Straight to Crazy After Boston Bombings

Well now, there's crazy like a fox and crazy like FOXnews. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell most definitely remains in the latter class of stupids.

Following Monday's Boston Marathon bombings, with their death, dismemberment and massive injuries, he took the mic on the Senate floor to make absurd political claims. Those centered on counter-terrorism following the 9/11 attacks. His punchline was, "With the passage of time, however, and the vigilant efforts of our military, intelligence and law enforcement professionals, I think it’s safe to say that for many, the complacency that prevailed prior to September 11th has actually returned."

Think Progress has the full quotes and clip.

Know you will hear more of such baseless claims. From what should be a leadership position, McConnell instead points the way to the unprovable, untenable, and impotent. As a nation, both government and individuals, we are more aware of dangers than ever, have numerous agencies and procedures at work constantly, and have thwarted many terrorism attempts. The ones that happen are God awful but very rare.

As usual, his implication is that somehow, someone (read President Obama) coulda, shoulda done something unspecified that woulda prevented the Boston bombings.So far for the first day and one half, most winger commentators have managed to stifle such base words. Here's betting McConnell's were just the first.

The larger and underlying issue continues to be that Congressional Republicans and GOP leaders neither like nor truly understand the post-WWII America. Let us recall that over 400,000 Americans were among those who died in WWII. To a one, they would say then and later that it was about keeping the United States and larger world free. Likewise those who fought in Korea, Southeast Asia and the Middle East almost all echoed that.

The trend we have seen in recent years though, particularly after 9/11, has been expanding government powers to limit liberties. Among the most pervasive are TSA airport procedures. Unlike say Israel, we don't use savvy airport agents and sensible observation. We go for mindless rules about a couple of ounces of liquid and resort to frisking and even to strip searches.

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Safety Fantasies

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The wingers at the state level instead reserve their version of freedom to actual murder threats. That would be stand-your-ground laws that literally permit individuals to decide when they can execute someone. That would be permits to carry loaded sidearms into drinking sessions at bars. That would be the right to own and walk around with semiautomatic rifles with 30 or 100 shot clips attached.

Let us constantly be aware that international and domestic terrorists want to cripple Americans. They want us to be afraid all the time. They want our country more like autocratic ones, where big, intrusive government rules and citizens must obey.

The crazy-like-FOX crew seem to be all for that anti-freedom movement. They're fine with every bigger, ever more intrusive government spying on us, our calls, emails, travels and more. Likewise, they are fine with employers deciding what health care their workers can get (think contraception). At the state level, many seem delighted to restrict the most fundamental American right, that of voting.

McConnell and his ilk clearly don't like the America that grew, evolved and matured around them. They want a much more confined America. They lie about wanting less government while they ever expand agencies to control us.

I call them out.

The Boston bombings brought many tragedies — a word I never use lightly. Personal ones include the murder of 8-year-old Martin Richard.

There is no need for or utility in political lies about complacency. Likewise, being in denial about susceptibility to terrorist acts right here in the United States is simply delusional. We're not in a war zone. Then again at the most basic level, we, and the whole world, are. Fantasizing that big-daddy government can keep us safe every hour everywhere from every monster goes straight to crazy.

Melissa Crosses the Nasties

Apparently MSNBC is new to the parents-rights mini-movement. This week, they've been wringing hands and trying valiantly to be amused by winger bloggers and Fox talking heads slamming Melissa Harris Perry.

At the bottom is a segment in which Chris Hayes and she seemed surprised and even stunned. The Fox-ies had spent much of the week literally ranting and feigning high-pitched outrage. She had only called for larger community involvement in ensuring the safety and successful development of children.

The winger drama centered on her saying that a family's children are not the sole responsibility of the parents, that the community can help and should help. Of course that is a simple, generally religiously based concept going way back to Old Testament days and before. The idea that if there are problems, you're on you own, is a more recent, destruction and cold one.

Yet, winger media are always eager to pounce. They have been outdoing each other depicting these old fashioned values as collectivism, communism and other such drivel.

Hayes and Harris Perry were generally confused about where all this overreaction originated. Welcome to the world of parents rights.

That subgroup of wingers claims legal and moral ownership of their children, be it in how they are educated or whether parents can beat them freely and on any whim.

I did a series here (search for parents rights). One post links to several others by their emphasis. MSNBC folk can be sure if they again dare call for community involvement in helping kids, and particularly if they use the expression that "our children are not our own" as the metaphor for people helping each other, these vipers will pop out of their holes.

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Self-flushing Scott Brown

Let us laugh together. Scott Brown has flushed himself down the drain, apparently out of greed alone. According to the Globe and to the Herald, he'll be a talking head for Fox(if you pardon the oxymoron)News.

