The Republican Disease vs. Reality
The first shooting took place at a traffic stop. The officer was wearing body armor. It worked. He was uninjured.
The perpetrator ran. A manhunt ensured. He was located in an unoccupied vacation home. The police surrounded it and mounted an assault. During the operation, one officer was shot in the arm, and another was shot and died.
The house went up in flames. The perpetrator died, either before the fire or in it.
As I was driving in my car, I heard John Bonacic, a Republican State Senator, on the news, calling for a reinstatement of the death penalty. For cop killers. And, of course, for terrorists. He wanted it now, right now. He wanted the Senate to go into immediate session.
“The State Senate,” he said, trying his level best to make it the familiar partisan, Democrats are soft on crime, issue, “is calling on Governor Spitzer to come back from politicking all over the state on campaign finance reform and call a special session and bring the Assembly to the table to reinstitute the death penalty for cop killers.”
The reasoning was, “What we can do is we can send a message, a message of deterrence, a message that when you attack a police officer it’s bigger than that police officer. It is us. It is all of us. And you’re going to pay the price for that life.”
You bet! Kill those cop killers! Send that message! We’re under attack! Strike back! Strike first!
That evening, at home, I caught the promo for the local news. Fox News, as it happens. And lo and behold! The dead officer was killed by friendly fire.
It’s absolutely true that the whole thing wouldn’t have happened if the perpetrator hadn’t committed the original crime. And, if he were alive to be tried, he would held responsible for the dead officer and charged with felony murder, a homicide that comes about as a result of the commission of a crime.
Still, who was left to execute?
The cops who shot the other cop by mistake?
Not the perpetrator, he’d already gone up in blazing inferno.
Send a message?
The message had already been sent. Shoot at a cop and - even if his body armor completely saves him - every cop in state will come after you. Resist, and they’ll blow you away.
The reality is that the officer was killed by another officer. Will more executions solve that? It wouldn’t seem so. What the reality suggests is better training. Training specific to such situations. Perhaps special units, for such situations.
Bonacic turned this small, tragic, local event, into a microcosm of the Republican disease. Like an opportunistic virus, when they sense a weak moment in possible hosts - us - they want to jump in and spread their infection, fear.
Like a virus, they do it for a reason. Their own survival.
Bonacic won his last election on fear mongering.
His opponent was a woman named Susan Zimet. He ran TV ads and sent out lurid flyers to spread the Republican disease. As reported, accurately, by Steve Israel in the Times Herald Record, the ads went like this:
A hooded thief, crowbar in hand, is about to rob a house in the dark of night. As a dial tone beeps, a somber female voice says:
“What would happen if you called the police and no one answered your call because politicians like Susan Zimet tried to cut police funding 50 percent?”
The words on the TV screen paint an even bleaker portrait of Zimet by eliminating the words “tried to”:
“(Former) Town of New Paltz Supervisor Susan Zimet cut police funding 50 percent.”
As the man continues to stalk the house, the phone hangs up and the sound is of stolen silver clanking. The voice says:
“Zimet fought to take police off the streets and put families at risk. The police chief called it ‘a horror show.’ ”
Then, as a red circle with a line through it slashes Zimet’s name, these words flash in red: “Susan Zimet Wrong on Public Safety.”
The facts:
Zimet never voted to cut police funding in half. Amid discussions over who should pay the police the Village of New Paltz, the Town Board in September 1998 said it would fund the town police force for six months, until the village passed its budget. This represented half the year’s police budget.
And Bonacic won with that campaign.
There it is, the essential message of the Republican Party: We’re afraid, let’s kill somebody.
It’s doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t matter if the only person killed was killed by friendly fire, let’s kill somebody. It doesn’t matter of killing somebody will actually make a difference, let’s kill somebody. It doesn’t matter if we invade the wrong country, let’s kill somebody. Let’s not worry about what happens afterward, we have to kill somebody. There are bad guys out there, let’s kill somebody.
And, of course, the Democrats don’t understand, we’re being threatened, we have to kill somebody.
This virus of fear is a bizarre disease. More widespread than any flu and more dangerous. Because in the fever of fear, delirium blocks out reality.
Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org. Responses can be sent to beinhart@earthlink.net
As HL Mencken said, office holders will say or do anything to win or stay in office. It was true in the 1920’s, its been true ever since. Politics, and religion, is the refuge of scoundrels, liars, and fools.
Fortunately, these type of gutteral political appeals are proving less and less effective as the corruption and incompotence of those who weild them are being revealed. Even the Democrats are starting to realize this and aren’t cowereing as much as they used to.
I can’t remember which pundit said after a little too long a delay post 9/11: “Shouldn’t we be killing someone by now?”
