John Bircher Idiocracy

The return of paranoid politics in the 21st Century has three main charismatic figures: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Cheneys. It kills me how Teh Librul Media™ doesn't recognize this common thread. It infuriates me to watch them get airtime and attention. Their opinions are loaded with fail and completely devoid of fact. If they were a football team they'd be the Detroit Lions, only without the pathos. And what self-respecting sportscaster would want to interview so much fail?

Think about it: they're pushing for America to go back and retry the whole Bush administration formula. Their entire historical narrative is a lunatic revisionism. Beck calls Theodore Roosevelt, who tripled the size of the US Navy in a bid for global economic dominion, a "weird progressive" because he was a (horrors!) trust-buster. Y'know, like Eisenhower.

Speaking of Dwight D., there's something...familiar about the tone of all this paranoid rhetoric. There is, in fact, an organization devoted to spreading exactly this kind of bullshit to as many feeble minds as possible, and it's the one that called a Republican president and war hero "communist." Which brings me to my newest video creation:

Go here, here, or here for more about Beck's Bircher connections. The John Birch Society denies that Sarah Palin actually reads their literature, but confirms it's their literature she's reading:

Does this show some type of connection between JBS and Palin? It does not connect her to The John Birch Society any more than a copy of the New York Times sitting on her desk would connect her to the New York Times Company. The photo is a symbol of the organized strength of a successful grassroots campaign to protect the U.S. Constitution from calls for a modern-day Constitutional Convention (con-con) that could potentially revise or completely rewrite the Constitution.

That's the JBS in a nutty nutshell -- nuttier than pecan pistachio peanut-butter sandwich with extra cashews. JBS materials are not as common as copies of the Times by any stretch of the imagination; Birchers organize in secretive cells of true believers and share the "special knowledge" of John Bircherism. Those JBS materials mean Palin hangs out with people who think Eisenhower was a communist.

No one is calling for a Constitutional convention either -- that's a straw man the JBS erected themselves. But the Eisenhower connection comes full circle when you realize that The Republican party of 1956 had a platform of environmentalism, was pro-labor, and based its foreign policy on support of the United Nations and international cooperation.

Eisenhower called Americans to civil service and built the nation's infrastructure to spur economic development. Sound familiar?

Eight years later, the intelligentsia of the conservative movement (led by William F. Buckley) repudiated the John Birch Society over the insane lies it was propagating. Birchers had called General Eisenhower a "communist" -- along with Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy; had labeled public health efforts "mind control;" and written apologetics for slavery. They saw "socialism" everywhere.

The end of America's conservative era finds a once-awesome conservative intelligentsia bankrupt of ideas because their ideas have nearly destroyed the country. Stepping into the vacuum, the John Birch Society "informs" the tea parties with all manner of tinfoil-hattery and co-sponsored the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) meeting in Washington, DC last month.

Why? Because a new president has a platform of environmentalism and anti-trust enforcement, is pro-labor and bases his foregn policy on support of the United Nations and international cooperation. He calls Americans to civil service and builds the nation's infrastructure to spur economic development.

The Birchers call it "socialism" and "communism" because they always have, no matter who is in charge. The president's newness and strange name are just icing on the cake of paranoid delusion. They mean to form a permanent revolution that is really, really ugly -- and if they gain any actual power, they plan to install a system of government grounded in that paranoid universe.

For her part, Liz Cheney seems to have gone too far by attacking Justice Department lawyers, but I guarantee you will see her again -- and it's unlikely anyone will ask her about Ken Starr's opinion. It's as if Tailgunner Joe had a daughter and no one wanted to ask her about her dad's ever-growing, never-revealed list of communists in government.

There is a reason Murdoch is willing to take a loss on Beck (and, I predict, on Palin). The dumbest hour on television is AM talk radio mainstreamed onto your television for the same reason Texas takes Ted Kennedy out of its textbooks: they want us stupid enough to fall for another idiot like Dick Cheney.