Fear Groupthink

Today's topic is the moronic town hollers and the misinterpretation of them by America's beloved media types.

Yes, of course the Republicans/Conservatives/Neocons/Birthers/Deathers/Teabaggers/Minutemen/Swift Boaters/town hollers/et al are driving us crazy here at Page A-26, but as usual we're almost more distressed by the media coverage than we are with their actual antics. That's because, the flaccid "reporting" on the town hollers, instead of being a spotlight of truth that shames these dead-enders and their big-money enablers into something resembling reality and morality, only serves to mislead and distract by sending those still paying attention down the wrong path like sheep into a loading dock.

Like rattlesnakes, the disingenuous Republicans/conservatives can't really be expected not to do what they do. Just as one wouldn't expect a rattlesnake to suddenly turn into a snuggly pet, one doesn't expect Republicans/Conservatives/Neocons/Birthers/Deathers/Teabaggers/Minutemen/Swift Boaters/et al to suddenly turn into rational, thoughtful, caring beings capable of reasonable discussion on any topic. Like it or not, it's who they are and what they do. Apparently, in modern American society, there is always going to be 25-35% of the population who refuse to accept reality and will ceaselessly continue bleating on and on about Obama's birth certificate or God's views on homosexuality and abortion, guns, or the evil incarnate that is taxes and, gasp, government.

So screw 'em. Those people are unreachable. However, that still leaves 65-75% of this country who theoretically might listen to reason. Except. Except the media proves itself on a daily basis to be either a megaphone for intentional disinformation and propaganda (yes, Fox News, we're looking at you) or an echo chamber of babbling sycophants.

Exhibit one in today's media lambast is the industry-accepted reason for the town hall disruptions: fear.

Sometime in the past few weeks, it was decided by the media types that fear was going to the be the universal descriptor to describe the mind-bogglingly stupid antics of the town hall disruptees. Everybody from Brian Williams to Jon Stewart to Keith Olberman to Rachel Maddow to Bill Maher has been beating the fear horse to death ever since. So much so that the fear explanation has become firmly entrenched in the media's conventional wisdom on the topic and nobody even questions it any more, just simply repeats over and over again that these idiot town hollers are driven by fear, fear, fear! All town hall news stories and commentaries are now built on this thematic foundation.

For Page A-26, it has become useless groupthink, very similar to the "Saddam Hussein is a butcher with WMDs that gassed his own people, is a threat to the very existence of the world, and must be taken down immediately" groupthink that every public commentator and politician (with some exceptions: Bill Maher, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean) was mindlessly parroting in the months preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. This groupthink is why nobody in the media really questioned Bush's bullshit "evidence" and why Bush and his thugs were able to use the media to convince the American public that the Iraq war was necessary.

After reading and considering Joe Bageant's excellent book, "Deer Hunting with Jesus," a piercing explanation of why poor, rural Americans act against their own self-interests by supporting Republican candidates and policies, Page A-26 has developed a different theory about why these town hollers are acting the way they are.

It's not fear that is motivating them to act out, it's empowerment.

These morons are not scared, they are emboldened. The pundits are asserting that the town hollers are afraid of coming changes to their lives that will leave them on the outside looking in. That's totally bass-ackwards thinking. As Bageant points out, these people are already on the outside looking in. They are forgotten nobodies in the age of celebrity worship, their lives just dreary, empty shells of the American dream and they know it.

The Republican/conservative puppetmasters know it too, and they have tapped into the empty lives of these people and offered them a raison d'etre. They get them all riled up on talk radio and Fox News with a lot of lies and misinformation about Obama, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats, and policy issues like healthcare reform, then offer them an opportunity to turn their anger into action through abortion clinic demonstrations, town hall disruptions, and the like.

For the poor dopes who buy into the Republican/conservative crap, they feel like this is their chance to be part of something, to make a difference, to be heard -- to feel powerful.

This is evident in the vehemence and total lack of introspection with which the town hollers proffer their ignorance in public. They feel they are part of something that wants and needs them. This is the same principle that drives people to join gangs -- and churches. The Republican party represents something that loves them, has a place for them, and has a mission for them -- or so they think.

