Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Stealing the family "values": the great morality swindle of 2004
Watch the yokels fight. Red yokels fight Blue yokels. Fight yokels fight.
Culture war that is. That's what the pundit gigglers and "official statement" readers in the corporate media and the multimillionaire religious mountebanks and the right wing think tank remoras and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page swindlers patting their fattened tummies in Manhattan want you to see on your shiny TV.
MSNBC meathead Chris Mathews, last night, on his moronic carnival show Hardball, even went so far as to offer the brilliant observation that no-one with a "southern" accent had voted for Kerry and no-one in the Blue states had voted for the guy with the "southern" accent. Mathews accomplished this marvel of certifiable nonsense while plopped in front of a Red State/Blue State cartoon prop map. Apparently it has never dawned on a dolt like Mathews that the people who live in places like New Orleans LA, for instance, (which voted blue) have "southern" accents. Ditto for any number of other areas in the south (especially urban areas) which Kerry often won. Likewise, many counties in New York state, for instance, came up red. Not many southern accents in upstate NY. So whats really going on here? Why are people like Chris Mathews so eager to keep the pond as stirred up muddy as possible? Well, maybe, while the yokels are slugging it out in the parking lot, the "have-mores" can sneak in the back door and make off with the cash register.
Remember this?: The "Haves" and the "Have-Mores" ~ "Some people call you the elite," remarked Bush "I call you my base." Remember that scene from Michael Moore's F-9/11?
Rick Perlstein has more on this:
Go read the rest of It's the Wealth, Stupid
It's all about the old "fusionist" mind-meld of course.
God, Guns and Greed.
Sound the culture war trumpet - with plenty of accompanying fear, sneer, magic, and noise from the corporate media whore house piano - and fire a few rounds into the air providing plenty of smoke and cover-fire for the advancing pitter patter of little neo-con and libertarian feet. Neither of which would go anywhere by themselves. Without the clamorous distraction of a theatrically orchestrated "faith based" moral-traditionalist hoot and bellow revival show the entire second story crew would never find their way out of their own lobby.
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Culture war that is. That's what the pundit gigglers and "official statement" readers in the corporate media and the multimillionaire religious mountebanks and the right wing think tank remoras and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page swindlers patting their fattened tummies in Manhattan want you to see on your shiny TV.
MSNBC meathead Chris Mathews, last night, on his moronic carnival show Hardball, even went so far as to offer the brilliant observation that no-one with a "southern" accent had voted for Kerry and no-one in the Blue states had voted for the guy with the "southern" accent. Mathews accomplished this marvel of certifiable nonsense while plopped in front of a Red State/Blue State cartoon prop map. Apparently it has never dawned on a dolt like Mathews that the people who live in places like New Orleans LA, for instance, (which voted blue) have "southern" accents. Ditto for any number of other areas in the south (especially urban areas) which Kerry often won. Likewise, many counties in New York state, for instance, came up red. Not many southern accents in upstate NY. So whats really going on here? Why are people like Chris Mathews so eager to keep the pond as stirred up muddy as possible? Well, maybe, while the yokels are slugging it out in the parking lot, the "have-mores" can sneak in the back door and make off with the cash register.
Remember this?: The "Haves" and the "Have-Mores" ~ "Some people call you the elite," remarked Bush "I call you my base." Remember that scene from Michael Moore's F-9/11?
Rick Perlstein has more on this:
Where did the lion's share of the extra votes come from that gave George Bush his mighty, mighty mandate of 51 percent? "Two of those points," Klinkner said when reached by phone, "came solely from people making over a 100 grand." The people who won the election for him—his only significant improvement over his performance four years ago—were rich people, voting for more right-wing class warfare.
[...]
How did the "people voted for the Republicans because of moral values" meme become the gospel truth about this election? The exit poll question, after all, signifies little: If a pollster went up to you and asked what was more important, your moral values or your economic well-being, what kind of cad would you be to tell a stranger that money meant more to you than morals?
All that the message about "moral values" dominating the proceedings last Tuesday means is that the Republicans have succeeded in their decades-long campaign to get what should plainly be called "conservative ideology" replaced, in our political language, by this word "morality." They have reworked the political calculus so thoroughly that liberal definitions of what is or isn't a moral value don't count. It's as if liberals didn't have any morality at all.
It's amazing how many people Republicans have been able to punk with this. Even Senator Charles Schumer, appearing Wednesday night on The Daily Show, said that Republicans won on "these values issues."
Hey, Chuck: Don't fall for their crap, it only encourages them. You have values too.
Go read the rest of It's the Wealth, Stupid
It's all about the old "fusionist" mind-meld of course.
Fusionism, simply put, was the historical juncture at which right-wing activists and intellectuals focused, diversely, on the libertarian, moral-traditionalist, and emerging anticommunist strains of conservative ideology, recognized their common causes and philosophies, and began to fuse their practical agendas. - Roads To Dominion, Sara Diamond, 1995.
God, Guns and Greed.
Sound the culture war trumpet - with plenty of accompanying fear, sneer, magic, and noise from the corporate media whore house piano - and fire a few rounds into the air providing plenty of smoke and cover-fire for the advancing pitter patter of little neo-con and libertarian feet. Neither of which would go anywhere by themselves. Without the clamorous distraction of a theatrically orchestrated "faith based" moral-traditionalist hoot and bellow revival show the entire second story crew would never find their way out of their own lobby.
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