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October 29, 2004
Billmon: The Future Belongs to Me
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Welcome back Billmon – guess you listened to Mosh.
You are right – the pictures from the rallies, where you only get in with tickets, no doubt allowed – its right out of Goebbels book of operation.
Posted by: b | Oct 29 2004 20:52 utc | 1
As another wise pundit, can’t quite remember who, either Goose Gossage or HST, once said…..
“history is hard to know, what with all the hired bullshit out there.”
But Billmon pretty much nails it because like other fascists before them, it’s not so much what the Rovians are doing themselves as what they are unleashing that is really scary.
Thank you Billmon. Was always a reader, never a commenter. Missed your insights sorely. Miss the country that I grew up in also.
Posted by: mer | Oct 29 2004 22:17 utc | 3
Do not mistake your own nightmares for reality. The future is not set.
Posted by: teuton | Oct 29 2004 22:39 utc | 4
Tomorrow Belongs to Me
(from the musical “Cabaret”)
“Oh Fatherland, Fatherland,
Show us the sign
Your children have waited to see.
The morning will come
When the world is mine.
Tomorrow belongs to me!”
The dangerous parallels have been in the floating in the air like cottonwood pollen on a hot midwestern summer day for some time now. My own wearied worry for the future has never been stronger.
A sigh and a shudder…
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Oct 29 2004 22:56 utc | 5
Scratch the first “in the” and the analogy makes more sense. 😉
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Oct 29 2004 22:58 utc | 6
Hi Billmon, if you’re ever here. First I’d heard of this oath.
I’m still surprised at the willingness of Bush supporters to be dominated. Maybe I should go into biz as a dominatrix for Republicans. Could be a win-win situation to be legally allowed to slap around their stupid asses, and get paid!
From Orincus Part 6, plus links to the first five entries on The Rise of Pseudo Fascism. (Scroll down to Monday, October 25th.)
Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 30 2004 1:21 utc | 7
OMG.
Has anyone else seen this? The Men Who Stare At Goats.
You must read this article about the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib…the foundations…based upon a book by the above name.
The two-part article is called The Road to Abu Ghraib, but it talks with a military guy who talks about experiments in the 1980s called Operation Jedi….working on attempts to walk through walls. become invisible. kill goats with thoughts (and shooting goats in the leg…)
Also, an incredible about of money has gone into black ops since Bush took office…or has gone into the black ops fund and has subsequently gone to line the pockets of the Bush junta.
Talks about the use of sound/frequencies to mess with people’s minds…I thought all this stuff was urban legend, but here’s a military guy confirming it.
talks about a church using subliminal sounds to get their congregation to give more money…I’d really, really like to know what church did this, because I’d also like to know how they could justify using their congregation as human guinea pigs, and exploit them for money, if what the guy says is, in fact, true.
I think I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.
Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 30 2004 2:34 utc | 8
Oaths and Miracles, as the old saying goes. All cults are based on solemn oaths and promised miracles…
This could get deep, but I’ll say in passing that “boy scout pledge” rituals like this are exactly that — rituals — things that human beings do when scared, to borrow for a moment the comforting feeling of having some control over events. Bush is being set up as a little tin god for his followers to pray to, just as various other personality-cultish leader-figures have been. The propensity of uneducated/superstitious people to pray to little tin gods when frightened or anxious is universal, it’s always there, waiting for something to fill in the emotional gap.
I have a feeling that the Rovian/Straussian masterminds know this very well and that they are deliberately manipulating the anomie, alarm, anxiety of the American public. With or without OBL there is plenty of anomie and fear in American culture: the monadic consumer lifestyle provides plenty of alienation and depression, and the vicious no-safety-net economy provides plenty of anxiety and fear, even without the added spice of an Emmanuel G. The manifest failure of the educational system and public media provide the ignorance. The anxious, nervous, deeply ignorant public is ripe for recruitment into any cult that makes a strong bid, and imho the resurgence of evangelism, the emergence of this new Leader Cult orchestrated by the ultra right, are related effects. Or so it seems to me.
Atwood left a mark. The cultural tremors were just there then. A seismic shifting from persperation to salvation. She pushed the probability limits to promote vigilance. So I watched.
