Don Henley- Heart of the Matter

These times are so uncertain
There's a yearning undefined
...People filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness
How can love survive in such a graceless age
The trust and self-assurance that can lead to happiness
They're the very things we kill, I guess
Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms
And the work I put between us,
Doesn't keep me warm

Remember my little snark to the producers of This Week a few months ago, over yet another booking of John McCain? Well, I had to do it again this week. Not because of McCain, but the bookings are nearly as egregious:

I'm sure that in the effort to have the show ideologically balanced (for, clearly, every issue is reduced to Democrat vs. Republican on This Week), it has completely escaped the producers' notice that they have booked THREE politicos against health care reform (Coburn, Nelson, Blackburn) to ONE in favor (Wasserman-Schultz).

Curious that ABC's idea of "balance" on an issue with OVERWHELMING public support is to tip the scale against health care reform. Does [your Senior Producer] feel he is serving his viewership well with such skewed bookings?

Sadly, This Week's producer doesn't really want to engage in any further tete a tetes on their skewed sense of balance, but taking a look at this week's schedule, certainly, they're not the only ones guilty. Look, for example, at the hacktacular framing on The Chris Matthews Show. Or the inclusion of Joe "Sucking Media Hole" Lieberman on Meet the Press. Personally, I think I'm gonna focus on the CNN foreign policy shows, rather than pollute my brain with any more of the health care nonsense.

ABC's "This Week" - Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent; and Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Joe Klein, Norah O'Donnell, Anne Kornblut, David Ignatius. Topics: Obama's Lost the Independents -- What Do They Want Him To Do Differently? Are There Signs of Carteresque Weakness in the Obama Presidency? Meter Questions: Will President Obama Sign a Health Care Reform Bill This Year? YES: 5 NO: 7; Will Delays Over Afghanistan and Health Care Hurt Obama's Image Longterm? YES: 5 No: 7.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Carly Fiorina, California Republican who's running for U.S. Senate.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - An exclusive interview with Maziar Bahari, the Newsweek reporter who spent 4 months in an Iranian prison. Plus, the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, gives Fareed his only television interview on his trip to Washington.

CNN's "Amanpour" - New Jewish Lobby: A new Jewish American lobbying group is angling itself as an alternative to the well-known pro-Israel AIPAC group. Could this change the way Washington approaches Israel? Afghan Exclusives: Former Afghan Pres. Cand. Ashraf Ghani calls the Afghan gov. a "looting machine," and calls Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar's Interior Ministry "among the most corrupt in the country".

"Fox News Sunday" - Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Kit Bond, R-Mo., Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Bernadine Healy, former director of the National Institutes of Health.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

Thomas Frank is, admittedly, the token liberal op-ed writer at The Wall Street Journal. And it's hard to say whether Murdoch's minions let this one slip through on purpose to lend credibility to the newspaper, or by accident:

To point out that this network [FOX News] is different, that it is intensely politicized, that it inhabits an alternate reality defined by an imaginary conflict between noble heartland patriots and devious liberals—to be aware of these things is not the act of a scheming dictatorial personality. It is the obvious conclusion drawn by anybody with eyes and ears.

The comment section had me splitting a gut laughing, especially this one:

Dr. Charles Krauthammer is a conservative respected on both the right and the left.

Far be it for me to speak for the right. But is there anyone on the Left who has "respect" for Charles Krauthammer? (Tweety doesn't count.)

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Rob Waters at Hatewatch happened to catch the above short-lived video the other day:

It advises President Obama and other prominent people (“Our Dear Leader and co.”) to “leave now and give us our country back” and to do so by next week.

“If you stay,” the silent video message continues, “ ‘We, The People’ will systematically dismantle you, destroy you and reclaim what is rightfully ours. …

“We are angry and we are ready to take back the rights of the people. We will fight and We will win. …

“Dead line [sic] for your national response: October 15, 2009

“Thank you to all patriots who support our cause. … Be prepared for when the fateful day of the declaration of war is nationally announced.”

As the post notes in an update, the video was taken down shortly after it appeared on the SPLC site with no explanation. However, we managed to capture it before then and have reproduced it here in its original form, with a C&L tag at the end.

The "National Militia, Soldiers of Freedom" is not a known organization of any kind. Most likely it is some guy sitting in his basement.

This is about 99.99999999 percent certain to be just so much hot air from the "Patriot" movement and its attendant lunatic fringe. It reminds me of the threat to organize a "Million Man Militia" march back in July that never came close to materializing.

These kinds of delusions of grandeur are endemic to the Patriot movement, and are part and parcel of the grand paranoia about a looming New World Order planning to imprison conservatives and the radical communist regime of Barack Obama. That is, not only do they wildly imagine the nefarious conspiracy out to destroy America, but their imaginations similarly run riot when assessing their own breadth and strength -- not mention their abilities to act on their fantasies.

