Kook, I Am Your Father

Now tell them that there are, oh, let's say, exactly one trillion Sith Lords in the "Democrat" Party.

What's a "Sith Lord"?

It doesn't matter.

Sigh

I'm sure almost everyone who reads this blog has some understanding of who "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn were, but it is possible that not everyone remembers this exchange between Angela Landsbury (in the greatest role of her career) and James Gregory from the original, 1962 version of "The Manchurian Candidate":

(Over dinner)   

Mrs. Iselin: I'm sorry, hon'. Would it really make it easier for you if we settled on just one number?    

Senator John Yerkes Iselin: Yeah. Just one, real, simple number that'd be easy for me to remember.  

(Later, addressing the Senate)

Senator Iselin: There are exactly 57 card-carrying members of the Communist Party in the Department of Defense at this time! 

The point is that even by 1962 enough people knew filthy, McCarthy-style demagoguery for what it was well enough for it to show up, virtually unedited, in a major motion picture.

Everybody got the point, which is why it took the GOP so many years and so many billions of dollars to rebury the crazy, paranoid core of their party deep enough so that they could pretend it did not exist.

But now...well, pick your metaphor; the containment unit around their radioactively crazy base has failed; the monster they built to win their elections has kicked the lab door off its hinges and is now running amok; even the legend of the Golem fits the facts entirely too well:

...
These are solemn rites performed for the Party Golem -- the Men of Mud with no thoughts but the thoughts they are told to think by the Dear Leader, hard-wired with the Prime Directive that Liberals are Always Wrong, Liberals are to Blame for Everything, and that the Dear Leader is a Plainspoken Man and a Per’fessed Christian and therefore is simply incapable of telling anything other than the Unvarnished Truth.

They are brought to a semblance of life by the stamp of hate and fear and greed that the Roves and Dobsons affix to their steeply-sloped foreheads. They are animated by Majyk Conjure Bile words by the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh; the demigods who casually burn yesterday's Scripted Verities, carefully inscribe on Hate Radio Parchment what their thralls are supposed to think today, and slip the new talking points into their mouths.

Their eyes flutter – the Party Golem – and they roar out into the streets to obediently scream today’s lies, which may or may not completely contradict what they were screaming the day before.

These people are not recruited for their critical thinking skills; they are useful only for their stupidity and meek submission to Conservative Authority. For the manipulable hellfest of bad religion and ugly ideology that packs their Creationist Bell Jar skulls. For the leering, jeering delight at that particular bloodthrill pleasure knucklewalkers get when they can pound the shit out of people who are better, smarter and more honorable than they will ever be.

But here's the catch: The rites must be observed. 

And if the proper Kabuki is not performed with all deliberate speed, the rank-and-file will start rubbing their little, dry hind legs together and making little frightened chirping noises. Not out of any concern for the “truth” -- they don't "do" truth -- but out of a growing fear of being stranded out in the big, scary Liberal World with no one to tell them what slogans they’re supposed to shout. 
...

Now the Party of God breeds demagogues like a McDonald's dumpster breed maggots on a hot summer day, all sounding like seventh generation replicants of the same, depraved original.

From the L.A. Times:

The voice of today's GOP: Allen West says Democrats are commies

By David Horsey

April 12, 2012, 5:00 a.m.

Rep. Allen West, one of the loosest cannons in the Republican arsenal, believes there are about 80 members of the Communist Partyin the United States Congress.

Tuesday night at a town hall meeting in Jensen Beach, Fla., one of West’s constituents asked him how many “card-carrying Marxists or international socialists” there were in Congress. Without hesitation, Allen responded, “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.”

He went on to identify them as the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group within the Democratic caucus that wants to end corporate welfare for oil, gas and coal companies, rebuild the country’s infrastructure, expedite an end to the war in Afghanistan and eliminate tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans while extending tax relief for the middle class. Now, that may not sound like communism to you, but to West, such scary ideas apparently reek of Bolshevism. (Note to Rep. West: solid majorities of voters tell pollsters they support every one of those proposals -- the commies have already won!)

Democrats are a wee bit offended. They say West’s remarks are reminiscent of Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy’s anticommunist witch-hunt in the 1950s. Well, yeah. But I think we are a long way from another Red Scare. Compared with the powerful McCarthy, the first-term congressman from Florida’s balmy beaches is a pipsqueak.

What makes West’s comment notable is how it is only a tiny stretch beyond the rhetoric being employed by many more prominent Republicans.
...

Of course, what is truly frightening is not that the Right listens to certifiable nut-cases or even that they elect certifiable nut-cases to office.

No what is truly dangerous and deeply depressing is the predictability of their reactions every single fucking time they get caught out once again defending the indefensible; how automatic and off-the-shelf their thinking has become:

1. Somewhere in a moral universe far, far away a horde of Teabaggers read Mr. Horsey's article and begin jumping up and down in unison screaming "But Saul Aliiiiiiiiiinsky!" at their computers. 


2. Then they call Rush. Busy! Damn it! 


3. Then they dashes off a million missives to their email list (including me) "proving" that Barack O'Bummer is opening secret, luxury prisons in Peoria to house his terrorist friends before he turns them loose to kill us all (When you can't win...Pound The Table!) 


4. Then I take 38 seconds to completely debunk everything they just wrote. 


5. Then I get another email rampant with eagles and flags "proving" that sites like Snopes and the Encylopedia Britanica are run by Commie co-conspirators who are funded by "George Sorooooooos!" 


6.  And somewhere in a moral universe far, far away, Karl Rove and Roger Ailes smile.

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