I watched the emergence of evangelicism and miltarianism and relaxtaxism and deficitism. Of aggressive isolationism. And then terrorism. The catalyst for Extreme Patriotism with a side of Savism.
So now here we are. Scrutinizing minorities and pulpit politicking. Four more years would complete it. Ask Reinquist.
Who woulda ever thunk.
Posted by: canucklehead | Oct 30 2004 6:53 utc | 10
This could get deep, but I’ll say in passing that “boy scout pledge” rituals like this are exactly that — rituals — things that human beings do when scared, to borrow for a moment the comforting feeling of having some control over events.
Just like to add a note about the boy scout pledge. I presume you all know the modern “Be always ready – always ready”, but what is less known is the original “Be always ready to die for your country – always ready to die for my country”. Die for the country became less popular around the time of WW1 and thus they let that part go. Bet you thought boy scouts were nice…
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Oct 30 2004 8:17 utc | 11
@DeAndander
The Fauxreal link above “from ornicus” The Rise of Pseudo Facism Part#5 Warfare by Other Means takes what you say and runs with it, the whole series well worth the read.
Posted by: anna missed | Oct 30 2004 8:19 utc | 12
Did I ever tell you that you guys and gals rawk the fucking house!?
Round for the house bartender!
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 30 2004 9:49 utc | 13
This could get deep, but I’ll say in passing that “boy scout pledge” rituals like this are exactly that — rituals — things that human beings do when scared, to borrow for a moment the comforting feeling of having some control over events.
As I slowly scrolled and read, before I saw your name at the bottom, I said to myself … “this has to be De”. 😉
‘Twas in about 1984 that I began to get the willies about how many “mindless” recitations there were in my life…. I began eliminating them then. Of course as a cradle-born and raised Lutheran (big time liturgical church), and well-trained creature of my culture, so many are still stored away in my head. The “national” mantras came easy, after being schooled since first being able to talk in sentences that reciting in groups is a “good thing”. uh-huh!
Let’s not stop at the comfort that comes from simple scout “pledges”, shall we… there are all those cultish things we recite and sing seeking a yummy transcending alpha brain wave state without really “knowing” we’re seeking it … Lovin’ those endogenous opiates. Give me too much. 😉
Oh most merciful God, who has given thine only begotten son to die for us, have mercy upon us. And for his sake…
Must practice in private in order to be better able to recite in public… Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.
I pledge allegiance to the flag … and to the republic…
So many verses in the mind, they swirl like water in a drain after a time … in the end indistinquishable one from another. Is our children learning?
I’m sure there’s a book here somewhere. A hefty project.
Ooooommmm!
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Oct 30 2004 12:26 utc | 14
fauxreal,
The “Men who stare at goats” link doesn’t want to work … hangs up… I’d love to read the excerpt…
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Oct 31 2004 2:48 utc | 15
If anybody we in “communist” countries had to endure all those pledges to our leader and our ideology (from school to working place).
We were like sure our great leader Tito can’t die…they tried to put him right where God’s place used to be in our mind prior to “revolution” (civil war during WWII).
People (especially older) honestly were desperate when he died in his 80-ies.
But he did die and our ideology died…most of the younger people (like we were at the time) didn’t care and were actually happy to lose it all and try something new.
What goes deeply in our mind and soul is what our parents had to teach us.
But I’ll never forget “Cabaret” movie…I went to see it like 7 times that year.
All tho during Milosevic’s years in power scene like this one that Billmon describe were different in a way that we could see on a TV mostly old people “chanting”…
And all the young and intelligent looking people could be seen in protests to Milosevic. So it gave me a hope.
The only event that made my hair “go up” really was prior to all wars in 1988 I think. It was a celebration of 600 years of Kosovo’s battle (with Ottomans). I suppose Serbs are the only people that celebrate battles they lost. Milosevic took this opportunity that didn’t belong to him in any way (because he was communist and never in his life was he religious and this battle was battle for Christianity) to wake up nationalistic and patriotic feeling in people. He will use them later for his purposes. I could see it right there and I remember I said to a friend: This man is dangerous…he has no shame and is capable of terrible things. It turned out I was right…
Posted by: vbo | Oct 31 2004 4:53 utc | 16