What Tom Cotton proves.

[delrem]

Tom Cotton proves that no matter how outrageous the fascist right gets, when given any chance at all it can ALWAYS outdo itself.

My expletive deleted expletive deleted my, but what I can't get my head around is that a majority of voters ELECTED HIM. People like Palin, people right up there at the intellectual summit with the Kardishians.
I can't get my head around how the US is spinning down this vortex by conscious choice.

Please please please, you people down south - get a grip. Get a grip.

______
As a Canadian I know that it's increasingly difficult for Canada not to follow in the steps of US madness, it gets safely packaged as fulfilling NATO responsibilities, and we're going through dark times with Harper.

[applegrove]

2. What I can't get my head around is the 46 senators who signed the letter. People like McCain. Then

McCain explained it all when he mentioned the snow storm. Senators in the USA are so entitled that they don't give a shit what they do or whose lives they destroy in the process. This is nuclear war we are talking about.

[delrem]

3. There's that, and how has the Republican party rebuked him?

It totally boggles the mind.

[Thinkingabout]

4. I don't know if there is anything which shocks them anymore.

Then Cotton goes on the Sunday shows and still thinks he has done something good, somewhere there has to be at least two people in the GOP who can think.

[bluesbassman]

5. The truth is approximately 28% of Arkansas' registered voters elected Tom Cotton.

He received 476,309 votes in a state with approximately 1,700,000 registered voters. While Arkansas' 2014 voting actually trended a few percentage points higher than the national average it is still, like the national average, an appallingly low turnout and is indicative of why nutjobs like Cotton can slip in.

[world wide wally]

6. But, who's fault is that?

[bluesbassman]

11. "Fault" is difficult word to nail down.

Is it the USSC's fault that Citizen's United allows people like the Koch brothers to funnel unlimited amounts of money to candidates like Cotton? Is it the Democrat leadreship's fault for not having a working plan to counteract the activities of people like the Koch brothers, or a plan to get the message out that 28% of the registered voters does not make a "mandate", which is what the GOP runs around saying every time they win any election.

[delrem]

7. When I was younger statistics like that were trotted out to prove "a failed state".

Where was an opposition party, I mean, a real opposition party that spoke common sense? That didn't just play the game that the voters are increasingly rejecting? Obviously it was largely absent and got defeated.

[joshcryer]

9. +1

[Archae]

8. Don't forget who they elected governor, after Bill Clinton.

Mike Huckabee, who on a daily basis sets new heights of hypocrisy, deception, holier-than-thou theocracy and corruption.

[delrem]

10. Yup, yet another on the same summit of achievement as Palin.

But c'mon, once stung that bad doesn't a person get it? How many times does a person have to be stung before they figure out the pattern?

[marym625]

12. The fault lies in ourselves.

The decades of spineless Democrats has now caused a problem that cannot easily be fixed. If at all.

[lastone]

13. what tom cotton proves

Is that there are people who are such religious extremists and who hate anything other than their own kind will relish the opportunity to vote (regardless of what election cycle it is) for one of their own. Couple that with $ for the tv and an aw shucks, god bless em candidate and consequence be damned. Remember when someone said, as a reason for voting for war criminal gwbush something about "I thick he'd be fun to have a beer with" or something --- well news flash people ---- presidents shouldn't be elected because he's one of the boys! Fucking idiots!

[Jon82]

14. Very ashamed that he is a senator from Arkansas

I currently live in Arkansas and considering what position I am soon to have in my career I will not be leaving for several years. I did not support Cotton while he was running for election and I even more adamantly against him now. Many people I spoke to during the election supported him because of his military back ground. Yes, I admire and respect anyone that did and is willing to serve in our military but that is not enough of a reason to vote for them. I would argue that but was often met with discontent concerning their belief that we need people like him to stop the federal government from dictating every part of our lives. If only they could understand, people like him are a major problem in how our government is currently operating and how it is perceived domestically and internationally.

[vlyons]

15. The dumbing down of America

I've thought about this a lot, the dumbing down of America. There are some key influences that I think explain it. I'm a Buddhist, so first what I see is how the mind works, the self cherishing and self grasping to reinforce the fiction of a sense of self as a real, solid thing, as opposed to concepts, feelings that are transitory. me versus you, us versus them is the hallmark of a dualistic mind. When really, we are all inter-related and dependent upon one another. We live on the same planet. Depicting Obama as "other" "not one of us" "not like is" is a perfect example of such dualistic thinking.

