's efforts to maintain America's position in the Middle East by keeping Saudi Arabia afloat or Murdoch will send out Glenn Beck to stand in front of millions of American rednecks and Tea Partiers and with his funny little "professorial" glasses on, chalk in hand, go to his huge blackboard and diagram "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for the folks.  You don't think he is capable of that? Antisemitism is the easiest, cheapest, shot of all, like falling off a log. As the August Bebel quote that tops this page says, "antisemitism is the socialism of fools": Beck's audience would eat it up. Then, if it is convenient for him, Murdoch will bow his head and hang Beck out to dry... but the damage will be done. DS

Beck, rhymes with yecch: Murdoch flirts with antisemitism... Why?

Welcome to the "Glenn Beck Program," where Jews are Nazis and those who exploit ancient anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives are friends of the Jews.  Michael Wolraich - CNN

“Soros' people called me to say I am an anti-Semite because I was going to air this," he says in one program. "Probably, I am more supportive of Israel and Jews than George Soros." Haaretz

“While I, too, may disagree with many of Soros’ views and analysis on the issues, to bring in this kind of innuendo about his past is unacceptable. To hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant. The Holocaust was a horrific time, and many people had to make excruciating choices to ensure their survival. George Soros has been forthright about his childhood experiences and his family’s history, and there the matter should rest." Abraham Foxman, Chairman, Anti-Defamation League

"Go to bed with dogs, wake up with fleas"

Old Spanish proverb

David Seaton's News Links

I'm not sure that the true significance of Glenn Beck's attack on George Soros is being evaluated correctly and in the proper perspective.

The question that people should be asking themselves is not whether Glenn Beck's remarks are antisemitic, because the only people who can define antisemitism are the Jewish people themselves and Abe Foxman is the person America's Jewish community has endowed with the power to decide what is or isn't defamation. Thus if Foxman, speaking ex-cathedra on this question, says that Beck's remarks are "unacceptable" and "repugnant", then that clinches it: Beck has crossed the red line into antisemitism.

That being so, the question people should be asking themselves is why Rupert Murdoch (Beck is merely Murdoch's creature) has decided to play with what is considered the "third rail" (touch it and you die, your career is finished) to end all third rails in US politics, which is antisemitism. And even to take it upon himself to break one of the touchiest of all taboos, which for a gentile to say who is a "good" or a "bad" Jew. And even more provocatively, he has allowed, or most probably encouraged,  Glenn Beck to connect the word "Jew" with the word "conspiracy". In today's America this, as Michael Wolraich points out at CNN, is to enter the world of Lyndon LaRouche. Murdoch has also allowed Beck to mention the most unmentionable of all unmentionables, the "don't go there" of all the don't go there subjects: the Jews that collaborated with the Nazis. No less than Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century's most prestigious political scholars, was dragged over the coals for mentioning it in her controversial book "Eichmann in Jerusalem". 

In short it would be nearly impossible to offend more Jewish sensibilities in such a short time than Beck has, all the while professing his "more papist than the pope" loyalty to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel. Perfectly outrageous. People are outraged. Mission accomplished

Why is Murdoch doing this?

My theory is that he is doing it to prove he can do it.

To prove that he, Rupert Murdoch, can break all the rules and emerge unscathed, can waltz blithely where others have had to crawl on their bellies in abject repentance or be expelled to the outer darkness where there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth .

Why should Murdoch want to do that?

He is playing a mind game with the Zionist right wing, both in America and Israel.

Why?

I think he wants to shake down AIPAC, that is why, and he is "talking trash" to make them nervous.

At this moment the Obama administration is trying to get a settlement freeze and then define the borders of a Palestinian state with a view to creating said state, thus ending the dream of a "Greater Israel". To fight this off, AIPAC is going to need all the help they can get and Fox would have to be a key player in that fight.

Murdoch doesn't want to be taken for granted... that is his message.

He wants to show all observers that he is the boss. That people crawl before him, that he doesn't crawl before anyone...  that his support is costly.

