Beckism in the Pews

It is becoming clear that Glenn Beck believes he will be personally responsible for a religious revival in the United States. What is not clear is exactly how his delusions will play out.

• Elijah - According to Armageddonites the Second Coming will be preceded by the return of Elijah. This belief is strong within Beck's Mormon faith. Beck is sufficiently insane to believe that he, himself, is Elijah.
• The Antichrist - Beck has self-proclaimed himself as the savior of faith in the United States. That is pretty close to role Armageddonites believe old AC will fill.
• Father Charles Coughlin - Coughlin was a radio preacher and Nazi-sympathizer who spent most of the years prior to WWII attacking President Roosevelt. Replace Coughlin's hatred of Jews with Beck's hatred of Muslims and we've got a carbon copy.
  
• Jim Jones - But perhaps Beck plans to merge the Tea Party Movement and his unique hate-based faith into a new religious cult with him as its prophet. His ego wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than millions of gullible Americans worshiping him.
  

Muslims Are the New Jews

This was going to be a post comparing that savior of American Christianity Glenn Beck to Father Charles Coughlin but you can't do this comparison without first noting how Radical Christian antisemitism has shifted from hating Jews to hating Muslims.

Original antisemitism began with blaming Jews for the death of Christ. It was enhanced by the blood libel that they had strange rituals including sacrificing Christian children. (An aside here, Christian churches do practice ritual cannibalism during their communion ceremony. Judaism has no practice remotely similar.)

The apocalypse theology rampant among Radical Christians since the 19th century requires a Jewish state in the Middle East as a condition for the Second Coming. No Israel, No Rapture. There is no love for Judaism here, only the belief that there needs to be a Jewish state for the Antichrist to destroy.

Islamophobia follows a similar path. For Christians, Islam has replaced Judaism as the enemy of Christ. There is the communal blame, the belief that all Muslims bear responsibility for all the world's evil. There is even a modern blood libel accusing Muslims of cannibalism.

Every aspect of antisemitism can be found reflected in current anti-Islamism. Every slander, every lie, every fear. We are even seeing the faint beginnings of pogroms.

So when I compare Glenn Beck to the antisemitic Father Coughlin I am on solid ground. If you doubt me, compare the antisemitic drawing at the top with the modern anti-Islam poster.

Supplying the Afghan Rebels

Afghan insurgents stage a raid dressed in US Army uniforms. So, how did they get the uniforms?

The Army hires civilian contractors (mercenaries) to transport clothing into the country; the mercs sell uniforms complete with body armor to the Taliban. Soldiers hire native servants (Dhobi and darzi using the terms from the British Raj) to wash and mend their clothes, some of which will go missing. And I suspect some soldiers will sell the uniforms of dead colleagues for fine Afghan opium.

There are many ways for an Afghan rebel to find American uniforms and American weapons.

Tea Party Populists

Yesterday I pointed out that the Tea Party Movement is simply the grandson of the Know Nothings. Its father is the People's Party.

In the late 19th century the Republican Party, like now, served only Wall Street, the Robber Barons, and corporate interests. The Democratic Party served urban immigrants and Southern segregationists. Ignored were the farmers and ranchers and from that sprang the Populist or People's Party.

While the People's Party was less nativist than the Know Nothings or the Tea Party they were still anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and anti-black. Unlike the Tea Party, the Robber Barons failed to coop the Populists.

It is no longer a government of the people, for the people, by the people, but a government of Wall Street, for Wall Street, and by Wall Street. ~ Mary Lease

It was born during the long depression of the Gilded Age when the extremely wealthy bought, sold, and rode politicians like polo ponies. Their platform included:

• The free coinage of silver and gold to counteract the deflation that was enriching millionaires while the common people starved.
• A graduated income tax to make the rich share in the burdens of government.
• Nationalizing telegraphs and railroads. (The wealthiest and most corrupt Robber Barons own the railroads. A modern equivalent would be to nationalize Goldman Sachs and Verizon.)
• Confiscate land own by foreigners and restrict immigration. (Traditional Nativist themes.)