I worked for a Republican insurance salesman who once admitted me to his personal home armory, brandished a sawed-off shotgun and, with a vicious, determined look on his face, said “for anyone who tries to come through the door…” That was out in the middle of the woods, out in nowhere. Maybe he thought the coyotes were going to stage a home invasion.
The more I think about the Republican mental condition the more I think it’s gotta be genetic. You can’t condition cretins like that.
As has become obvious to most of the American public, according to all the polls, just ‘killing somebody’ hasn’t worked to pacify the Middle East nor to prevent disasters at home, whther natural or economic.
I think we have reached the point in this country, as people in the old USSR and Eastern bloc countries did, where we don’t believe the recycled government propaganda and fearmongering that has been a feature of the US media for years, particularly since 9/11.
The silver lining on this dark cloud is that it should send the neocon Republicans into the wilderness for a generation or more; the unfortunate part is that we’re stuck with the Democrats who are still campaigning, with the notable exceptions of Kucinich and Gravel, as if it’s 2004 and scared to death of the GOP questioning their patriotism or their committment to fighting terrorists.
They should tell the Republicans to take their ridiculous Rovian claptrap, fold it five ways and stick it where the moon don’t shine.
But that would take a spine, something notably lacking in the political physique most Dems these days.
The reasoning was, “What we can do is we can send a message, a message of deterrence, a message that when you attack a police officer it’s bigger than that police officer. It is us. It is all of us. And you’re going to pay the price for that life.”
Fear and ignorance are deadly to our democracy, or what’s left of it. Doesn’t this guy know that statistics have proven that the death penalty is not a detterant? Are all polticians living in a bubble? Does he not know that crime has been rising steadily over the past few years?
Some would call it reasoning, but it is clearly a “reaction” from fear, resulting from a lack of control over the situation.
It is unconscionable that people like this are involved in critical decision-making for the citizens of this country.
It is a known in sociological, psychological, and anthropological theory that those who have either little voice, or limited ability to communicate their thoughts are the most prone to violence and murder. You have Bush…need I say more? No wonder that your country can only respond violently to any imagined or possibly sometimes, real threat. The American love affair with guns and violence is a cancer that is spreading globally.
I think a major part of the problem is that so many Americans aree politically ignorant. The mass media tells us only what it wants us to hear. I have talked with many people who are at the lower end of the economic spectrum, and very few of them vote, or pay any attention to politics or the issues facing this country. They just stick to their own lives, let the world go on around them and let the chips fall where they may (which of course turns out to be on their heads).
But when pressed, they all make the point that no matter what they do, it’s not going to change anything. Well, of course as long as they believe that, they’re right. But we wouldn’t have a minimum wage (pitiful as it has become) or weekends if everyone believed that at the beginning of the last century. Back then, people were willing to fight and die for their rights. But I’m very concerned that so many are willing to relinquish what was gained with such great sacrifice.
They also almost always point out that they don’t really understand the issues, that they don’t really follow politics. We all know that’s not easy to do, or cheap. You won’t find out the truth of the matter by buying a newspaper or turning on the TV. Before the Internet, it took real research, and by no accident, people are living unreasonably busy lives. It’s an effective plan to keep them tired and stressed so when they get off work all they want to do is sedate themselves.
Several important facts have been mentioned in these postings… the most important being that the Death Penalty only appears to show the people of their states that murder is officially sanctioned as “okay”.
It is no coincidence that the states that frequently carry out the Death Penalty have the highest murder rates. So much for “deterrence”.
As for crime increasing in recent years, when the government and the Press backpeople into a corner, they should EXPECT that people will come out fighting. We have been hearing PHONY economic and employment figures coming out of Washington for years now… the Press repeats it… no one questions it… and it leaves no sympathy for those suffering under the truth.
Reality… if you go to the Department of Labor Statistics web site and search “Private Sector - Not Seasonally Adjusted - Age 16 and Up” EMPLOYED for the past 20 years you get an entirely new picture of the REAL employment situation in the U.S.
Each year we ADD nearly 2 million people to the workforce from our high schools and colleges… this doesn’t even count immigration. During Clinton’s eight years, we added 17.8 million new jobs. Since 2001, we LOST several million jobs, then added about six million… leaving a net gain of less than 4 million jobs in 6 years.
Now, if you believe the Bear Stearns numbers, that we have acquired over 25 million illegal invaders in this country since 2001, that would indicate a HUGE unemployment problem and certainly explain our vast increase in criminal activity!
This country is in deep trouble…. and NOT because we aren’t killing enough people.
Kathyodat: So true!! Also, part of the problem is that the ‘war on the middle class’ leaves us with less financial resources to help progressive liberal democrats get into office. All part of their great plan of one party rule: Turn the middle class into the working poor, with no time and no money.
