2001 - 2009: When All Hell Broke Loose

Remember the Bush years? I do - that's when I came out as a conservative. It was disgust that finally did it. I had one friend, a photojournalist, who, whenever he came over and discovered I had guests (which was often) would immediately set about poisoning their minds to our foreign policy - even after I begged him to stop. But he, and too many others, were just incapable of stopping themselves.

Bush Derangement Syndrome. Nasty business. They'd all gone mad.

And, anyway, why should anyone have tried to stop? That now-revealed font of journalistic wisdom, Helen Thomas, labeled George W. Bush "the worst president in history", giving permission for that lie to be openly parroted by every wannabe cool I'm-not-political know-nothing on the planet.

In hindsight, of course, it was free-floating ignorance and hatred and nothing more. But it crushed me - not just here but overseas as well:

"I know some Europeans who are not quite anti-American — they just support or accept America when the voters elect liberal Democrats. When the voters, under the influence of darkness, elect conservatives, all bets are off: America is illegit."

Yes, yes - as someone who traveled to Europe often in those days - I do remember it well.

What am I saying? I'll never be able to forget it - it haunts my dreams:

It was absolutely the worst time of my life.

But now, in their insanity, the Democrats are back to slicing their own throats, so, thank goodness, it's all finally almost over,...

Hat Tip: Collective Wishes

Thinking So Weak It's Defined By A Rainbow

"The idea of hidden agendas has influenced discussions on the war in Iraq, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the outbreak of swine flu.

In previous times, such attitudes mainly informed the thinking of right-wing populist movements, which always saw the hand of a Jewish or Masonic or Communist conspiracy behind major world events. Today, conspiratorial thinking has become respectable; many of its most vociferous supporters are to be found in radical protest movements or within the cultural left. When, a few years ago, Hillary Clinton warned of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ against her husband, then president Bill, it became clear that the politics of the hidden agenda had become part of everyday public life. Today, the anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movement is as wedded to conspiratorial thinking as are its opponents on the far right.

Conspiratorial thinking is encouraged by a powerful cultural narrative that depicts people, not as the authors of their destiny, but as the objects of manipulative secretive forces. Life is interpreted through the prism of a Hollywood blockbuster, where powerful evil and hidden figures pull all the strings. The flourishing of this imagination springs from mainstream society’s own inability to give an authoritative account of contemporary events. Virtually every aspect of public life is contested today, and there is little agreement on what are the causes of our current predicament. This crisis of causality continually calls into question the official version of events. Of course, the official version of events often needs to be questioned, but not through embracing a simplistic conspiratorial worldview that blames small cliques of evil people for what happens in the world.

Conspiratorial culture communicates the idea that nothing just happens by accident: somebody is at fault. Fantasies about international terrorist networks, paedophile rings, corporate conspiracies to fool people about an impending environmental disaster and neo-conservative cabals compete with one another to gain public attention. Virtually every misdeed, it seems, is the outcome of a carefully worked-out plot. Conspiratorial culture helps fuel suspicion and mistrust towards public life. It displaces critical engagement with society in favour of a destructive search for the hidden agenda. It distracts from any clarification of genuine differences and helps turn public life into a continuous crusade to unmask the perpetrators of malevolent deeds. The media fuel this attitude by frequently arguing that what is important is not what public figures say but what their real agenda is. The media incite the public to look for hidden motives; that normalisation of suspicion and mistrust is the key accomplishment of today’s conspiratorial culture."

-- Frank Furedi, on how and why the cultish Democrats have handed the office of the American presidency to a communist crank, in Spiked.

We're Big On Self-Reflection Around Here

"No more stupid apology tricks."

-- Michael Saul, insinuating David Letterman and the Left have been more-than-a-little slow in the Honesty Dept. (with problems regarding Sarah Palin and self-reflection) because it's in The New York Daily News.

"A refreshing bipartisan consensus is emerging in the liberal and conservative halves of the blogosphere and the media in general. Visceral detestation of the Islamic Republic regime in Iran is all but universal."

-- Michael J. Totten, not insinuating the Left has been more-than-a-little slow in the Honesty Dept. (with problems regarding George W. Bush and banging your ol' lady) probably because it's from that classy Commentary Magazine.

Attention K-Mart Shoppers: There's A Sale On Political Foolishness Now Appearing In Aisle 9

"Remember the good old days? When the air was thick like curdled paste and the days were long like sad, lonely sighs and evil -- sweet, dependable evil -- was like some sort of predatory perfume salesgirl and we were all trapped in the same apocalyptic department store?"

