Ok, can we get serious here? What the hell are we so afraid that we won't call it like we see it?
here's the thing...
The emperor and all his tea party-birther-bachman-palin-beck followers have no freaking clothes. They are running around intellectually buck naked. And more than that, they think they are clothed in the finest silk and linen. Our leadership is afraid to say what we all know to be true.
Now the thing is, it isn't a debate, we can't discuss with them. We don't have to answer their charges and show our long form birth certificates. In fact we have to STOP doing things like that- because- you know what?- THEY ARE CRAZY. Seriously. Bats in the Belfry Crazy.
We can't reason with them. And with the exception of maybe DocBopper if he is still hanging around here somewhere- we are NOT qualified to try to intervene and to deal with their mental health issues. Nor can we just look the other way- That is cruel.
Letting someone hurt themselves and others in their craziness is just not right. But stop trying to explain to them why what they are saying makes no sense. It makes no sense because there is something wrong with these people. They are ill.
I recommend that we all gather a list of mental health professionals, or web links of where we can send our crazy relatives or coworkers who suddenly start quoting Orly Taitz. Or on the left- the guy who sends you videos about "controlled demolitions."
These folks need help. They need it now. When you hear them start- when they send you an email... You should respond simply by saying "you are crazy and you need help."
Here's a handy template, feel free to cut and paste
Dear (nutty family member or annoying co-worker), Thanks for your mail but quite honestly I am worried about you. Your ideas are pretty insane and if you really believe this stuff I recommend you go here http://store.samhsa.gov/mhlocator just type in your zipcode and go see someone. I say this because I really hope you can sort things out and later join us in the reality based community. Until then, please, I am not interested in (insert here any of these-- 9/11 truther info, Birthed BS, Libertarian Nonsense, Why I should buy gold, your ideas that the market will regulate itself, etc. etc.) If you want to write me about the weather, or sports, fine. Otherwise- thanks but no thanks. Sincerelymr/ ms. x
In any case- call it like you see it. It makes no sense, it is never going to make sense and you cannot change their minds. So just step away from them, slowly. Don't run though- it makes them chase you.
There's more...
A Picture With A Thousand Words On It...Is Worth Ten Thousand Words
In a previous post, I took the media to task for its appalling myopia about the full-throated roar of the crazies railing against President Obama and why said crazies are doing so. I said...
“Now, the news media beyond Lupica for the most part has been reluctant to look this stuff straight in the eye and call it for what it is, preferring to take the false equivocation / Sgt. Joe Friday “Just the facts...even if one side's 'facts' are clearly made-up bullshit” tack to cover their asses against I suppose...a Limbaugh-led boycott of sponsors...or some such nonsense.
They don't want to point out the big, scarlet-necked, angry elephant tearing the Goddamned room apart with its wild charges into the walls.
That dam may indeed be breaking, as evidenced in the cover story in New York Magazine last week, with said cover art shown above in this piece.
The caption accompanying it?
“The Obama Crazies, And Why They're Not Going Away”
A burly Pennsylvania correction officer named David McElwee held up a poster of Obama photoshopped as a half-naked African native in a hut with a grass skirt and a bone in his nose. (Emphasis LM's) That was Obamacare, “voodoo” health care, McElwee said.
This wasn’t politics, exactly, or at least it didn’t start as politics. It came from deeper down, from a stirring pot of disaffection and resentment that made the president a kind of fantasy villain. They dreamt about him. Obama was, quite literally, their nightmare.
---------------------------------
Nuts. Yet what did that word even mean now? “In the early sixties, you had the John Birch Society saying the same kind of nutty things. It never made it into the mainstream,” says Robert Shrum, the longtime political consultant. “The editors of the New York Times or L.A. Times or Washington Post decided what was going to appear.” Reporter Brooks Jackson of Factcheck.org says, “We used to be gatekeepers, back when there were gates. But now you see elected officials standing up and echoing some of the most bizarre, weird, false information we see on chain e-mails.” The left blogosphere spent a lot of energy refuting the crazies—but even as they refuted them, their alternative reality grew, and maybe their power too.
For those of you thinking we here at Group News Blog and the other places where discussion of this “phenomenon” has gained currency were just some hyper-sensitive wackos with an overactive persecution complex, I direct you to this story. It probably won't change your mind, as your hatred of us is just as irrational and rooted in the same loopy biases and misplaced anger as the nuts described in the article, but hey—there the damned thing is. It is the first of many articles like it to come. What has caused this alarm to gain traction is of course the usual gang of idiots overplaying their hateful hand—proudly sporting guns at peaceful gatherings, chucking common and well-established decorum in debate out the window like slovens heaving refuse street-ward during the Middle Ages, and the absolutely craziest overreactions to the most nothing of things.
Note again New York Magazine's coda on the cover blurb—“And Why They're Not Going Away”.
