I’m seriously just sick of lunatics. I really am. I simply can not believe people are freaking out over Obama addressing schoolchildren. As unhinged as I thought some on the left were in the early Bush years, they have nothing on the right-wing noise machine. They’ll just say or do anything. They have no shame. And I’m sick of reading “respectable” Republicans who fail to call their own party out on this crap. They sit by and feed this nonsense, but I’m supposed to get my knickers in a twist because a liberal blogger said the “f” word of Van Jones called Republicans “assholes?”
Can we just start the civil war now so it might be over by the 2012 election?
Comrade Jake
We’re planning to pull our daughter out of pre-school, out of concern she’ll interact with the galactically stupid.
JK
Wingnut on Super Strength Steroids vents about Obama’s Speech to Students
Make September 8 a Family Day!
Written by Linda Schrock Taylor
Wednesday, 02 September 2009 01:44
I wouldn’t send my child to school on September 8, unless I had a strong death wish for America. On September 8, President Obama will be broadcasting a prepared speech to every school child, grades K-12, in America. On September 8, Obama the Change Agent begins his takeover of the schools…but not with my child, and hopefully not with yours.
Consider the implications of his grand plan. In a style typical of dictators, he is preempting the communications into every school in the nation. He has not sought the permission of parents or local school boards. He will not sign in at the office to get clearance and a visitor badge as everyone else must do. As a parent, I expect the schools to notify me in writing if a controversial person or group would be making any kind of presentation. I could then decide whether to keep my child home, or ask that he be sent to the library to read during that time. But Barack Obama, with one huge broadcast, will dismiss the rights of everyone, ignore laws, and kick dust on the Constitution.
Parents will not be warned — except by a few like myself, Jeff Bennett at the Federal Observer, and others who stumbled upon the information that was sent to schools and teachers in advance of this controversial speech. The State will attempt to defend itself by pointing out that Obama will be encouraging children to work hard in school and learn all they can for a global economy. (He will cross his fingers behind his back and then tell how he approves of citizens being well informed, better educated, and more active, but Acorn thugs at health care town halls have already proven such talk to be a travesty, at best.)
The problem with the usurpation of nationwide instructional time on September 8 is not so much the message, but the manner. What gives Obama the legal right to trod upon the Constitution in this, and other matters? Nothing gives him the right…
There is no time like September 8, 2009, to begin homeschooling your children. There are a multitude of successful examples to follow…
…On September 8, keep your children out of school and take the whole family out for a great day of adventure and real learning. Better yet, on September 8, keep your children out of school and homeschool them for at least kindergarten through grade 12.
Linda Schrock Taylor is a reading specialist and former public school teacher. She teaches English composition at a state university.
Source: http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5307
freelancer
Okay, but I pick the union side.
JK
Another Wingnut on Super Strength Steroids vents about Obama’s Speech to Students
WorldViewWeekend
By Brannon Howse
On September 8th at 1pm EST, President Obama will be the first U.S. president to speak to America’s school children in an address that is directed specifically to them. I would not agree with this even if it were President Ronald Reagan delivering the speech. It is highly offensive for our children and our schools to be used by the President to push a political agenda. The U.S. Department of Education event put out an activity package for students to use before, during, and after the speech including making posters that will hang on the walls for several days. I read the activity sheets and I noticed that the questions students were being asked assumed that they would agree with whatever the President’s agenda might be. The questions were written in such a way as to discourage dissent and to seek group consensus on the President’s agenda.
Parents from all political parties should be offended and outraged by this disrespect of parental authority and personal family values and should reveal their disapproval by removing their child from any class period that will broadcast this speech. Take your child or children to lunch and then return them to school when the propaganda program has ended.
Sadly, most Americans do not know history and thus they do not understand why children should not be used or recruited for a political, worldview agenda by any national leader. These children do not belong to the State as the humanist elite choose to believe. The people that do not think this is what is happening are only revealing their ability to be easily manipulated.
President Obama understands that a revolution, as called for by his hero, Saul Alinsky, requires three things. First they need a crisis, secondly they need the youth (for sure the youth of the middle class), and thirdly they need an impotent church that does not oppose them. In my new book, Grave Influence, I explain how all three of these ingredients are coming together to make this perhaps the most dangerous time in America’s history…
Brannon Howse is an author, talk-show host, columnist and President of Worldview Weekend
Source: http://patriotsandliberty.com/?p=6522
JK
We’ll do it live, damn it
flounder
So far Pawlenty takes the cake in my book:
http://is.gd/2SZ35
I can’t decide if implying that the prez is taking the names of 4th graders for some sinister purpose is more insane or treasonous or both.
ominira
Republicans are assholes. Van Jones spoke the truth.
Here’s an email I got from DiFi yesterday (in response to a message I sent early August) on health care reform:
demkat620
I am calling the school district Tuesday and telling them I expect my children to hear every word my president has to say.
It is time to push back and end this crap. Enough. If your kids are that delicate, keep them home with you where you can teach them about the flat earth and Jesus riding a dinosaur into Jerusalem.
Enough.
r€nato
You know, Hitler liked to speak to the schoolkids as well.
Do I have to draw you a picture?
EvolutionaryDesign
I hear ya John. I’m ready to call America a failed experiment. I don’t think we can turn this jaloppy around anymore.
David
They’ve rationalized the lying and the just-willing-to-say-anything-and-everything-no-matter-how-ridiculous.
freelancer
@JK:
“You can’t even get it right after 5 takes, why would I agree to do it live?”
“I’ll write and we’ll do it live!”
“You can’t even read it, how are you gonna write it?!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5tVxi6iCXM
“Do you just blow-dry your scalp until it resembles a coconut?”
MikeJ
I don’t recall the left being really unhinged during the Bush years. I’m sure that there was a guy with a sign at an anti war rally somewhere, but I don’t recall members of congress, or the “liberal media” saying much of anything.
Dave C
Thanks, John. I share your extreme frustration. If this shit keeps up, I’m worried that I’ll have become a misanthropic curmudgeon before I reach the age of 30.
mai naem
I posted this yesterday. My sister volunteers at my niece’s school in the front office. She said the principal pulled aside volunteers to tell them that the kids don’t have to watch the speech. They’ve been getting enough phone calls that the principal had to set up an alternative to the president’s speech. One parent even took time out of his day to come in to talk to the principal to ensure that his child wasn’t exposed to the socialist Obama.
General Winfield Stuck
My Code Pink Commando Cadres are itching for some action, sir. Just say the word El Presidente Cole, and the wingnuts will know the wrath of Mommy Power.
ellaesther
Oh, where oh where are you, license to kill time?
