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Neo-Supremacy Chic: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin’s Tea-Scalding of MLK
They don’t call it white supremacy for nothing.
One of the ways this country’s reactionaries have made racism and neo-segregation chic is by co-opting the language of emancipation, equality and civil rights.
The “tea party” broods—the richest, most pampered, most welfared generation in the history of mankind—portray themselves as the put-upon victims of high taxes, disenfranchisement and debt, though this is the same generation that since 1981, and more so since 2001, has benefited from the lowest taxes this country has known going back to the 1920s, contributed to the greatest debt it’s known, and is now profiting from the richest retirement benefits this or any other country has ever known. Rich enough, that is, to give rise to sprawls like Palm Coast, which was created to suck on that hog.
Almost exclusively white, Catholic, Protestant and old, this most selfish generation discovered in 2008 that it was no longer the swing vote. It was outrun by younger, certainly more colored, more colorful, voters. It rebelled. It declared itself disenfranchised. Already self-segregated in communities physically gated or deed-restricted from the rabble, it was not a leap to self-segregate politically and turn imaginary disenfranchisement into discrimination.
The minor genius of the “tea party” movement is to do so by adopting the language and methods of rebellion, albeit in slogans only: reactionaries don’t make rebellions. They crush them. By co-opting the mythology of the original tea party, today’s “tea party” broods have managed to make their over-representation at almost every level of government look like no representation because the man at the helm doesn’t look like them. They go as far as using the language of disenfranchisement, and the protest words of the 1960s.
It is supremacy by rhetoric, the sort of supremacy that, in its cruder form, enables some fools to claim that a National Association for the Advancement of White People is no more (or no less, for good measure) racist than the NAACP. It is the supremacy of a Glenn Beck or a Sarah Palin who, as they did Aug. 28, on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, posed as the nation’s new civil rights pioneers, “taking back” America and “restoring” its honor. Taking it back from whom? Restoring it from what? Don’t ask, though it isn’t the fifth-grade speech-contest skills of a Beck or a Palin that would obscure what they mean: “For too long,” Beck said today, “this country has wandered in darkness, and we have wandered in darkness in periods from the beginning.” Darkness. The darkies, in other words, are back.
You don’t need to call the president a nigger to get your point across in this era of “darkness.” Especially not to a sea of whites joined on the Washington Mall by the single resentment of being led by a darkie president, and there to pay homage to Beck, who called America under Obama “The Planet of the Apes.” Some of Beck’s best friends, obviously, are black. “If we hadn’t elected a black president, do you think they would be doing this today?” the poetically named Joyce White asked a Washington Post reporter covering the event. The answer was all around, punctuated by the lie at the heart of the neo-supremacists’ movement: where the old civil rights wars were about inclusion, these “tea party” reactions are about exclusion. Where the old civil rights movement was about overcoming blood-soaked oppression, the “tea party” broods (which have no Bull Connor dogs chasing after them that I know of) are about keeping tax rates on the richest 5 percent among them from going up a few points.
In the “fair and balanced” reasoning behind neo-supremacy, the old master is the new victim, using the old victim’s language. The suffering and disenfranchisement of one has been replaced by the suffering and disenfranchisement of the other. It doesn’t matter that there’s no relationship between the two, that the mere suggestion of white suffering or disenfranchisement in this country, this retiree generation especially, is a supreme offense to those who have genuinely suffered and lived through decades of disenfranchisement until relatively recently. This is the United States of Amnesia, where historical memory is slight and the latest snappy slogan as good as scripture, especially when it’s cloaked in the language of god, as Beck—like a pimp wearing his obligatory crucifix and flag pin as his visas to credibility—did: “We are a country of God. As I look at the problems in our country quite honestly I think the hot breath of destruction is breathing on our necks and to fix it politically is a figure that I don’t see anywhere.”
