"The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes."
John MacFarlane on stuff, things
An incomplete index of what John is doing right now and a little bit before right now. And possibly a little bit before that.
"How long ago was it that a black woman would be denied entrance to a whites-only restroom? Well, at one point in the afternoon, a white woman wearing a shirt that said “Kill Fags,” which appeared to be a homemade silkscreen job, felt a similar call of nature. At the door of [A LOCAL SPORTS BAR], she met Matt [LAST NAME REDACTED], one of the bar’s managers. He told her that she could not use the restroom.
“So you’re refusing?” she asked.
“Yes,” Matt said. “There’s no public option here.”
“Bastard,” she said.
“I can do you one better,” Matt said. “I suck cock.”
He then put his tongue in his cheek and cupped his hand, moving it back and forth in front of his mouth in the internationally-recognized gesture for fellatio.
“I’m one of those,” he said, pointing at her shirt.
She left to find a bathroom more accommodating to her sort."
“So you’re refusing?” she asked.
“Yes,” Matt said. “There’s no public option here.”
“Bastard,” she said.
“I can do you one better,” Matt said. “I suck cock.”
He then put his tongue in his cheek and cupped his hand, moving it back and forth in front of his mouth in the internationally-recognized gesture for fellatio.
“I’m one of those,” he said, pointing at her shirt.
She left to find a bathroom more accommodating to her sort."
"The alternative explanation — that a free-market, consumer-addicted, image-obsessed society created by a certain stage of capitalism creates a society where a narcissistic style is the norm rather than the exception — could not be considered. Why? Because it would suggest that free market liberalism and cultural conservatism are in total contradiction — and since their fusion is the core fantasy on which the contemporary right is founded, such thoughts must be screened out."
From Modern Art Notes. Amazing.
"He is insistent that generalities should be avoided, not least the “normative idea all Israelis are exposed to: that all Arabs hate the Jews and all Arabs want to drive the Jews into the sea”."
Israeli dissident Uri Davis in a profile in the Observer.
"It was a Republican, the lawyer Joseph Welch, who delivered the coup de grâce to Senator McCarthy when he said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Where is the Republican who would dare say that to Rush Limbaugh, who has compared the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler?"
"What’s happened now is the technology of protest has metastasized, and it threatens to overwhelm the relationship between members of Congress and their constituents."
The shit going on at “town hall” meetings in the US is, of course, crazy. But, as this article notes, it can be pretty easily understood as the next logical phase in the evolution of US politics, as things get more polarized, more dumbed-down, more manipulative, and less like anything anyone was thinking about when they started thinking about democracy.
"Gun enthusiasts have been on a shopping spree since the election, with some areas of our country reporting percentage sales increases in the mid-to-high double digits, recession be damned."
There has been a lot of talk about the increasingly scary noises being made by the extreme right in the U.S., and the slow (?) creep of their extremism into the mainstream right. But Frank Rich’s NYT Column might be the scariest one I’ve read.