Has anyone seen license? Did anyone who saw license get to tell him/her that I gave him/her a huge shout-out today? ABOUT THIS VERY TOPIC? (So now I’m not even OT!)
I was at a friend’s house celebrating the birthdays of two of our group and enjoying the lovely weather and companionship, and your whatnot, and bam, someone mentioned that in our school district (apparently) parents have been told that they can remove their kids from the classrooms if they want to — AND I LIVE IN QUITE PROBABLY THE MOST LIBERAL DISTRICT OF THE DEEPLY BLUE STATE OF ILLINOIS WHENCE THE PRESIDENT SPRUNG!!
I sort of lost my shit on my lovely friends. Thankfully, they were right there with me. If perhaps not so loud or so given to cursing.
Rosali
This uplifting interview by an 11 y.o. from FL, Damon Weaver, is what got the wingnut ball rolling. The FL GOP chair saw it and ran wild with the indoctrination accusations.
JayMi
A couple of points:
1. This whole Van Jones smear thing seems like revenge by the Glenn Beck brigade for the successful Color of Change boycott.
2. My theory is that the nation shocked itself when we elected President Obama.
3. The full wingnut craziness that did not come out during the election has now exploded. It’s kinda like a patient comes out of surgery feeling no pain before the anesthetic wears off. Once it does…..it hurts like a mofo. The pain seems to build up and hurt twice as much due to the medication.
Have a good Labor Day vacation, y’all.
Shinobi
Can I just say “UGH NOT THIS STUPID FUCKING GRAPH AGAIN!”
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/09/the-data.html
Every time someone abuses statistics for their own ends, a Statistician kills a Republican. They’d better quit it or soon we will be a 1 party state. (Or even more of one than we already are.)
arguingwithsignposts
@JK:
The irony of this is just beyond astounding.
arguingwithsignposts
why, oh why is my comment in moderation?
And, as this is an open thread: Tuna steaks, bitchez! I’ve got peppercorn, some corn on the cob and olive oil and a pan. tonight is cooking experiment! Pray for my poor skillz.
SIA aka ScreamingInAtlanta
This really sickens me. Like some others have said here, after a while it gets really depressing. If we had a serious media, Ifeel i could somehow deal with the surreal right-wing universe as an unfortunate entity separated from myself. As it is, they feel like an ever-encroaching monolith blotting out civilized society. The good news, my husband has always wanted to move to Ireland.
ellaesther
@arguingwithsignposts: Did you say s h o e s?
Dearie me. Dearie, dearie me. S h o e s will be the end of us all, do you not know that? Sigh. The innocent always suffer the most.
JK
Song for Obama staffers who created the 63 question application form http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/13apply_questionnaire.pdf for prospective White House employees but forgot to include a question asking “Have you ever signed a petition?”
Questions 67 and 68 – Chicago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3NMszrfjio
Songs for 9/11 truthers
What is Truth? – Johnny Cash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVjfPuXiwUg&feature=PlayList&p=526415B144B5E8FF&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=45
Gimme Some Truth – John Lennon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTzZz9Tea_U
Be True – Bruce Springsteen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOZ_6M8YcQs
Song for Birchers, Birthers, and other assorted Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh Following Wingnuts
Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues – Bob Dylan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnZoHzFDaI8
R-Jud
@ Cole: “I’m seriously just sick of lunatics. I really am.”
I am drinking and listening to Warren Zevon. It’s kinda helping.
Brachiator
Constitutionally speaking, isn’t there supposed to be a separation of wingnut and state?
Jorge
Living in rural Georgia is no fun right now…
I’ve gotten to the point in the gym were I can only use certain treadmills because if not I have Glenn Beck and his chalk board staring me in the face. Though there is something surreal, profound and funny about listening to Green Day’s American Idiot while watching Fox News.
I go into doctor’s offices to do sales calls* and instead have to listen to differing doctors go on for 45 minutes about topics such as the evils of socialism, the “blue gum” POTUS, and militant Islamic training camps supposedly two counties over. Oh yeah, and there is nothing like hearing a person with a license to cut you open snicker when a speaker mentions evolution during an educational program. My own friggin doctor believes that the earth is 10,000 years old and there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark.
My one silver lining is that I know A) I live in the Bible Belt and B) most of the folks having these world class fights are white adults born in the early 1970s or earlier. So, maybe this is the last gasp of this brand of American Idiots.
General Winfield Stuck
@Brachiator:
I think the state has undergone Mitosis and now are two.
Ejoiner
I’ve always believed that we should engage in meaningful and constructive dialogue and just have a lot of patience. But lately, after a summer of…complete hate and insanity…I just sit and stare (mostly at the Facebook listers). I don’t have the energy to “discuss” anything with people this piss-ass ignorant and hateful. The worst are the “Christians” who argue that Jesus really didn’t mean we were supposed to help the poor and needy, just the ones who worked hard and deserved it. There’s a special level in hell for people like that.
So, yeah, I’m kinda done with the whole “we’re all Americans” thing. Some people are just worthless. And evil.
JenJen
I’m friendly with a lot of teachers, and you know, what we’re hearing isn’t even the half of it. My friends tell me people have lost their damned fool minds; they’re calling administrators non-stop; they’re sending threatening letters to the point of harrassment; they’re getting shitty with other parents at soccer games and meetings… all to stop whatever school district they’re targeting from showing President Obama’s address on Tuesday.
And even more depressing than that? It’s working. Administrators are absolutely buckling under the pressure.
HyperIon
@ellaesther: no, it’s the KIND of reading person Linda Schrock Taylor is.
spe c_i_a_l_i_s t
slag
Honestly, I’ve been at this point for about two weeks now. So much so that they’re starting to turn me into one of them. This aggression will not stand, man.
Violet
@JK:
This is so much fail on so many levels. President Obama is NOT “the first U.S. President to speak to America’s school children in an address that is directed specifically to them.” And Saint Ronald DID deliver a speech to schoolchildren.
I swear these folks wouldn’t know reality if it hit them with a two-by-four. They’d swear it was Jesus whacking them upside the head for visiting a dinosaur exhibit.
arguingwithsignposts
@ellaesther: No s_h_o_e_s. I was responding to https://balloon-juice.com/?p=26393&cpage=1#comment-1355353 .
Moderation warning: I think it was the use of the word “spec ial ist”, not soc ia list.