Supposedly, the rally on the mall was not about politics but about the revival of religious virtue. But that, too, was a conceit as transparent as Beck’s camera tears. The country isn’t lacking in religious virtue, religious fervor or religious fixations. It’s drowning in it all, to its detriment: faith-based fanaticism is replacing rational analysis. It’s the sweetener of “tea party” brews: the rational and the analytical is to those brews what daylight is to Dracula. So the rally was a seizure by a master marketer of god as branding, god as divine legitimacy for what was otherwise a slow-motion stampede on the day’s iconic place in the nation’s historic calendar. It turned into the biggest “tea party” rally yet, signaling the arrival of the neo-supremacist political movement in god’s clothing.
The day’s nightmare, of course, the supreme act of white supremacy, was the co-opting of King’s day on the Mall to the “tea party”’s uses, and abuses, under the banner of restoration, religious or otherwise. Charles Blow, a columnist for The Times, put it simply in a piece entitled “I Had a Nightmare.” Calling Beck “the anti-King,” in a wordplay too subtle for most tea drunkards to detect, he writes: “I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.”
“In fact,” Blow continued, “to even insinuate that the president’s policies are in any way equivalent to the brutality of the Jim Crow South at the time of the civil rights movement is the highest order of insult, particularly to those who lived and suffered through it, as well as to those who live with its legacy. If Beck truly thinks these movements are comparable, I have some pictures of “strange fruit” I’d like for him to see. And yet, I’ve come to the conclusion that anger is the wrong reaction to Beck’s rally in Washington. Anger provides too low a return on investment. It consumes a tremendous amount of energy, but yields little progress. Instead, we should each take this opportunity to listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech once more, paying particular attention to how the echoes of yesterday’s struggles reverberate in our present struggles, and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.”
So here it is.
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116 Comments so far
Show AllTristam's piece is right on the money, though I wish he did not insist on blaming the Tea Party on the Boomers. For one thing, I am not sure the extent to which the Boomer generation dominates the Tea Party. Boomers have plenty of faults (full disclosure: I am two years older than the first of them), but I don't think they are to blame for political foolishness of the present age--that is shared across several generations. And you shouldn't forget that the Boomer generation was the first to make real progress on Civil Rights, sexism, the environment, and peace. The Tea Party does not represent Boomers any more than it does the War generation or the Gen X's and Y's. It is an equal opportunity party for the ignorant and blinkered.
"Almost exclusively white, Catholic, Protestant and old, this most selfish generation discovered in 2008 that it was no longer the swing vote. It was outrun by younger, certainly more colored, more colorful, voters."
This should tell you how good his opinions are, rather than check the stats and records, he simply repeats talking points. It seems to be a failing of the do nothing generation.
People often like tsalking points though because they are comfortable and fit their prejudice.
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vastly, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall.
AP Report
Need we say more??
Yes. The issue in question had to do with the age of the participants, not their race. What percent of tea partiers are boomers vs. the percent of boomers in the general population? Even if if boomers made up, say, thirty percent of Partiers vs. say, twenty percent of the general population, that would not be sufficient evidence to say boomers dominate the tea party ranks. They would make up a larger percentage than expected, but not by much. And support for the tea party might have to do with just getting old, not with any special characteristics of a generation--like their having received a low tax burden and many government benefits.
The boomer remark was way off the mark. I have worked outside the home I was raised in since I was 9 yrs old. I have done anything for a buck since I care to remember. From backbreaking farm labor to the tediousness of inventory taking. My parents made me save and when my father passed I was expected to use that savings to pay for a private high school. I earned an athletic scholarship to college for 4 yrs and am now privileged to have chronic physical ailments for the " glory days ", as they call them. I have managed to start and lose several businesses which were always undercapitalized. I have worked and represented companies and their interests all over the world. I have been an environmental activist with the League of Conservation Voters and caucused with Jesse's Rainbow Coalition. I have spent a lot of energy and money on what I believe in and will continue to be a royal pain in the xss to The Establishment and the go-alongs until I draw my last breath. Mostly it's been a great ride and it renews my belief, held since I was very young guy, that fence-sitters and company men are the shxt of the earth and not the salt. Glen Beck needs the full reuchambeau, politically speaking, and Palin needs to finish her degree in weather forcasting before she makes another public statement. None of these TeaBaggers and Faux News followers represent anything I recognize from the Boomers I hung around with after the close of another business day, as the say.