Of course, they are being cynically manipulated by Republican/conservative idealogues who prey on these desperate lost souls and hire PR and marketing firms to shape and sell their messages to the very people who will be most hurt by them: Joe the Plumbers, hockey moms, and the town hollers themselves. In the cruelest of ironies, the town hollers are like ants who take poisoned bait from an ant trap back to the nest and end up killing off their entire colony, themselves included.

So it's not about fear, it's about empowerment. And these town hall fools have been empowered and enabled by the attention they are receiving for their public antics. You can see them growing in confidence, vehemence, and righteousness every second they're in front of a camera or a microphone. Their expressions similar to those of an eight-year-old who looks to his older brother for approval before doing something he knows to be wrong but wants to do anyway to impress the brother and his friends. Seeing that their buffoonery generates the right reaction -- attention -- they forge ahead, louder and dumber and wronger.

This is the kind of artificially invested self-importance wielded by security guards and vice principals, as if somehow their rumpled uniforms or polyester ties give them the right to exert social control well beyond their wisdom, intellect, and morality. Of course, it's the power of the superorganism standing behind them that gives them their arrogant righteousness.

So the town hollers are willing to suspend disbelief and logic to be a part of the Republican/conservative superorganism because it gives them a voice and a role in an American society in which they would otherwise be nameless, faceless drones. The Republican/conservative puppetmasters feed them lies and validate their misconceptions and ignorance, then give them a mission as God's warriors on the front line of patriotism and rugged individualism and point them towards the issue of the moment (abortion, Terry Schiavo, gay marriage, gun control, elective war, healthcare reform).

The town hollers are basically social/political/moral suicide bombers outfitted with explosive ideological vests by the Republican/conservative puppetmasters and loosed into the crowded open-air markets of American public discourse. And the town hollers carry out their missions with the same unthinking certainty and misguided prestige as the manipulated martyrs in Iraq.

But American media thrives on fear and so fear is the reason they have chosen to explain why these town hollers are acting out. Fear of change, fear of black people, fear of losing their place in society, which is something they don't even have to lose because it's already gone.

Too bad it misses the mark. Nope, these town hollers are fueled by the sense of purpose that comes from years of being told by the Republican/conservative puppetmasters that their ignorance is truth and that they can make a difference if only they will force the rest of society to see things as they do.

The vociferousness of voice and action of these town hollers and their ilk, at the behest of the Republican/conservative puppetmasters, has gotten steadily more aggressive in the last 25 years and will continue to do so until two things happen:

1) The Democratic/liberal/progressive leaders understand the disenfranchisement of the town hollers and find a way to reinspire their lives. Page A-26 doesn't have that answer yet, but we can sure as hell tell you it won't happen through condescension, derision, complicated philosophical Senate speak, or the inability to stake out a clear position and then stand behind it with the courage of conviction. Something more akin to rolling up their figurative sleeves and getting into these communities and showing how government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, public education, and so on directly and positively benefit the lives of the town hollers. It will only work if it's as simple as A + B = C. The Democrats/liberals/progressives must find a way to make the town hollers feel just as important and empowered as the Republican/conservative puppetmasters make them feel.

2) Somehow the American media has to be reclaimed from the MBA and Chamber of Commerce crowds. There is no way that Americans can hope to understand what is going on behind the scenes in Congress and the corporate boardrooms when the media is controlled by the very corporate boardrooms that are carving up this country for their own gain. So long as editorial decisions are made based on spreadsheets, political ideology, and ego, there is no hope to pass meaningful healthcare reform or any other publicly beneficial legislation. The media is the only spotlight the American public has, and without it, the roaches will multiply in the dark and end up eating us out of house and home.

The Plot to Attack the United States, er Iran

Bad news America -- bad news world. Dick Cheney's thirty-year priopism for attacking Iran is closer than ever to coming to a climax. He wants this so bad, he can almost smell it with his lizard tongue.

Generally, it's more of the same from the Bush Crime Family and the Cheney neocon-men: we know Iran has nuclear intentions, we know they are supplying weapons and training to insurgents in Iraq, and we know they have designs on your teenage daughters. We have no tangible proof we can show you, but we have plenty of talking heads that will get up and make the unsubstantiated claim. Basically, trust us, would we lie to you?