Giggle now that he wasn't immediately available for comment. Consider that this attention addict doesn't even get that aspect of it all.

So in a couple of years from a drone realty lawyer to a do nothing state legislator to a big honking ego disguised as a fill-in-the-term US Senator, Brown chose to unplug the drain and wash himself down.

In his Congressional mini-life, truncated when someone with ideas, accomplishments and the compassion he totally lacks skunked him for the full-term in office, he was also a do nothing.

Rather, he was a do badly while pretending otherwise. Assuming all other Senators and all voters were thoroughly stupid, he played junior-high tricks. He'd stand at the edge of the new playground, the Senate chamber, waiting to run in and make the key point or save. He'd pretend to play for one side and then for the other, all the while saying not that this proved his deviousness and dishonor, rather showed him fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. He feigned bipartisanship so many times, he seemed to come to believe it himself.

So there you have it, FoxNoise hired him to provide political commentary and insight. Well, at least he's in the Sarah Palin moldy mold of no-noting, do-nothing, having accomplished next to nothing, smoke blower. Brown as a political commentator is like Bernie Madoff teaching ethics. They make it up as they do and hope they don't get caught.

Moot? Interpretation?

Seemingly parallel and equally weighted to free speech, far too many of us nod like bobble-head dolls in approval of virtually everything being open to interpretation. Whether it's a shared experience or analysis of provable/disprovable facts, we like to extend the right to everyone to be bone-headed wrong.

There's some stereotypical fantasy that unless you cut people infinite slack for the wackiest ideas, you are far too rigid and you don't understand the human thought process. It is true enough that overly rigid literal thinking leads to orthodoxy and exclusion of differing ideals. But letting everyone advance wacky ideas to a group is cowardice.

Cut me a very thin slice of that baloney, Jack. Not all ideas or interpretations of facts are valid or equal. Some of us twist the facts and evidence for our nefarious purposes. Others are too lazy to analyze at all. Still others are not very bright.

Instead of bobbling when you hear, "It's just a matter of interpretation," consider it your moral and intellectual obligation to call foolishness. Ideally, you'll be well-bred enough to avoid doing it self-righteously. Yet, the main goal should be putting the brakes to the wagon-load of crap.

Out of our control are professional loonies and liars, like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. They are highly paid entertainers, masquerading as analysts and commentators. They have no incentive to be reasonable, realistic or honest.

Where you can have an effect though is in the likes of personal conversations and public meetings. Don't yield to those who say their crazy assertions are as valid as yours or anyone else's. Most times that simply isn't true. Say it, say it to them.

Of course, much of this is political and cultural. The most obvious current example may be the birther folk. They have available and most have beheld the POTUS' state-issued proof he was born in Hawaii, as well as seen the newspaper announcement and so forth. For them to hold that Barack Obama is not a native-born American is loony, stupid or both. Yet, some continue to insist this is a matter of interpretation.

Yes, reasonable people can disagree, but one reasonable one and one crazy one are on different planes, unequal ones.

I think of a relative who advances fantasies and lies constantly and has from when I first met her. To put it kindly, I can say she is perhaps the most skilled fabulist I've ever known. She constantly re-remembers, restructures, reinterprets, and retells her life. Although she was an adulteress, an inheritance thief and more, she speaks with great conviction of her blamelessness in all acts and in fact represents herself as heroic and virtuous. She reinvents herself as the lead in her own play.

She has lied to my face, slandered other relatives, and iterated those calumnies repeatedly at increasing volume. In the times that I called her on them and spoke of provable contradictions, she would simply drop the subject and address it no further.

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Don't Accept It

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There too are the behaviors of the worst of these sorts. In what used to be limited to U.S. prep school (UK public schools) and Ivy-League class colleges, the disingenuous learn to shout and badger. The atmosphere includes the elements that if you bellow someone down, you win. Of course, the truth is that if you cow someone by saying the same thing repeatedly at increasing volume, you aren't right. Instead you are loud, repetitive and, well, rude. Unfortunately, this attitude has percolated from the fancy schools into the populace.

Bill O'Reilly certainly fits in that group. Also, although I agree with most of his politics, Chris Matthews does as well. Neither listens to others and both bully their guests far too frequently. I have little doubt it has to do with their home lives and schooling.

So, the call here is plain. When the jive demons pretend, don't accept it. When you know better, tell 'em. Don't accept that everything is a matter of interpretation, that one set of assertions is automatically as valid as another.

Facts are stubborn things. When armed with knowledge, be as stubborn.