Glenn Beck, Karl Rove and the Reptile Brain

This is part two of “Sexy Gums and Reptile Brains,” published yesterday … 155 minutes ago. It’s a lot shorter and you really OUGHT to read it first, or this may make significantly less sense to you. Like a good joke, the punchline requires a setup. Otherwise just reciting the punchline, like, say, “That ain’t my finger either” doesn’t really communicate the joke.

ii. Karl Rove, GOP Lizard

He’s basically admitted it. Certainly the missing piece was provided by ex-Bush Campaign Chair, and former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman “coming out” to The Atlantic magazine:

Mehlman’s leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities — such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party’s platform (“Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country…”). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.

Just to make it crystal clear, here, from the [extremely homophobic] Baptist News:

FORMER GOP CHAIR IS HOMOSEXUAL — Former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, who was the campaign manager for President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign, told The Atlantic in an Aug. 25 story that he is homosexual. He also says he backs “gay marriage,” which is ironic, because pundits often credit Bush’s 2004 re-election — at least partially — to social conservatives who went out in droves in 11 states to vote for constitutional marriage amendments. Ohio, a key swing state that went for Bush, passed a marriage amendment that year…

This has been Rove’s hallmark for a long time, and after years of feeding the reptile brain with Faux Nooz™ Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, the second stage of the Great Reptile Brain drain of 2010 kicks into high gear.

Remember when Rove was trying to sell the “elitist” meme that worked so well for him with Kerry in 2004 against Obama in 2008? Here’s Jake Tapper of ABC News (not noted for his conservative talking  points UNfriendliness) [emphasis added]:

Rove: Obama’s the Guy at the Country Club Holding a Martini Making Snide Comments About Everyone Else

June 23, 2008 1:36 PM

ABC News’ Christianne Klein reports that at a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, former White House senior aide Karl Rove referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, as “coolly arrogant.”

“Even if you never met him, you know this guy,” Rove said, per Christianne Klein. “He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

Rove said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., “needs to come right at him.” He referred to the latest Newsweek poll showing Obama with a 15-point lead over McCain as nonsense, though he used a more scatological synonym. Rove said he was heading over to the White House for lunch and a chat with the President, Klein reports.

**

Interesting that Mr. Rove would use a country club metaphor to describe the first major party African-American presidential candidate, whom I’m sure wouldn’t be admitted into many country clubs that members of the Capitol Hill Club frequent.

But the picture Rove paints is interesting. Who, pray tell, is Rove at this country club?

The guy telling funny stories near the band?

The charming president of the club’s philanthropic arm?

The brainy guy with all the sports scores?

Or the guy who vandalizes your car and blames it on the kitchen staff?

- jpt [Jake Tapper]

So, there’s no doubt that the reptile brain is being invoked, and the dream logic becomes clear:

Obama=Black Radical=Black Panther=Black Muslim=Muslim=Terrorist=Communist=Socialist=Obama=Black Muslim Socialist Terrorist Communist.

And Glenn Beck holds a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and makes grand pronouncements about bringing “Christian” values to government, and, to a sea of White faces, grandly proclaimed at the outset:

It is one of the most beautiful places, I think, in America. I used to stand — I used to sit in the morning when I lived here in Washington about three columns in and watch the sunrise. It is spectacular because it rises right over the Capitol. It is a miracle.

And, the weather this Saturday is also a miracle. It’s supposed to be perfect. In August, in Washington, D.C. — this is a swamp — it’s supposed to be 82 and low humidity and perfect sunshine. I mean, thank you. Thank you.

The Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pool, if you haven’t seen the new World War II monument, it is remarkable. Bring your children to see the Washington Monument. It’s looming in the distance.

If they’re not watching, ask them this. You’ll see up about three quarter — about a quarter of the way, the stone changes colors. Nobody knows this. Ask them why it’s a different color. Do you know? That’s where they stopped building it in the Civil War. It’s pretty amazing to see the history….

Bad salesmanship, that. If Beck had told the ACTUAL story, it might have proven a hilarious bit of historical irony. You see, hateful nativist American reptile-brainers aren’t anything new. The reason that construction stopped was because of the “Know Nothing” party, yet another gaggle of angry folks who would have felt utterly at home at BecKKK’s rally. Here’s the tale, from Wikipedia:

Excavation for the foundation of the [Washington] Monument began in early 1848. The cornerstone was laid as part of an elaborate Fourth of July ceremony hosted by the Freemasons, a worldwide fraternal organization to which Washington belonged. Speeches that day showed the country continued to revere Washington. One celebrant noted, “No more Washingtons shall come in our time … But his virtues are stamped on the heart of mankind. He who is great in the battlefield looks upward to the generalship of Washington. He who grows wise in counsel feels that he is imitating Washington. He who can resign power against the wishes of a people, has in his eye the bright example of Washington.”