-- Mark Morford - San Francisco's insane NewAge yoga instructor - still so lost in Bush Derangement Syndrome he's relieved that we're going broke, anti-semitism is now a public spectacle, political corruption is rampant, high-profile terrorism is back, and America is the world's 1970's whipping boy, in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Uh-Oh: The Truth Ain't "Out There" Anymore

"On January 20, Barack Obama became president of a deranged nation. He did so apparently taking no notice of the fact that a good portion of the country, a country that otherwise repeatedly voiced its support for him in poll after poll after poll, continued to be completely out of its mind."

-- Charles P. Pierce, finally saying openly what many Americans can't accept - this is now a nation of nutcases - a fact the crazies refuse to believe, merely because they don't think whackjobs are capable of reading Esquire.

Zen And Now

"'Blaming George' still makes a tingle run up the legs of all the hymn-singing true believers, but outside the embrace of the cult, that tingle is beginning to sting instead. This is Mr. Obama's government now."

-- Wesley Pruden, acknowledging the political acceptance of denial, the cultural acceptance of delusion, and the now-slowing journalistic STD of Chris Matthews' mind, in The Washington Times.

It's Just Further Proof Bush Was An Idiot, Right?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"Obama bumped his head Monday morning when boarding Marine One on the White House's south lawn. He misjudged,...and banged his head on the low doorway."

-- The Associated Press

Joseph Nigro: An Overcooked Conspiracy

As a public service to the celebrity moron brigade, we offer the following potential conspiracy:

On January 30, 2008 Bill Clinton, campaigning for Hillary said in a speech:

"We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."

And the major news stories a year later are the crashed economy and saving the planet.

On behalf of the whack-O-matics, we could make the argument that Clinton accidentally spilled the beans that he and Al Gore colluded with the Democrats controlling congress, Wall Street, celebrities and the Obama campaign to crash the economy, slow down carbon emissions and give Obama something to club McCain with.

So there’s a good start, nut-cups. Or maybe it requires Bush to be a target before you spring into action.

Like A Hit-And-Run Driver Asking For Gas Money

"Observers might deduce we are headed towards a second coming of the Era of Good Feelings. However, it would require a mild case of amnesia for anyone who has been paying attention to our national dialogue since 2001 to believe this.

The past eight years have not merely been partisan, but full of dangerous and unhinged hatred for President George W. Bush. And the engine of much of that bile were the men and women in the crowd at Grant Park, the rank and file of the next president's party, and the compliant media who did so much to destroy Bush and deify Obama."

-- Ryan L. Cole, who hasn't been swept up in the stupid yet, as befits The American Spectator.

The Difference: Repulicans Are Adults

The fact that the Democrats and the left have acted like 2 year olds the last 8 years doesn’t mean that if Obama is elected we should throw the same infantile tantrums and look for ghosts in the machine – or accuse the opposition of foul play without a shred of physical proof, only the paranoid imaginings whipped up by people who knew exactly what they were doing – undermining the legitimacy of the elected leader of the United States government.

...whether Obama wins – if he wins – by one vote or millions shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you believe the reason he won was because the press was in the tank for him, or ACORN cheated, or McCain didn’t get a fair shake, or any other legitimate or illegitimate reason you can think of.

At the very least, Barack Obama will deserve our acknowledgement that he is the legitimate elected president of the United States.

That doesn’t mean we have to slavishly follow him or join his cult like groupies. What it means is that where what he proposes to do is reasonable and doesn’t conflict with our principles, he should expect our support.

It means that we don’t have to delegitimize his presidency to oppose him either. People of good will and good conscience can disagree without tearing each other and the country apart. And in this day and age, such an outcome would be unbearable.

An Obama election will mean changes – not all of them for the better. So be it. We will fight like hell against what we believe to be wrong. But we not do it by trying to delegitimize the elected president. Get personal, sure. Satirize and make fun of him, absolutely. Argue on the merits, most definitely.

But when push comes to shove and crisis erupts somewhere in the world involving American interests – and no president in recent memory has escaped such a challenge – I plan on backing my president’s play. I may give voice to skepticism about the path he chooses. This is our right and duty.

But I will not wish that he fail nor will I work to see that he does. The fact that I even have to mention this shows how foreign an idea this is to both the right and the left. The unbalanced hatred on the right directed against President Clinton was followed up by the even kookier and dangerous rage by the left against Bush. Perhaps its time for all of us to grow up a little and start acting like adults where the survival of our republic depends on the two sides not trying to eye-gouge their way to dominance.