And just like the run-up to the Iraq war, Administration officials are getting increasingly frustrated with sanctions and other UN methods for dealing with international conflict. So they are looking for some way to justify military action. Make no mistake, justification will be found. More like, justification will be manufactured -- this war is going to happen.

The terrible twosome have been steadily ramping up their anti-Iranian rhetoric for a couple of years now -- from painting Ahmendinajad as a nutball (takes one to know one), to accusations of providing the materials for IEDs, to empty UN resolutions, to hypocritical accusations of state-sanctioned terrorism, to constant lying about Iranian nuclear intentions, and even a super-groovy retro Gulf of Tonkin hoax -- with frustratingly (to them) little to show for it.



Just last month, President Bushmill got up in front of the country and the world and unashamedly claimed that Iran wants "a nuclear weapon to destroy people." Well, maybe he was a little ashamed, but only because the elite liberal press made such a stink out of it. Jeesh, John McCain gets to totter on about "bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran" and nobody bats an eye, but danged if those elitist liberal pinheads committed to defeat in this here war on terra don't get their drawers in a wad when the President says it.

Of course, it doesn't help when dumbshits in the intelligence community publish naive National Intelligence Estimates that contradict every hyperintuitive bone in Bushmill's one-dimensional world. Or when traitorous, disloyal bastards like General Erik Shinsheki and Admiral William Fallon refuse to be used as puppets in Boom-Boom Cheney's bloodthirsty theater of vain.

Earlier this month, Bushmill sent reliable Administration schills, General David "Betray us" Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan "What a crock" Crocker up to Congress to stall for more time on the Iraq issue. Never ones to pass up an opportunity to get a jump start on the next war, Bushmill and The Dick made sure to have Petraeus and Crocker lob Iranian fear bombs whenever possible. "They spoke of Tehran's 'nefarious activities,' its 'malign influence,' and how it posed 'the greatest long-term threat to the viability' of the Baghdad government."

Ever since pronouncing them as a founding member of the Axis of Evil, the Bushmill Administration has had Iran in their sights. The festering sores of Afghanistan and Iraq have kept their murderous passion to a slow burn, but with Dumbya's catastrophe nearing a hard stop in January 2009, it's go time.

Meet the new lies, same as the old lies. Now, just like they did with Iraq, Bushmill and Cheney are strategically positioning their game pieces in advance of the green light for War III: the Iranian Debacle. This week, Admiral Fallon dispatched the aircraft USS Abraham Lincoln -- you remember old honest Abe, right? -- to join the USS Harry Truman in menacing, er "reminding" Iran that as soon as the bloodthirsty cowards of the Bush Administration get their ducks in a row, it's their ass!



Also this week, Pentagon officials are trying to claim that Iran, a Shia state, is providing support for the Taliban, a devout Sunni organization. That'd be like what, Republican members of congress actually supporting legislation proposed by the Democrats? Yeah, right. Predictably, that bullshit has met with some skepticism from anybody with half a brain, but that ain't going to stop Bushmill and The Dick from their bloody ambition.

Public opinion has no relevance to the Bush/Cheney junta because they have no regard for the public. However, low public opinion does make it tougher to run roughshod over the country and the Constitution because it often leads to nagging questions about details (where are the WMD? where is Osama? Will we again be greeted as liberators? How much is this going to cost? Do you have any kind of plan for after the invasion? Do you have any actual evidence of anything?).

Despite the gaping holes in logic and common sense, Bushmill and The Dick still have their media enablers to help make the case for them.

And yet, still nothing. Daaaaamn. What does a corrupt, war-mongering, intentionally incompetent Administration have to do these days to gin up a fake war against a sovereign country that has done nothing to harm or threaten the United States? Oh for those heady post-9/11 days when all Bushmill had to do was hunch his shoulders and go "boo" and he'd have every legislator in the land falling all over themselves to get a piece of the wartime action.

Some like Mother Jones, Dan Froomkin, and Olivier Knox see the process but don't yet see the mechanism. What they need to realize is that the American public and even this weak-kneed Democratic congress won't back any attack on Iran based solely on Administration say-so. No amount of evidence or statements from military officials or hand-wringing or terra'-baiting can overcome this Administration's credibility gap. So how will they do it?

