No apologies here. There will be, of course, because a significant number of Progressives and Morlocks have no conception of the difference between thought and deed, which is THE critical differentiator in law and policy. You can IMAGINE strangling your boss all that you want. It is only when you actually TRY to strangle your boss that there is any moral or ethical problem.
What? I am speaking, of course, about the new online flash game “Tea Party Zombies Must Die!” And the vapors that the Righties have gone into over it — paralleling their false shock and Faux Nooz’s dishonest editing of James Hoffa’s Labor Day address about the “sons of bitches.”
Has there ever been a gang of bullies more prone to wetting their pants at the slightest whiff of non P.C. thought? (Hey! I thought they were AGAINST political correctness!)
So, don’t expect the game to be around for long. The bullies are already seeing to that, and, as usual, the morons of the Eloi are sure to enable them, catching a case of the vapors themselves. Retards.
Yeah. I said it: “Retards.”
Twelve hours ago, it was at the top of Memeorandum. Twelve hours later, it was gone. Such is the fluffing of the kerfluffers. Every day (as those first three links show) it’s been some new case of the vapors, some new outrage, some new snark and moron-superiority-complex and then it’s on to the next thing.
But I hold out hope for those Zombies.
Because when the sniffing and phony moral posturing, the “incivility” that the uncivil pretend to deplore fades away, we will always have the ball-less centrists of the media and the spineless on the left — who are so afraid of picking a fight with the snarling right that they will not and have not protested the obscenfication of the term “liberal” and its demonic substitute, “leftist” which is a term that was formerly applied to potentially Communist revolutionaries in jungles and third world countries — we will always have the delayed reaction of dumping all their contempt on this “awful” game with its terrible, violent thoughts.
“Meet the zombies”
On this issue, left and right are unified: if someone on the left is less than perfect for any reason, BOTH pounce. Thus far, no one on the left has defended Tea Party Zombies Must Die, nor do I expect them to. The Morlock righties are calling for boycotts and attacks on the parent company responsible. The lefties, as usual, are blissfully comatose.
Now, it has been argued that Eloi lefties, being of the order of invertibrates, do not actually attain the level that we would term “self-aware” or fully sentient. Accepting the proposition for the sake of argument, it must be countered with the observation that the snarking right reacts viscerally in such a constant and consistent emotional manner that arguably “self-aware” and fully sentient cannot be ascribed to their class of carnivora, either.
So, there’s no moral high ground in either side for that argument. But when “because liberalism is a disease” is so ubiquitous and constant in rightie blog postings and comments, without any high moral dudgeon, one cannot take these vapors seriously.
Oh, I have the vapors. Oh! Let me lie down. Ahhhhh!
Remember: when we devolve into Civil War, and it becomes an act of patriotism to lawfully shoot the “Red Staters,” I call “dibs” on Rush Limbaugh. OK?
But meantime, it seems existentially oxymoronic to protest this video game while flogging the exhausted pony of the zeitgeist INTO that sort of killing field.
Civility works both ways; science is the basis of our “enlightenment” form of governance, and freedom of speech has never fully been allowed to take effect, although it’s gotten better and then worse and then better since the Fin de siècle.
“How completely inappropriate and having no grounding in reality!” Right.
Let me quote liberally from a superior essay that appeared this week:
Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.
John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:
“Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today’s Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.”
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
The left has ceded the rhetorical fight (you never see them, for instance, fighting AGAINST the day’s rightie blog swarm, as a rule), the center and the media have seemingly given up the responsibility to be FACTUAL, leaving the right to make things up.
[I wonder when the Eloi left will realize that ALL politics is rhetoric. There are no other tools.]
You know: The Tea Party Zombies Must Die video game is awful. But this stuff gets a pass:
The point that I keep making is that either it’s OK for us to get mad, too, or else we return to the treason that marks the underlying GOP philosophy:
It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
In his “Manual of Parliamentary Practice,” Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally acknowledged and honored by all parties. These include unwritten rules, customs and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure.
The only thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. … Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.
In attempting to derail all governance if they don’t get their way, the GOP and their followers are engaged in an act of fundamental treason. But they are focused on what’s important. Lookie what was just forwarded to me:
Civility of the left…
Fellow Patriots,
The past 48 hours has brought a profound look into the mindset of some of Obama’s biggest supporters. First there was Hoffa, the Teamsters labor boss, calling for his Obama army to “take out those sons of bitches” in reference to the tea party movement. After Hoffa’s hate filled speech, Obama took to the stage and actually thanked him for his support!
Then came the news of the “Tea Party Zombies Must Die” video game that represents one of the most vile, hateful attacks against the movement to date. The game takes players through an “educational” timeline of slashing and slaughtering members of the tea party movement who are portrayed as mindless zombies. As we report on LibertyNews.com, the makers of the game actually believe this is a useful tool for those who oppose the movement.