Then there's the degradation of public education. In the late 60s I went to the Univ of Texas, a world class university, and my tuition was $125 a semester. Higher education was funded by the oil industry. Go out to west Texas, and every 10th oil well, when the arm went down on every 4th time, that was one for UT. But being filthy rich wasn't enough for the oil barons, because being fabulously filthy rich was ever so much better. So hey, let's cut taxes by cutting funding for higher education. I think that Ayn Rand's "virtue of selfishness" philosophy, wherein chasing after money as the highest of moral endeavors, was also a big influence. It gave the oligarchs their justification.

Then there's the fundamentalist Christians, who by god don't want their kids learning about evolution or sitting next to and becoming friends with blacks, Hispanics, because they are "not like us." So hey let's use tax dollars to send our kids to charter schools and do home schooling.

Public education used to be something that Americans took great pride in. Teachers used to be respected. Kids used to be educated to reason and know science and history.

[hifiguy]

21. Ultimately there is no future for any society in which

teachers, education, and the educated are vilified and viewed as the evil elites.

And the reichwingers and jebus-wheezers have convinced a huge segment of the population that all of these things are to be avoided at all costs.

[Rex]

16. You know you should be worried. Canada seems to be slipping in voter turnout.

DON'T follow us into some hellhole of apathy! The GOP has ALWAYS been crazy/evil stupid. Cotton proves you can fool a lot of people all the time. So does Foxnews and CNN.

Jesse Helms was one evil asshole, don't think wet behind the ears Cotton even registers on the scale of Helms...yet. For some reason, we have a lot of people in America that like the way things are. They like Reaganomics. They like the 2nd amendment. They like wars with people that don't speak English. They constantly misspell their protest signs. You might like to think it is Down South...but no sir, that was 60 years ago.

NOW it is from one corner of America to another. The 47 traitors represent millions (ack) of people that live in hopes of America returning to the days before women had any rights and black people were slaves. THAT is fucking scary and THAT is what should keep people up at night when they want something to worry about.

So how did it come to this? Did you forget about that entire 8 years of George Bush and Dick Cheney? They pretty much destroyed any semblance of a nation by stealing 2 elections, starting 2 wars. One war based on lies and the other seemed not to matter since Bush let OBL walk away from harm.

Don't let Canada fall like we have. Even 8 years of miracle work by Obama is just the start. We will be feeling the impact from Nixon on up for decades and decades.

Moral of the story, don't let anti-intellectualism gain roots in your government or educational system. That included fundamentalism no matter what flavor it comes in. Don't pretend economic stimulus is created by tax cuts or extremely wealthy people. Make sure to have a high voter turnout for every election.

But that probably won't happen, Canada probably will follow us into the Land of Stupid.

[cordelia]

17. Palin is from Alaska.

Keep that in mind with your implicit South bashing please.

[delrem]

18. As I said, I'm Canadian.

Thanks for your distinction.

[KamaAina]

23. And Bachmann Loser Overdrive is from Minnesota.

[Baitball Blogger]

19. All politics is local. They are doing the same thing at a local level.

I don't know if it started at a local level, or if it trickled down from national practices, but they have been playing it over the edge since the eighties.

It is just keeps picking up traction. Unfortunately, the Clinton era didn't help us.

"I do what I want. I do what I want," seems to be the new mantra for this "Don't Tread On Me" cult.

There is no respect for conventional wisdom which came about because of the consequences that we have to face every time someone goes over the edge.

[hifiguy]

20. A manlike object like Cotton is no deviation from the norm in the US.

He is a near perfect representative of what is probably a plurality of the American population. This is a deeply and profoundly stupid country and it always has been, Part of the stupidity is genetic, part of it is ignorance based, but the largest part of it is based in fundymentalpatient religiosity and the imbecile belief in 'murkan exceptionalism, with which it is often inseparably intertwined. Education and the educated have ALWAYS been distrusted and mistrusted in the US. Critical thinking is dismissed in favor of gut reactions and "common sense" which usually makes every bit as much sense as phrenology.

35% of the population of this country is so goddam dumb they are capable of being held up through the mail and will believe literally anything if it is told to them by a religulous authority figure.

We are, I am afraid, pretty much done as a society. There are too many morons to be effectively combatted any more and the tools of stupidification can not be wrenched from the hands of the owners.

[MisterP]

22. it's not the same election, but it's the same state where the Almighty Party decided it'd

rather lose with a dusty conservadem than win with a more charismatic left-of-center guy