O.K., not a lot of time today, because I've got some new things to get into - and, no, it's nothing to do with conspiracy theories or aliens - but here's some thoughts to hold you over until I get back:
Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, is calling the Obama/Joker posters, "politically mean spirited and dangerous". But, as Matt Drudge points out, he was nowhere to be found when Vanity Fair did it to President Bush.
Personally, I'm getting a kick out of all the liberal whining, now that the right has decided, after eight years of over-the-top behavior from the opposition - without hardly a word of caution from the media - conservatives can scream, "It's payback time!" as well. 
And, really, it's not just payback, but (as Oleg Atbashian points out) the realization that the left in this country (including the media) are just communist and socialist operators with no capacity for independent thought, because the man dubbed our first Hip-Hop President "was cheered on by a generation who grew up believing that deformity is beauty and ideological lunacy is the norm." 
Throw the Left's love for NewAge nonsense in the mix - and the fact they won't respond to reason or, if they do, that it's with screams, dirty tricks, threats and/or violence - and it's the same picture I noticed we were warned about, by Yuri Bezenov (another person from behind the Iron Curtain) a long time ago:So, if you don't like "The Church of What's Happening Now", kids, don't blame us:
Blame the K.G.B. - or yourselves - or, maybe, Jane Fonda.
"I do not subscribe to the respondent’s new faith nor approve of it. I find it fundamentalist and bordering on the absurd.”
Those are the words of a man who is accusing his NewAge ex-wife of abusing their child with her crazy "spiritual" ideas. The ex-wife's own mother is backing the father, aghast at a whole slew of "cult rituals” that even the child says include:
Everything that has a picture of "skulls, ghosts, magic, mythical creatures, superhero e.g. Spiderman and pictures of celebrities are burnt in a fire".
“People who are ‘Possessed’ are by choice prayed for and most of them make scary noises and this happens during all night Friday night and when an exorcism happens I am allowed to go to sleep.”
Excessive prayer, vegetarian food and (of course, the all-time most useless "cure" ever invented:) homeopathic medicine.
"In court papers, her mother claimed her daughter had been 'brainwashed' after becoming a member of a 'cult', and was forcing her grandsons to be a part of it. 
She said she had witnessed an exorcism at the house and was worried that she 'will soon be burying her grandchildren."
The ex-wife said said she was "essentially a Bible-believing Christian” and her ex-husband did not like her Christianity and “had to concoct something to make it sound crazy ... He couldn’t base it on me just being a Christian”.
The boy’s mother also said she believed in 'healthy eating' and moderation. 'I don’t want my children to be slothful,' she told the court.But we've been there before, haven't we?
Anybody know of any other "Christians" like this? If so, I'd alert whatever governing body their church is a part of, because it's fairly obvious it's been infiltrated by NewAge.
And, people, that just ain't good.
the realization that the left in this country (including the media) are just communist and socialist operators with no capacity for independent thought
ReplyDeleteColor me skeptical, but the idea that 50% of the people in this country are actually secret Communist double-agent mind-control victims seems a bit far-fetched.
Coming on over like you suggested at Respectful Insolence. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI agree with the Ghost of Joe McCarthy that the left is not widely communist. In this country, our left and right wings both tend to be rather centrist compared to what you get in other countries, which is probably a good thing.
I would like to comment on the "Christianity infiltrated by newage" idea. There were Christian sects with these sorts of ideas long before anybody started calling such things "New Age". You mention homeopathy; that's actually been around for over two hundred years. (Got discredited fairly quickly once chemistry advanced enough. But like Dracula, it just doesn't die.) But go back, and you can find all kinds of hippie commune stuff, particularly among various gnostic sects. The Cathars are one interesting example, though I don't think anybody could call them libertarian. The Catholic Church at the time considered their beliefs to be a dangerous heresy, and correctly identified the political threat they posed. The sect was wiped out by the Albigensian Crusade.
There have been other interesting Christian sects going right back to the first Century which would seem quite bizarre by our modern standards.
About the Obama-as-Joker posters, I just don't get them. I've seen pictures of them; they claim that he's a communist. I don't get the joke -- I mean, how is the Joker communist? Anarchic I could see. He's pretty antithetical to communism, really, especially the extra-dark Heath Ledger version. I didn't get it when it was done to Bush either. One commenter on that Vanity Fair post said that he liked the Bush-as-Joker image and that "Only his puppet strings are missing." Joker? Puppet strings? WTF? That doesn't make sense either.
Some artists clearly have no respect for graphic novels. ;-)
Ghost,
ReplyDeleteThe term is "useful idiots", and it's been around a long, long time. The Russians aren't behind it, but are more than happy it's happening to us, because they can use it.
The reason it seems far-fetched is because NewAge is such a part of our culture that aspects of it seem normal. Consider: This is a nation that's now had 40+ years of NewAge seminars, workshops, be-ins, and self-induced mental experiments done in it - all designed to get the participants to turn away from the country and culture they live in - and those participants raised the generations that followed to do the same. Waht do you expect the result to be? As Yuri Bezmenov said, after all that, you couldn't convince those people of the truth to save their lives. Those of us who never bought into the scam just have to become aware of it and, most likely, wait them out: The Boomers are dying, so that's a start.
Calli,
Welcome. i've read both of your comments and they're smart and funny and just what I'm looking for. I hope you hang around.