The present system [...] opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our wage-earners; and we denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor, and demand the further restriction of undesirable emigration. ~ 1892 platform

Comparing the Populists with the Tea Party shows clear similarities in the anti-immigrant fervor. Where they differ is on the economy where the Tea Party is the most vocal advocate for lifting the burden of taxes from billionaires and supporting a corporatist hegemony over all aspects of society.

That such positions will do immense damage to the lives and livelihoods of rank and file Tea Partyites does not seem to occur to them and indicates the degree to which the Robber Barons have bought off the Tea Party leadership.

Know Nothing Tea Party

Before there was a Tea Party there was the Know Nothing Party of the 1850's.

Like the Tea Party the Know Nothings were nativists whose hatred of foreigners was only slightly greater than their hatred of urban "elites."

The Know Nothings were terrified that America was being overrun by foreigners who didn't share their loyalty to the U.S. Constitution (Irish Catholics then, Mexican Catholics now). They saw an international conspiracy by a Semitic religion designed to conquer the nation (Jews then, Muslims now). They also hated Americans who were not as American-American as they were.

When the Know Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics. ~ Abe Lincoln, 1855

The similarities between the Tea Party and the Know Nothings is striking. 1856 Know Nothing Political Platform

• Know Nothings wanted to abolish naturalization laws; Tea Parties want to end citizenship to children born in this country to foreign parents.
• Prevent foreigners (Know Nothings) or Muslims (Tea Party), from serving in the military or elective office.
  
• War to the hilt on Romanism (Know Nothings) or Islam (Tea Party).
• Both want to punish poverty. Know Nothings wanted to deport foreign paupers, A Tea Party candidate wants to send poor Americans to prison.
  

The Know Nothings became powerful enough to run a candidate for president in 1856. Millard Fillmore was the Sarah Palin of his time. Judging from the mid-term elections to date, may reach an equal level of influence.

Sarah certainly qualifies as a Know Nothing.

The Evils of Religion

I don't actually hate religion. For example, I have not met a Quaker who did not impress me as thoughtful and caring. But, there are several important aspects of many of the world's religions that can only be described as evil.

Intolerance
Certainly the most pervasive evil of religion is when it teaches hatred of others. Wahabi Muslims, Mormons, and Southern Baptists are three modern sects where intolerance is a major sacrament.

People are always murdering each other over often petty matters of dogma. Catholics wear the blood of centuries of inquisitions as they tried to stamp out competing faiths. Here is a modern Catholic defense of inquisitions. Countless wars have been fought over religion. Excluding disease, religion is the most frequently cause of death in human history.

Prudery
Wahabi are infamous for requiring women to dress the same way nomadic Arabs did in the 10th century. Mormons prescribe sacred underwear. As long as they keep their prudery to themselves I don't care. But....

In Israel, ultra-orthodox Jews will attack tourists for immodest dress. American fundamentalists are debating whether to kill homosexuals or lock them up in concentration camps. Book banning is popular with Republicans. Many religions insist on forcing their bizarre morality upon everybody else.

Wherever there is prudery there is also hypocrisy. Family values Republicans carrying on affairs. Fundamentalist pastors with gay lovers. Catholic priests molesting children. They would impose on others a morality they would never practice themselves.

Ignorance
I don't care if some people want to believe that the universe is 5000 years old, that God shits and has a penis, or that when you die you become a god over your own planet. What bothers me is when they want to teach children these myths are facts.

Whether it is Muslims in Pakistan refusing to teach children anything other than the Koran or Baptists in Texas forcing religion-based phony science on public schools the motive is the same, keep their idea of God alive by keeping people stupid.

Fundamentalists fear science and truth because they know their concept of God requires a childlike faith. They honestly believe that knowledge is the greatest sin of all.

The Merc Way

Hadmid Karzai (not my favorite Afghan) has pointed out what should be obvious, the civilian contractors in Afghanistan are are seeking profit at whatever cost to the Afghan people.