R-Jud
@Jorge:
I have always wanted to corner one of these people and say, okay, which dinosaurs? I really do not think T-Rex would a) fit onto an ark with the dimensions given in Genesis or b) eat straw for forty days and forty nights.
But I resist, because I know they’ll have a rationalization: “Jesus did it!” or, “What do you think happened to the unicorns?”
Thomas
While flipping through the channels yesterday I came across CNN Headline news covering this as though it was totally legitimate. They said critics say the President is trying to “indoctrinate” kids, without any hint of skepticism. I understand it is important to present both points of view but somewhere you have to draw the line and add some context to the story.
MikeJ
@HyperIon: I emailed Cole telling him how to fix that problem. Might have wound up in his email spam filter though.
JK
@arguingwithsignposts:
I almost fell out my chair when I read that Linda Schrock Taylor is a teacher. She and Brannon Howse are part of Glenn Beck’s tinfoil hat brigade.
“It’s time for Texans to secede from Rick Perry” – Kinky Friedman
freelancer
@JenJen:
If were a teacher right now, bartender’s would be my best friends too.
John Cole
@MikeJ: I got it. The blogmistress is busy with her husband’s surgery, but she said she is goingto do all the rebuilding sometime soon.
Sloth
You know, sometimes you wonder what they will do to top the crazy.
And really, on the Palin Scale, this is a fairly rational thing to say. I mean, really, he’s just suggesting that the president of the United States wants to collect the names of fourth graders for some nefarious purpose. No biggy.
But this is one of their serious politicians. A fucking sitting governor.
The mind boggles. On a daily basis.
General Winfield Stuck
The more I think about it, it seems to me the act of removing children from school for the purpose of shielding them from an elected president, that is by all measure in good standing morally and legally, albeit with proposals he campaigned on clearly that some people disagree with, is as close to a civil act of war as I have experienced living in this country.
These parents and others are in effect removing these kids from the union as it currently is.. They are removing them from the flag and constitution. And everyone knows that parents often live vicariously thru their kids, so what they are saying is I quit America. I no longer share the dream and future the founders gave us. Sad, but not unexpected, as it has happened before. Obama having Lincoln as a role model may turn out to be tragically prescient after all.
freelancer
@freelancer:
bartender’s = bartender is. Goddamnit.
http://wordsplosion.com/
MikeJ
@John Cole: Glad to hear you got it, sorry to hear about her husband. Didn’t want to nudge you on it because I’d hate the idea of pushy people telling *me* how to run my site.
Joel
“Walk a mile in a man’s shoes before you judge him”.
I’m thinking about doing this for Glenn Beck. Does anyone know where I can get an ample supply of methamphetamines and LSD?
arguingwithsignposts
Via GraphJam, I have created a venn diagram that I believe explains the entire phenomenon.
Take a look.
JK
@Brachiator:
We’re going to Hell in a Bucket, but I’m not yet enjoying the ride.
@Violet:
For wingnuts like Taylor and Howse, nothing counts as a fact unless it’s spoken by Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, Dobbs, or Savage.
Mark S.
@arguingwithsignposts:
Linda Schrock Taylor also is a Bircher. If you want an easy A in her class, write about how Ike was a Communist.
I don’t ever want these assholes in power again. I would seriously consider leaving the country.
arguingwithsignposts
I created a venn diagram that I think explains the whole thing. View it here.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mark S.: @JK: What I want to know is what “state university” is she teaching at? I want to know so I can never apply to teach there, or – fsm forbid – send my children there.
Demo Woman
I went to the grocery store and purchased carrot cake, chips, onion dip and beer. I’m ready for the revolution. Actually I had planned to buy pecan pie, fritos, rotel tomatoes and velvetta, so I did show some restraint.
It’s like we have been invaded by aliens and there is no where to turn.
We need Tunch and Lily!
gnomedad
I suppose to these guys, being pro-education is a controversial position. Facts being liberally biased and all. Equal time for teh stoopid!
JK
My sympathies go out to the sane, reality based residents of Texas
Rick Perry: “While President Obama talking directly to school children could be a memorable moment in their young lives, I am troubled that local school boards and superintendents were not involved in the process. State law gives parents the discretion over whether they think this is appropriate for their children. I hope schools will provide a suitable alternative for students not participating in this event. I also hope that this is not an indication of the federal government further encroaching on states’ authority over education.”
Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I share the concerns of many parents about the President addressing schools in a way that leaves little choice for parents if the speech includes a political agenda. The original worksheet put out by the Department of Education raised this possibility and caused a legitimate public outcry.”
h/t http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2009/09/03/perry_troubled_by_rollout_of_o.html
JenJen
@freelancer: I haven’t been a bartender for awhile now; I’m more on the management-side of the Food & Beverage biz. But I do keep a hand in it so I can keep up on my skillz.
I don’t think I could handle being a full-time bartender these days. I had to endure the Chimpy Years, and the bar chatter during those days almost did me in. I can’t imagine what these drunken assholes sound like now.
arguingwithsignposts
@Shinobi:
I liked this comment over at OW, speaking of the difference between infrastructure spending and tax cuts:
Makewi
I see no difference between the insanity that was going on in the Bush years and what is going on now. The only difference is which group is doing the freaking out.
arguingwithsignposts
@Makewi:
David? David Broder? Is that you? How you been?
freelancer
@JenJen:
I think the majority of low-info / apathetic voters and just population in general is starting to get disgusted with what is going on. They may not pay too much attention to politics, and on a national level, that gets like 3 minutes of coverage in a 22 minute live local newscast. I think the American people know batshit crazy when we see it. Trouble is, we’re also kind of attracted to it. Like watching a trainwreck.
ellaesther
@arguingwithsignposts: Oh, now that’s just too right! (I do love a good Venn diagram!)
ellaesther
A PSA for my fellow Balloon Juicers:
/clears throat/
Trolls may be safely ignored! While rule #1 of the internet is “Do Not Feed The Trolls,” the truth is that often, one may simply ignore them, as well! See a familiar name? Skip to the next post! Do your heart and your head-desking forehead a favor.
It’s what all the cool kids do!
Demo Woman
@ellaesther: and take deep breaths. Thanks for the comments.
freelancer
My parents, for instance are intelligent low-info voters. They have historically backed Republican candidates and self-identify as leaning to the right. They tend to be skeptical and disappointed in every candidate because of a general disgust with politicians. These teabaggers are making them think twice. Peak Wingnut will happen when people who are otherwise too busy to pay attention to a political fight, look at the insane core of their own party, and say they’ve had enough.