This may not be self-evident to some of you younger readers but this was the America I grew up in and which existed until about 20 years ago. Politics was just as raucous a game then. There was no pussyfooting. It was a game played for keeps and played to the hilt. There was little love lost personally or professionally between the two sides.

But there was also a recognition that the will of the majority was, in the end, respected and granted legitimacy. This included recognizing that there was only one president and that even if we disagreed with him, that didn’t mean he was an impostor. The fact that the 2000 election was so close (and the results confirmed by a consortium of independent media who took the time to recount the Florida votes several different ways proving that Bush did indeed win the state) no doubt was frustrating for the losers. But the idea that after 8 years the left could never get over the results and indeed, showed a derangement toward the president even after a still close but decisive win in 2004 proves that it is up to us on the right to bring our politics back to a rough equilibrium so that we can work together in these perilous times.

I plan on doing just that – while still skewering my political opponents with as much zest and glee as I can muster.

— Rick Moran, on what it means to be an American, in the Right Wing Nut House

Whoda Thunk Crazy Was Contageous?

"With George Bush off the front pages for much of the last few months, the political pathology known as Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) took an unexpected summer hiatus.

BDS sufferers - liberal Democrats seething over successive presidential election losses and hamstrung by a Republican president confidently wielding wartime authority - failed to transfer their enmity to Sen. John McCain, largely because they couldn't bust his 'maverick' brand, but to a larger extent because they assumed Sen. Barack Obama was going to win in a laugher.

That presumption ended when Mr. McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Before Charlie Gibson could even grill the Alaska governor over her "hubris" in accepting Mr. McCain's historic invitation, the raw rage that focused for eight years on the 43rd president of the United States transferred in a flash to a former "Miss Congeniality" and Anchorage suburban mother of five who immediately swung the momentum to Mr. McCain's side.

Palin Derangement Syndrome, a more irrational variant of the Bush contagion, doesn't require sufferers to know anything about the subject of their hatred. Anonymous, unsourced rumors fuel the fire (book banning, speaking in tongues, creationism, etc.). Lovely family photos hacked from a personal e-mail account displayed on commercial Web sites push more buttons. Asterisks from Mrs. Palin's biographical sketch - 'moose hunter,' 'small-town mayor,' 'wife of champion snow machine racer' - cause excessive sweating and irregular heartbeats. She even fired a guy who Tased a 10-year-old. (Oh wait, she didn't.)

What will happen when they find out she shops at Wal-Mart?"

-- Andrew Breitbart, suffering from something himself, or giving you Real Clear Politics

No Justice No Peace

Not too long ago, there was a woman in California setting fires in Starbucks, and other establishments, as a protest against high gas prices. Now this. It looks like we've, once again, slipped the bounds of reason and the mass hysteria of the Jimmy Carter 70's are back. All that's missing is the matching fashion sense.

That said, TMR would like to send a hearty "thank you" to all the anti-Bush protesters, their heads filled with every bit of wrong information known to man, for weakening America's position to the point where events seem to finally be slipping out of our control - and citizens are losing their minds.

I know, I know: you'll deny one thing has anything to with the other (you're so good at denial) - no confronting the fact you were wrong all along - but, as someone who lived (and was already politically aware) through both eras, I call "bullshit" on you. This is your doing. This was always your goal: stop America at all cost - not those that would do us harm.

Well, you got your wish, Losers. How does it feel (since your feelings were always so damned important)? Yea, like the children of the 60's that fucked their parents and, now, have led your dumb ass down the exact same road to social stupidity - again - you were so fucking tough, standing up to those who cared about you, and pledged to protect you. You were such a fucking NewAge rebel. Until the bad guys showed up.

You can't fool me - I'm now your psychic, reading the fucking "signs":

You've been the very definition of a NewAge anti-American tool.

Look hard at the idiot in this video: he's the mirror image of all your confused hopes and dreams.

Traveling With Friends

Bush-hatred is one of the most interesting phenomena of our times; to me, it is also one of the most disturbing. Consider Bush’s speech at this conference, and its calls for freedom, democracy, and humaneness. If Bill Clinton gave the identical speech, what would the reaction be? And if Barack Obama gave it, word for word? I can see people on their feet, cheering.

For me, one of the most memorable Davos moments came courtesy of Tony Blair. It was January 2005, just after Bush delivered his Second Inaugural Address. And Blair said to Davos — I paraphrase just slightly — “What’s wrong with us progressives? I thought we were supposed to be all for freedom and against tyranny. Why did we hate that speech so much?”