There is an old maxim that “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” And Republicans do not believe a government is good for anything except state-sanctioned violence, so that is their solution to virtually every problem. As pathetic as the Democrats are, they are still several orders of magnitude less evil than the Republicans. The US cannot survive and the human race cannot survive if the Republicans hold onto power for much longer.
I’d direct the kind reader to check out three interesting articles on the Wikipedia.
1) Memes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
2) Cognitive Dissonance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance.
3) Virtues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue. To wit: temperance, prudence, fortitude, justice.
In essence, I’ve come to conclude that the Republican Party, and perhaps 75-95% of the Democratic Party along with them, largely promote the inverse of the old Greek/Platonic virtues (perhaps greed, ignorance, fear). It is cheaper for politicians to capitalize and score points on the weaker more brutish aspects of our species, than to encourage and nurture our better qualities. Part of this is a failure with politics in general, in that its “job” is only to gobble up points (like Pac Man) in as quick a manner as possible to attain and enhance power over other people. We apparently can no longer (if ever?) expect politicians to genuinely lead, to nurture our best qualities: they only feed. So the break down is larger than just politics. It’s our way of life, our economy and cultural values in general. If there wasn’t a pre-existing “place” for fear-mongers and brute-mongers, then they’d be nowhere to be seen.
“It is a known in sociological, psychological, and anthropological theory that those who have either little voice, or limited ability to communicate their thoughts are the most prone to violence and murder.”
True, and the constant sub-text of the US media to the average American citizen is: “You are too stupid to understand all of this. Leave it to the experts. Now, here’s Katy with the latest on Sanjaya.”
Added to that is the adoption of the ‘quick cut’ by TV news, giving viewers — I believe intentionally — little time to think about what has been reported; like music videos, they are only going for a cheap emotional reaction — “Iranian A-Bomb” or “Hate Osama” — or a pretty picture, “Ooooh, puppies.”
Of course, out in the Red and ‘Purple’ States people know quite well that the American Dream isn’t working for them as their towns fall apart and their jobs fly away, but the neocons have craftily found perfect foils for their anger: Liberals, minorities and ‘uppity’ women — instead of the true culprits BushCo, Wal-Mart and global ‘free trade.’
America is gradually waking up to the sick obsession with violence and anti-democratic authoritarian streak of the neocons who dominate the Republican Party these days, but I think it will take an economic collapse on the order of the Great Depression to bring them fully to their senses.
Unfortunately and fortunately, that’s on it’s way.
It’s no different with what Rudy said last week. Someone needs to point out that,
There was a Republican President on 9/11
There was a Republican Vice-President on 9/11
There was a Republican Congress on 9/11
There was a Republican Senate on 9/11
There was a Republivan Governor of NY on 9/11
There was a Republican Mayor of NY on 9/11
Republicans tough on terror? Get real, voters should be asking how and why they allowed it to happen.
Republicans talk tough but are weak on crime, weak on defense.
Ask yourself what the GOP would say if all those people I mentioned were Democrats on 9/11. The answer? Exactly what they’re saying now. Don’t let them spin this, remind everyone that the GOP is weak on terror, weak on crime.
It is refreshing to see someone else saying what I have been saying for a long time. That is the obvious fact that extreme conservatism is a disease of fear. The clear perspective lacking in their paranoid view is because, in a physical sense, chronic fear has caused their brains to permanently alter themselves structurally. Adrenalin, that strongest of natural drugs, kicks in when we suffer a sudden terrifying threat. This is what slows everything down and lets us steer out of a skid instead of crashing. Sufferers of PTSD, and others subjected to long term fear stress, respond another way, and actually grow different connections in their brains to respond to the threat. Your computer can switch modes at the flip of an internal switch, and instantly change its entire personality, suddenly being able to understand different instructions or stimuli, and respond in a completely different fashion. Humans and animals can’t. The fact that we on the left can’t even barely understand the right is because their minds and ours operate in a completely different way. This is because everything in their minds is a response to fear. These folks are damaged, and their healing will be slow. All the bad emotions they display, fear, anger, jealousy, hubris, aggression, and so forth, can actually be good, like adrenalin, to find solutions to short term threats. Carrying these bad emotions on forever is dangerous, as they become an addiction and permanently impair the victim.
The only people who have the moral right to impose the death penalty are the victims of violent crime in self-defense.
It’s unclear whether “conservativism” is quite the right word to describe Bush & Co. Many good things are worth conserving (the ecosystem, civil liberties, freedoms, privacy, etc.) — or resisting change (when it is for the worse). ‘Conserve’ derives from the Latin etymology for to keep, guard, observe. It can be a legitimate ideological approach, genuinely above-board, to govern society. It might even, under some circumstances, be argued as utilitarian.
