Since I don't watch Fox news the only time I am exposed to Hannity is when his inane comments are picked up by the sources I do use. I really have doubts about this practice of repeating what he says even if you think he has been "pwned" . The sad fact is that those who are predisposed to think the sun shines out of his butt crack won't think he was "pwned" no matter how stupid his "guests" make him sound and if all that is gained is an eye-rolling opportunity on the part of people like me is it really worth the extra clicks his stupid commentary gets? I would have been just as happy if Cenk Uygur had done an actual interview with Democratic committeewoman Patricia Bynes and ignored shit-for-brains completely.
One of the side effects of the ad hominem style of political discourse we have been dragged into is that it begs emulation;"inside-the-beltway chicken-hawks with small peckers". Very droll. There is however a grain of truth in Brook's otherwise forgettable characterization of President Obama although not in a way he meant. It is clear that the Presidents decision early in his first mandate to adopt a lofty posture with respect to the utterly egregious mendacity and incompetence at that in the wars and conduct of foreign policy of Bush and the Republicans, to "look forward" as he put it, was a huge mistake. Whether this stemmed from cowardice or lack of judgement it has allowed the bunch of dilettante dickwads (how's that for ad hominem?) like Brooks and Krauthammer et al to "move on”, as it were, as though they were not stained in the blood of Americans and all the rest who died due to their disastrous expressions of their manhood. On a more substantive level, Obama’s relative lack of naive bellicosity and more rational response to conflict, while an experience similar to ceasing to smash yourself in the head with a hammer compared to Cheney and Bush, is not a substitute for a coherent doctrine. The best evidence for this lack of focus is the ineffectual use of the bully pulpit to educate the American public, or at least attempt to do so in the face of the huge megaphone placed in the hands of the plutocrats of wealth by the plutocrats in the supreme court, about the real threats to peace, not the least of which are empowered likudists, climate change and legacies of previous exercises in carrying and using big sticks by powerful but ill informed politicians of years past. In the end, it is the quality of leadership not manhood that is in question and I look in vain for evidence that Obama intends to move far from the Washington consensus view of history and economics that has seen America fumble it’s way from one disaster to the next and play a huge role in creating the intransigent and brutal present circumstances in places like the Middle East. To do so would require courage of the kind that FDR showed when he rose to the challenge of his day.
What we are seeing in the United States and everywhere, really, is a crisis of legitimacy for any type of government that is not an absolute monarchy, an oligarchy, a plutocracy or a military dictatorship. The most effective opposition to the tendency to bend all human effort to the exaltation of mammon appears to be those who wish to resurrect the seventh century. Meanwhile North Americans will buy whatever nonsense is necessary to see to it that nothing ever changes but the slogans and the warm body in the suit. Those “millions of young Americans” who supported Obama and “expected to usher in age of domestic unity and international cooperation” (sic) have not even grasped what happened to their hopes but then the poor, downwardly mobile, angry white males in the gerrymandered heartland of perpetual darkness still don’t get the bait and switch that their cultural heroes are preparing for them either. Hint: it has nothing to do with “freedom”.
This may look cynical but it is not meant that way. No one is doing this. There is no central command programming the deceptions and planning for a monarch, dictator, oligarch and plutocrat paradise where the poor know their place and the peace of the graveyard is everywhere. Of course there is plenty of scheming going on but it is all like the fantastic, intricate dance of pain and fear that Bibi and his fellow travellers do as they deftly out-maneuver everyone, including themselves, in pursuit of an ultimately self defeating end game that can only end badly.
If there is hope it is certainly not in American party politics. There is now as there was in 1964 or 1968 or 1980 and 2008 a choice of a lesser evil; that choice always in the eye of the beholder. What might change is the perception, finally, of how transparent, rent by recent history and inadequate to cover grotesque, bloated reality the garment of democracy has become. This, surely is the essential prerequisite to see the danger.
Since I don't watch Fox news the only time I am exposed to Hannity is when his inane comments are picked up by the sources I do use. I really have doubts about this practice of repeating what he says even if you think he has been "pwned" . The sad fact is that those who are predisposed to think the sun shines out of his butt crack won't think he was "pwned" no matter how stupid his "guests" make him sound and if all that is gained is an eye-rolling opportunity on the part of people like me is it really worth the extra clicks his stupid commentary gets? I would have been just as happy if Cenk Uygur had done an actual interview with Democratic committeewoman Patricia Bynes and ignored shit-for-brains completely.
One of the side effects of the ad hominem style of political discourse we have been dragged into is that it begs emulation;"inside-the-beltway chicken-hawks with small peckers". Very droll. There is however a grain of truth in Brook's otherwise forgettable characterization of President Obama although not in a way he meant. It is clear that the Presidents decision early in his first mandate to adopt a lofty posture with respect to the utterly egregious mendacity and incompetence at that in the wars and conduct of foreign policy of Bush and the Republicans, to "look forward" as he put it, was a huge mistake. Whether this stemmed from cowardice or lack of judgement it has allowed the bunch of dilettante dickwads (how's that for ad hominem?) like Brooks and Krauthammer et al to "move on”, as it were, as though they were not stained in the blood of Americans and all the rest who died due to their disastrous expressions of their manhood. On a more substantive level, Obama’s relative lack of naive bellicosity and more rational response to conflict, while an experience similar to ceasing to smash yourself in the head with a hammer compared to Cheney and Bush, is not a substitute for a coherent doctrine. The best evidence for this lack of focus is the ineffectual use of the bully pulpit to educate the American public, or at least attempt to do so in the face of the huge megaphone placed in the hands of the plutocrats of wealth by the plutocrats in the supreme court, about the real threats to peace, not the least of which are empowered likudists, climate change and legacies of previous exercises in carrying and using big sticks by powerful but ill informed politicians of years past. In the end, it is the quality of leadership not manhood that is in question and I look in vain for evidence that Obama intends to move far from the Washington consensus view of history and economics that has seen America fumble it’s way from one disaster to the next and play a huge role in creating the intransigent and brutal present circumstances in places like the Middle East. To do so would require courage of the kind that FDR showed when he rose to the challenge of his day.
What we are seeing in the United States and everywhere, really, is a crisis of legitimacy for any type of government that is not an absolute monarchy, an oligarchy, a plutocracy or a military dictatorship. The most effective opposition to the tendency to bend all human effort to the exaltation of mammon appears to be those who wish to resurrect the seventh century. Meanwhile North Americans will buy whatever nonsense is necessary to see to it that nothing ever changes but the slogans and the warm body in the suit. Those “millions of young Americans” who supported Obama and “expected to usher in age of domestic unity and international cooperation” (sic) have not even grasped what happened to their hopes but then the poor, downwardly mobile, angry white males in the gerrymandered heartland of perpetual darkness still don’t get the bait and switch that their cultural heroes are preparing for them either. Hint: it has nothing to do with “freedom”.
This may look cynical but it is not meant that way. No one is doing this. There is no central command programming the deceptions and planning for a monarch, dictator, oligarch and plutocrat paradise where the poor know their place and the peace of the graveyard is everywhere. Of course there is plenty of scheming going on but it is all like the fantastic, intricate dance of pain and fear that Bibi and his fellow travellers do as they deftly out-maneuver everyone, including themselves, in pursuit of an ultimately self defeating end game that can only end badly.
If there is hope it is certainly not in American party politics. There is now as there was in 1964 or 1968 or 1980 and 2008 a choice of a lesser evil; that choice always in the eye of the beholder. What might change is the perception, finally, of how transparent, rent by recent history and inadequate to cover grotesque, bloated reality the garment of democracy has become. This, surely is the essential prerequisite to see the danger.