Shinobi
@arguingwithsignposts: So true. I’m so glad some people still have some sense remaining.
John Cole
Congratulations, Mr. Broder.
I was on the other side, and it was different for several reasons:
1.) It really was the fringe during the first few months, and they were ignored. This time around, the Republican leadership IS THE FRINGE.
2.) The left wasn’t packing heat and plotting secession.
3.) The media marginalized the fringe then, now they treat them seriously.
4.) The fringe was protesting an pointless war based on lies. Now the fringe is protesting steps to restore the economy, attempts to reform health care, and the President speaking to schoolkids.
Also, the fringe turned out to be right about just about everything.
Now stop with the BS.
John Cole
I see I am not the only one to make the Broder connection.
General Winfield Stuck
Normally true, but sometime me heart and head wants to but heads with goopers. Though this particular troll is so low rent, it’s mostly a waste of time.
ellaesther
@John Cole: (Ah but you’re completely undermining my “just ignore the trolls” PSA, and intimating that in fact, the cool kids engage with trolls in an intelligent and witty fashion…. Damn you Cole! /looks to ceiling cam, shakes fist/)
PS So, how’s the cold today?
JGabriel
John Cole:
We weren’t unhinged, as subsequent events and information have pretty much confirmed.
.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Oops, you already got there. Never mind.
.
John Cole
@ellaesther: Feeling better. This is turning into one of those really irritating not feeling quite right for a week minor colds, rather than a knock you on your ass for two days and then you feel better affairs.
ellaesther
@John Cole: Ah, well. I hope it clears itself up and moves on very soon indeed! My theory is that if you catch one at the start of fall, you’re good and done for the season. It’s not science, but it is comforting. For the time being.
Allan
This middle-aged unfit gay male is ready to lie through his teeth to enlist in the army when Civil War II – The Texas Edition commences.
I look forward to bloodying my bayonet with the entrails of as many traitors as possible, and can’t wait until Dallas is napalmed. I want to see video of little Bubba and Jesus Sue running screaming with their flesh falling off in chunks past the megachurches of Plano.
So yeah, I’m about done with wingnuts too.
gwangung
@Allan:
Some folks are gonna be REAL surprised when they find out how many liberals support the functional form of gun control (“I hit what I aim at.”)
JenJen
@freelancer: I know a handful of people who pulled a Cole and left the batshit GOP right around the same time he did, for the same reasons. And they are rightly disgusted by what’s going on now.
What continues to surprise me is, well, where is the sanity? Isn’t there a huge opening here for a sane Republican to start shooting this nonsense down, and make a real name for him/herself? I mean, when Joe Scarborough is the only Republican on TV even saying “BOO” to these people, we have a problem.
I have my days. This is one of those “I don’t like my fellow countrymen” days. This education speech thing has just really sent me over the edge.
Makewi
@John Cole:
You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but you are suffering from a very selective memory on this. I do understand that you now are very much in agreement with the arguments that were being made by “the fringe”, but that doesn’t mean what you wrote is true. The difference is you.
JGabriel
r€nato:
Not that funny, once you remember that Hitler in fact had a Mickey Mouse like character that spouted anti-Jewish propaganda in cartoons for children. So, yes, Hitler did extend the propaganda to kids, and if the conservatives haven’t hit upon equating that to Obama’s speech yet, they will.
.
freelancer
@JenJen:
Here’s a question for any of the Boomers here. I’m 27, so my knowledge of the 60s is historical and clinical. Were the 60s this nuts in terms of a divided nation and civil unrest?
Or did I just pull a Hoekstra, and this is actually very teeny-tiny compared to the violence and general malaise the country saw then?
sashal
is this guy Makewi for real?
Would you, idiot shows us an examples of what you claim, then compare them with craziness and hysteria of the whole damn political party-GOP
arguingwithsignposts
@JenJen:
Here is the sanity.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
Go soak your head in some sewage dipshit.
freelancer
@sashal:
He’s for real. For the sake of your blood pressure, ignore him or tell him to fuck off.
Kryptik
I’m sick of the lunatics too.
I’m even more sick that our Democrats seem either unwilling to stand up to them or actively enable them the exact same way the GOP does.
arguingwithsignposts
@Makewi:
No, Cole is right. I was actually on the same side he was on in 2003. I recall the “moonbat” talk, but it was usually ignored by the media. Look up the iraq war protests on google. There was a huge hew and cry about how they weren’t covered in the wapo and other outlets. Contrast that with the summer of wingnut discontent.
Selective memory my ass.
CapMidnight
@arguingwithsignposts: Pretty!
But doesn’t the (SANE) area belong in a [FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE] Venn box or something?
gnomedad
@JenJen:
The sane are purged. RINOrhea, bitches!
JenJen
@freelancer: I’d like to know the answer to that, too. My parents are boomers, and my mom swears that as bad as it got even at the end of his adminstration, no way did we ever come close to loathing Bush the way they hated Nixon.
The thing about the 60’s that my dad always brings up were the civil rights struggles, and the assassinations. Dad says that it felt like anarchy, like the complete undoing of democracy, and that every day, you thought something else might blow up. He’s one of those guys that gets really frustrated at 60’s romanticism.
I’d love to talk more to people who were around then. I hope someone jumps in the thread and tells us what it was like, because as interested as I always am in my parents’ stories, everyone has a different view, and I’d like to hear them.
South of I-10
My Facebook feed is completely insane right now. Nothing but wingnuts and normal people trying to reason with them. I quit trying to reason, it’s a waste of time. I did sign up today for my town’s community run cable/Internet provider (LUS fiber). It is smoking fast (the highest tier is 50 Mbps up and down). Some may call it socia1ism to compete with private industry, but it saves me $30 a month.
JenJen
@freelancer: Oh, and just to add… I wasn’t around for the 60’s, but I sure was for the 90’s. And this feels almost exactly the same to me, except with a violent, racial fringe element thrown in, which is disturbing.
May the FSM help Obama if he ever gets stuck with a Republican Congress, because if we think this is bad, we have no idea.
Makewi
Were the 60s this nuts in terms of a divided nation and civil unrest?
Worse. Much, much worse.
Seriously people, don’t let me get you upset. At worse my opinions are different then yours. So what? That can’t hurt you.
arguingwithsignposts
@CapMidnight:
Well, if I made it smaller to represent the actual (sane) repubs, it wouldn’t hold the text. I probably should have put it on another page entirely. :)
freelancer
@South of I-10:
http://angrytownhall.com/
My brother’s a volunteer firefighter who leans to the right so I constantly am giving him shit about his homosexual commie fire departments, sucking up DHS grants when those could be used to give us tax cuts.