Read our full report on the game, including video and more information, at LibertyNews.com here.
I’m not supplying the link; the letter is from Eric Odom of Liberty News, of Grassfire Nation, Inc. former IT manager for the Sam Adams Alliance, tourer on the Tea Party Express bus in Wisconsin last month, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
OK, this is a little over the top. But, really?
Sensahumor seems in hibernation in some, like Odom,
who regularly prints reverse slanders every bit as offensive
Get out the fainting couch.
But this is a non-issue. Non-issue, that is, until Limbaugh and Company and Faux Nooz can get ahold of it. And then, the predictable “oh my this is awful” sniffs from the left and the bewilderment of a public facing yet another fake crisis in the middle of a very real crisis. Refusing to help pull the bus out of the ditch that YOU drove it into is not merely the height of boorish self-centeredness not often seen in humans beyond the age of three (although it IS endemic in that age group), but it’s a risk to the entire society.
Let’s hope he never becomes a borror.
(Possibly induced by a radioactive borer bite.)
And yet, to merely type those words is to accept the inevitability of failure in the arena of civility or governance of the commonwealth … COMMON WEALTH*.
[* A sad commentary on the age is the fact that the Junior Senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky not only has zero idea of what a Commonwealth is, but that, if he did, he would reject the very notion.]
This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don’t want those people voting.
You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican.
I have purposely not told you who wrote the above before this. It comes to us from TruthOut, and is entitled:
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
Saturday 3 September 2011by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis
He explains it this way …
It is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism of an Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann that impelled my departure from Capitol Hill. It is not in my pragmatic nature to make a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of personal martyrdom in the manner of David Brock. And I will leave a more detailed dissection of failed Republican economic policies to my fellow apostate Bruce Bartlett.
I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country’s future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and “shareholder value,” the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP’s decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.
If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren’t after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.
And adds this:
Mike Lofgren retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees.
But THAT crucial debate isn’t happening. We spend our time on the cattle call “presidential” debates, and the eternal bait and kerfluff of the scandal du jour — because 24 hour news services actually only have about 15 minutes of actual news on any day, which are replayed endlessly, and talking heads which are replayed endlessly and when you cut out the trivial, what’s Left? Talking about ‘vampire’ wannabes?*
[* Zombies? Vampires? Halloween sure came early this year, didn’t it?]
The fundamental SHAPE of our system is being crippled by a wildcat strike — by union busters, go figure — who seem to think that they’re all John Galt, and that by bringing down the country some sort of golden age of beneficial and idealistic selfishness will erupt, and the air will sparkle and the waters will be pure and fields of daisies will cover the slag heaps and the open pit mine tailings and lions will lie down with lambs.
At least here one Republican crossed the picket line for the highest and most practical of reasons, and we ought to listen to what he has to say.
Or else invest in fainting couches.
Until the Eloi decide that being Eloi sucks, the Morlocks will continue to feast on their tender flesh. I wish it were more complicated than that, but it isn’t.
And the game is old 1990s first-person shooter game “Doom” of course, but if ever there were a movement that found its true expression in gaming, “Tea Party” and “Doom” are a perfect wedding.
I wouldn’t even know about it, except that the Righties have had the vapors about it for 24 hours now. I won’t say that I’ve had much of a chance to play it.
I can imagine hitting Bill O’Reilly with a crowbar as much as I want. It’s only when I attempt to act it out in real life that you and the rest of society have any say in the matter. And I promise you, in real life I believe that it would be wrong. Is wrong. Was wrong. Always will be.
Still, just remember, you have to hit the Bill O’Reilly zombie TWICE with the crowbar before he goes down in a cloud of gore. The pistol, AK47 and Uzi are more effective, but the deep feeling of personal satisfaction isn’t quite the same.
Courage.
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UPDATE (almost immediate): Odom has now sent out a “corrected” version of his Tea-mail, including this:
Where is Obama, Pelosi and Reid on this one? [sic] They constantly call for civility and respect of differing political views, yet refuse to rebuke hate based [sic] attacks against the tea party movement. This video game, along with Hoffa’s comments, are incredibly offensive and we should not back down in voicing our distaste of their efforts against us.
I’ve taken the first step by boycotting Red Bull (this is a personal decision, not one of Grassfire or Liberty News Network) and you can read about it here. Radio Patriot has a post up that lists all companies who work with the game maker. The list includes GM, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Nascar, Hasbro, Red Bull and many more.
Don’t demand government get involved… vote with your wallet and make sure these thugs know we’re not going to fund their war against liberty.
Is our children learning? Odom released yet ANOTHER revision, usage errors intact.
And, last evening, Keith Olbermann basically took the same position regarding Tea Party Zombies Must Die (Bad game! Boycott!) and vigorously opposed Mr. Odom’s objection (and its factual basis) to the nameless entity known only (in the universe of that letter) as the “Hoffa.”
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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.