"Contractor" in Afghanistan and Iraq is just a polite term for "mercenary." They are not there to be nice or kind or helpful or even loyal to a cause. They are there for money and money alone. They have a vested interest in insuring the war lasts forever (there is no profit in peace).

If they can double their profits by working with the Americans during the day and helping the Taliban at night then they will do so without the slightest qualm. Are civilian contractors providing security for opium druglords? Almost certainly, and they are probably double billing the United States Army for the work.

Debtor's Prison

How completely Victorian Republicans have become is indicated by how they want to treat the millions of people who can't find a job in this horrible economy.

What is terrifying is how many voters listen to the heartless scoundrels.

California Stories

Nine-Digit Whitman
I've seen this before just not on this scale. Billionaire Meg Whitman has hired just about every campaign consultant in California. She has outspent her Democratic rival Jerry Brown by 15,000% yet the best she can show for it is a dead heat.

If you give political consultants unlimited money to spend they will spend it. They will spend all of it and more. They will spend it publishing 50 page booklets that absolutely no one, including the consultants, will ever bother reading. They will buy English language ads attacking Hispanics while at the same time buying Spanish language ads with the exact opposite message.

The consultants are so orgasmic over spending this kind of money they don't even realize the supreme irony of someone so extravagantly wasteful as Whitman claiming to be a fiscal conservative.

The Marrying Kind
Speaking of irony, have you ever noticed that the people who claim to be defending marriage are the ones most aggressively against other people getting married.

I find it interesting the number of Republicans who, when faced with the issue of gay marriage, immediately begin to fantasize about marrying their horses.

Marriage is, separately, a civil contract and a religious rite. As a civil contract the state has a legitimate reason to regulate it but only for legitimate cause such as age of consent. The state cannot use illegitimate causes to ban a civil contract such as race (miscegenation), religion (the state cannot make it illegal for a Muslim to marry a Jew), and gender.

As a religious rite, marriage can have many definitions. The Episcopal Church is drafting gay marriage rites. In the United States there are Mormon sects that still sanctify polygamy, marrying dead people (proxy marriage), and child weddings. None of these are legal as civil marriages and the latter is legally statutory rape. Many Southern Christian sects still refuse to sanctify interracial marriages. The more fundamentalist the sect the more likely it is to refuse to allow interfaith marriage.

When Perry v. Schwarzenegger comes to the US Supreme Court, and it will, Justice Antonin Scalia ought to recuse himself because this proves he cannot be objective. Yet we know he won't because that would require a little intellectual honesty.

Dog Days of Summer
The plan by California teabaggers to use dogs to protest building a mosque (Is Temecula close to Ground Zero?) fizzled. Apparently, the belief by the Christians was that Muslims "hate dogs" and if a few mutts slobber on the construction site the mosque will have to be moved. Well, only one dog showed up and he was leashed. Apparently, dogs are more tolerant of other faiths than conservatives. Of course, dog spelled backwards is....

Tea Party Math

The reason last weekend's Tea Party diversity event was an epic failure is simple mathematics.

• There aren't enough blacks and hispanics in the movement to fill a Mini-Cooper.
• White tea partiers stayed away because there were supposed to minorities there.
  

This was a more diverse, and more sane, tea party.

Another Vietnam-Afghan Analogy

The Afghan War's targeted killing program sounds a lot like the old Search and Destroy operations in Vietnam.

One of the persistent fallacies of American military strategy is the belief that guerrilla forces require the same inflexible, top-down, chain-of-command structure to operate as the US armed forces need. If only we kill their generals, think our generals, they will be helpless. It's silly, really. Guerrilla wars, by their nature, lack a central command to behead.

Casual Observation

Maybe, things like this wouldn't happen if Arizona law enforcement was more worried about white murderers than they are about brown workers.
Then again, to FoxNews fanatics those prison escapees are probably heroes.

Actually, the Arizona prison system is probably the most screwed up in the nation. It's a joke. A joke with dogs trained to look for telephones. A joke with frequent prison breaks. A joke with torture chamber tiger cages. A joke where innocents die.