Construction continued until 1854, when donations ran out. The next year, Congress voted to appropriate $200,000 to continue the work but rescinded before the money could be spent. This reversal came because of a new policy the society had adopted in 1849. It had agreed, after a request from some Alabamians, to encourage all states and territories to donate commemorative stones that could be fitted into the interior walls.

Members of the society believed this practice would make citizens feel they had a part in building the monument, and it would cut costs by limiting the amount of stone that had to be bought. Blocks of Maryland marble, granite and sandstone steadily appeared at the site. American Indian tribes, professional organizations, societies, businesses and foreign nations donated stones that were 4 feet by 2 feet by 12–18 inches (1.2 m by 0.6 m by 0.3 – 0.5 m). One stone was donated by the Ryūkyū Kingdom and brought back by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, but never arrived in Washington (it was replaced in 1989).

Many of the stones donated for the monument, however, carried inscriptions which did not commemorate George Washington. For example, one from the Templars of Honor and Temperance stated “We will not buy, sell, or use as a beverage, any spiritous or malt liquors, Wine, Cider, or any other Alcoholic Liquor.”

It was just one commemorative stone that started the events that stopped the Congressional appropriation and ultimately construction altogether. In the early 1850s, Pope Pius IX contributed a block of marble. In March 1854, members of the anti-Catholic, nativist American Party—better known as the “Know-Nothings”—stole the Pope’s stone as a protest and supposedly threw it into the Potomac (it was replaced in 1982). Then, in order to make sure the monument fit the definition of “American” at that time, the Know-Nothings conducted an election so they could take over the entire society”. Congress immediately rescinded its $200,000 contribution.

The partially completed monument, photographed by Mathew Brady circa 1860
The Know-Nothings retained control of the society until 1858, adding 13 courses of masonry to the monument—all of which was of such poor quality it was later removed. Unable to collect enough money to finish work, they increasingly lost public support. The Know-Nothings eventually gave up and returned all records to the original society, but the stoppage in construction continued into, then after, the Civil War.

Uh, whoops!

Washington’s eponymous erection

[Spoiler alert. Movie = "Unbreakable" starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, 2000]

Who can forget Spencer Treat Clark as the kid in “Unbreakable” (I may be hazy on the chronology, but for my purposes, this is what it’s going to be) significantly pulling the carton of Tropicana® orange juice, untwisting the plastic cap and pouring himself a glass … slightly before he shoots his dad in the stomach with the gun he’s stolen from the hall closet?

I mean, as far as the arc of the story goes, what? We’re going to drink Tropicana™ orange juice because of the story arc of the character? Sure. Why not? It’s that magic drink from the movies!

[end spoiler alert]

Just as Glenn Beck twisted off the plastic cap on his Jesus® Patriot juice carton and poured a big glass for the Know-Nothings on the mall in Washington D.C.

Why “Know-Nothings”? Because Beck can  count on virtually all of his audience to NEVER look up the actual history of the Washington Monument that HE just invoked to get his audience into that groovy semi-sexual stimulated brew of patriotism, Jesus-lovin’ and hatred of the awful “liberal.”

Yes, he consciously chose to dispense Jesus juice so that he could make absurd claims about how he was the heir to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (phony crocodile tear humility aside) etcetera, and asked that no political signs be in attendance (although a sea of Gadsden flags were present, almost as ubiquitous as the Klan’s giant D.C. rally in 1925 pictured at the top of the column.)

Like Sinclair Lewis supposedly said in 1935′s It Can’t Happen Here, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

Well, meet Buzz Windrip.

Here’s something Lewis actually DID write in It Can’t Happen Here:

As a newspaper man, Doremus remembered that the only reporters who misrepresented and concealed facts more unscrupulously than the Capitalists were the Communists.

He was afraid that the world struggle today was not of Communism against Fascism, but of tolerance against the bigotry that was preached equally by Communism and Fascism. But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word “Fascism” and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty. For they were thieves not only of wages but of honor. To their purpose they could quote not only Scripture but Jefferson.

Well, what with Communism basically gone in all-but-name, I guess the Capitalist reporters win the crown by default.

But it’s not “reporters” and “media” that drive the news anyway.

Why do you think that the “press is filled with liberal bias” meme is so absurdly and yet frenetically preached as a Pillar of Faith among our new (literally) Know-Nothings?

To innoculate them against Dick Cavett. To innoculate them against thought. To innoculate them against knowledge.

A lot of commentators have been wondering how, in the utter lack of any evidence that belief Obama is a “Muslim” has jumped from 11% to 18% in the past few months. I wondered myself until I happened to run across some of those viral emails that your granny sends out to all her church friends. The kind of viral emails that are always third-hand, untraceable but always from some “authority” who often ends up protesting that he never wrote anything of the sort.