"The boomer remark was way off the mark."
That's right. Bigotry, stupidity, homicidal rage, compulsive resentment, religious fanaticism, etc., have nothing to do with being born between 1946 and 1961. It simply has to do with one's character, or lack of it.
Take it easy dude.
From where I stand it looks to me that the Boomers grew up to be the same jerks I remember from high school days. Later SUV driving the road to personal pleasure-glory out into the burbs with never a glance back at the revolution. Once the draft was finished so was the revolution. The Boomers were never really interested in anything but themselves, folks like you notwithstanding.
Yes, you might add that this is a Rupert Murdoch/Koch Brothers/Karl Rove type adventure at keeping the American People ill informed and at constant polar extremes as "They" finish their work on "Their New World Order"......How can a country continue to believe that 9/11 was an Islamic Attack on The United States? Start with the FACT that NORAD was ordered to plan five practice exercises on 9/11/ 2001 to void the Northeast United States of all its defenses and made it impossible to intercept 4 hijacked planes even though every plane that violated secured space or was lost had been intercepted in under 18 minutes prior to 9/11.
Rupert, GE, and every Mass Media Enterprise had a vested interest in the attacks of 9/11/2001...GREED! They have created a White Protest Group who are terrified of losing their "Wealth" and believe the "Myth of 9/11"...."Their Fear Mongerers": Hannity, Limbaugh etc. keep their listeners on edge terrified of "The Corporate Capitalist Puppet" who has brought them nothing but: continued wars, continued occupations, Wall Street Thefts, Health Industry Abuses, Oil Company Tax Breaks, Corporate Greed, and Government Lies....."The Puppet" does what he is told and has functioned to polarize America on "Race and Religion"!
What will happen once Israel or The United States attacks Iran? Those same "White Folks" will support that one too! "The home of the brave," is now a country that murders brown people with drones and uses presidential assassination lists to hunt down brown insurgents and militants......3.8 million Vietnamese dead was not enough!
Wars mean money and power. When murder is ok with a society, that society can expect the murderers to turn on its own society.
Let me see Paine Stewart's plane took 76 minutes to intercept, and it still had it's transponder on. Its right in the NTSB report, people seem to ignore the fact that there is a timezone change in the report, making it look like 18 minutes, but by all reasonable accounts it was 76 minutes. It took 24 minutes for the intercept plane to even respond, which was already in flight even doing a training exercise.
I don't understand how pretty much every article seems to have someway that people can post 9/11 is a myth replies.
I have been a long time reader, but this is my first comment ever. Though I am not a babyboomer, I am married to one. I don't like to make sweeping generalizations in general, and specifically where boomers are concerned because of my bias re: my hubby. So I don't mean to offend. But, I think the jury is pretty clearly out on this one. The tea party is indeed largely made up of aggrieved, white babyboomers. This NY Times article back in April profiled tea party backers, and found them to be largely "Republican, white, male, married and older than 45," as well as "wealthier and more well-educated than the general public." Give or take a couple of years, the folks profiled in the article all fall within the babyboomer generation years (1946-1964). And while they all complain about government intervention, intrusion and ownership, Obama's creeping socialist empire, etc, they also cling onto the right to their social security and medicare. The last woman quoted in this article, 62 year-old social security-loving babyboomer Jodine White, was famously lampooned by Bill Maher for realizing the conflicting logic in her argument and changing her position on the evils of big government right as she was talking to the NY Times reporter!
So, though Tristam's language may be a little harsh, I'm not sure (if this NYTimes article is to be believed) where he is wrong.
Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html
We used to make these gross assertions along the lines of dopers vs. boozers. Guess which side was considered the left back then? That was 1971. Now the only sympathisers to the Teabaggers' message I know are dope growers and other hoodwinkers, against decriminaliztion and legalization, and screaming about getting the gov't off their backs. I wonder if the then boozers have found the underground economy much more entrepenurial and to their liking? Nothing like tax free income to change people into self-proclaimed libertarians. It can't all be this shallow or can it? I'm afraid the boomers who attend the Beck/Palin rally were the same guys who didn't get what " bogart " really meant and weren't invited to very many afterhours parties. Just generally sayin'.
(slang verb) To keep something all for oneself, thus depriving anyone else of having any. A slang term derived from the last name of famous actor Humphrey Bogart because he often kept a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, seemingly never actually drawing on it or smoking it. Often used with weed or joints but can be applied to anything.
To hog something which is supposed to be shared.
"More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor"
Thanks for the NY Times article. The above quote from it reveals something about both the tea partiers and the NYT editors. For the editors to publish the statement pretends that policies favoring the poor is a legitimate issue worthy of debate.
But it is absolutely a non-issue. The whole purpose of government is to serve the society's better interests, i.e. upholding universal equity/justice. So there is no legitimate favoring of any class but the very "lowest". This is the most elementary of ethical truths.
If you allow your own personal sense of justice to prevail you will come to the same conclusion. But if you can't get in touch with your own sense it's most likely because "Dracula" has cast his spell on you. That is, the elites have proposed, and you've accepted, that a class hierarchy in which the haves have more is somehow just.
That's complete baloney, of course. While it's true that some of us are more productive than others, we see that productivity isn't so very important when we witness the gargantuan plunder, waste, and destruction that comes out of the USA's "famous productivity".
So there isn't any justification whatsoever for any class hierarchy, and thus the assumptions of the NYT editors are bogus, which should come as no surprise, given events of the past decade. They and the tea partiers are lost in the wilderness without a clue where to find the far left platform of universal equity/justice.
By the way, here's a good approach to engaging Tea Partiers, Conservatives, Centrists, Liberals, and anyone else who is hostile to the people's platform (the far-left platform of universal equity/justice): Walk up to them, and tell them you embrace the far-left platform of universal equity/justice but you are eager to join their tea party and just need to be convinced of the net benefit of joining.
The rest of the conversation becomes a debate over the whys/hows and should be very interesting. If you keep your cool, and depending on your skill, and energy, you will very likely make an unforgettable impression on the tea partiers, causing them to think far outside of the tiny little box their elite masters put them in.
Agree. Perhaps the author is still a little wet behind-the-ears, or doesn't know American history. Fairly bad rant if you ask me.
All this is BS anyway. Cut to the chase and leave this silliness behind. As this scumbag president and his congress has proven without a doubt that liberals are just as murderous and capable of general criminality as republicans. Certainly as menacing to the world as GWB and his henchmen were. No morality exist in either of those two spheres of evilness.
Arguing about whose has the moral high ground at this point its totally laughable. Writing about it like PT does here rewards you with a small check –I guess.
Yep, I didn't like Tristam's boomer reference either.
Beck is an entertainer. The "Tea Party" is also entertainment. They will be co-opted and disposed of when the ruling elite need another form of distraction. At best they probably confuse the electorate, but who/what doesn't these days? That might be their intent.
Nothing to see here but a bunch of religious nut jobs insecure about their Christianity after Islam got to hog all the headlines for the past couple of weeks.
Remember one thing -MLK will endure, Beck won't.
Glen Beck For President !!!!!!!!!!!
Because only a nation that has an electorate filled with stupid people deserves a religious lunatic that stupid as president.
And I thought the rich elite were going to run America into the ground, I keep forgetting that they have the money to pay people to help them do it.
God Bless the stupid right wing religious lunatics of America, and forgive THEM for they know not who and what you really ARE!!
BECAUSE THEY THINK GOD IS SPEAKING THROUGH ARE GLENN BECK.
Here, let me end with my own personal Glenn Beck style speech.
" We must restore honor in America.
The Honor we lost when we elected George Bush using the Supreme court to force the state of Florida to ends its recounts.
We must restore honor to America.
