EMAILS FROM THE HUNKERED-DOWN RIGHT

My fundamentalist cousin's email today was another multi-forwarded thing crowded far over to the right margin by all the sending on (copy and paste is beyond their skillset, apparently). I confess I did not read it thoroughly, but the baseline document appeared to be a rant about how Target stores would not allow something Christmas-related to be advertised because the store had an official policy to only support LGBT and Muslim causes. They quoted some corporate newsletter allegedly stating this policy. Someone on the email list had taken the trouble to look it up on Snopes and refute this as a hoax, sending it back out to all the recipients of the previous email. The third response was a diatribe about how Snopes was run by queers and liberals, and nothing they said could be trusted, and therefore this proved the Target story must be true.

The whole thing reeks of such fear. They live in fear and misery.

And some part of me thinks her adding me to this list may be rationalized in her mind as trying to "save" me, but down at the deepest level, it's a cry for help. I am not going to help her, my priorities are elsewhere, but it's no problem for me to read the anguish and silently wish her well before going on to where I actually can be effective. And to note that someone else on that list is not drinking the koolaid.

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THE CRUSADERS HAVE BREACHED OUR CITY GATES

Sarah Palin, like George W. Bush, is stupid in at least two classical definitions: Closed to the challenge of thinking for oneself, and unable to think flexibly. She is by her own admission not a reader. Her inability to speak with clarity or consideration is most on display when she is placed in a non-scripted situation, which she consequently avoids at all costs. She opens her mouth mostly to earn a fee, and she has (mostly) learned to allow others to tell her what to say.

She is quintessentially the dimwitted beauty queen who is sullen about being asked questions instead of the swimsuit competition sufficing, just as Bush was the rich frat boy claiming a cowboy heritage not his own because he saw cowboys as likewise inarticulate, small-minded, and not expected to observe social niceties (an outsider's patronizing view that too many urban Texans-by-migration gleefully embraced as well).

So when one of these mouthpiece symbols makes a horrific blunder in the course of a teleprompted speech -- as Bush did when he called his invasion of Iraq a "crusade" and Palin has now done invoking the vile Jew-hating phrase blood libel to express outrage at being questioned about the consequences of her targeting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords -- it is not as simple as another example of their stupidity on display. Nor can we explain it away solely as their existing in an elite theocratic bubble where such fundie hate phrases are bandied about in conversation, leaving dimwits such as Palin and Dubya to later use the language without comprehending what it means.

No, someone who is paid to design messages inserted those two words into Palin's carefully crafted video, which was (as always) intended to keep her in the money-making public eye without expecting actual work from her. It was not miss-speak. This is bolstered by Andrew Breitbart, that Goebbelesque liar, also using the same phrase in recent days.

What was its dogwhistle intent, then?

For fundies, it reinforces the simultaneous martyrdom they cling to -- the delusion that Christians are the only genuinely persecuted group in our culture, because we refuse to allow them to convert and control the rest of us in Jesus's name -- and the rationalization that Jews have it "coming to them" because they killed Christ. It is a coded reinforcement of anti-Semitism which is intrinsic to Christians who believe they have the right to kill as part of G*d's will.

In short, that gunsight leveled on Giffords was, actually, justified.

Study the rest of Palin's commentary. She asks when political debate was ever less heated, revealing she operates in the End-Timer maelstrom of constant fear and rage. She speaks of praying but not of finding resolution or growth from prayer, because her ilk believe they have already heard from G*d and will not ever require a course correction. And she whines about the apportioning of blame, but never mentions the word responsibility.

Because responsibility implies the possibility of error, something Christian soldiers never have to worry about.

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MORE NOTES FROM A HOUSEBOUND OBSERVER

The great essays and deep conversation about the psychology of the Christian Right just keep on rolling out over at Orcinus . Today Sara Robinson follows up on a report by Dave Neiwert, and I want to quote the entire damned thing, but will settle for just a couple of excerpts:


"The fundamentalists among us have, simply, jumped the track -- and are now heading off in a radically new direction that is, very pointedly, re-defining our historic understanding of the First Amendment. Suddenly, in their minds, 'justice' is no longer defined as merely having exactly the same rights everybody else does. They are claiming that their religious doctrines absolutely require them to harass other people about their beliefs, take over the government, co-opt the military for religious ends, bomb clinics and kill doctors, demonize gays, oppress women, and dismantle the Constitution. It's not hard for the more paranoid among us to imagine a day when they will assert a 'religious freedom' right to commit genocide for God as well. That is, after all, where the heinous logic of all this leads."