What is his price? I have no idea as yet. All I know is that with Ayn Rand dead, Rupert Murdoch is one of the nastiest pieces of work to share our planet and whatever the price, it will be a devil's bargain. DS

The "Big Lie"... How it works and what it is for

The big lie kicks in: before and after

Americans for Prosperity, the rightwing campaign funded in part by the energy billionaires the Koch brothers, is working with the Tea Party movement to increase its impact through the use of new media and social networking. The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch has declared his dissatisfaction with Barack Obama and the Democratic party, saying that two $1m donations by News Corp were intended to encourage change in Washington. Financial Times

Shortly before leaving for the US to report on the midterm elections, a respected colleague told me that: “Obama’s problem is that he is trying to govern a nation where half the population is insane.” Gideon Rachman - Financial Times

David Seaton's News Links

Today lets look at the "big lie": the art of calling black white and white black and making it stick, how it works and why it works.

I will cut directly to the chase: to me it is obvious that the Tea Party has been evoked, like a political poltergeist, from the shadowy bourne, of the American earth by people like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch in order to terrorize moderate Republicans and keep them from moving to the center and cooperating with president Obama in a time of national emergency.

How bad are things?

Maybe even a bit worse than we think they are.

For example, if we consider the mortgage foreclosure fiasco as the possible tip of an iceberg of massive fraud and generalized, quite unbelievable, negligence throughout the system, something like a metastasis  of  an Enron on steroids, we may be looking at future meltdowns that could make the consequences of Lehman Brother's collapse look as tame as Paris Hilton's prison stay.

I would venture to say that people like the Koch brothers and Murdoch have much better information as to the potential and immanent blowback of all of this and its possible effects on their positions, both  financial and political, than we do.

They obviously are moved to take drastic steps, steps that put the entire system in jeopardy. Therefore, whether us lesser folk have any real inkling of what's going on, by their behavior we may know that something is going on: just as the Chinese detect the coming of an earthquake by monitoring the restlessness of farm animals and songbirds; the way granny knows its going to rain, because her hip hurts. Something is cooking.

In any one of a dozen national emergencies of the nature I suspect (or might not even dream of) that may be developing or might already be upon us, the natural reaction of the citizenry would be to demand, as in wartime, or any other great national emergency, that their elected representatives work together in a bipartisan fashion to clean up the mess and to put in place regulations and regulators to make sure it never happens again and to punish those responsible severely "pour encourager les autres". 

And, who knows, then,  perhaps in  the cheery glow of new found kameradschaft and moderate bi-partisanship, they might set themselves to reform campaign financing, the infrastructure and even work on climate change and fossil fuel energy dependence.

From a certain point of view this kind of constructive or reconstructive harmony must be avoided at all costs.

So we here we come to the big lie.

What I call the "Tea-Fox-Koch-Murdoch-Beck-Limbaugh-Party" are using classic techniques, nothing new here

To get into the mood and to understand better what the Murdochs and the Kochs are up to and what  techniques they are using to achieve their ends, let us look at what the OSS had to say during WWII about the recognized master of the big lie:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. "Hitler as His Associates Know Him" - OSS report on Hitler, p.51

Sounds familiar doesn't it. Now let us hear the "master's voice" as he himself describes in some greater detail how the big lie works:

(...) In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.— Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X

Let us move directly to a concrete example of how this "philosophy" is being put into practice today.

Why are the "Tea-Fox-Koch-Murdoch-Beck-Limbaugh-Party" so afraid of Barack Obama?

Because he is a radical socialist-communist-extremist, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

They are afraid of him for precisely the reason he "disappoints" his progressive base: They are terrified of him because he is a born centrist, reaching out eagerly for members of the Republican opposition in order to "cut a deal" or "split the difference".

That has been his message from the beginning. To refresh your memory:

I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.  Senator Barack Obama - Keynote speech, Democratic convention - 2004

Despite all of President Obama's unearthly and unbearable lightness of being, that speech still has them terrified. The more he appears manifestly mild mannered and generaly ineffectual, the louder they cry "Marxist!" and "radical!"... and worse.