No Room Under the Bus

It looks like the Obama Administration didn't learn anything from that "teachable moment" of the Sherrod affair.

Now, I've never liked Charlie Rangel. He always struck me as the kind of politician who keeps a tip jar on his desk and has a night deposit slot for bribes in his office door. Still, it is rather unseemly for the President to be so quick to throw him under the bus. If, on the other hand, Obama was trying to stick it to Sen. Ben Nelson for throwing Elana Kagan and the unemployed under the bus then he missed the target by a wide mark.

Obama has an odd sense of loyalty - he is not loyal to his friends and rewards people who are not loyal to him. I just can't figure out the political utility of that.

The Long War Doctrine

Officially, the Bush "Long War Doctrine" was put to sleep by the Obama Administration. Long War became authorized Pentagon policy with the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and quietly disappeared in Obama's 2010 version. Yet the Pentagon is ignoring the President and proceeding with a long war strategy.

Basically, the Long War Doctrine envisions an 80 year struggle on various fronts in the Middle East. The logic of Long War, from a neocon perspective, is that we are at war with a fifth of the population of the world (Islam) and it will take several decades to kill them all. From a Pentagon perspective the Long War returns the professional military to the job security of the Cold War era which ended abruptly after a profitable 50-year run.

Prior military doctrine held that you identify an enemy and engage in the quickest possible effort to ensure that enemy will never again bother you. Modern strategy is not interested in "winning" a war but in milking the war for as long as possible. Hence we see the US government helping to fund the Taliban and helping to arm them. If the Taliban disappeared tomorrow we would have to invent a replacement, the Pentagon Afghan War strategy requires it.

The goals for the Afghan War are vague to the point of be amorphous. Vice-President Biden says there are no plans for nation building. Yet Gen. Petraeus' counter insurgency strategy is all about building an Afghan governmental structure. Biden thinks the US will not be in Afghanistan for another 10 years. On the ground, Petraeus is stalling security handovers and talking about "process" not "exit." That's NewSpeak for "We're not going anywhere this side of 2050."

Things are no different in Iraq where the talk from the military is of a "long-term partnership" while the President wants a total withdrawal of troops by the end of 2011. The Pentagon is planning to stay in Iraq regardless of what the politicians want and we can expect something will happen in the summer of 2011 that will kill any withdrawal effort. Then there is always Iran, Yemen, Somalia. The possibilities for endless war are endless.

The generals love this Long War idea. It gives them huge budgets, fancy new weapons, and puppet master control over the politicians and diplomats.

To the Pentagon, the Thirty Years War was
woefully short.

Afghan War Diary

The most surprising thing contained in the 92,000 classified document WikiLeaks disclosed on the Afghan War is that nothing there is surprising. There is really nothing there that we didn't already know or could have easily surmised.

• American helicopters are being shot down by portable surface-to-air missiles, just like Russian choppers a couple of decades back. Only Americans would assume the Afghans didn't stockpile their unused Stinger missiles. For Americans most of the fun in a war is you get to buy all new weapons.
• Certainly the niftiest new war toy are the drones. The Air Force even has a recruitment ad where they play up the video game thrill of being a Reaper remote pilot.
  
• Killing civilians creates more insurgents. There is a direct cause and effect here. Foreigners kill a man's family or neighbors and he's going to want revenge. And we are killing a lot of civilians.
  
• Pakistan is not our friend. They have provided safe haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda since 2002. We give money to Pakistan to buy weapons which they, in turn, give to the Taliban.
  
• Afghan opium warlords are the most powerful men in the country.
• The US military covers up war crimes. We did that in Iraq, we did that in Vietnam, why not now?
  

There is nothing we didn't already know. The only things this War Diary does is leave no room for doubts.

This doesn't mean that the Afghan War is a failure. The Afghan War, as it is being run, fits perfectly into the Pentagon's Long War Doctrine that envisions an 80-year long series of colonial and brush fire wars for the United States raging from Beirut to the Pacific Ocean. The goal is war for its own sake - the consumption of weapons so that expensive new weapons must be built.