In all probability, Bush could have said nothing here in Sharm El Sheikh that would have gained approval. Nothing short of a self-denunciation.

And a thought occurs to me: Bush stands for sweeping change in the Middle East. And he was talking to a throng of people for whom life is pretty good. On the whole, they are affluent; a good number of them must have domestic servants. They have positions of power and influence. They travel internationally, including to conferences like this one. They are the “haves,” the societal winners.

And who is Bush’s Middle Eastern constituency? You could argue, they are the poor, the imprisoned, the hopeless. The poor need liberalization more than the rich. And no one in jail attends conferences.

Bush’s speech would have been much better received in, say, Syrian prisons.

In the next hours, I hear many reviews of Bush’s performance, and they are not good, to put it mildly. And I will tell you about a conversation I overhear — an American woman is talking to some Middle Easterners in a lounge. I am typing this column.

A man asks the woman, hesitantly, “What did you think of Bush’s speech?” “Oh, I hate Bush,” she says. That is a jarring sentence to hear: “I hate Bush.”

And she goes on. Some of her choice sentences: “Democracy is overrated.” “All of us Americans in the audience, we were like, ‘Do we applaud or what?’” “His approval rating is 18 percent. No one cares about him anymore; everybody hates him.”

She allows that the First Lady, Laura Bush, “seems nice.” But then she drops this: “The rumor is he hits her, you know. Sometimes I see her on television, and I’m thinking, ‘Poor woman.’” Then our American seems to have a prick of conscience: “But I don’t know — maybe they have a great relationship.”

Here is a theme I have sounded many, many times, and will again: The American abroad can be tough to digest. For decades, people have denounced the “ugly American” — the ugly American abroad. They mean conservative ignoramuses or loudmouths or bigots in Hawaiian shirts and shorts. But my idea of the “ugly American” is something else.

-- Jay Nordlinger, covering the president in the Middle East, for the National Review

Everything Is (NOT) A Cult

"While many of these alternative medicine gurus say a lot of weird stuff does that mean it’s wrong? Many medicines we have now are derived from natural sources like plants. I mean who would’ve thought that we can treat diseases with fungus? If that’s the case then wouldn’t it also be possible that some of the “crazy potions” actually have value to them? Of course science detests anything from these shamans yet it’s a possibility that only the ignorant would cast off.

We can find treatments to diseases in strange places. I’m actually working in a lab right now and we’re studying the effects of cinnamon on the large conduit arteries of male wistar rats. We’ve found that licorice administered in vitro causes vasodilation! Right now we believe licorice acts through nitric oxide synthase in the endothelium.

(Uh, the point being that you’re studying it. If it doesn’t pan out you will shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh well, guess we were wrong about that one,” not form the Cult of Cinnamon Therapy and defend it from all infidels.-PB)"

- From the comments section of Panda Bear, M.D.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've become a big fan of Panda Bear, M.D.'s medical blog, and the exchange, above, is an obvious reason why:

1) He talks straight, like a human being, with no BS.

2) He doesn't suffer fools gladly.

3) He's not afraid to call a cult a "cult".

And notice the distinction he makes about the behavior of others - that not everyone decides to form a cult around a particular idea. This has been an argument I've heard from many people ("Everything is a cult") and I've always thought it was one of the most bullshit answers I've come across.

"Everybody" doesn't do this. Only "close-minded" people get to the point of being cultish around an idea - like the suggested good in being "open-minded" to all things - just as I've become, completely and openly, close-minded to the idea there's any worth in cultish-thinking. I'm an "open-minded" person, but I've circled the wagons on this one.

Believe it or not, I wasn't always this way. (You might get some argument on that point but, hell, I'm an atheist who, for 20 years, was married to a woman who went to church, attended Reiki "meetings" - eventually claiming she could walk through walls - believed in U.F.O.s, and continued to throw every other manner of New Age nonsense available, that her psychic "guides" could think of, at me. Without my awareness, of course. And there I am, above, smiling with an actual frenchman - in France of all places!) But - while I'm sure most people don't know what it's like to endure being in love with someone who is functionally crazy - that's proof enough, for me, that (at the very least) despite my biases, I was a "tolerant" fellow before my divorce. Just not anymore.

Now I can see that people form cults around all kinds of things, but they just don't call it that. "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is just another term for cultish-thinking.

