Reflections: History 101

All those who start hurling epithets and talking about "tinfoil hats" as soon as someone suggests a possible conspiracy to explain the how and why of some current event should stop and consider that history--except where it records "acts of God"--is nothing other than a transcript of the enactments and aftermaths of conspiracies, all readily accepted as such when seen as sufficiently distant past events.

Rants: They Never Learn

I just gave up on an attempt to watch a 9 a.m. Sunday morning political/news show. There, on ABC, was the embarrassing sell-out, Obama, and on Fox, the even more disgusting huckster, Reince Preibus. All bullshit, all the time. More productively, I started reading Howard Zinn's The Twentieth Century: a People's History this morning. It is amazing to be clubbed over the head once again with the proof that "business-as-usual" for the U.S. of A. has not changed one iota since the inception of the 20th century. Then, it was Cuba and the Philippines; today it is the Middle East: same motives; same murderous tactics, still to the benefit of nobody but the corporate oligarchs. Then, it was the mysterious explosion that destroyed the battleship Maine; more recently it was the mysterious controlled demolition of the three buildings of the WTC. Same old, same old. The people never learn and apparently never will.

Rants: Lies, Damned Lies, and Book Tours

There is evidently a considerable number of bozos out there who still can't bring themselves to believe that the Bushies would actually LIE this nation into war. A corresponding note resonates in the assertions of a statistically significant number of trusting souls who continue to maintain that John McCain and his Republican cohort are running a dignified and honorable campaign. Persons of this mind-set should merely consider the book The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality that is atop the best-seller lists—due to bulk sales to fascist front organizations.

This "study" is more accurately a propagandistic screed, full of outright lies about Obama--lies that are being easily disproved both in print and over the airwaves of the broadcast media. But the book was never written and published with the expectation that many people would actually read it. All that was ever intended to result from its publication is that it would be talked about on television. The obvious lies, because of their “controversial” nature, would receive the most discussion. The sought-after result would be that even in being debunked by the so-called “liberal media” those lies would grow legs and thrive through wide dissemination. This pure, grade-A bullshit would be believed by many of the credulous rubes on the idiot fringes of the electorate, because those lockstep legions all “know” that the card-carrying liberals debunking them are in the tank for Obama: the media figures doing the debunking become the liars, while the author of this pulp fiction becomes the brave voice of truth crying out in a liberal wilderness.

And next consider the book’s subtitle: “Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality”. The “leftist” candidates in the two presidential campaigns prior to this one were Al Gore and John Kerry. Do I need to say more about the patent libel of characterizing liberal politics as a personality cult? And in this round Obama’s main competition was Hillary Clinton. Throughout the early months of campaigning it was endlessly reported and widely held to be most evident that precisely Hillary Clinton’s personality was her greatest liability.

So this book is another glaring example of the Conservative Way, boyz and grrrrls: Create a useful lie and float it out there. The bleating merinos in their pseudo-patriotic, conformist stupor will gobble it up like the sweetest clover--or poppies...