That said, if you look at the post I did this weekend, you'll see that I kinda mentioned your point in a quote from U.S. News and World Report. What I now call NewAge (rhymes with "sewage" - and what they now call "Mind/Body/Spirit") comes in waves: They get active, and fundamentalistly evangelical, and then they get laughed at, or denounced, and go away - only to return, later, pulling the "old wine in a new bottle" trick on the gullible. What I've learned is you actually have to have a witch hunt to make them go away for a long time. I know - that's not P.C. and turns Orac off - but, sorry, it's all they understand.)
About the Obama posters: Think of them more as shock art, than propaganda, and it'll make more sense. He's the "Messiah". The idea that anyone could dislike him that much is startling to those who believe the media portrayal of whether or not he's likable. Like I said, I don't like him. As a person, I find him stuck-up, dishonest, and dangerous. I've felt that way about a lot of black guys in my life - his color doesn't affect me like it does a lot of white people. I have no white guilt that needs to be salved by his presence - he's just "some guy' to me - not a symbol, or an icon, or anything,...but another lousy politician.
BTW, I LOVED the original "Dark Knight" graphic novel, the first "Superman" movie, "The Watchmen" graphic novel, and the comic book movie "Unbreakable". I didn't like "The Watchmen" movie, and HATED the "Batman" movie with Heath Ledger (He made a good joker but the movie sucked, and I was anticipating it for years). Yea, I'm a purist about comics, too,..do you like Adult Swim? "Squidbillies?"
I actually haven't gotten into Adult Swim at all. Mostly because I have two small children and thus very few opportunities to watch "grown up" shows. ;-) (I'm even falling behind on my Mythbusters viewing, shame on me!)
ReplyDeleteThe original "Dark Knight" graphic novel -- do you mean "Dark Knight Returns"? That was awesome. No connection to the movie "Dark Knight", of course, which has it's own continuity distinct from the comics. ("Dark Knight Returns" is also distinct from the "canonical" Batman, of course.) It was awesome. Frank Miller is amazing, and I loved what he did with the story. I also liked his "Batman: Year One". His Batman novels have definitely influenced this new film franchise, but they are also clearly distinct from it in terms of continuity. I'm okay with that. I actually liked the movie "Dark Knight" very much. It was clearly a different Joker than the one we're all used to, but that's okay; the mythos of Batman has become large enough that it can tolerate very different "takes" on it. (I liked the campy old TV series too, even if it was ridiculous half the time. It was ridiculous on purpose, after all.)
I liked the movie of "Watchmen", though I did have some quibbles. I think they did an admirable job of squishing it down into something that you could watch in under three hours, although some of the subplots that were lost were definitely missed. The prison psychologist, for instance, is much less significant in the movie, and that was disappointing, though I understood why they had to minimize him. The novel is better, but that is usually true of movie adaptations; the book is generally better. What I usually hope is that the film will enhance appreciation of the book, and at least for me, the "Watchmen" movie did that. (That said, I'm surprised they actually managed to be *more* graphic than the book. Some of the graphic violence seemed almost pornographic -- that is, it was there to be seen, not because it enhanced the story in any way, and that ended up making it distracting. Also time consuming; I hate to see story sacrificed just so you can see somebody's fractured radius pop through their arm.) I have now puchased the director's cut, and am looking forward to finding enough time to actually watch it. (Definitely not suitable for a 5-year-old!)
I will enjoy following your blog, I expect. ;-) It is funny how things go around in waves, newage being one such wave. (I also like to pronounce it to rhyme with "sewage".)
The reason it seems far-fetched is because NewAge is such a part of our culture that aspects of it seem normal. Consider: This is a nation that's now had 40+ years of NewAge seminars, workshops, be-ins, and self-induced mental experiments done in it - all designed to get the participants to turn away from the country and culture they live in - and those participants raised the generations that followed to do the same.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you mean by "turning away from the culture" here, since after 40+ years it seems pretty clear that New Age has BECOME the culture.
To put it another way, if new Age is such a big a part of American life that it "seems normal" to most people then it is normal by definition, since what is defined as normal in any given culture is only what the majority of people in that culture accept.
Whoa, wrong, dude. If that were true then Nazism, or slavery, would've been "normal" - popularity never equals anything but popularity.
ReplyDeleteBy "turning away from the culture", I mean holding such contempt for our national character that it always appears to be our enemy. I'm proud to be an American - as proud as a frenchman is to be french - not only because I know I live in the greatest country on earth but as a practical matter: This is my home. To trash where you live is just stupid. To weaken your defenses, for some unknown others, or a naive vision of utopia, is even stupider. We dream of utopia because we can dream of utopia - because we have it so good - but to think the poor and the desperate share that dream, for or with us, is idiotic: They're looking out for number one, just as we have been. It's like my thoughts on feminism:
As long as certain women want to play a zero-sum game, then that's the game I'm playing, too - so they must lose. In any battle that's presented as "you or me", you can be sure who I'ma be fighting for, and there's no amount of historical pleading that'll win me over - that includes with blacks as well. Like I said - I'm an American - and you're either "down" or you ain't, period.
NewAgers are not "down".
Whoa, wrong, dude. If that were true then Nazism, or slavery, would've been "normal" - popularity never equals anything but popularity.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, right dude, those things have both been considered "normal" in their own contexts.
Normal
–adjective
1. conforming with or constituting a norm or standard or level or type or social norm
2. serving to establish a standard.
example:
http://listverse.com/2009/01/14/10-fascinating-facts-about-slavery/
"The Old Testament goes a little further and reminds people to treat their slaves well. The most likely reason for this apparent moral discrepancy is that the Bible was penned at a time when slavery was not only widespread, but considered perfectly normal and moral – there was no reason to mention it as most people wouldn’t have considered it an issue worth thinking about."
My bad: I should've said American slavery - which was different than any that came before.
ReplyDelete