"We are now sharing this country with a substantial class of people who not only harbor the fierce belief that they are superior to the rest of us -- yes, a master race, and their rhetoric is starting to work that meme as well -- they also believe that the future of the country is at immediate risk unless the non-believers are restrained and subdued, placed under total control of their betters. Further: they believe that they are justified by God to do this by any means necessary -- within or without the Constitution."

Go read 'em, folks. They're doing really important work for us.

Two points I'd like to follow up on. One is that the Christian Right's war on gays is no longer the sure-fire winner it once was. The majority of Lesbians and gays have refused to go into hiding or buy the crap which conflates same-sex attraction with gender "dysphoria". As recent scandals have shown, the Republican Party is larded with closeted gay white men, and more to the point, the insistence that gays must be hated has torn too many families apart. The fanatics will need a new demon to organize around, and I agree with a lot of observers that it will center on race -- because race hatred is their not-so-secret underbelly, the number one defining characteristic of the Right Wing. Anti-Muslim screeds are really about race, don't be fooled, and their big ticket item right now is anti-Mexican rhetoric. So, I call on everyone I know who is queer or queer-sympathic to be willing to switch your efforts, ALL of it, over to fighting the good fight for our sisters and brothers who will be next in their gunsights. Their methods will become increasingly illegal over the next ten to twenty years. Lives will be on the line. Get ready to speak up No Matter What.

Secondly, educate yourself about what is effective and accurate about progressive ideology. In particular, learn to immediately notice the power flow and name it. Oppression is not necessarily about larger groups excluding smaller ones, for instance. I'd recommend studying the brilliant thinking of Ricky Sherover-Marcuse, especially her Liberation Theory: A Working Framework . Here's a few of her basic definitions:

On Unlearning Racism, Sexism or Classism: "...'to unlearn' is not the opposite of 'to learn.' Thus, for example, the necessity of 'unlearning racism' does not imply that racism is 'learned,' or that racist attitudes are acquired through a 'learning' process. On the contrary, racist 'thinking,' like other forms of mystified consciousness, represents a disturbance of the learning process, a disturbance which itself is the consequence of social oppression and which in turn serves to perpetuate it."

Definition of Oppression: "Oppression is the systematic and pervasive mistreatment of individuals on the basis of their membership in various groups, which are disadvantaged by the institutionalized imbalances in social power in a particular society. Oppression includes both institutionalized or 'normalized' mistreatment as well as instances of violence. It includes the invalidation, denial, or the non-recognition of the complete humanness (the goodness, uniqueness, smartness, powerfulness, etc.) of those who are members of the mistreated group." [Emphasis mine: Oppression must be systematic and pervasive to qualify, and it must be reflected by institutionalized imbalance in social power. We must stop letting them pit those of us in target groups against one another. If your primary grievance and argument is with the members of another target group, I believe it's time for you to rethink your strategy.

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On another note, I very much enjoyed watching last week's Celebrity Jeopardy shows because of how much it revealed who is smart and who is NOT. The questions were extremely dumbed down, and aside from the rampant distractability of actors (Alex Trebek simply gave up with folks like Martin Short, who were having too much fun being silly to remember even the basic rules of the game), what emerged was a steady stream of flamers running intellectual circles around their straight celebrity competitors. They were flamboyant AND brilliant. I hooted as Carson Kressley (from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) simply fucking CREAMED the hate-monger Nancy Grace. Mario Cantone also won his episode. Isaac Mizrahi and Neil Patrick Harris were not the big winners on their respective days, but they held their own.

Still, the best occurred on the last day, when NON-queen Michael McKean (Lenny from Laverne and Shirley, award-winning ensemble player from A Mighty Wind and This is Spinal Tap, and memorable Morris Fletcher who swapped bodies with Fox Mulder on The X-Files) racked up 30,000 points over Margaret Spelling, the Bush asslicker and so-called Secretary of Education who brought us such travesties as the "No Child Left Behind" program. I laughed and laughed. He didn't even glance her way as he ran entire categories with ease. Now, that's educational television.

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