Monday, May 01, 2006
by Red Angel @ Empires Fall
Those of you who have been around for a while may have noticed something about the conservative blowhards on the net. I'm not just talking about the ones here, but in general. A great example is guns-and-gear forums, which swarm with the kind of person I'm talking about.
The observation?
These people aren't much for the written word. They can't spell. They mangle grammar and syntax to varying degrees, sometimes to the point where they're almost unintelligible. And the worse the problem is, the more vociferous they are about supporting George Bush.
What do I conclude from this?
I conclude something we've always suspected. I conclude that Bush voters aren't very bright.
There's political theory that holds that people tend to vote for candidates who are like themselves.
When Gore talks, he makes a great deal of sense. The problem is, the ideas he expresses are complex; it's not easy to encapsulate him in a ten second soundbite. Same with John Kerry.
Bush, on the other hand, just makes statements. Simple statements. He doesn't bother supporting them. He doesn't bother explaining why. He just pronounces.
And I think Bush is very reassuring to a lot of people who aren't very bright, and for whom the complexity of modern times is a little bit scary. People like that would like to return to the halcyon Mayberry days of an idealized 1950s with black and white televisions, baseball on the radio and the good old Sovs to hate and fear.
Nice and simple.
This is what I was talking about a few days ago, about the needle sweeping downwards along the IQ curve. As Bush's popularity ratings sink below 30, we're going to see more and more malapropisms, misspellings and misunderstandings of the English language.
They're going to get louder and more belligerent, because now the needle is descending into serious bellicose obstinacy territory. See, stubbornness, inflexibility, lack of ability to adapt to changing circumstances, inability to change one's mind even in the presence of overwhelming evidence-- these are characteristics associated with the state of being... well, not being very bright.
Let's face it: How smart do you have to be to not see the glaring facts that Bush is gutting the constitution, selling off our security and our national savings to foreign interests, and spending like a drunken sailor in a Bangkok whorehouse?
From Red Angel @ Empires Fall
There's a kind of person on the left who seems to be afraid of conflict.
I'm not talking about war, I'm talking about political conflict. Acrimony and stress, sturm und drang. They don't want people making noise and rocking the boat. They don't want anyone making the righties mad, because when they get mad (hell, even when they're not mad) they throw tantrums and yell, and that scares the lily-livered set.
We don't need you people. We need people who aren't afraid to stand up. If you're afraid, then sit the fuck down and don't get in the way of the rest of us who are willing to speak truth to power. Go back to your rainbow-family drum circles and pass the peace pipe while you wait for Rummy and the draft board to come for your children.
I've been watching right-wing nutjobs for years. I think that by and large they're more stupid than evil. And in fact, it's often not even stupidity as blind authoritarianism. It's so easy for loud, angry father figures to manipulate them.
And guess what, shrinking-violet brigade: you aren't going to gardenparty them to death. You aren't going to shut them up by feeding them cute little cucumber sandwiches.
They're used to that.
If you let it go far enough, they'll be at your garden gates with axe handles. And long knives. That's the kind of person they are, make no mistake. They're weaklings, just like you, but when there's a struggle, and one side is afraid to even hurt any feelings, I can tell you which side is going to win. If you're so much of a coward that you're afraid to even let anyone else offend, then you deserve what you're sure to get.
The nutjobs don't respect you people, because they know you're snivelling coward weaklings. I agree with them.
I love my family, but I really wish they would stop sending me this kind of drivel. It drives me nuts and sends me spinning off topic in an apoplectic rage that demands I sned an immediate factual slapdown. Here's what I was sent. . .
"Love him or loathe him, he nailed this one right on the head..........
By Rush Limbaugh:
I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just don't criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well, I can't let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing about the
entitlement mentality of this country. If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you're going to get an average of $1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000, all the way up to $4.7 million.
If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable.
Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a screeching halt.
Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it's not enough. Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers.
We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well.
You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It's just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense?
However, our own U S. Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don't know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn't have to pay into the system.
If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.
I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our sons and daughters who are now fighting.
"When do we finally do something about this?" If this doesn't seem fair to you, it is time to forward this to as many people as you can."
Here is my response. . .
Dear Mr. Grothaus,
I received your email regarding the "entitlement mentality" of American society. These words coming out of Rush LImbaugh's mouth is nothing short of hypocrisy. Limbaugh is a Republican mouthpiece of the lowest order, his lies for the right only rivaled by the ridiculously named "fair and balanced" Fox network. For years, the Republican majority has resisted increasing benefits for the men and women of the U.S. military. Even now as the Bush administration profligately wastes the lives of our fighting men and women in a failed invasion and occupation of a country that clearly had no weapons of mass destruction and no connection whatsoever to the attacks of 9/11, the Republicans, who, in case you have conveniently forgotten, control all the mechanisms of our government including the purse strings have failed to extend adequate compensation to our troops over, I might add, the loud and frequent protests of the Democratic minority.
As for the vast amounts of money paid to the widows and orphans of the 9/11 attacks, remember two things. First, the government of the United States failed the people of New York and Washington D.C. at every turn. While the attacks may ultimately still have occurred, the signs and warnings were loud and plentiful. FBI agents around the nation were sending reports of young Arab men were signing up for lessons in how to pilot large commercial jets but had no desire to learn how to land them. WARNING! Intelligence briefings skittered across the Presidents desk and were also ignored. Remember this little nugget; "Bin Laden determined to use planes to strike in the US." WARNING! Outgoing Clinton intelligence staffers told incoming Bush counterparts that the most important threat to the US was Al Qaeda, yet every report coming out of the White House, from career counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to Reporter Bob Woodward show that George Bush could care less as he went about planning his little war in Iraq. WARNING! DANGER! Limbaugh also conveniently forgets the fact that everyone and their brother knew that the police and fire communications systems were not able to communicate back and forth, and that the New York City emergency operations center was built into the number one terrorist target in the city, The World Trade Center, a complex that had already been attacked by Muslim extremists once before.
So what is Limbaugh saying. Is he saying that the survivors of 9/11 don't deserve this level of compensation or that our soldiers deserve the same. Since he calls it an "entitlement mentality," he obviously believes that no one except fat, bloated, corporate head honchos and intellectually stunted, drug riddled radio hosts deserve such grandiose levels of compensation for their socially redeeming work and to hell with the men and women dying in the sand for George Bush and Dick Cheney's corporate buddies profit margins. And if they leave behind widows and orphans, let them seek out welfare. Oh wait we want to eliminate that too.
If you really give a damn about our service men and women, quit listening to Limbaugh and his EIB (Extremely Ignorant Blowhard) network and find out who is actually stopping our soldiers and their families from getting the benefits that they not only deserve, but were actually promised when they signed up.
Greg Colvin
Publisher/Editor
"The Alarm"
