I predicted this in a cartoon I posted on FaceBook last month:
The GOP Titanic (Healthcare) timestamp Saturday, April 19, 2014, 6:36:29 PM
Having ‘gone to the mattresses’ over the Affordable Care Act open enrollment, it far surpassed expectations, made its numbers; said numbers were debunked for the Faithful, but, to any sentient being, the GOP had just gotten its collective vertically-integrated-monopoly of a political machine’s ass kicked.
They paused. Whined a bit reflexively, and then loaded a new round into the chambers and fired the next round of double-barrelled sawed-off shotgun blasts.
Which was predicted.
“We are just amateur military enthusiasts
out for a weekend drive through Crimea….”
Because the GOP has become as transparent in their manipulation as Vladimir Putin has become in his. The same ham-handed propaganda techniques perfected by the Soviets, handed off to and improved by the Reaganauts (who wrought a media revolution in US politics) and thence taken back again by Putin, albeit slightly more ham-handedly.
Wide angle of the “giant crowds” in Baghdad Square as statue is toppled.
Taken from the roof of the media HQ hotel across the street. Close in
video camera work makes a small crowd look like a large crowd, as I learned
at a taping of the Midnight Special at NBC Studios in Burbank, long ago.
The “stock footage” of the Crimean elections was undoubtedly every bit as phony as the “Taking Down Saddam’s Statue” show of camera trickery was in Iraq. But neither most Russians nor most Americans are aware of either.
John Kerry: I’ll comply with House GOP’s Benghazi request
Edward-Isaac Dovere / PoliticoSecretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday indicated he would comply with a House GOP subpoena to testify about Benghazi and other questions from the new select committee appointed by House Speaker John Boehner….
But MAN did they pivot on a dime; as one, and in complete talking point coordination. Zowie.
Kind of takes your breath away. From Sharyl Attkisson last week to the Speaker of the House appointing a Special Committee — which gives this hogwash the phony legitimacy of “news,” it has only been a matter of days to pivot the entire Health Care Dog and Pony Show to the Benghazi Follies of 2014, complete with dancing girls, animal acts and trapeze artist injuries for the price of admission.
And admission is free. (Well, it’s taxpayer and consumer funded, ultimately, but TANSTAAFL. And Anti-IOKIYAR.)
It is the same charade and now, with John Kerry forced in front of the Kangaroo Court of Darryl Issa-dom, to be hooted at for the benefit of the monkey-cage, and other flying feces … the same sad charade of Vince Foster, all over again, having successfully convinced enough of the families of the dead to allow the GOP propaganda machine to dry-hump the corpses of their relatives for as long as it takes for this next Titanic to sink, holed on the reefs of its own absolute certitude about events that are claimed that are completely uncertain and must, therefore, be investigated.
And it will not have the authenticity of “Billy Jack Goes To Washington.“
And the non-story becomes a “story,” which CBS (which a large part of last week was spent “discrediting,” beginning with Sharyl Attkisson’s walking of Benghazi back into the mainstream on Walpurgisnacht) must now cover.
And, the leading edge hit just over a week ago.
I wonder what the next Republican crisis will be to avoid the actual business of governance, and to advance the field of amateur theater.
Time will tell.
From the killing fields of Cambodia
But the simple truth cannot be avoided: whether the Boko Haram in Nigeria, the anti-evoluti0n homeschoolers in America, the entire state of Oklahoma or the massive control apparatus of the Chinese media, the one unifying theme providing the aggression and antagonism seems to boil down to one basic thing:
People want to fight for their right to be intentionally stupid.
Intentionally ignorant.
Intentionally to cling to their idea of the world even in the face of that same world.
And the prognosis looks terminal for an awful lot of decent people.
Meantime, Nero fiddles.
Courage.
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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.