Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Palin/Bachmann 2012!

Taibii on Michelle Bachmann. It's a great read.

Bachmann's story, to hear her tell it, is about a suburban homemaker who is chosen by God to become a politician who will restore faith and family values to public life and do battle with secular humanism. But by the time you've finished reviewing her record of lies and embellishments and contradictions, you'll have no idea if she actually believes in her own divine inspiration, or whether it's a big con job. Or maybe both are true — in which case this hard-charging challenger for the GOP nomination is a rare breed of political psychopath, equal parts crazed Divine Wind kamikaze-for-Jesus and calculating, six-faced Machiavellian prevaricator. Whatever she is, she's no joke.

I'm assuming Palin won't run because she made up the whole Trig birth story, and the media is content to leave it alone as long as she doesn't run. So, that leaves us with Michelle Bachmann, which is my second choice.

I sincerely hope that she beats Obama. I'm quite serious about that, and I'll donate money to her campaign to help.

It would be the most awesome disaster.. ever... assuming we all don't end up a smoldering pile of rubble.

/update

This bit is particularly interesting to me;

She is at once the most entertaining and the most dangerous kind of liar, a turbocharged cross between a born bullshit artist and a religious fanatic, for whom lying to the infidel is a kind of holy duty.

Who does that remind you of?

I guarantee you that people like Bachmann and Doug Gibbs would consider brazenly lying about something is perfectly acceptable in a pragmatic sense. They think ethics only matter once the religious state is established, because anything that they might do which we might consider "immoral" is fine as long as it furthers the Jesus agenda.

They figure that once Christ wins - they won't have to lie anymore, and their immoral behavior will be vindicated by Christ as a means to a glorified end.

I always ask, "stupid or lying?". I think the answer is probably an equal measure of each.

Snickering readers in New York or Los Angeles might be tempted by all of this to conclude that Bachmann is uniquely crazy. But in fact, such tales by Bachmann work precisely because there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously. When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don't learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you're a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they're even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.


/update 2

And of course.. the comments are the best part.

Cool Steve
22 minutes ago
GOD I WISH WE WOULD HAVE ANOTHER CIVIL WAY IN THIS COUNTRY SO I COULD WEED VERMIN LIKE YOURSELF OUT OF THE FREAKIN GENE POOL

I am suddenly convinced that Bachmann is going to win, and I can't get over how awesome the debates with Obama are going to be.

The comments are filled with the exact sort of people Taibbi describes as "hating us". They think Taibbi's criticism of Bachmann's religion is a "hateful attack" on their religion - because there really are millions of Americans that have the same sort of "God speaks directly to me" fantasies.. and they do NOT like it when somebody points out that that sort of thing is, by definition, crazy.

Thomas Beach
2 hours, 5 minutes ago
Mock a person's faith? this article is trash.

God gave us unalienable rights, and it is what makes us a free people. Your condemnation of her belief is a condemnation of America.

There really are millions of people in this country that equate their view of their religion as being the absolute definition of "America". By even suggesting that superstitious super natural hooey is.. well.. crazy.. they prove that they are, in fact, crazy by losing their fucking minds that Taibbi even critique a national politician in the style he does.

That make sense?

I'm really floored by the whole thing. I used to believe that the guy that shuffles around the city streets, talking to himself in paranoid delusions, was a one off in a city of millions.. but there literally are millions of other Americans that are exactly the same, but somewhat higher functioning. At least the ones that commented on Taibbi's article are able to use facebook, and post those comments with their actual name attached to them.

If you zoom out a little further, I would imagine that instead of these people being the crazy minority, they are the majority in quite a few nations around the world. Start with the entire Middle East, and then throw in Africa, and parts of South America.

When viewed as part of the "culture war", America is struggling. The vast majority of Europe and eastern nations such as Japan are much further along in reducing the influence of the crazy. I'm not so sure about the Southern Hemisphere nations, such as Australia. They seem to have quite embraced the crazy.

The problem is, most "secular humanists" are content to just self segregate themselves from the crazies. The crazies, on the other hand, are working day and night to change the broader cultural climate in their direction.

Ultimately, I don't really give a shit anymore, as long as they can't affect me. So far, they can't. Even in Texas, they can't touch us. As soon as that changes, we'll self segregate again by leaving... which I'm sure is quite okay with the Loon Brigade. Everyone wins in that scenario, so I don't see why secular humanists even try.

I would prefer that the Loon Brigade not self segregate by religion though. It would be far more entertaining for them to intermingle and destroy each other.

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