That idea of inclusiveness, the mildness, the desire to negotiate and split the difference, not radical, leftist, extremism, is what has Murdoch and the Kochs frantic and frothing at the mouth.

Why?

Because, under the new rules of globalization, much of the world's economic power and especially the cash, has escaped from state control, regulation and supervision. As the recent euro crisis showed, elected officials of powerful and wealthy countries found themselves suddenly at the mercy of the "markets" and the rating agencies, themselves made up of human beings, whose power, unlike the law makers of a democratic states, is in no way derived from the consent of the governed... and there are people... not many people, but very, very rich people, who are extremely comfortable with that.. and why shouldn't they be?

Now it happens that there is only one state in the whole world that is still, for the moment at least, potentially powerful enough to be able to bring this situation under some sort of control at home and abroad, and this state is in theory a democracy that is elected by its citizens to serve them.

That state is, of course, the United States of America.

Now, for the state apparatus of the United States of America to bring the situation under control in America and to a great extent around the world, all the branches of the state, executive, legislative and judiciary would have to be in nearly total alignment, as they were during World War Two.

Keeping that from happening, paralyzing the political system so that unity is entirely unthinkable except around "supporting our troops" to defend the "homeland" against the threat of "terrorism" is what the Tea Party movement and every move of Fox and Kochs is about.

The acceptance of policies that counteract our interests is the pervasive mystery of the 21st century. In the US blue-collar workers angrily demand that they be left without healthcare, and insist that millionaires pay less tax.  George Monbiot - Guardian

I think we have just solved George Monbiot's mystery.

As I said at the beginning of this piece,  the Tea Party has been created in order to terrorize moderate Republicans and keep any of them from moving to the center and cooperating with president Obama in a time of national emergency.

Just to see how effective this strategy is, lets look at the following four year old quote from certainly the best known and perhaps the most respected of Republican moderates, John McCain,

“People want us to do what we’ve forgotten, which is put aside philosophical differences, which are important, and legislate and get things done.”

What happened since then? This from Vanity Fair:

“The senator owes his victory to the pressure he received from conservatives and Tea Partiers,” the conservative guru Richard Viguerie declared after the primary. “To receive that support, he had to give up his maverick positions that have sometimes given aid and comfort to the liberals. I’m sure Senator McCain knows very well that he would not have won if he had continued his reputation as the Democrats’ favorite Republican.”

So that is what it is really all about: it is about not legislating and not getting things done... to paralyze the government of the United States of America at a critical time in its history. To prevent the system from flushing itself out and regenerating itself. To cut the wires of the burglar alarms to be able to sack the house in peace.

The danger is impossible to exaggerate, because, in any normal country in the world if democratic politics become impossible and the state is paralyzed, sooner or later you have either a coup d' etat or a civil war... or both, and not necessarily in that order. How long America's incomparable mechanisms of infotainment alienation can fend off that law of gravity remains to be seen. DS

Glenn Beck: a clown by moonlight

"...there's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight...." Lon Chaney Sr.

(hat to James Kunstler)

David Seaton's News Links

First, once again, it is important to remember that it is central to Glenn Beck's message that nothing in it make much, or sometimes any, sense at all.

This is not some sort of defect due to lack of intelligence or skill on his part.

Quite the contrary, his is a work of art in the media of cynical confusion. There is no other meaning to it than the anger he arouses.

No other fuel for the fires he ignites than the frustrations and confusion of his listeners.

To keep them confused and frustrated is the goal. Glenn Beck is a master of his art form.

What is disturbing is not so much Beck himself or even that an audience exists for Beck. What is disturbing is that there is an enormous amount of money being spent to put him into every home in America. That is terrifying.

The idea is simply to manipulate through emotions. The only real messages are the emotions.

