2014 marks 100 years from the start of World War I, btw.
Here are a couple of good articles to keep you going while I’m doing other things —
Josh Marshall, “Forget the Chatter, This is the Democrats’ Real Problem”
Edwin Lyngar, “I was a conservative coward: How the midterms evoked my past of shame, terror and Fox News“
I read his piece, but Edwin Lyngar doesn’t say how he became a former conservative.
Was it a ’12-Step DeFOXification program?’
Happy Veterans Day to all you vets out there!
Yes, Happy Veterans Day!
And thank you for all you’ve done to keep us safe.
We don’t treat you well enough, or thank you enough.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/glenn-beck-reveals-mystery-illness-and-says-doctors-had-to-reboot-his-brain/ar-AA7BQEO?ocid=HPDHP
Normally you’d be sympathetic to anybody who is going through a debilitating illness, but Glenn beck has pulled so many stunts that it is difficult to know whether or not he’s on the up and up or whether this is just another marketing ploy to maintain his media relevance. Maybe it’s the rebooting of his brain that causes my skepticism. I mean, how do you reboot a brain? I think a good boot in the ass would probably would be more beneficial to a guy like Beck.
He might be suffering from the boy who cried wolf syndrome.
I read the Josh Marshall article; but, it took a long time to get through it without my eyes glazing over at least six times. I still do not understand what he was getting at or the point of the article. I mostly think that the Democrats need to do some very hard-nosed debunking of every lie Republicans tell. They need to do this every day and ten times a day without fail. Pound into the public’s mind that the sky is blue and not green with orange polka dots. And, if the our lame stream media, which is a poor excuse for journalism, won’t pick up on the daily debunking; then, the Dems need to do it. They need to fight the brainwashing that goes on everyday by Fox news and talk radio to the death.
Mr. Lyngar offers some interesting insights:
snip
“For this reason, I consider it my sacred duty to call out this constant, needless fear-mongering. O’Reilly is exposing himself as a pants-shitting, sniveling coward. He can’t possibly love America, because he’s too busy being terrified by nonexistent threats to offer any meaningful contribution to society.”
snip
“The good news is that O’Reilly is losing, and he knows it. With every rant, scream and insult at a “liberal†on his show, he only proves the desperation of his rear guard action. A child of the ’50s, he has spent his life expecting certain communities to kowtow to him. For O’Reilly, every small brown person, immigrant or poor person exists only to carry his bag, but now “those people†are talking back. The social order is in upheaval.”
snip
“All humans experience time in an inevitable forward march, and conservatives see the march of time as an inevitable loss. When modern conservative hero William F. Buckley stated: “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop,†he was drawing a line of failure in the sand. When I was conservative, even before gay marriage or the Affordable Care Act, I knew that every conservative loss, no matter how tiny, was one we could never get back. The realization that every inevitable forward step was a loss for my cause enraged me, stimulating my reptilian brain. Even against an avalanche of one-sided wins, conservatives have to only lose one, say, the gay marriage debate, and they can never, ever move the needle backward.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/10/i_was_a_conservative_coward_how_the_midterms_evoked_my_past_of_shame_terror_and_fox_news/
If O’Reilly doesn’t believe what he espouses then his performances in method acting and staying in character are superb and Shia Leboef should take a lesson from him.
I do see how every loss is such a big deal because it just adds to the constant state of agitation. Humans cannot sustain such high levels of fear for great amounts of time, we are just not built that way. So just as people will inevitably start to relax, they must be jolted to new adrenalin levels all over again.
Bravo Swami. You’re right. Glenn Beck does seem to fall back on a series of illnesses which seem to account for his riding the crazytrain a little too often. Maybe he does have moments on clarity when he sees himself for what he is, a “circus clown”: his words not mine.
Still, his side of the fence just loves to either forgive its’ sinners, or sympathize with them in their “hour of need”. No matter how many hours of need they have.