There is only one card left for Bushmill and The Dick to play, and it's the ace of spades: a massive domestic terrorist attack. Hell, it worked once before.

Think back a few years. Despite all the phonied-up evidence about WMD, would America have supported an invasion of Iraq based just on the warmongering of Bushmill and The Dick? Probably not. But supercharged with the emotion of an event like 9/11, and well, the American public will buy anything. So here we go again.

Stock up on your duct tape and plastic sheets Bay Area, because President Bushmill and The Dick have a shitstorm headed your way.

At the danger of being framed by the NSA as a patsy for Bushmill and The Dick's craven plan or winding up an unfortunate "suicide," based on close observation of the right-wing sound machine and a nasty gut feeling, Page A-26 fears the following:

• There will be a large-scale terrorist attack in the United States this year. Like 9/11, it will be an inside job intended to frighten the American public and American politicians into such a frenzied state of panic that they will agree to anything Cheney's neocon-men want. Fox's pompous pompadour John "Kim Il-Jung stole my hair" Gibson has already acknowledged as much on live TV. (When we say "inside job," we don't necessarily mean that American agents actually carried out every detail of the attack. We mean that there was some direct assistance from US operatives, there was some intentional negligence, and there was some strategic inaction -- all designed to "allow" such an attack to occur.)
  
• It will target a major US city. Bill O'Reilly already let slip that the lunatic fringe would be more than willing to sacrifice the other "blue" capital of the country, San Francisco. It will target an iconic yet low-population-density target in the Bay Area such as Coit Tower (O'Reilly's suggestion), Alcatraz, or the Golden Gate Bridge. For maximum effect on morale, we suspect it will be the Golden Gate Bridge -- think of the anti-Olympic flame protest there in April as a test run on the bridge's security.
  
• It will involve a "dirty bomb" in order to substantiate both the Administration's scare tactic of a nuclear Iran and the necessity of the so-called War on Terror.
• It will occur this summer, most likely after the Democratic National Convention in late August and before the Republican National Convention in early September. Such timing will give McCain the Main Stream Media's (MSM) undivided attention and effectively put him in the middle of the action, compared to the Democratic nominee who will have no access to the decision-making process or the associated spotlight.
• As with 9/11, immediate and irrefutable "evidence" will surface linking the attack to Iran, most likely the elite Al-Quds brigade, which despite being a unit of the Iranian military, is still somehow considered a terrorist organization.
  
• Suspects in the attack will be quickly identified, almost too quickly, but we will soon learn that they were either killed in the blast or have somehow already left the country. Dead (and make-believe) men tell no tales, right, so no use looking for anybody.
• As with 9/11, the boisterous choir of jingoistic vitriol from the right-wing sound machine will make any quest for the truth not only impossible, but treacherously unpatriotic.
• And like 9/11, there will be an immediate flood of emergency wartime legislation designed to give Bush and his Republican successor free rein to act unilaterally in response.
  

Such an incident will accomplish the following for the Bush/Cheney neocon-men and their corporate collaborators.

• It will ensure the election of a Republican president in 2008.
• It will fulfill Cheney's 30-year boner for revenge on Iran.
• It will open up the Iranian oil fields for corporate plunder.
• It will further enable the neocon-men's dream of a "democratic" Middle East by making it possible for the US to establish yet another puppet regime in the region.
  
• It will further expand US military presence in the Middle East.
• It will take all public and MSM attention away from all the other crimes and constitutional depravities of the Bush Administration.
• It will continue indefinitely the plunder of the US Treasury by the Bush Crime Family's profiteering cronies in the military/industrial complex.
  

So there it is. Unless the Democrats in Congress grow a sac or the American people pull their heads out of their jingo-holes, we will have ourselves another unprovoked invasion of a sovereign Middle Eastern country and another interminable war for profit and pride.

As Bushmill and The Dick tried to tell us before they invaded Iraq, we cannot wait to attack because the final proof could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. So for War #3, they are going to combine the last two steps in the run-up to this new fake war: a mushroom cloud to prove their point.

Heads-up America, the writing is on the wall.