They're right. They're not.
Unfortunately for them, neither are we.
There is a hard-core twenty to twenty-five percent of so-called Americans (“so-called” because real Americans would actually recognize and try to live by what the Bill Of Rights says) for whom this President cannot fail fast enough, be mud-dragged often enough, or in the darkest pit of their sick little hearts, be dead fast enough for their tastes. And every day he wakes up and they see his face sticking out beyond that white collar of his—that face being some seven shades darker that what they've seen all their lives doing what he's doing now, they go just a little bit more crazy.
It will be the job of folks like you, and us—to remain super-sane in the face of these screeching tantrums. These wild outbursts that have given the likes of the dipshit-teous Glenn Beck currency in the daily discourse. Crying, kicking, screaming, wailing, breath-holding, self-punching, clothes-ripping crazy designed to wear and wither the resolve of the “adults in charge” so that we might relent and give them that little break—allowing them to claim a victory and grease that slippery slope where all they have to do is bitch and moan loud enough to keep getting over just enough to rightfully deem our side as “weak”.
FDR fed on this sort of hatred. Where we look at him now as a beloved, patrician, fireside-sitting salve to what ailed us during the awfulness of The Great Depression and the ensuing trials of World War II, during his actual heyday he was utterly reviled by a solid chunk of the more retrograde among us in America. The article sagely notes:
Thirty percent of the country hated Roosevelt, and that number never really went away, Shrum points out. Ultimately, FDR made hay of this rage. In a 1936 campaign speech in Madison Square Garden he castigated the right as “organized money” and declared: “I welcome their hatred.” Shrum says it took FDR four years in office to arrive at a “progressive confrontational politics.”
Sometimes when a kid goes berserk in a tantrum, the thing to do is to just let 'em go off and embarrass themselves for a while—the crazier they get, the calmer you get...and you simply do not give in. You let them shame themselves. And then comes the time when you eventually have to do what you have to do and you take Junior by the hand and go where you have to go...fuck if he's got a snot-soddened face and only a hoarsened howl left for words. You make the moves grown-ups have to make and that's all there is to it in the end. The hope here is that President Obama doesn't have to spend his (hopefully for him) first four years like FDR did converting all that nutty caterwauling to so much white noise (pun unintended).
I'd like to see more of what Shrum so perfectly described at the end of that piece—“progressive confrontational politics.”
It's getting to be about time to just drag Junior's ass along, people...and to not worry about what his fellow immature knuckleheads may think about it. He's a spoiled, irrational brat. Case closed We've known that for the longest and the New York article is the bellwether that those beyond us are realizing it as well.
So we're going to keep on pointing it out here at Group News Blog.
Because it's absolutely necessary to keep 'em honest.
Because they need to know we're not going to let them get away with it.
And because sometimes...just shining a light on flip-nut, batshit crazy can be almost as entertaining as it is as scary-truth-revealing...
I am pretty damn tired of dealing with crazy people. I mean I know the tent is big but sheesh.
Recently I had to listen and respond to a fundraising idea that I don’t think will work and that is bordering on less-than-legal. I wanted to meet the propos-er face to face about the whole scheme but did not yet have the time. When I didn’t respond with the desired HEY GREAT IDEA, I got accused of dissing the person because of his sexual orientation. He totally went off on me. Having never met me. And by the way, before his accusation I never even knew his sexual orientation, not that it matters a flying fig to me.
And
At every event I do, there is always one total loon, who we-- the organizers cringe over, just waiting to see what fresh-embarrassing-hell they are going to put us through. I have had drunk women flashing their panties at former ambassadors, men with anger-management issues shouting swear words at visiting VIPs, and don't even get me started on the folks who still think it is a good idea to vote for Nader! And on top of just being hard to deal with, these crazies suck energy like a Hoover vacuum. I know I am being insensitive, but damn it gets exhausting.
So here are my questions for you;
Why do the crazies require 5 times as many email responses as most other people?
How can we keep the big tent big and still remain pragmatic and effective?
How do you handle the lovable and not so lovable crazies in your life?
p.s. I do love OUR crazies though, because at least they don’t burn crosses in people’s yards and hold purity balls like THEIR crazies. As a general rule, our crazies don’t try to hurt people. But as an organizer, it is hard to be inclusive and effective when energy that would be better spent registering voters and raising money is spent putting out fires. Thoughts?
Vice President Dick Cheney fought furiously to block efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to strike a controversial US compromise deal with North Korea over the communist state's nuclear programme, the Telegraph has learned.
"The exchanges between Cheney's office and Rice's people at State got very testy. But ultimately Condi had the President's ear and persuaded him that his legacy would be stronger if they reached a deal with Pyongyang," said a Pentagon adviser who was briefed on the battle. --Telegraph.co.uk
Ok, can we get serious here? What the hell are we so afraid that we won't call it like we see it?