It hasn't been lost on me that most of the people that hate the president can only get along with other people that hate him as well. (Don't get me started on that one - man, have I got stories,...Hate may not be a family value but it, surely, flourishes in the hearts of many of my friends - and, especially, some of the best liberal families I know of,....) These are people who know every possible charge against the president but can't find time to discover if those accusations are true - and, more importantly, don't care. Show them how such an attitude hurts the country and they blithely bat it away, having convinced themselves of their own righteousness. (It's really sad because, like my ex, they can be so damn smart, and charming, at other times. And they absolutely hate any comparison, of themselves, to my ex.) This is just not how thinking people behave.

BTW, on a related topic, out of all the e-mails I've received, not one has pointed out any "overflowing landfills" to date. Nor have any of my readers, when I bump into them on the street, wanted to discuss it. (Very curious behavior, for people who are so sure recycling is necessary, and/or who seriously want me to reconsider my position on all this cult stuff,....)

What's truly amazing is, any kid can see through this stuff that the adults around them will destroy friendships over - and marriages - to maintain believing in:

I was on the BART train not too long ago, and a group of Jr. High School students (from Berkeley, Ca.) got on, playing some of that really bad Hip-Hop R&B that kids are inundated with these days. Two girls sat across from me, playing their music loudly, until I told them - flat out, as an adult - "That's really bad music."

They looked at me like the thought had never occurred to them before (which it probably hadn't). "Really?" they asked. "Yea", I said, and I started to engage them in conversation about the obvious merits of good music over bad. They seemed intrigued.

Having that opening, I asked them what grade they were in and what they learn in school. One volunteered "stuff about the environment" which - Bingo! - got me to asking some questions about the "knowledge" they had received.

As we talked, other kids in their group started gathering around, paying close attention to the conversation their classmates were having with this unknown black man. Then, as a group, they started asking me probing questions, leading to some wild exchanges:

"Are you a Republican?"

"Yes." (Murmuring from the peanut gallery, including a "Whoa" or two)

"I never met a Republican before."

"What do you think?"

"It's cool."

As we went back and forth, I could see their eyes starting to light up; their little brains flickering on; until one kid finally let loose with, "I knew it!", meaning he'd always been sure his tie-dye brained, granola-munching, teachers had been trying, badly, to indoctrinate him They asked me how I felt about everything - even abortion - until their stop arrived.

As they left, I heard one kid say, "That was awesome!" which gave me a great feeling. Almost like what a real teacher must feel like. And (as my friend, Tony Sparks, likes to say) here's the thing:

They never once got angry.

Those kids were asking good questions, while listening closely for evidence of deception, because I was challenging some of their deeply held beliefs - like what constituted good music, which, as any parent can tell you, is very important to a child of a certain age and not exactly open for discussion - but they could tell, no matter what I said, I was always on their side and I gave them everyday examples they could sort out themselves. I wasn't the Devil because I showed them some idea, or bit of information, was wrong. Challenging them wasn't considered an insult. Learning was, believe it or not, fun. (I actually feel sorry for their instructors when they got back at school.)

With adults I get none of that. Especially for those that know me and my recent personal history, my divorce is the first obvious weakness to attack in any debate. "You're obsessed!" they cry, turning the argument away from whether or not they hold a defensible position on the topic of discussion, which is a totally chickenshit move. (How low can they go?) They cut me off with "No, no, no" if a concept can't be explained in a sentence or two - anything but accepting an idea on the merits or - Heaven forbid! - looking at the evidence. (I put links in my posts for a reason, Kids.)

And they'll punish me, brutally, if I don't go along. That's been the most hurtful discovery, regarding my "friends" (and, especially, my ex), of this whole ordeal:

How absolutely ruthless cultish-thinkers, spiritual types, Leftists, etc., will immediately become to defend their beliefs.

It's like they've been waiting all their lives to show their asshole side and, now, they've finally got the opening they've been waiting for - to slam The Big Guy, Mr. Know-It-All, The Crack Emcee - the daddy figure they've been running to for advice all these years because he was happily married and famous. (My current favorite: "Why does my wife scream at me the way she does?" "Because you let her.")

It's tragic, really, because they're still as wrong-headed as they ever were, and pissing me off isn't going to change that, or help them escape their long-term battles with such confusion. It's merely going to eliminate one more critical thinker, who loves them, from their lives; which certainly can't be helpful, considering the, many, totally ass-backwards and cultishly apocalyptic delusions they hold, oh so dearly.

Time gets us all - but websites live forever - and cultism will be defeated through: