I will state this just once: Stealth is the key to vanquish your enemy or take your prey. With that said, I will venture further by stating flatly that the Republican Party, their followers, and the associated fringe wing nuts which would include Tea Party ilk, are engaged in anything but stealth. Their opposition is beyond anything making for good debate. For all intents and purposes I hear the rattling of sabers and the blood hungry cries of people who are scared shitless of their own shadows. If it wasn’t so intensely disturbing to watch this paranoid mania unfolding it would be absolutely hilarious. However, I am fearful that this may very well be the harbinger of things to come. So be it.
The simple fact that these loud, obnoxious, disruptive, obtuse and obvious criers of . . . well, I’m not sure what it is exactly it is that they’re ranting about any more . . . nonetheless, “those people” – are anything but stealthy and have really only succeeded in painting targets on themselves. I do believe that the astute among us are also the calmer and more rational elements of our society. We (I would hope) have the presence of mind to conduct ourselves in a more discriminating manner: understanding stealth as being one method advantageous to our mission. That “mission” is to hold down the fort as it were.
I see that we have the responsibility now of bringing our country out of the depths of ignorance and fear where it has been for the last decade. If and when we are beset by a civil war it’ll be important to lay low and act with purpose. Those noisy blithering idiots out there inciting the riot will be the first ones against the wall when the revolution they so desperately want to have – comes to pass. I will never understand their precipitous and provocative behavior. Don’t they understand that in this society that worships the cult of personality, that one day you are a hero and within 24 hours you can be public enemy number one?
Seriously, look at Tiger Woods. One day he is beyond reproach and the next day the wolves descend upon him. Sarah, are you paying attention? Rush? Helllloooooooo, anybody home? Guess not. I don’t like to be pious but you’re not going to be able to say I didn’t warn you.
The best analogy I can think of is the GnOP sounds like a bunch of Baghdad Bob’s. Remember the Iraqi foreign minister that was so confident that the US military was going to be crushed by Saddam’s forces. Well unbridled confidence when you are facing ultimate defeat just makes you look worse when you lose. The GnOP more than the Democrats were all in on HCRs failure and worse unlike the Democrats that modified their strategy after teabagger Brown’s election in MA, the GnOP is sticking with their failed strategy with saying they are going to repeal HCR when it just ain’t gonna happen. Fortunately for Democrats the GnOP is not only filled with vitriol and negativity they are so unreasonable they can’t come up with a winning strategy.
Viterperation:
Excellent piece. I just hope they are brought down before they can tear a fissure in this country as big as the Grand Canyon, which btw they claim was formed in 6 days.
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
– Shelley, “Ozymandias”
Superb! Thank you Whatsthat!
Grandiosity is nothing new. Falling by the way is also not new.
Thanks for the really cool words. I remember just before the storm in early 90s a group called Alice In Chains put out an album and on it was a song called “Man in the Box.”
At the time I was working in a machine shop and I had a job that had me in the office doing CAD work. In this office was my boss and his wife. I admit I was a bit naive and perhaps ignorant back in those days however, it didn’t take me long to sense there was some agenda other than machine shop business. Indeed – these two “small business owners” seemed to be concerned with things like abortion and Jesus and taxes.
I quietly smirked when the Alice In Chains song played on the radio out in the shop and could be easily overheard in the office. The words filtered through the air and landed upon the ears of the bosses wife. Her reaction was precious:
I’m the man in the box
Buried in my shit
Won’t you come and save me, save me
Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut?
Jesus Christ, deny your maker
He who tries, will be wasted
Feed my eyes now you’ve sewn them shut
I’m the dog who gets beat
Shove my nose in shit
Won’t you come and save me, save me
Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut?
Jesus Christ, deny your maker
He who tries, will be wasted
Feed my eyes now you’ve sewn them shut
Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut?
Jesus Christ, deny your maker
He who tries, will be wasted
Feed my eyes now you’ve sewn them shut
In these days when the Right Wing is purveying their self-righteous sensibilities once again with a particular fervor, I look back at that time in the office with some fondness. I still admire Alice In Chains and the message they were giving us back then. Seems good now too.
Love that song and Alice in Chains. They probably did my favorite MTV Unplugged performance of all time.
My #2 Unplugged performance. But, my top three all be Seattle bands.
Let me guess Nirvana was #1 for you.
That poem and T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland influenced this song and indeed the whole album it is from :
httpsh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWvOHT0zfXY
I think that within months, the twisted momentum of hatred and lies will screw the GOP and Baggers into the ground.
In the short term, negative campaigning works. In the long term, when people learn they have been lied to and dishonestly frightened and manipulated, they turn away.
The Repubs screaming “Liar!” and “Baby Killer!” and calling Obama a Hitler who is trying to destroy America, they have invalidated themselves as being honest or rational enough to lead this nation and I think a majority will see it that way by 2012, if not by November.
I do find it hard to believe that any responsible person
would buy into the repub spew machine
but nevertheless they have an audience.
So if there is one thing to know for sure,
Dems need to be fully aware that
They will stop at nothing
No lie is beyond the pale
No tactic off limits
and leave nothing to guesswork.
Excellent observations, Vitupe!
As for the stealth part, this is where SueinCA comes in when she gets to “The Family”. Too many of the religious right are swept up in the End Times frenzy (I just read a delicious evaluation of them – calling them “rapture ready”!) and in the manifest ugliness of anti-Americanism to be collectively dangerous. They are losing support because of their brutality.
The Family, however, IS capable of deep and dangerous conspiracies. I think Jeff Sharlet has not even scratched the surface in his terribly scary book. Linking various historical actors, we can see that Family supporters were also involved in the attempted coup against FDR, were supporters of Hitler and fascism in general, and that the Family has deep and abiding ties to the CIA. What ELSE they may have done is pure speculation, but they are deeply engaged in support for tyrants this nation is often working to repudiate but that they continue to fund and endorse.
One wonders if their dab hand was in our own national tragedies.
And they are quiet. I have done corporate power research for decades but never answered the “who is behind” question until Sharlet’s book. I have dealt with the obvious religious right also for decades, and never heard of The Family until Sharlet’s articles in Harper’s. I know some of the players, but I’d never seen the depth of these people’s involvement until the last few years. They are stealth personified, and I truly fear them. They believe nothing, are not interested in being personally ‘rapture ready’ since they are more like Cheney and the neocons in desiring an empire here on earth. Religion is a cover, not a belief. So shining the light of day on them is HUGELY important. And Sue is about to do that, along with what Sharlet has already uncovered.
Full disclosure, full exposure is what shrivels the stealth operators.
Absolutely CL. I am with you in the fear of these people. They have money, power and are connected all over the world. They have worked with brutal dictators like Suharto, Siad Barre and Ferdinand Marcos. There is also a charge that Richard Halverson who founded World Vision and was a Chaplain in the Senate for years, was a CIA front.
When you operate in the shadows, you are doing something wrong.
Vit excellent point. What they are doing may give them attention but that could be their downfall as well. The great middle of America hates radicals and they are radicalizing the GOP more and more. They will probably make some short term gains but even David Frum admitted Americans don’t like to vote for angry people.
Fundies of any stripe always have the loudest voice. It takes stealth to tactfully exclude them from the dialogue. Then you will see them flailing about trying to regroup while you calmly mop up.
Mainstream media has turned the cult of personality into “The Cult.” And that is what the republicans have become and what the tea bag partiers are fast becoming. Fringe fundie groups on the margin of society.
Just a heads up. I think you mean Tiger Woods was beyond reproach.
Thanks for the edit 🙂