What that OUGHT to tell the talking heads is that the ability to run propaganda over around and under the radar has grown to frightful proportions. 7% of the public doesn’t suddenly walk outside and believe an absurd proposition (I mean wasn’t it the REVEREND Jeremiah Wright that caused all the electoral coded-racism that painted Wright as a racist?) just because the air is a little clearer or cooler, or the yellow-jacket poison looks like it worked.

Doesn’t happen without help, and doesn’t happen without intentional propaganda.

Or, consider this, from CNN a few days ago:

Report: 8 percent of U.S. newborns have undocumented parents

By Arthur Brice, CNN
August 12, 2010 5:08 a.m. EDT

The 14th Amendment stipulates that children born in the United States automatically become U.S. citizens.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The study was conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group
• The results come amid a national debate over changing the 14th Amendment
• The 14th Amendment grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States
• Nearly 80 percent of illegal immigrants’ children were born in the United States

Read the report (PDF)(CNN) — One of about every 12 babies born in the United States in 2008 was the offspring of unauthorized immigrants, a Pew Hispanic Center study released Wednesday concluded.

According to the study, an estimated 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in this country that year had parents who were in the United States without legal documentation.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution stipulates that those children automatically become U.S. citizens, but some members of Congress are pushing to change that provision. That effort — rooted in the debate over illegal immigration, particularly of people from Mexico — has created some controversy.

“This has got a lot of attention in the past weeks,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, the study’s author. “The idea was just to put a number on it.”

According to the study, 79 percent of the 5.1 million children of unauthorized immigrants in the United States were born in this country, making them U.S. citizens.
Nearly one of four children born in the United States in 2008 had parents who were immigrants, the Pew study found. Of those, 16 percent of the parents were legal immigrants and 8 percent were in the United States without proper documentation.

Many of those children are Latino, Passel said.

More than three-fourths of all unauthorized immigrants in the United States in March 2009 were Latinos, the researcher said….

Which neatly “supports” the new racist meme conflating Hispanics with illegal immigrants, just as conflating Muslims with terrorists, Old Black Panthers with New Black Panthers, American Black Muslims with ALL Muslims, Obama as a “radical”  secret Muslim/secret Black Panther/secret illegal immigrant, etc.

It’s about racism.

Just as Ayn Rand provides you with a series of pallative rationalizations for acting like a greedy prick and sneering at the less fortunate, so, too, Glenn Beck today provided his rationalizations for behaving like the worst kind of bigot against anyone not white, not in agreement with you, and all those horrible people with colored skin tones and liberal, humanitarian notions. Against anybody that Jesus tells you to kill or fuck up real bad.

Glenn Beck’s “religion” is not any opiate of the masses; no, it’s more like PCP for the masses. And Saturday, they gussied it up wrapped in an unholy triumvirate of Founding Fathers, the Flag and Jesus H. Christ, Esq.

Whoever actually minted the “Sinclair Lewis” quote above could have been writing directly about the Beckkkian tactic of the day, or the Karl Rove tactics since at least 2000.

But it isn’t about the conscious mind. It’s about the reptile brain. About inflaming the horrific passions of mob “justice,” and hatred of all “politicians” — you know, just like the Know-Nothings of Olden Daze™.

And make no mistake, that sea of white, angry faces filled with self-righteous fury and the Pledge of Jesus Allegiance to the Grand Old Party of God’s Own People, those “honor restorers” today were no less American Patriots, no less convinced of their own Righteous in dealing with the iniquitous outsiders than were those Know-Nothings who stopped the construction of the Washington Monument rather than let a brick get in that said something nice about a Pope, than those Klansmen and Klanswomen marching with their flags down from Capitol Hill in 1925.

They were your grandparents’ friends and neighbors, just as the current gaggle are your friends and neighbors. Green justified by Rand; Bigotry justified by Beck.

And we ask: who would sink so low in American politics — knowing our shameful past – to intentionally, deviously and repeatedly incite the most racist and bigoted American voters just to win elections?

Who would plant the venomous serpents of hatred in the nursery and crib of democracy?

What sort of monster would knowingly rouse the dogs of hatred, of violence, of mindless bigotry just to gain a few seats in Congress?

Would it be someone connected, say, to the RNC, Faux Nooz™, the Wall Street Journal (redundant, of course, since foreigner Rupert Murdoch’s noise machine runs in lock-step), the Rightie blogosmear (you know, like Pam Geller?), the radio Talk Show hate jockeys like Limbaugh and BecKKK and the dirty GOP political apparatus in every state in the Union?

Gee. Dunno. Beats me.

But whoever that is manages to prove that you don’t have to wear or even own funky robes and pointy hats to do the work of the most Imperial Wizard that the Ku Klux Klan ever fielded.

No.

All you gotta have is a dream.

Courage.