Bush & Co. can be approached only one of two ways: (1) they’ve drawn highly strict boundaries around what exactly is it they want to keep/guard — only their own financial interests, and those of the top 1%? or (2) they’ve completely bastardized the meaning of the term.
Maybe a little of each. “Conservative” been used as a euphemism for words like corporate crime, organized crime, privateering, cronyism, corporo-fascism, co-option, xenophobia and corruption. None of those have any legitimate ideological underpinning behind them.
I get tired of reading accounts like this where a candidate runs ads lying about the opponent. I wish there were some kind of law established that would allow citizens to challenge the lies in court, and if found to be lies, the lying candidate goes to jail…
People are so damned gullible that without some sort of vehicle to force honesty in a campaign, the low-life politicians will do and say anything to strike fear of the opponent in simple minded people. And it works….
Paul Bramscher:
I think most people know that when “conservative” is mentioned regarding a socio-political group we’re not talking about a recycling bicycle rider trying to save the spotted owl. We know exactly who we’re addressing. The social-conservative who thinks his home is going to be invaded by wetbacks and that bin Laden just planted an IED under his pillow. That’s who we mean.
acemoab:
I agree completely. A continual stress hormone drip into republican brain will rewire it so that, discounting a ten year marooning on a south pacific island, nothing in this all too short lifespan is probably going to make a dent.
Absolutely right, Paul Bramscher, this Bush Maladministration is anything but conservative, in the traditional American use of the word as exemplified by Barry Goldwater. In fact, it’s even been described as ‘neoliberal,’ having nothing to do with classic liberalism, but referring to its penchant for deficit spending, using the government as an instrument of welfare for the wealthy, and establishing a world empire.
Things are even weirder in the UK, where the liberal Labour Party of Tony Blair is being slapped as the ‘conservatives’ while the Tories head to the left on issues like Iraq.
Acemoab, you’ve hit the nail on the head. These are, as John Dean has pointed out, ‘Authoritarian Personalities’ (read ‘fascists’) who respond to the world from their basal ganglia, or the reptilian ‘flight or fight’ part of the brain, and rarely apply the frontal lobe to political situations or even their own lives. That’s why liberals have a hard time understanding them — they are literally thinking with a different part of the brain, a part of the brain that operates on fear and is unreachable by logic. (Although ‘reacting’ would be a better description than ‘thinking.’) Fortunately, they comprise no more than 25 percent of the population; their arguments for force seem credible when the public is scared, but qucikly lose their luster when its proven that they don’t work in the long term, as has been demonstrated in Iraq, etc.
AP’s make bad bosses, military officers, and generally blunder and fail when in any position of authority (witness Our Beloved Leader), since their reptilian reactions are tied to two otehr unsavory characteristics — they always believe that they are right, even when proven wrong and they frequently indulge in ‘magical thinking.’ (”Things will turn out the way I want them to if I just believe hard enough.”)
Read the history of Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and any other fascist movements — rigidity of thought combined with fantasy and fear runs through their downfall like a Mississippi of raging error. It’s what happens when you abandon science, fact and logic and hand your mind over the the demons of ego and lust for power, and it’s happening to the Bush neocons now.
Language is important, and if crooks/corporo-fascists are lurking behind shield terms like “conservative” or “liberal”, then we’re obliged to employ the most accurate term to describe them.
There’s a grassroots, bottom-up linguistics. None of us need to be a fan of Chomsky or a postdoc from an elite priviledged ivy league college to see that terms are referential pointers, labels that evoke mental responses. The two corporate political parties employ a language which, along with their politics, is non-grassroots. The meanings conjured up don’t “land” at conservative or liberal — if you take my meaning. i.e. these are not “grassroots” words like “ouch!” or “absolutely!” Rather, they’re deflections, insertions, place-holders. So let’s call the play as we see it. I don’t really know what conservativism is, never really seen it my almost 40 years, but I can smell a crook a mile away.
Fear mongering is only effective on the ignorant. Ignorance does not need to be terminal, it can be cured permanently with INFORMATION—-most effectively applied with the TRUTH—but only if the patient is willing to take the remedy. There have never been any adverse side effects to this cure.
lpenek: one can only hope it’s his kids coming through the door after late-night partying before they’re old enough to reproduce.
In general - when it becomes not merely possible, but practical, for individual people to kill corporations, violence against humans will probably drop correspondingly (assuming the corporations are not simply replaced by other similar organizations).
We are essentially ALL powerless against corporations - it is the way they are designed, and their designers have been writing our laws for generations now. To buy a product is to vote for the corporation. To not buy it is to abstain from voting. How does one vote against, or for an alternative to corporations?