California Speed Trap

In all my decades driving California freeways I've never seen the likes of this. It seems behind every bridge abutment, every patch of landscaping, there is a Highway Patrol officer with a radar gun.

There is way more than concentration than their holiday drunk driving patrols. There is way more activity than your standard end of the month quota rush.

It's not like we don't need it. Most Californians (those between the ages of 17 and 91) believe the posted speed limit is a suggested minimum below which you should never drive.

Sandra Bullock was just your average California driver.

I'd like to believe the Highway Patrol is concerned about the health and wellbeing of Californians, but I know that's not the case. Most likely is that the CHiPs have turned the entire state into a gigantic speed trap in an effort to balance the state's budget. They can't raises taxes or cut spending any deeper so the only resource left is California's bumper crop of speed demons.

Between the Lines

The more Tim Geithner praises Elizabeth Warren to the media the more likely it is that she will not run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It's a standard political rule.

Rule #32: I'm going to fuck you over so I will at least say some nice things about you first.

The Shirley Sherrod Affair

The Case of Shirley Sherrod is a sign of how cowered Democrats have become by the rightwing slander machine.

A Tea Party racist, Andrew Breitbart, smeared a good, decent, innocent woman because she had spoken at an NAACP banquet and Breitbart hates the NAACP.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack displayed the knee-jerk cowardice of a whipped puppy fired Ms. Sherrod purely on the word of a known liar and without any attempt to discover the actual truth. The NAACP also reacted with knee-jerk cowardice when they condemned Ms. Sherrod even though had they been listening at their own event they would have known that Breitbart's tape was shit.

Now that the truth is getting out we are discovering that Ms. Sherrod is the only hero in this story. The NAACP, at least, has apologized. Vilsack, looking like a weasel, is saying he is "reviewing" her dismissal when he should be abjectly apologizing and begging Ms. Sherrod for forgiveness. (If I were Ms. Sherrod I'd tell Vilsack to go fuck himself but I suspect she is too much of a lady to do that.)

As for Brietbart? He stands by the story, blames someone else, and says his character assassination of Sherrod was all the fault of the NAACP for daring to criticize Tea Party racists like himself.

And what about President Obama who was the real target of Brietbart's lie? He is going to end up passing the buck, blaming Vilsack, and looking like a weakling who can be manipulated by his enemies. This administration, top to bottom, has to grow a backbone or it will continue to be whipsawed by Republican demagogues and liars.

Update: It's good to read that Vilsack manned up and apologized, asked Ms. Sherrod for forgiveness, and has offered her a better job in the department. (I was right, Ms. Sherrod is more a lady than I am a gentleman. She accepted the apology while I would have insisted on a face-to-face meeting to spit in his eye.) I hope the "teachable moment" Vilsack spoke of is that the entire Obama Administration realized that everything coming from Breitbart, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and the rest is unadulterated shit and the only attention that should be paid to it is to throw it back in their faces. (I'm speaking to you, Rahm Emanuel, stop being such a fucking pussy.)

BP Is Criminally Insane

The psychopath is one of the most fascinating and distressing problems of human experience. For the most part, a psychopath never remains attached to anyone or anything. They live a "predatory" lifestyle. They feel little or no regret, and little or no remorse - except when they are caught. They need relationships, but see people as obstacles to overcome and be eliminated. If not, they see people in terms of how they can be used. They use people for stimulation, to build their self-esteem and they invariably value people in terms of their material value. ~ Psychopathic Personality

If you look at it clinically, British Petroleum fits the description of a psychopath. The story about BP faking photographs is just another symptom, compulsive lying. BP published a photo of their oil spill command center but the original photo didn't look busy enough so they photoshopped it. When people spotted the lie BP released "the original" photo only that the metadata seems to show that the original photo dates from 2001 and may not be of the Deepwater Horizon spill at all.

The thing that makes this all such a psychotic act is that they didn't need to lie. If they don't have a command center or if all the monitors are actually showing porn, just don't release a photo at all. No one would have missed it. But, no, they have so show they are engaged, although they are not, by faking photographs. And when they are caught lying they blame someone else (the photographer, although as Americablog points out, no professional would be that sloppy).

If British Petroleum were a person we would know what to do. We would demand it be lock in prison for multiple life terms. BP has killed repeatedly (11 at Deepwater Horizon, an additional 15 in Texas City), they only show remorse for being caught, they value people only for how they can be used for profit. If BP were an individual we would recognize it immediately as a psychopathic mass murderer. We would lock it away forever as an incurable monster.

The New Gilded Age

It's not a new observation that we seem as a country to be reliving the days of the Robber Barons when wealthy corporations and super wealthy individuals ruled the nation, when corrupt politicians were servile tools of the rich, and when all politicians were corrupt.
The 1870's to the 1900's, basically from the Grant to Teddy Roosevelt presidencies, saw a time when governments solely existed for the benefit of business. Politicians and judges were bought and sold as casually as Chippendale chairs. High unemployment was considered good for business because it lowered the price of labor and the more the unemployed suffered the cheaper wages became.

While the unemployed were bettered by suffering, the wealthy were deserving of every subsidy that could be imagined. Taxes and tariffs that burdened the wealthy were evils to be expunged from the body politic. Laws that regulated corporate activities to prevent unfair or dangerous practices were an abomination.

Which is worse, coalminers dying in the tunnels or the owner being forced to spend money to prevent those deaths? Obviously the latter. Regulations impinge on the owner's rights. As for dead miners, with high unemployment there will always be plenty of men available to take their places.

Look at the picture above. How like those Robber Barons are the bankers at Goldman Sachs requiring public tribute in the form of TARP and the AIG bailouts? Now look at the chart below.
It has been more than a century since the disparity between the rich and the rest of us has been this large. The times of great disparity have always marked great economic decline. The times of least disparity always marked the times of greatest prosperity. That is not a coincidence. Prosperity comes when most people have money to spend. When an economy is geared only to support a handful of the very richest the nation as a whole suffers.

It is fair to compare Presidents Obama and Clinton to Grover Cleveland, the only Democrat to hold the presidency during the original Gilded Age. All three were good, intelligent, and honorable men. All three were elected to redress Republican excesses. All three failed that assignment and found themselves going, perhaps unwillingly, with the tide of crony capitalism. (Also, two of the three had sex scandals in their day.)

Cleveland used the Army to crush union strikes at the behest of wealthy bosses. Clinton helped set up the current financial crisis by agreeing with Republicans to deregulate banks. Obama's Treasury Secretary believes the universe revolves around his investment banker friends and isolates himself from competing opinions.

The first Gilded Age was not a happy time for most Americans. Yes, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and other in the elite did great.
They build massive castles to their even more massive wealth. Above is Frederick William Vanderbilt's summer house. The rest of the country suffered economic disaster. The Long Depression (1873 to 1896) spanned 23 years, encompassing most of the Gilded Age.
Homelessness is not something new in America. During the Gilded Age thousands of children slept on the streets. Source: Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890).

Current economic policies, cutting spending to the bone to pay for tax relief for the very wealthy, promises one to two additional decades of high unemployment. Republican policies to end unemployment insurance, certain to be implemented eventually if not soon, will drive millions of small children into the streets.

Remember, this is all to the benefit of the richest of the rich who will see labor costs drop to starvation levels while their smaller taxes will be more than repaid through government largess to corporations.

Additional Reading: Wall Street's Ownership of Government (Salon, 2009)
Political Corruption in the 19th Century (NBC News)
Republicans: Don't Tax the Wealthy or Feed the Hungry (Jonathan Kantrowitz)
Republicans and the Gilded Age (David Offutt)
Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) where one Supreme Court justice (actually just a clerk) rewrote the Constitution to declare corporations are people by misrepresenting the actual ruling of the court through a single sentence in the summary.
Supreme Court Delivers the Goods for Corporations (the Citizens United case, 2010)
The Wealthiest Americans Ever (New York Times, 2007) - spoiler: It's J.D. Rockerfeller.
Gilded Once More (Paul Krugman, 2007)