There is an ugliness in the land.....

[kpete]

The Ugliness and the Unfolding Horrors
by Jaime O'Neill


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/63532/the-ugliness-and-the-unfolding-horrors
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When a right wing talk radio host in Iowa (the heartland), promotes the idea of enslaving Mexican farm workers who are here illegally, and when that notion is not met with condemnation by the entire population, you know the country is settling very deep into the muck, enmiring itself in the worst kind of ugliness, hungering for a police state even while the most vociferous supporters of government intrusion in our lives insist that they was for smaller government.

Meanwhile, our news media seems complicit in spreading the tale as the fascists want it to be told. Meanwhile, the liberals equivocate or remain silent, telling themselves, as they did in Germany, that such madness would surely be self-limiting, that the nation would, sooner or later, see where such hatred and fear mongering can lead. Meanwhile, the right wingers, emboldened, grew ever more extreme, ever more hateful, using their twisted interpretations of religion to justify the most ungodly things imaginable. Meanwhile, the “moderates” were seen rushing ever rightward, their status as people with moderate views distorting the very definition of moderation, pushing the national conversation into a kind of “newspeak” in which war equals peace and justice equals summary executions by out-of-control cops. Meanwhile, the corporatists, the industrialists, the wealthiest few, the shielded, entitled, and most privileged, threw their money and power behind the men who promised to ensure the advantages that had made them so rich and powerful in the first place.

And so, when a demagogue steps forward, a man with an odd way of arranging his hair and a promise to make the homeland great again, the most thuggish elements begin to scream “seig heil,” and ugliness is loosed upon the land.

I think of the first stanza of the William Butler Yeats’ poem, written in the immediate aftermath of World War I, as the seeds of resentment that would sprout Nazism were beginning to grow in Germany.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And, reading those words nearly a full century after they were written, I think that this is not an old poem I am reading; this is the news.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/63532/the-ugliness-and-the-unfolding-horrors

[MrMickeysMom]

1. What is most ugly to me is the way people "cope" with helplessness...

Coping mechanisms are pretty ugly. I just screamed in traffic as a passenger in our car and it wasn't necessary, it was rather embarrassing that "no one heard me but my beloved driver". I'm embarrassed for thinking and reacting that way.

That scheme is what I see the masses do when prodded to lash out with the "enslaving Mexicans" idea. They are played like violins on acid. Was it all a dream that people reacted or played along that way? Ask all those "good Germans". Hell, ask the Germans now as to how they should treat Greece.

In fact, while I'm at it… ask every one of us if we could replay our worst behavior, would we not think before going along with this need to lash out against the poorest at the bottom of the corporate food chain?

Collectively…. Shame. Redemption is knowledge and realizing that one scheme builds on the other.

May we learn to embrace the answers without somebody killing someone else needlessly again.

[kpete]

2. if only MrMickeysMom

if only
PEACE,

kp

[n2doc]

3. We've seen this ugliness before

Who will stand up to it this time?

[truth2power]

4. Chris Hedges continues to raise the alarm about exactly what you're describing...

He says that when social structures fall apart, society "vomits up" (his term) the kind of demagogue described in your OP.

Accordingly, says Hedges, there are a number of well-organized proto-fascist groups in this country, i.e., the Tea Party, religious right, white supremicists, neo-Confederates, militias, who are just waiting to step forward when the opportunity arises. And the PTB who profit from death and destruction will channel the rage inherent in these groups toward the most vunerable: immigrants, gays, African-Americans, the poor etc. It's a frightening scenario, and the majority of the population seem to be sleepwalking toward it.

Go to YouTube and pick out any of Hedges' recent talks. Listen to what he's saying.

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ETA: I just went over to Smirking Chimp to read the entire article. Please, you all, read the comments.

Here's part of one by johndamos:

The root of the ugliness resides in and around Wall Street and those corporate boardrooms, and those think tanks the 1% own, where the money and power create the ugliness we see and then promote it across USA.

Those yahoos in Alabama and Trump are not the creators of our problems, they are the result of 1% polices aimed at destroying the USA we once knew and loved, in favor of something alien to us all.

[haikugal]

5. Hedges is on top of all this....I second your suggestion!! n/t

[truth2power]

6. Thank you.

[stuarttman63]

7. The chickens have come to roost

The ugliness is a profound regurgitation of what has always been here since white settlers came to this land. It's now unbridled and unfurled for all the world to see. It's racism, plain and simple. When this country was first founded, although it was never said explicitly by anyone but the Confederates, it was founded on a bedrock of racist attitudes and the idea that the truest citizens of the country were white. All the laws, folkways and hidden covenants were supposed to be for the benefit of the white population. This had only begun to change in the early sixties with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the change in immigration policy which had previously favored immigration from caucasian countries. Over the last fifty years, the white supremacy crowd has seen America become a more equal society and they fear the loss of their position in society along with all of its privileges. This fear fuels their hatred of the federal government and their desire to make it so small that it, in the words of Grover Norquist, can be drowned in a bathtub. Indeed, the changing demographics in this country make the white supremacy voter cringe. They turn to such candidates as Trump as their last savior, someone they believe will restore white supremacy in this country and, as they put it more obliquely, "make America great again."

[tavalon]

8. Creepy and far too correct.