JackieBinAZ
“Other kids did it too” is a pretty lame defense.
JK
Ann jackass Althouse: “People are disgusted at the melding of partisan political power and education and the prospect of a child made to accept compulsory school in the form of gazing upon the face of our leader. Imagine if Bush had proposed such an exercise for all of the children on the first day of school. Well, Bush would never have proposed such a thing because: 1. He didn’t have the fawning approval of the vast majority of teachers, and 2. He never acquired the idea that his countenance and voice could inspire the masses.”
Source: http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/09/number-of-people-who-believe-that.html
Genine
@Ejoiner:
I totally with you, Ejoinder. The change began for me shortly after the inauguration and the discussion over the stimulus bill. I was so angry over what I was hearing, but I tried my best to stay peaceful. I would remind myself that we’re all one and that, deep-down, we’re all human beings trying to do what’s best. (Though some of us are misguided.)
However, the health care reform debate has just totally disgusted me. This freak-out over the President giving a “stay in school and do well” speech is just the shit frosting on a shit cake. I feel fairly confident that there will be rotten cherries to go on top in the near future. It’s truly soul-depleting.
I am, generally, an optimist. But I feel myself losing optimism for how things are going in the country. I know everything will turn out well in the end (whenever that end may be). In the meantime though, I feel things will not be going in a good direction.
I do my best to hold this country in a loving space during meditation. I am also active in groups and organizations trying to make a (positive) difference, but I’ve been feeling more moments of despair lately.
arguingwithsignposts
Re: the 60s – yes, the 60s were much worse than the 2000s are. Examples: JFK, RFK, MLK, desegregation, ’68 DNC, Selma, Birmingham, church bombings.
So far. But the Bush years weren’t nearly as insane as the last 8 months have been. And we started two wars!
freelancer
@Makewi:
Stop making baseless, fact-free, retarded claims and arguments.
Leelee for Obama
In the interests of my continued sanity, I watched Criminal Minds instead of Tweety. I rarely watch re-runs of that show, but I’m so glad I did. Mandy’s quote at the end was pitch-perfect:
arguingwithsignposts
@JK:
She’s using that word “people.” I don’t think it means what she thinks it means.
JK
Dr Helen Smith (Wife of Instashmuck Glenn Reynolds) “This is just creepy–Obama is the first president to come in and give a speech directly to school children. This Hugo Chavez wannabe is really working overtime to get the American people riled up. Some conservatives and others are calling for parents to have their kids skip this day at school.”
http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2009/09/you-are-your-childs-moral-tutor-not.html
arguingwithsignposts
Apropos of the present moment:
Ani DiFranco – Hello Birmingham
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
No more than dog turd on our sho-es.
freelancer
1st legislative item on the agenda: Declaration of War with Venezuela.
2nd item: Impeachment of Obama, cause why the fuck not?!
arguingwithsignposts
Not political tuna steak update:
Cooked tuna steak in pan with olive oil, a splash of beer, thyme, and cracked peppercorn.
Ate with oven-cooked corn-on-cob.
mmmmm.
only issue was figuring out when ts was done. didn’t have a thermometer, and fish doesn’t brown. haha!
gnomedad
@freelancer:
From the Facebook page:
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in asbestos and carrying a fire hose.”
JK
@arguingwithsignposts:
She actually wrote “they”. It was a long passage where she interspersed her remarks with remarks from Joe Klein and I changed “they” to “people”. I should have put it in brackets for clarification purposes. The bottom line remains that Althouse is a smarmy jackass like the rest of the wingnut crowd.
JGabriel
Ann Althouse, via JK:
However, Bush could, and often did, inspire the asses.
.
South of I-10
@freelancer: That is too funny. My town just passed our fiber project three years ago or so, and Cox and AT&T fought it like hell. I definitely heard socia1ism batted around a few times. Strangely, Cox hasn’t raised their rates here since and is now offering faster service. Amazing what a little home grown fiber competition can do.
PTirebiter
I posted this earlier but I think it’s worth repeating.
My wife teaches middle school in Allen, TX (upscale suburb just north of Dallas) and yesterday she was informed they won’t be making Obama’s speech available. The district cited concerns over students being kept out of school. In Richardson, also just north of Dallas, my 7 year old grandson went home with a waiver, requiring a parent’s signature for him to watch it.
Not watching the President’s address is the fucking default option here in Texas.
Now my grandson will be conspicuously separated from his classmates and shuffled off to the Mohawk Elementary free speech zone. I’ve decided to take the day off and accompany him. I’m anxious to see how the school officials handle it. My wife has already packed my angry eyes but I’m a little conflicted about packing heat, conflicted, as in, sidearm or flamethrower?
You Don't Say
I just had lunch with two former colleagues. We were all laid off, first me in December, then both of them a few months later. I am fortunate, I’ve had a little freelance work and my spouse can support us if all else fails. But one of my companions is in real dire straits, and he’s about to lose his mind.
People are suffering in this country.
I am sick to death of stupid and stupid’s enablers.
JK
Dan Balz on Washington Week: “The country has re-polarized”
Makewi
@arguingwithsignposts:
I was there too. The media covered the Iraq war protests on a regular basis and hid the crazier elements, hid the fact that many of them were funded by world wide soc-ial-ist organizations. They made crazy Cindy S a star.
Not ringing any bells?
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
I’ve never understood the fascination you have with feces. Fortunately you stopped collecting your own, because that was ugly.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
Because it’s so you. Coward.
Makewi
Deep breathes and celebration people. I’ll leave you to your shared opinions for the weekend.
Topic to be discussed in my absence: Wingnuts, just how much do they suck?
Makewi
@General Winfield Stuck:
You calling me a coward just make me love you more, you big lug.
Everyone should have a great 3 day weekend except you. You have a fantastic one.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
Bye dipshit.
arguingwithsignposts
@Makewi:
Bullshit. I recall Cindy Sheehan being mocked endlessly. She disappeared quickly. They didn’t show the Code Pinksters? That’s crap. If the media was so “liberal” back then, how do you explain the success of the Swift Boat Campaign? The attacks on Dan Rather for Bush’s TANG record?
Give me a fucking break.
I’m saying they didn’t cover the hundreds of thousands who showed up in protests around the globe protesting the war nearly as closely as they’ve done these HCR town halls. Or the birther nonsense (ask yourself how much attention the truthers got in 2002? not much).
The difference being JCole and I came to our senses.