The honor we lost when the Bush/Cheney ignored an August 01/2001 intelligence report that an attack by terrorists using hijacked planes might occur very soon.
We must restore honor to America,
The honor lost when we invaded two sovereign country's based on lies ,that did not declare war on the USA, for the control of oil.
We must restore honor to America.
The honor we lost when congress passed the Patriot Acts, and stole our 4th amendment rights of privacy and the ability to seek redress of Grievances.
We must restore honor to America.
We must not torture , or allow right wing religious gang stazi stalking torture networks to operate in America.
We must restore honor to America.
The honor lost when as a free nation right wing religious lunatics are allowed to judge free Americans who dont have the same beliefs or life styles.
Freedom of religion go's hand in hand with freedom to not be ruled by religious lunatics.
We must restore honor to America.
Shut down the 800000 spy annalists and 2000 private corporations being paid to spy on us, and shut down these illegal wars and bring our troops home.
We must restore honor to America.
Stop the bank bailouts, and start throwing banksters in jail.
We must restore honor to America.
Christians have forgotten that War is evil, and need to protest to the Wars, its what Jesus would do.
The constitution is the law of the land, not the bible, or the Patriot Acts. "
Thank You Glenn Beck, for helping our troops and troops family's by collecting donations for them, I have not heard how much you collected, but thanks.
I can agree with much of what you say but my one question is: Why restore anything that wasn't there in the first place except in a few minds. No, I say let it fall and be done with it. This country has gone in some kind of weird transition since the start. No let it fall and lets see who is willing to stick around and pick up the pieces.
The final paragraph falters. The quote by Charles Blow somewhat misinterprets what is happening when he says "to even insinuate that the president's policies are in any way equivalent to the brutality of the Jim Crow South at the time of the civil rights movement..."
Actually, Obama's policies have a good deal in common with Jim Crow. The continuing privatization of and lack of regulation of everything from education to housing to insurance to the military is for the benefit of an ever-more greedy and indifferent elite minority who are perfectly satisfied with enslaving and oppressing.
The "tea party" members are too smug and greedy to see beyond the color of a person's skin.
"Actually, Obama's policies have a good deal in common with Jim Crow. The continuing privatization of and lack of regulation of everything from education to housing to insurance to the military..."
I don't understand this comment of yours. First of all, no one is getting hit with nightsticks or bitten by dogs today.
Second, the lack of regulation you mention is hard to find. The Secretary of Education's words and actions (in spreading money around) is concentrating power over what once was a completely decentralized education system in Washington.
Third, the insurane industry is not being privatized - it always was, except for Medicare and Medicaid. And the health care bill just passed does its best to keep it privatized.
"sheepherder"
I can only hope that you are being sarcastic.
To your first statement, I would reply that the acts of physical violence are global and largely ignored because of misguided "patriotic" bigotry.
To your second statement, I would say you have it backwards as far as the idea of the government providing equal access to education, which I think should be one of THE fundamental rights of all people. "No Child Left Behind", which is the guiding scheme of this administration, is all about punishing the most needy students and their families and promoting exclusive education whereas, in contrast, regulation would insure that all schools have whatever they need to insure equal education for all. Your idea of a "completely decentralized" education system is one of the hallmarks of Jim Crow and is also the goal of privatized "Charter Schools."
Thirdly, the so-called health care bill is a only meant to protect the profits of people who make money from the suffering of others.
Lastly, please double check your english.
People don't HAVE to be getting hit with nightsticks, bitten by dogs, or having firehoses turned on them. The fact is that since Obama took office, he's been continuing many, if not most of G. W. Bush's and Clinton's worst pollicies; the Patriot Act, NAFTA and CAFTA, the regular attacks on Civil Liberties, the repeal of Habeus Corpus...the list could go on.
I may not like Glenn Beck and Sara Palin for what they're doing, but Obama is not to be romanticized either.
I agree with everything you say. I did not intend to romanticize Obama; I just thought that the comments that I commented upon went too far.
