Forget that Max “The Face of The Death of Change” Baucus (D-Who gives a shit) unveiled his abominable health care “reform” bill today and consider this little 9-and-a-half minute ditty, courtesy of the intrepid Public Record and filmed at last Saturday’s 9/12 March For Idiocy in Washington, D.C., wherein the very people whose asinine beliefs Baucus’ heavily compromised legislation tried to “take into account” are on full display: Racism, religious atavism, ignorance about the Russian feudal system and exhalations of Glenn Beck.
FYI, the money shot is @ 5:16 — “Grandma, what did you do when our country was changin?! I’ll say ‘I did this.’” [sic] Way to go, grandma.
6 Comments
A lot of ignorance on parade here. But what’s almost as offensive is the smugness of the magnifying glass. The penultimate slide of the clip talks about the volume of the ignorant voices. But personally, to my ears those voices were silent, not worth tuning into, until I heard them through this filter. It’s not like I’m shocked by bias from LEO or any media outlet, but my point is that THIS STUFF, both sides of it, represents what’s really wrong with us. It’s the filters. Someone explain to me how it is that I haven’t stopped listening altogether.
@ Sohl:
Three things:
(1) I’d hate to think that an all-powerful blog like Fatlip is causing this much damage to the nation-at-large… as opposed to, say, the corporate interests and failed politicians whom are intentionally fucking up this reform process by misinforming (and ultimately harming) millions of under- or uninsured Americans who deserve better than the likes of Glenn Beck’s Parade of Stupid? Give me a break, man.
Re: health care reform inanity coming from “both sides,” I’ll say this: There is garbage primarily being spewed from only one side of this debate, and that would be the people depicted in this video, i.e. card-carrying Republicans, wayward Regan Democrats, or single-issue voters. I’ve met them in droves, and even though they’re but a tiny fraction of our overall population — the fraction uninterested with things like “logic,” “reason,” or “facts” — we’re letting them have the loudest voice on an issue they know little to nothing about. In a democratic republic, knowledge is the most powerful weapon we have. Unfortunately for us, in those terms we only measure up to a .22 derringer.
Put another way, if I didn’t call out this bullshit then my “lens” would be broken.
(2) You haven’t stopped listening altogether because you (ostensibly) care, in which case I recommend you contact your congressional representatives and implore them to ditch Baucus’ bogus bill and get behind HR 676. I mean, fuck it, man: If France can have the best single-payer health care in the world, why can’t we? (But wait… that’s SOCIALISM!!!1!11)
(3) LEO, its rational subjectivity and/or its reverence for empirical truth may be an acquired taste for some, much like olives, snark or your first beer.
To your first point, the misinformation… if I am reading you right, you’re identifying GBPoS (who is Glenn Beck anyway? Should I not be asking that?) as victims of stated misinformation? If so (which really in the case of misinformation we’re all victims somehow), that rather gets back to what I’m saying: partisan lens-ery has this stinging edge to it that I find distasteful, particularly because it’s misdirected (at victims). Not that it isn’t easy, because they’ve got GIANT targets on their backs — stars and stripes and signs and southen drawls.
I understand the sourer the olives, the more you can peddle. I guess I just felt compelled to call out how sour they were this past wednesday.
“Who is Glenn Beck anyway?” is a question I ask myself at least once a month. Bless your pure, innocent heart for not knowing.
The only GIANT target on their backs is one of unrepentant ignorance — something that an advanced country in the 21st century, with all of its myriad problems and complexities, should not have to tolerate. We’ve seen this kind of virulent idiocy on display before: during Civil Rights, women’s suffrage, passage of the New Deal, the movement for an 8-hour workday, or pretty much anything else that required confrontation with the nation’s status quo in order to expand the liberties and quality of life for all of its citizens — including those morons who initially opposed such progressive measures in the first place.
And let’s not excuse these people too much viz. their “victimhood.” They made these signs. They chose to espouse the dumb rhetoric. They decided to show up in D.C. that day knowing cameras would be everywhere. I mean, they’re not that dumb, eh? Even if they are being coerced by larger corporate/Republican forces, they’re mainly libertarians and would reject that theory anyway, so why defend them?
Point is: As long as they remain deaf to reason, compromise or the facts regarding the sorry state of America’s health care system, they don’t deserve to be mollycoddled, capiche?
The unrepentance — I think you have a good point about that — I can see how that tends to raise ire. But I do think they’re victims of ignorance, spurred on (and even trapped within!) by the really nutty conservative side of the media from whence Mr. Beck must clearly originate. I’m really not trying to stick up for their talking points. What I’m really asking is “where are we getting by making fools out of the fools that follow the fools, or, the fools’ fools,” follow?
I would like to concede to you man, that now looking at my first post, I realize I may have been a little impolite to step on the blog’s toes. My humble opinion is that what’s in this particular video is far from an acquired taste and is much more like left-flavored candy (say, licorice, cause it’s similarly big in Europe). And even if I friggin’ hate licorice and don’t much capisce it at all, writing “licorice is an affront to man-and-woman-kind” on the licorice store wall is asking for it.
But at the same time, what’s cool is that you’ve not only let me share my opinion here, but personally and actively engaged me as the “store’s” proprietor. (I know — they’re called blogs. Neat, right?) But your engagement is something I do thank you for and would say that LEO’s got really right.
i’m DEEPLY troubled by these people. I hope that this time of hope and change of America turning the corner is not shrouded by these lunatics. If the silent majority lets such people take control we can be fooled into believing that this is what popular consensus is across America–which is a dangerous signal to the rest of the world.