What Is The Point?
I have been looking for the pattern in the Nine-Twelver moment and I just can’t figure it out anything beyond a visceral hatred of Obama.
The signs make no sense. They jump all around covering anti-immigration [including the English only crowd], anti-bailout [Bush administration], anti-deficit [Bush administration], anti-tax [no tax increase on the horizon], gun rights [no bills involving guns in Congress], et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
Then you have the leader of this motley crew, whose latest book has a picture of him on the cover wearing a Nazi uniform and a Soviet medal. Why? What message is that supposed to convey?
If you look at the official poster for the event, as the LA Times did, the message is “Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!” [Proletariat of all countries, unite!] as it features three upraised fists in red. That is standard socialist iconography.
In the end I have to conclude that this isn’t really a movement, it is Brownian motion.
Update: Badtux presents an example of the vague messaging:
“DON’T STEAL FROM MEDICARE TO SUPPORT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE”
7 comments
“DON’T STEAL FROM MEDICARE TO SUPPORT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE”
😆 however, it’s better than much of what the democrats are putting out.
seems to me the republican-engendered visceral hatred of clinton worked well enough to at least become part of the overall movement to destroy government as we
knowonce knew it.Brownian Movement could explain it but I think it is more akin to just frustrated rage and the typical lashing out that accompanies it. These folks are just unable to accept the fact that a black(though half white) man is President of the U.S. and what’s more that he is probably smarter by a wide margin than they are. They latch on to anything that gives them a sense of unity against the “black Satan” whether they understand its meaning or goals, or as you can see, roots and history.
It would be very interesting to see someone run with the ‘socialist symbolism’ thing and point it back at Beck and see how he explains it all.
.-= last blog ..Food Safety – Good Resources =-.
Beck doesn’t seem to need to explain anything as there is no one willing to take him to task, other than a few bloggers. The media has no interest in dealing with its own problems, and Beck is a media problem. They have created this genre of “shock jocks” and justify them with ratings numbers. There is no system of accountability in the US media and it shows.
Hatred is very reliable for the Republicans and always has been. Terror is what they are good at, and they use it.
When I saw those three upraised fists, at first I thought, “what is this, a demonstration of anarchists?” I thought I was looking at a photograph of a left-wing rally that had its usual infestation of anarchists until I read the headline and the story. Because that’s what I usually think of when I see posters of upraised fists.
Muddled ain’t the word for it… but it isn’t about any particular message anyhow. It’s all about slinging mud at the wall and seeing what will stick, and really, they don’t believe any of that messaging anyhow, what they’re acting from is gut anger and hate, not anything rational.
– Badtux the non-anarchist Penguin
Oh yeah. You’re wrong about the “no bills in Congress regulating guns”. HR45 was introduced by a Representative from Illinois on January 6, 2009 (several weeks before Obama entered office in case you’re counting). It has no (zero) co-sponsors and has been quietly buried in the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security since February 9, and has about as much chance of seeing the light of day as I have of flapping my flippers and soaring through the sky, but it IS a bill, and it IS in Congress, albeit going nowhere fast (a bill with no co-sponsors is a bill that might as well be declared Dead On Arrival). I know about HR45 because I got one of those fundraising missives from a tighty righty organization (I do that to get intelligence on their stupidity, which is always entertaining) where the head of this organization, panicked that he might have to go get a real job rather than rely on wingnut welfare, is trying to scare the rubes into sending him more money for his six-figure salary…
– Badtux the Law Penguin
.-= last blog ..OMG it’s a gun grab! =-.
Thanks for the heads up on HR 45. Given the cost of implementation and all of the committees it would need to pass through to make it to the floor, it would need about 250 co-sponsors to get a vote on the House floor, and Baucus et al. in Senate finance would never take it up.
It reads like a local issue bill, since Carolyn McCarthy [D NY 04] isn’t on board. She entered politics because her husband was shot on the Long Island RR and is at the center of the “anti-gun” caucus in the House.
I just checked and it is named for a victim of a shooting in Chicago.
We don’t enforce the laws we currently have, but Congress keeps proposing new ones.
As for the clinched fist, maybe it’s a reaction to constipation…