No one? What about the "illegal aliens"? Here in FL there's night sticks and dogs and KKKers on the prowl. The victims are sometimes Tasered to death, sometimes just locked in the back of large abandoned semi-trucks, sometimes hunted down and shot in Arizona and such boarder states. Blacks don't get beaten any more?
Try, you whiteys, driving around town with several black men. You'll see.
Arne Duncan is worse than NCLB! What he spreads around ain't money!
Do you know any insurance agents well enough to ask them what part of your premium gets paid to them? The president and CEO of AIG lives in a gated subdivision of multi-million dollar mansions about a mile from my house. His Bentley and Ferrari going by on my street are the only indications of when he's around.
I concur with your assessment of Obama and his policies. He seems to have replaced the " predestination " beliefs of the theocratic ruling elites of yore with the wealthy business gods of today. Money is god in this world and only 5% of the people are divinely inspired enough to use it properly. This leads to the present day ruling class as separate but equal. We are equal only to elites in that we are human but inferior to them in our governing concepts and ideals. The nonchosen want the chosen to abide by the rules of law, economic equality and fairplay which is messy and inefficient and may cost more money. The chosen find this a distraction to their goal of increasing power thru accumalation of more assets: those being politicians, parties and whole gov'ts. Obama is a zealot for the private interests who see democracy as inefficient to their main goal: the world as they see it is an organism made up of profit cells to be altered and exploited. Damn the cost to the nonchosen and nonbelievers; the " predestined " role of American capitalists like our past religious elites is to control and guide the world with their superior wisdom and understanding of what is good for us. Obama sees himself fitting quite well as the facilitator of this hierarchy. Afterall, he was a community organizer.
"The quote by Charles Blow somewhat misinterprets what is happening when he says "to even insinuate that the president's policies are in any way equivalent to the brutality of the Jim Crow South at the time of the civil rights movement..."
I would say that the Afghans and the Iraqis look upon Flopco/Obama as we look upon Bull Connor or George Armstrong Custer. For them, Obama, or any USA president, is a brutal oppressor, a thief and a killer.
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death". - Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City.
Beck could have honored both MLK Jr and veterans by demanding that all US troops abroad be returned home.
Alas, he did neither.
Well said!
MLK was agiant of a man, Beck is a gnat in comparison.
Becks ignorance is monumental. He knew that Aug 28 was the day MLK made his famous speech. Beck is also a lier.
We need a new reality show: "Who's smarter? Who's better? Glenn or Sarah?" Let's start with their educations. Well maybe not. Let's look at their resumes. Well, maybe not. Let's look at their achievements. Well maybe not. Let's look at the truth of what they say in public. Well maybe not. Well what can we look at? We can look at them. They are good to look at. That's why people look at them. They are pure ego and they live to be looked at. On the Fox or on the Mall. Makes no difference. End of show.
Good to look at? I'm sorry....I can barely stand to watch these egomaniacs for 5 minutes. Their mendacity shines through their smug, superior faces. Can't do it.
"We need a new reality show: 'Who's smarter? Who's better? Glenn or Sarah?' "
Or maybe just revive that great skit from SNL, "Quien es mas macho?"
Only a pathetic nation consumed with mindless celebrity worship would spend any time on these two Human Stains.
Oh....wait - that is the definition of America.
Sorry...nevermind.
[gag]
They're both repulsive. Period. Stylist or none, you can't shine sh-t.
..."New Reality Show..." Don't forget to throw in that loud mouth up in Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, she's the third [there are more] Rodeo clown in this group.
"Good to look at."
Boy, there is no accounting for taste. Beck has always appeared to me as a flushed pig with that ruddy fat, squarish face and snout like nose dressed in a tight fitting suit. I seem to go into feverish expectation that he is going to break out into "oink-oink-oink" any time now. Beck's the poster boy for white rednecks, even better than Rush.