General Winfield Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
In Makewi’s make believe world, Cindy Sheehan is the equivilent to nutters with assault rifles, protesting the reception of health care for all, as compared to losing a son in a war based on wingnut lies and incompetence. And that is all you need to know about this smarmy motherfucker.
Beth in VA
Mr. Cole, you’ve expressed my thoughts today exactly. Crazy post this is, it’s perfect, thanks.
jwb
@Makewi: So you admit that the Right is freaking out? That’s bold of you. Now why don’t you do something productive and work to calm them down rather than shitting over here. You really are completely useless.
jwb
@PTirebiter: This is true in Austin as well: we had to sign a consent form for my child to watch the President.
Sloth
Oh, hey. Lunatics nothing, how about assholes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAEIcsOL2n4
Yes, that’s a bishop they are booing.
I really cannot wait for immigration reform. That’s going to be a regular barrel of laughs.
JGabriel
Makewi:
But you were able to protect and preserve your precious bodily fluids despite the commie incursions everywhere you look!
.
JGabriel
jwb:
Something about this requiring a consent form strikes me as possibly unconstitutional. We all have a right to a private vote in elections, but the Texas state government / school districts are collecting the signatures of all parents that allows their children to see the president speak?
It’s very strange, and it sounds not quite legal.
.
General Winfield Stuck
@JGabriel:
We have an apparent Fluoridation Gap, that must be corrected.
PTirebiter
@JenJen
I grew up in L.A. and I’ve now been in Texas for almost 20 years. My memories of the 60’s are bittersweet. It started out naive and sweet natured, a little dope, a lot of music and a lot of talk. LBJ got softer and MLK and Bobby got killed and Nixon got tough. As Nixon and Reagan got harder, the dope got harder, the talk got harder and along with it, I think, so did our hearts. After Daley in Chicago, Hell’s Angels at Altamont and Nixon at Kent State the whole thing had grown cynical, market driven and it was getting ugly.
The weirdest thing I remember is, that after Nixon resigned, I didn’t feel triumphant.
As much as I loathed the man, I still loved what the office stood for and it just made me sad. The last time I was in San Francisco I went down the Haight in an nostalgic mood, my mood didn’t survive all the homeless people. They were all about my age and obviously fried their brains back in the day. I still love the music but that’s about it.
General Winfield Stuck
Forget it Gabriel, it’s Texastown/
JenJen
@PTirebiter: Thank you for that. Riveting. I could read that stuff all day.
I finished “Nixonland” a few weeks ago, and it was so eye-opening. So much about today seems to stem from that. And nobody ever talks about it.
South of I-10
@jwb: Wow! Texas is wingnuttier than LA for a change? Here, parents can opt out, but otherwise the children are watching the speech (in my Parish).
SIA aka ScreaminginAtlanta
@JK: Used to read her, mostly for the photographs. Last couple times I read the blog, I asked myself, “Why”? and deleted Ms. Althouse from my bookmarks.
jwb
@JGabriel: Actually, it’s not clear what the default is. The school sent a form home giving us an option of presidential speech or “alternative activity.” We were not told what children who do not return a form will do.
PTirebiter
@jwb
Not so up here, in Richardson default is class as usual-
and in Allen it’s strictly, President who?
spare
No love in Lubbock. Our district was one of the first out of the block to say they would not show it. Please keep all of us sane people out here in the hinterlands in your good thoughts.
It’s so incredibly rude–to take something completely innocuous and politicize it for no reason. I love the people telling me, “If it was Bush, you’d be having a fit!” No, I wouldn’t. I’d probably need to wear glasses so no one would see my eyes roll though. LOL. But it never would occur to me that kids should *not* listen to the president.
There are going to be a lot of people looking back on this speech in a few years and wondering WTF all the fuss was about.
IndyLib
@PTirebiter:
LOL on the “angry eyes”. You don’t see many Toy Story references.
MFA
I live in Western PA, and my son came home from school today with a note from the school board emphatically pointing out that students in our district “WILL NOT participate in the presentation.”
“Many families have expressed concern about the content, the intentions, and the appropriateness of this presentation during the school day.” it says, and pointedly mentions that matters relating to the curriculum are at the discretion of our locally elected Board of Directors, who claim they haven’t had “adequate time to follow the defined process for curriculum evaluation” so the district will stick with its already “approved and planned academic instruction.” What a bunch of utter cowards.
Then they point out you can always watch it at home. Useless, utter cowards.
So I wrote to each of the board members:
“I was shocked to discover today that an address to students nationwide by our President on the importance of a good education, the necessity of working hard to get the most from school, and the value of serving one’s community is seen by our local Board as something to be avoided rather than embraced. I do not know whether the members of the board themselves disagree with those ideals or whether they simply lack the courage to defend such ideals to parents in our community who, out of ignorance or predjudice, have lobbied the District against the President’s efforts to encourage kids to get an education.
“Either way, what a poor example you have all set for my child. Shame on each of you.
“I hope a review of the District’s actions with respect to past presentations by other recent Presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush will show that this same policy was applied; if on the other hand the District did participate in those past events while declining to do so now, the Board will have demonstrated a partisan sympathy that defiles its very mission–ensuring the best possible education for our community’s youngest citizens. If that is the case I will work tirelessly to see that like-minded parents do not tolerate, at the next election, Board officers who value their skins above our schools, or their politics over their purpose.
“For shame. Stand up and be Americans, and give our children a lesson in civics rather than a lesson the efficacy of mob rule.”
What sniveling cowards they are. I’m disgusted.
Tom Q
Jen Jen, if you’re still in the market for personal testimony about the 60s…
I’d say it depends some on your age and location. I was born in ’52. Civil rights barely happened on TV for me; I honestly didn’t even have a very deep knowledge of who Martin Luther King was the night he was shot (which made me a fairly typical apathetic teenager). Obviously there was plenty of violent horror involved, but it led (most thought) to the happy ending of the Civil Rightys/Voting Right Act.
The thing I think Nixonland gets right is the sense of betrayal felt in the white neighborhoods and suburbs around the major cities when, virtually in the wake of LBJ’s legislative coups, riots seemed to become a fact of daily life. The country got to seem dangerous in a way it never had been before, and the rise of urban crime undedrscored this (I remember watching a 40s movie during this period, and being amazed there was a time people strolled through Central park after dark). And of course we never really got over the shock of JFK’s assassination; it was pretty much the 9/11 of my childhood — the event beyond anything you considered possible. And when other assassinations followed, it appeared we had a “new”, horrifying “normal”.
