Pack Your Sanity In Your Old Kit Bag And Puke, Puke, Puke
If you had a dime for every time a government official has used national security to railroad some segment of society, you’d never have to work again. The pitiable history of humanity is ripe with this kind of stench. The only question that needs to be asked is why it keeps happening, or more to the point, why it keeps happening in a purported constitutionally mandated republic, which grants liberty to all.
Long ago, before I completely gave up on the ambiguities of democracy, human decency and the evolution of free thought and traded it all in to comment on what is obviously a fucked game of slobbered knuckle-dragging claptrap, I used to laugh out loud at the barbaric notions of the McCarthy Anti-American hearings of the 1950s. It was a surreal scene, to say the least; as if the whole fiasco was less horror show than sick joke. It is still hard to fathom that you could find two people, even those from the South, who would buy such a load of crap, much less allow it to happen in latter 20th century America. It was so unconscionably bizarre it didn’t even appear to feign rationale. It was as if there had been a mass hallucination or the Scopes Monkey Trial had been recast as a kangaroo court of gray-flannel Neanderthals posing as absolute authority on who was American or Un-American, as if comic book villains had taken over the shop and were peddling this pathetically infantile shit as law.
I was never quite sure how anyone could recall that era and be the least bit proud to be American or a human for that matter. It’s not like this was the 1850s; it was the 1950s. But then you think, hell, no one would ever get away with that crippled logic today; blathering incoherently about hidden radicalization and questioning the loyalties of certain citizens based on hunches. It’s bad fiction, much less decent reality.
So now we have another Republican legislator with another lame reason to drag an entire community, religion, culture, whatever through the muck as a chairman of another bloated government over-reach program that was as useless as tits on the proverbial bull nine years ago when it was dreamed up. The man says, “I have no choice” and that his hearings on the radicalization of Muslims are “absolutely essential” when none of it is remotely true. There is “a choice” and nothing is “essential” except food, water and breathing.
Peter King says: “There are elements in that community that are being radicalized, and I believe that the leaders of that community do not face up to that reality. Too many cases are not cooperative, not willing to speak out and condemn this type of radicalization.”
What the fuck is going on?
Why isn’t whatever is left of the flaccid mainstream press, which is supposed to be wildly liberal, not calling for New York Senator Peter King’s arrest for subverting the constitutional and the civil rights of our citizenry in this most egregiously haphazard way? Why isn’t this new-fangled, next-generation President of ours not stepping in and closing down this ignominious sideshow and call it what it is; a fascist pogrom? And where are all these fancy “Keep government out of our lives” Republicans during this?
Yeah, I thought so.
Because as stated in this space for nearly 14 long years now, the whole thing is fucked. You’re fucked. I’m fucked. The system is completely and utterly fucked. You wonder why we’re a broke, indebted, war-torn, backwards, sub-intellectual, fat, distracted, lazy-ass sucker of a nation? When Wall Street marauders pilfer freely with no repercussions and gigantic health care bills are voted on by legislators that still fail to understand its scope and the most interesting thing we can think of is watching a cokehead rant like a twelve year-old on the Today Show over and over and over?
The only “controversy” I’ve read from the press is that King was once a supporter of the Irish Republican Army and a member of the terrorist group, Sinn Fein. But what the hell does that matter? I don’t care if King donates his salary to the Klu Klux Klan. King has nothing to do with this. He can call for all the hearings he wants or demand everyone from every walk of life come clean on anyone they might know who is a “radical,” whatever the hell that is? It’s like this incessant liberal bashing of Sarah Palin, as if she counts for anything. Ignore it and it will go away. That’s my motto. But allowing this xenophobic publicity whore to cobble together a nonsensical circus on our dime is a whole other animal.
Seriously, people, I was going to do my usual “Hey, great, let’s all hear it for Peter King! He’s going after the myopic loons who inhabit organized religion! I propose we begin hearings on fundamentalist Christians and Hassidim and put the Hindus on trial and make Buddhists crawl. And how about the snake charmers, Voodoo priestesses and Wiccan chieftains? We can begin by investigating the tax evading cretins who run these magic shows.” Yeah, I was going to have fun mocking the whole thing in the detached, goofy way I always do, but this, well, this sort of criminal affair turns the stomach like nothing else.
First, it was months of moronic debate about allowing an Islamic center to be built in New York City, as if being upset by the location of a religious building held much weight. Then we’re overrun with assholes actually going out in public—many of them elected officials and journalists saying, “We know these people have the right to do it, but hey, have some sentimentality.”
What the motherfuck does sentimentality have to do with rights? While we’re at it; what does morality have to do with civil union rights? Or what does the survival of our social fabric have to do with outlawing plant life?
The press might be hypnotized by the dog and pony show, but we know what’s going on here; an assault on civil liberties and a systemic urination on the constitution; pure and simple.
You know the jack-offs who cry like Glenn Beck every time someone takes butane to an American flag? Well it’s time they wake up and realize this is the real thing; only instead of just some meaningless cloth smoldering, actual live citizens are being rounded up and asked to answer for the inept, asleep-at-the-wheel federal government, CIA and FBI, all of which dropped the ball and left this country wide open for what went down on 9/11/01, leading to the tax sinkhole that is Homeland Security and its current vapid freak of a chairman.
As much as I hate to admit, I am embarrassed to even write about this, and if you’ve read this space for one week you would know that embarrassing me is not an easy task.
Well, what did you expect from this farce of a government representing the farce we’ve become?
Enjoy the show.
James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of Deep Tank Jersey, Fear No Art, Trailing Jesus and Midnight For Cinderella.