Still, the spread of this kind of rhetoric underscores the violent mindset of the militia units we now see forming at various locales around the country. Eventually, someone competent is going to act on it. And it's clearly being abetted by the wild fearmongering being promulgated by the likes of Glenn Beck and other right-wing pundits.

Indeed, you have to wonder if this is the kind of thing Glenn Beck had in mind in his recent interview with Newsmax:

"I fear a Reichstag moment," he said, referring to the 1933 burning of Germany's parliament building in Berlin that the Nazis blamed on communists and Hitler used as an excuse to suspend constitutional liberties and consolidate power.

"God forbid, another 9/11. Something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced."

Of course, I think we can predict now that if there is another Oklahoma City -- rather than a 9/11 -- Glenn Beck will also be calling it a "Reichstag moment" and claiming it's the product of a government conspiracy to clamp down on civil rights.

This is why he and the rest of the right-wing chorus have been so eager to dismiss the existence of right-wing extremists -- even in the face of obvious evidence that the violent crazies are coming out of the woodwork. We can thank the tea parties for providing the fertile ground for much of this rhetoric.

If you want a sampling of how bad it's getting, check out the video below, which I captured from the same YouTube site as the one that hosted the "warning" video. The owner stocks it up with Alex Jones conspiracy videos, but this profile of the militias caught my eye:

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I apparently missed the largest flash mob in American history today, and it took place just a few blocks from my house. Michelle Malkin and the redstaters have been abuzz about how there were more than two million people marching on Washington today, (that would make it bigger than even the inauguration) but all anyone who wasn't a right-winger saw today was 30,000 to 60,000 right-wingers bused in from around the country.

Here's what the organizers themselves told us to expect. Dick Armey told the right-wing Newsmax that they're generating hundreds of responses in interest to the 9/12 March. The tea party patriots told us that they were expecting as many as one million to turn out and that they had permits for a one million man march on Washington.

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Protesters at an event in Austin, TX yesterday just took the vile rhetoric we've seen on display this August one extra step:

"the protesters had Larry Kilgore, a “Christian activist” and candidate for governor who has endorsed executions for homosexuals; Debra Medina, a Ron Paul Republican and a slightly-less long-shot candidate for governor; and Melissa Pehle-Hill, yet another fringe candidate and a member of a self-appointed “citizens grand jury” investigating Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro."

Kilgore captured the sentiment of the mob. (video here)

“I hate that flag up there,” Kilgore said pointing to the American flag flying over the Capitol. “I hate the United States government. … They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need!”

“We hate the United States!"

Just a lone nut, I guess. Except the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, flirted with the secessionists a few months ago. He didn't attend this protest, which I guess is a positive step.

But this has increasingly become the Republican base. A group of people who feel completely justified in chanting "We hate the United States!" I seem to remember being told that I hated America and I was "on the other side" and "in league with the terrorists" because I didn't agree with an unnecessary, illegal and ultimately disastrous war. I don't have tape of myself from every day in that time, but you can trust me that I never chanted "We hate the United States" in front of a state capitol building.

Note, too, the lady who used the phrase, "the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots," a quote from Thomas Jefferson, often misappropriated by extremists and the Patriot movement. Timothy McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt that bore this inscription when he was arrested for murdering 168 people in Oklahoma City.

What the report reflects is a reality that law enforcement trying to deal with domestic terrorism in America must confront: Their subjects are thoroughly American; many of the people drawn into these movements are, if anything, "hyper-normal." Their version of "patriotism," for instance, is so extreme that they actually hate not just their government but their fellow citizens -- in essence, their country: because, you see, it has been "perverted" from its original purposes.

The hyper-normality is a kind of intentional camouflage. The Patriot movement, and militias in particular, were a very specific and intentional strategy adopted in the 1990s by the white supremacists and radical tax protesters of the American far right -- and the whole purpose of the strategy was to mainstream their belief systems and their agendas. The tactic was to adopt the appearance of normal, "red-blooded" Americanism as a way of pushing out the idea that their radical beliefs are "normal" too.

In the process, they often adopted time-worn "patriotic" sayings and symbols, such as the "Don't Tread On Me" flag Beck wears, as their own -- though with a much more menacing meaning. If you've seen that flag at an Aryan Nations compound, as I have, you never quite look at it the same.

This is why the meaning of Thomas Jefferson's quote above is quite different for them than it is for you and me. To all outward appearances, it is just an expression of avid patriotism. But to a Patriot movement follower, it means something potentially deadly.

Patriots who use the symbols of American history while claiming overtly to hate America. This would be something good to ask Dave Neiwert about on Tuesday night in LA.