The whole peace/love/drugs/music thing wasn’t really directly related to any of this, but the foreignness of it –and, later, the riots at the ’68 Chicago convention — made the average middle-class American family (read: mine) feel as if it was all somehow connected, and thus something to be avoided or mocked.
But then I went to college, starting in ’69, and I discovered the counterculture was, at least from its own POV, idealistic — hoping to make a better, more just America. Spring of that year brought the Kent State shootings, which radicalized many of us more against the war. Nobody I know bought into the yippie/tear it down mentality, but, unfortunately, that was all TV seemed interested in showing. Which meant when I got home for summer, I had a hard time explaining to my parents why this was all a positive thing (forget about their friends, who joined the wingnut brigades then and remain charter members).
I guess my meandering answer to you is, yes, things were bad then, and there was plenty of fear, but, because I saw some of it as positive, I didn’t sense the pure hate I get today. There were violent jerks on the left, but they were generally shunned by the Democrats (who, sensibly and presciently, thought they’d cost them support). What’s shocking about today is the backing these loons are getting from elected officials –and the, at best, indifference from too many in the press.
Maybe it’s a simple as this: there were more actual violent events in the 60s than we’ve seen so far today, but I’d put emphasis on the so-far…because the potential for true conflagration, based on the venom I’m seeing every day on TV, today strikes me as greater than what I saw back
Molly
@spare: “No love in Lubbock. Our district was one of the first out of the block to say they would not show it.”
Hubbie’s district is showing it. They sent a letter to parents saying if kids want to opt out, they’ll have something else for them to do. But none of this “you have to sign a permission form for your child to view it” nonsense.
My first grader, blissfully unaware of the threat Obama presents to his delicate Capitalist sensibilities, is busy writing a letter to Harry Potter at this moment.
Onward.
PTirebiter
@IndyLib: Glad you liked it. When my grandson was a toddler it was pretty much all Woody & Buzz. all the time. They got thrown over for Maximum Prime and now it’s Legos Star Wars and Baseball. Pixar and Dreamworks always had enough adult asides and great art design to keep them fun for the first twenty or thirty viewings.
Allan
@MFA: I nominate you for President of the School Board. Hell, how about Secretary of Education? Well done.
PTirebiter
@MFA : Would you mind if I copied your letter and by way of example, shared it with a few friends? I would of course attribute it to you in any manner you’d like.
MFA
Thanks, Allan. There’s a board meeting this very Tuesday night. I’m going to go. and to speak if I can. I want to ask them to their faces, whether they are cowards or partisans, and to point out that they have sent the message to the community that they will cave in to any sufficiently aggressive group of agitated parents no matter how irrational the demand; so that everyone there will understand the precedent the Board has set. What fools.
I’ve never thought of running for the Board, and doubt that I would now. But I sure as hell will campaign on behalf of anyone determined to stand up for what’s right in our district, and will vote against every single one of these weaselly tools.
You Don't Say
@MFA: Right on. Well said.
mclaren
If you’re sick of lunatics, you’d better shut this site down, because a huge number of commenters here (perhaps a majority) are certifiable.
You may recall the wildly hysterical response to my post pointing out that if we want real change in America, people are going to have to go out into the streets in non-violent protests in such massive numbers that they’ll shut the country down.
The kooks and cranks and crackpots on the left came out in force. These nut jobs apparently think that in order to effect wrenching, tectonic political change, all we have to do is join hands and sing “cumbayah,” or type some email letters to government officials.
No, sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
Moreover, non-violent protests aren’t actually non-violent. Study history. Non-violent protests typically provoke extreme violence from the people in power. Depend upon it: if millions of people came out into the streets and surrounded the White House, SWAT teams in body armor would wade into the crowds beating and tasing and shooting to death many tens of thousands of non-violent protesters. Given the extreme ferocity of today’s far-right kooks and the extreme nature of today’s police weaponry, the streets would be littered with corpses and the sidewalks would run with blood.
A lot of people on this site came unglued at the suggestion that massive protests are the only real way to effect serious change in this country. Millions of people have to get out of their homes and shut the country down. Electing new rubber-stamp corporate drones to congress so they can vote for more corporate-sponsored pork won’t help. Writing emails won’t help. Rachel Maddow’s show, as fun as it may be, produces no actual change.
Only when millions of people get out on the streets and lie down in the halls of congress and get beaten to death by body-armored masked SWAT teams and get shot to death by panicking capitol hill police when the police realize they’ve run out of jail cells and run out of SWAT tanks and run out of rubber bullets and run out of pepper spray, will we get actual change.
Otherwise, you get this:
Bush’s Third Term: You’re Living It
Karen
It’s reached a point now where if President Obama said that breathing is a good thing, the Wingnuts would talk about how breathing is communist and socialist and how dare he try to indoctrinate the US about breathing. Obama may as well just burn his bridges to the right wing now because it’s obvious that they will not let him govern. The media won’t let him govern. His own party will not stand with him and let him govern. It’s also obvious that the only plans the other side (not necessarily the right wing but whoever considers President Obama to be an enemy) has is: overturn the election by birth certificate nullification, hunt Obama down and kill him or just refuse to work with it all. The decent nature and honorable behavior of people is no longer a given any more and it’s crystal clear that they will stop at NOTHING, no matter who gets hurt, to ensure that President Obama is a less than one term President.
Original Lee
@MFA: That letter is a thing of beauty. May I plagiarize it?
jwb
@MFA: That’s really nicely done. You might think about reworking it slightly and submitting it to your local paper as a letter to the editor.
hamletta
@MFA: I’d like to chime in, too. That’s a great letter. I don’t have kids, and my SD is currently at hummina, hummina.
But you’re eloquent and reasonable. Good work.
DaBomb
Wow there’s another troll amongst our midsts. I don’t know who’s crazier. @MFA: You go! I hope there are more parent like you and EllaEsther who stand their ground and let those idiots know where we stand.
@arguingwithsignposts: As EllaEsther said earlier don’t feed the trolls, you can’t reason with them. They are batshit crazy mofos.
MFA
@PTirebiter, @Original Lee – Thanks for the kind words. Yes, please spread it around as you see fit. It’s heartfelt.
@jwb Thank you. I’m so mad I could spit; it gives focus to the writing. And I have now sent it to the Post-Gazette.
@You Don’t Say, @Hamletta – I appreciate your support. Thank you.
I think right now we all have to get vocal; but our words, though given shape and force by emotion must still come from reason, not fear. We can not allow the mob to win.