To understand what Beck is doing, to understand him, you must suspend your capacity for rational thought and just let the emotions wash over you and try to take note of them as they assault your endocrine system and all I can say is this: children don't try this at home.

Here is a hostile sample of Beck in full flight just to get your juices flowing:

Charming isn't it, the devil doll cuteness of it all? The little campy gestures...

What is behind this grotesque performance?

Simply this:

The USA is moving into what appears to be a long period of low growth and the rapidly increasing deterioration of the American middle class's legendary living standards, not to mention the working poor's. Also reform and regulation are necessary in the energy and financial sectors. America's infrastructure needs restoring and refurbishing. The whole thing is a mess and needs to be firmly taken in hand with the greatest good for the greatest number as the guiding principal.

This means, in the not too long run, more regulations, more control and more taxes, which means in turn that people with a lot of money are going to feel a little less free and a little less wealthy than they do today. They are paying Mr. Beck to help keep Americans from thinking rationally about their problems or thinking rationally at all.

If people could think straight for only a few days, be sure that sensible solutions that would benefit the majority of citizens would follow as night follows day. Those who have discovered and nurtured the talents of Mr. Beck and have provided him with the opportunity to reach millions of viewers are investing their money now to avoid those sensible solutions affecting their future earnings.

________________

Lately I've discovered that one of Becks favorite targets is none other than Woodrow Wilson, who he accuses of multiple sins, among them for being a fascist avant la lettre.

Watch how he does it:

Here is a little explanation of why he puts this Wilsonophobia all together, written by an egg headed, Ivy League, frau doktor-professor and published in that Marxist-elitist, Islamofascist, cheese-eating, faggot-socialist, competition-for-Rupert-Murdoch rag, the New York Times:

To the campaign to make “progressive” a slur, Wilson is useful. Much as many people admire aspects of his presidency, he has no natural constituency any more, right or left. He was opposed to female suffrage. He supported Jim Crow. He wrote about Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy. He makes a good bad guy. He was also an intellectual, the first U.S. president to hold a Ph.D.(...) This professor-president has convenient similarities to our current chief executive — a scholar of constitutional law, professorial, intellectual, even, in some people’s eyes, effete (as, for instance, T.R. and F.D.R. were not). Jill Lepore Professor of American History at Harvard - NYT

I find it curious that Beck should attack Wilson, when those who supported the foreign policy of George W. Bush, neocons and the like, often portrayed it as Wilsonian. Wilson's interest in imposing American values on errant primitives by force of arms, was often used as the precedent for invading Iraq or fighting the Taliban. 

Of course consistency has nothing to do with Beck, still that he should attack the one figure that was used to add a bit of class to Bush's presidency seems a bit weird even by Beckish standards.

My particular beef with Wilson is a little different.

With the best intentions in the world, "making the world safe for democracy", Woodrow Wilson took the USA into WWI thereby setting off a series of catastrophes whose aftereffects we are still living with. I am sure that he would have been horrified to know what his meddling brought about.

It goes like this:

In 1917 Britain and France, Germany, Austria and Turkey had basically bled themselves white and had fought World War One to a draw. 

If left to themselves, they couldn't have continued much longer, especially with the Russian Revolution at their doors. Soon they would have had to come to the peace table and split the difference.

Thus there would have been no Versailles treaty and Germany wouldn't have had to pay the crippling reparations that caused the hyperinflation that helped bring Hitler to power, thus avoiding WWII.

The Austrio-Hungarian empire would have had time to collapse more gracefully and Turkey might still have control of the Middle East, thus avoiding many of the problems we have there today such as the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Ask yourself, if Palestine were still a Turkish protectorate and the Holocaust had never taken place and European Jews were living happily in Germany, would Israel have even come into existence?

By entering the war, when it did, the USA was directly responsible for humiliating Germany and thus, in my opinion, is directly responsible for creating Hitler.

So for me Wilson is the father of the most evil century in humanity's history.

And so, logically, to top it off, without Woodrow Wilson there would be no Glenn Beck.

Way to go Woodrow! DS