Sarah Palin. Man, that mousy, nasal voiced, bag of white muscle, lard and no brain may attract the panting, sex starved white male, most of whom are Tea Party pigs anyway, who will jump into bed with any white trailer trash for a quickie. But any male with a decent brain and some self-respect who finds himself, God forbid, in Palin's arm or vice versa, would vomit all over the place after lust has dissiated and shower for hours once the realization sinks in.
Sorry, they ain't good to look at. Jane Fonda in her 70's is still good to look at. Robert Redford also the same in his late 60's. People with brains and class and looks to match. Beck and Palin? Nah.
Word are important. I think of the lines: "The more he prated of honor, the faster we counted the spoons." "Honor" is a word that no honorable person ever utters, just as a true patriot never wraps himself in the flag. Fine analysis of a disgusting phenomenon.
And "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".
I did not get his point either. There are a number of nations with retirement benefits that are much higher then that of Social Security in the USA and a number with far less seniors living in poverty.
Needlessly inflammatory comment deleted by its author.
"People often like talking points though because they are comfortable and fit their prejudice."
Mighty,
Your one sentence summed it up exactly....."Prejudice" is never interested in those nasty details required in the formulation of good public policy.....
Small point the entire media has, um, overlooked:
Glenn Beck is a Mormon. His 'bible' was written in 1830 and states that a Mormon's number one purpose is to convince ALL HUMANS that Jesus is the Christ.
In other words - Mormon's DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE FREEDOM OF RELIGION. They believe there's Mormons, and the unconverted. Period. Hence, Glenn Beck doesn't give a shit about America and the Constitution - his sole duty is to convert the world to Mormonism.
Which is ironic, seeing as how he and his cultists constantly warn of Obama's secret plot to convert all Americans to Muslim.
None of the 'Founding Fathers' were Mormon, obviously, since the word didn't even f**king exist in 1776. Just another Big Lie being perpetrated by an unstable sociopath willing to do whatever it takes to fill his bank account.
twitter.com/frank1569
Joke's on you ... the LDS church can baptize ANYBODY posthumously - including yourself.
We'll all be Mormons in the end, and I've gotta say I'm going to miss my homebrew in their peculiar hereafter.
I am an atheist. It will be funny to see what they do with me after I am dead.
After death my conscience will be annihilated. So they will make a non believer into a believer?
I am laughing.
They'll only have my current life information from documents, and all they can do with that is tie my name to another, saying I'm now a Mormon through eternity, but like my life information, it'll only be words on paper. The ashes of what is my current body will be scattered on a mountaintop and blowing in the wind, and my soul, which they cannot touch, will be long gone from the confines of earth as it soars through the universe with all the other souls, until it decides to have another life experience in a whole new body; perhaps on a continent or island it has never lived on before; possibly a life in the misty past, or in the distant, uncertain future, maybe just in time to cope with the effects of these current times; experiencing things it never experienced in the life I've lived, or in any lives it has lived through before this one.
I wonder if many souls decided to come here to watch and participate in the death of a planet. I said earlier that I did not choose to be born. Well... maybe I did. No one knows, certainly not this agnostic.
Because this country is pretty much doomed anyway, I support either Beck/Palin or Palin/Beck for president in the 2012 election. We could use the comic relief as the country continues its inevitable slide into fascism and third world poverty.
I'm with you. I, too, believe the United States is finished and we are all witnessing the slow, ugly, grinding process of national degeneration. But I respectfully suggest that you sit on your hands on election day. Don't give your vote to those who are hell bent upon destroying you.
By not voting O'bomber/Bidin' time in 2012 you virtually guarantee Palin/Beck whatever ticket!
This is A OK with me. I'd rather have the swift "coup de gras" of the Palin/Beck crowd than the "Chinese water torture" of O'bomber and Co.
Most posters here know were going down, down, down. Why wait? Lets accelerate the process and get it over.
I'd replace O'bomber with Palin today if I could - it would be great "Greek Tragedy" all the way to the botton, which shouldn't be long.
Oh, hell no, I will never again vote in a national election for any democrat or republican.
I am with you. I miss Bushisms. And Obama is not funny.
Palin/Beck in 2012.