LosGatosCAa
I remember the good old days. When Peak Wingnut seemed like the optimistic future.
But it turns out Keeping the Krazy Koming© is a renewable resource.
The world will never run out of wingnut Krazy.
sunsin
Yeah, we’ll get actual change. We’ll be dead, and they won’t.
Why would they be worried about running out of rubber bullets and pepper spray if they’re willing to use real bullets? IICR, there are quite a few of those around, and you only need one to ruin someone’s whole day.
It’s painfully clear what this poster has done. He’s imagined an impossible situation where he’s a great big hero (note the vivid, obsessive detail in his fantasy), and this protects him from doing anything whatsoever in the real world. His message is in essence, “Nothing is possible except what is impossible, so I can rest easy with doing nothing but talking.” It’s just self-pleasuring endlessly in the ivory tower.
And non-violence usually fails as a tactic unless there is a real threat of violence backing it up. Beside and behind Gandhi was the Indian National Congress and other popular organizations that would have set India on fire from end to end if the British had been so impudent as to stay.
What a fo_ol we have here.
DecidedFenceSitter
Here’s what a friend of mine, who teaches high school in a suburb of Richmond, is going to say:
God bless the internet. Each and every tube.
mclaren
And we have a winner.
Proving once again that the kooks and crackpots remain firmly in charge of the Democratic party in general, and the commenting in this website in particular, the latest nut job (named “sunsin”) chimes in to assure us that what Martin Luther King did was impossible.
Genius. Pure genius.
Spoken like a true crackpot. I’m sure plenty of kooks just like sunsin assured the people who packed their bags and made out their wills and headed down south to march alongside MLK in 1963 were wasting their time. Yes sirree, when those sheriff’s deputies beat and clubbed MLK’s marchers in Selma, Alabama, there wasn’t any change at all.
Notice how stupid and how self-deluded this commenter is, folks. He (or she) assures us that what happened back in the early 1960s couldn’t possibly haven’t happened. Just erase it from the history books. Poof! Gone. It never took place.
You’ve never actually been in a non-violent protest, have you, sunsin? You see…police typically don’t come to protests with M60s and bandoliers of belt-fed ammo wound around their shoulders. Maybe in some rambo movie that happens, but not in real life. Your typical police officer may have an M16 and a couple of clips, but you know what? Those M16s don’t even have any rounds chambered. And here’s an interesting little fact for you — the vast majority of human beings are extremely reluctant to shoot other people. Statistics from WW II show that most soldiers fired into the air, or at the ground, even in combat, rather than shooting at other human beings. Police are no exception.
As far as “plenty of bullets around,” once again, you don’t have a clue. In a firefight, people go through bullets like you wouldn’t believe, and most of ’em never hit anything. The M16 uses selectable single-shot, semi-auto three shots at a time, and full auto. You will empty a clip in about one second on full auto, and it’s virtually certain that if you fire an M16 on full auto you won’t hit a damn thing…contrary to what you see in the movies.
So, no, there aren’t “plenty of bullets.” If we lived in an actual Stalinist police state in which the army got mobilized to kill protesters en masse, then, maybe…maybe protesters would have to worry about getting mowed down with continuous belt-fed weapons fire. But even as far as things have gone in America, the reality remains that your typical riot cop has a couple of clips, a baton, a couple of pepper spray canisters or possibly mace canisters, the riot armor, and an M16 which is almost certainly unloaded.
What really matters in a protest is intimidation. If the people who are protesting refuse to be intimidated, typically, the police panic. They riot. Then you get Seattle 1999 or Chicago 1968.
JenJen
@Tom Q: Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to write that. These perspectives are important and I’d love to hear even more.
I do have to say, though… I was afraid one of you was going to say what you did, that what we’re seeing know is actually unlike the 60’s. It is new. This is what frustrates me so much about the teabaggers, the school speech protesters, etc… this isn’t one of those “oh everybody does it” moments. This is unique. And the ignorance, the vitriol, the utter hatred… it scares the crap out of me.
atheist
From #87
JenJen
I hear that from some boomers too, but to me it just suggests that these boomers aren’t really engaging with the reality of today. George W. Bush was just a more extreme version of Nixon as far as I am concerned, and Obama is almost exactly the same as George W Bush.
The boomers sometimes peer at reality, but superimpose an image of their memory over it, an image of 1960s violence made much scarier by the fact that they have watched it on television a million times.
gravie
There was vitriol and hate a-plenty in the ’60s. One of the most horrifying things about Kent State, other than the deaths of those four students, was the number of good, solid Americans who believed that they deserved to die for no other reason than being young, possibly long-haired and in college.
JenJen
@atheist: No, I’m pretty certain my mom (best example personally) is quite engaged with the reality of today.
And yes, obviously there was vitriol and hatred in the 60’s. It manifested itself in horrific ways (the early 60’s with civil rights; the late 60’s with riots and division and chaos and turbulence). But in the 60’s, as far as I can see, real change was taking place, the demographics of the country were changing rapidly, women became in engaged in politics and the workplace en masse. All of this took place with the Vietnam War as a generation-splitting backdrop. I can understand, if not agree with, the the resistance to that kind of change and restlessness within the establishment, and among the working class. The WWII generation was coming up against their own kids, it was such a different time.
I’m not convinced that what we’re seeing today out of the unhinged right wing can be properly compared to the unrest of the 60’s. I’m open to the idea, though, which is why I’m so interested in the stories, especially from people who were around for both.
gocart mozart
“Walk a mile in a man’s shoes before you judge him”.
Have you ever tried to walk a mile in big, floppy, red clown shoes? It aint easy I tells ya.
gocart mozart
I remember back in 2002, some high school kids got suspended for playing Dylan’s “Masters of War” at a school talent show. Disrespecting the POTUS you see. Good times.
Christabell
“The problem with the usurpation of nationwide instructional time on September 8 is not so much the message, but the manner.” Linda Taylor Schrock
If Ms. Shrock is a teacher, she should be aware that instructional time in schools all over the country is regularly usurped by topics essential to the curriculum such as pep rallies, assemblies tro drum up excitement among students to go out and sell, sell, SELL magazines/candles/candy/ nuts/cookbooks/wrapping paper and other junk to raise money for their schools, “talent” shows, and more. Seems to me that a message of “stay in school and do your best” from a person who is actually an unstanding citizen and PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, for heavens sake, might be a valuable use of instructional time.
Steeplejack
@freelancer:
Funny. The original meltdown was even funnier. And I think someone made a hip-hop rip of it.