Perfect Day
I've had a song, Lou Reed's Perfect Day, stuck in my head the past few days. I can't think why, but I've been thinking about the rise of a particular type of leader in the republican party. Seemingly drawn from an American version of Commedia dell'arte, The stock characters are all there: harlequin, brighella, il capitano etc. Their activities have been welcomed, joined with and cheered on, by certain sections of the party in the name of energizing the base. Even as it drives that base down to new levels of baseness. A vitriol that calls for a reactive if not reactionary sensibility. The rank and file, and the elected leaders beholden to the public do not seem to realize that the needs of this set of individuals; controversy, attention, and ratings, may not necessarily align with the parties best interests. Now after half a year of malignant broadcast the seeds sown by this hint they may return the whirlwind. A Doctor who performs abortions is shot to death in a church in Kansas City. This is when Scott Roeder shoots Dr. George Tiller. The irony of taking a human life to fill a pro life agenda is not lost, but few take it further to the principle that if any social, subgroup, can rationalize taking human life, for whatever reason makes sense to them, the general moratorium vanishes. Not long after a vile cantankerous old man walks into Washington DC's Holocaust museum shooting a man dead as he came through
Holocaust shooting signals race turmoil, some say - washingtonpost.com. This person James von Brunn was his name I think was at the University Maryland back in the spring. I didn't make the connection until I saw in one article that he supported himself in partial fashion handing out materials from the liberty lobby. There was a guy handing out copies of a newspaper called the Spotlight and little cards that raged over the forgotten grievance surrounding the Israeli air force's attack on the US Navy vessel USS Liberty in 1967. In wake of all this, having spent several months ardently stoking this fire of bully vendetta the reaction of the republican commentators is first to try to deny anything is happening, attempting to brush off suggestions that such people as Roeder and Brunn the Holocaust museum shooter are right wing extremists in any event
Eastern Shore Acquaintances Say Museum Shooting Suspect Spouted Hatred - washingtonpost.com. Unfortunately for this argument as people emerge from the chrysalis of childhood into adulthood political sensibilities become as fined tuned and in as innate a manner as one's ones sense of balance or gravity. Brunn's problem was not too many Kumbaya sing-a-longs. Some seized on the fact that Brunn also had the the address of the National Review among his belongings. Surely no true dexter-winger would consider a grievance against hero and champion of La Causa William Kristal. Argument by exclusionary definition, the no true Scotsman argument as some have pointed out
Latest Right-Wing Meme: Von Brunn's A Lefty | TPMMuckraker. The shooting at a US Army/Navy recruiting center in Little Rock Arkansas
AFP: Arkansas army center gunman trawled web for target that killed one soldier, wounded another by Abdulhakim Muhammed, aka Carlos Bledsoe, 23 is an outlier does not change median data. In law enforcement eyes it reinforces a forming notion that we are in a period marked by Lone Wolf terrorist acts
The Associated Press: 'Lone wolf' terrorists elusive target for police. What Bill O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and others in the unelected leadership committee ought to remember is that those whose ideology has been honed and pushed into a murderous rage are unstable, are less than ordinarily rational, and unpredictable as well
Federal Eye - Eye Opener: Does Holocaust Shooting Validate Homeland Security Report? Certainly I have seen comments following some of these articles that indicate social constraints are being dispensed with
Hate Crimes and Hate - dot.comments in favor of seething contempt. None of these commentators know when some statement or phrase of theirs will make one of these self-appointed guardians of righteousness sit up on the couch in front of the TV and yell "You saying what know?" Then reaching for his (or her) gun between the cushions calling out: "Bess, old Bess where are you? You loaded? We got some varmint hunting to do" As Lou Reed sang at the end of Perfect Day: "You're going to reap just what you sow. You're going to reap just what you sow."
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