A Reflection on an Echo of a Cartoon

To the one, winter is as winter does, and we should probably leave it at that. Nonetheless, a month later, Jen Sorensen’s point still echoes:

Hillary has certainly frustrated me at times over the years, but I came to admire her intelligence and poise over the course of this election cycle. Her performance at the debates with Trump was nothing short of heroic. She also ran on the most progressive Democratic platform ever, but since policy has become almost completely divorced from politics, she gets little credit for that. I could go on, but as my husband says, this was not so much an election as an exorcism, the culmination of a decades-long smear campaign by the right.

The term “political correctness” has been the cornerstone of conservative efforts to transform the ideas of civil rights and equality into something frivolous and stupid. The right loves plucking silly examples from obscure, powerless people and blowing them up into huge “culture war” issues that supposedly threaten the nation. “PC” is an insult that plays into their hands.

Along these same lines, “liberal elites”―long a Fox News favorite―is designed to shift attention away from the actual economic elites hoovering up the world’s wealth and resources, such as the Koch Brothers or Trump, and instead make one think of poodle-owning urbanites supposedly looking down their noses at everyone (while in reality voting to raise the minimum wage). It’s a frame, not a fact, and hides a deep anti-intellectual agenda.

What They Voted For: Pervert Bully

#perverts | #WhatTheyVotedFor

This is the basic math: (Sexual Behavior) + (Gender) + (Death) = Conservative Rant.

In the interview with arts publication Artvoice, the real estate developer was asked what he would most like to happen in the New Year.

He responded: “Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to [senior White House adviser] Valerie Jarrett, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her being a nice person and decapitated her.”

He also said he’d like to see first lady Michelle Obama “return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortable in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”

(Rupert)

This is the important question: Why?

Dr. Ben Carson

In today’s chapter, we look to a report from David McCabe of The Hill, documenting what appears to be neurosurgeon, conservative activist, and presumptive 2016 GOP presidential contestant Ben Carson advocating war crimes.

While being interviewed on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” by Bill Hemmer, Carson was asked about the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

“And our military needs to know that they’re not going to be prosecuted when they come back because somebody has said you did something that was politically incorrect,” he said.

“There’s no such thing as a politically correct war. We need to grow up. We need to mature. If you’re going to have rules for war, you should just have a rule that says no war. Other than that, we have to win. Our life depends on it.”

Carson did not specify what he meant by “politically incorrect” behavior.

It is easy enough to cheer the proposition of a “no war” rule, but good doctor would still need to explain how our lives depended on invading Iraq.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ben Carson.

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McCabe, David. “Ben Carson: No rules against ‘politically incorrect’ acts of war”. The Hill. 16 February 2015.

The Electric Jonestown Clusterbumble

This was inevitable:

You’ve probably heard the expression, “He drank the Kool-Aid.”

Arianna Huffington once used it to describe supporters of George W. Bush’s economic policies. Bill O’Reilly said it of his critics (“the Kool-Aid people,” he told listeners, “are going nuts”). In 2012, Forbes called it a top annoying cliché used by business leaders.

There’s a problem with this flip word play though: That expression was born of a nightmare.

Thirty-seven years ago today, 918 people died in Jonestown, a Guyana jungle settlement, and at a nearby airstrip. Some of us knew the victims. I grew up with one of them, Maria Katsaris.

(Richardson)

Alright, then, you heard the man.

And in truth, his reason is no worse than any other, even for those of us who found the phrase offensive for its blithe lack of distinction. That is to say, drinking electric Kool-Aid is a variation on the theme, and much more useful than the Jonestown variation, but from the outset it has been subject to a certain sort of (ahem!) “affirmative action” whereby a conserative drinks the Kool-Aid by believing in a tinfoil wingnut conspiracy theory, but a liberal believes the Kool-Aid by disagreeing with conservatives. At some point, conservatives need to just come right out and demand reasonable accommodation under the ADA.

Yet this is how far we’ve come.

And who knows, perhaps before all this is over, Republicans will fulfill the Jonestown version, too. You know, “Second Amendment solutions”, and all.

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Richardson, James D. “The phrase ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ is completely offensive. We should stop saying it immediately.” The Washington Post. 18 November 2014.

Waldman, Paul. “The real problem with Joni Ernst’s quote about guns and the government”. The Washington Post. 23 October 2014.