[Writer’s Block picks a funny time to disappear. Happy day after Saturnalia, everybody!]
“What do you mean, you didn’t expect us? We sent you a registered letter!”
It’s a true joy to watch Republicans panic about Mike Huckabee. Austin Hill is our latest correspondent:
Pardon me, but have you seen my Republican Party lately? I don’t recognize it anywhere.
My mom worked for Barry Goldwater as she carried me in her womb, Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of my home state of California when I was two years old, and I’ve believed in the principles of Goldwater and Reagan all my life.
But given the surge of the “Huckabee for President” campaign, it would seem that many Republicans have abandoned Reagan’s vision in favor of something more reminiscent of President Carter.
As a former Governor, Huckabee has a less-than-conservative track record on a wide range of crucial policy issues, from taxation to immigration to judicial appointments. But Huckabee speaks fluently about Jesus Christ, and theology, and for some people this is apparently all that matters.
And this is why I’m confused. How can so many members of the Republican Party be so quick to abandon the principles of Ronald Reagan?
There’s so much wrong with this. First of all, what St. Ronnie’s acolytes love to forget is that Reagan himself had a less-than-conservative stance on a wide range of crucial policy issues, which he was quick to abandon in order to achieve political power.
Second of all, what Hill calls “quick”, I call “more than 25 years in the making”, traceable to the very beginning of the post-Goldwater “conservative movement” but most obviously prominent in the 1980 Reagan campaign, which is what makes Hill’s Carter comparison so glaringly bad – Carter and the religious right were entirely at odds. (For an even worse take on the Carter-Huckabee “connection”, enjoy this guy:
Jimmy Carter sold us out by giving away the Panama Canal and humiliatingly bending over for Iran’s ayatollahs, which established our vulnerability in the Muslim world, thereby opening the door for the terror war that brought us 9/11. Huckabee would sell us out by facilitating our colonization by Third World hordes who overburden our services, spit on our laws and pour over our border not as immigrants, but as a vanquishing army intent on displacing us from our own country.
Something tells me this guy thinks this is a documentary.)
But even aside from schadenfreude, what’s really striking to me is how this false surprise – “When I sent you an invitation to my party and let you pay for the cake and all the decorations, I didn’t think you’d actually come” - permeates every layer of the conservative psyche. The level of denial it takes to claim that a theocrat revolution has come upon the Republican party by surprise, with no participation by those now decrying the developments, is out of this world.
But this is just another example of how denial is an absolute requirement for being a conservative in Bush’s America. And the boom market for denial is in the “march to dictatorship” sector. A recent example, via Digby:
I was exhausted, tired and hungry. I didn’t understand the officials’ conduct, for they were treating me like a very dangerous criminal. Soon thereafter I was removed from the cubicle and two armed guards placed me up against a wall. A chain was fastened around my waist and I was handcuffed to the chain. Then my legs were placed in chains. I asked for permission to make a telephone call but they refused. So secured, I was taken from the airport terminal in full sight of everybody. I have seldom felt so bad, so humiliated and all because I had taken a longer vacation than allowed under the law.
But even more telling is the response from a few commenters:
[“janusinsocal”] Don’t you guys get it? This woman broke the law! She overstayed her visa by three weeks and expected to come back to the US without hindrance. As far as I can see, she got what she deserved. If you want to be treated with respect and dignity, respect and dignify our laws. I’m sure the government in Iceland would expect the same from US citizens. Tens of thousands of foreign nationals stick to the rules every day and have no difficulty entering the US. Being blonde, beautiful, and from Iceland doesn’t make you special here.
[“Ciarin”] I do not think any of her treatment was inhumane(so sorry she got porridge instead of filet mignon), and I suggest people not break laws if they want to be treated better than a criminal. I refuse to join the “I hate america” bandwagon, thanks.
There’s a contingent of authoritarians who welcome any iron fist tactics, but there’s a much larger contingent who have their blinders on. Just as they learned to ignore our screaming about the dangers of the religious right, they’re pulling the same act about constitutional erosion. It’s not even justification, it’s complete denial. They’ll do anything to avoid thinking about what’s actually going on – from setting up the most ridiculous false dichotomies, to saying everyone’s doing it to parsing into nothingness.
But they’re not doing it to fool us. They’re desperate to fool themselves. This is obvious in the Huckabee fallout: Until the day a crazy evangelical became the frontrunner, they were free to pretend that crazy evangelicals weren’t a threat – simply an exploitable resource with no strings attached. And so it is with authority creep, and so it has ever been: Until it happens to you, it doesn’t really happen.
——-
A footnote: According to Thomas Madden, who despite being an Inquisition apologist is pretty authoritative on the matter, says that far from fear and surprise, most of the Inquisitions were welcomed into European towns with open arms. The announcement of the impending arrival of the travelling court was a cause for celebration, and even the inevitable orgy of informing couldn’t dampen most peoples’ enthusiasm for the perceived security of making sure their neighbors weren’t crypto-Jews or heretics. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t escape from the European system of “justice” one of the driving forces behind the writing of the Constitution in the first place?
32 Responses to “Denial”
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Holy cow, it’s nice to see that conservatives savage each other with just as much glee as they savage the Left.
9/11 was all Jimmy Carter’s fault. The bastard!
I know people who have accidentally overstayed visas while traveling. It is not always spelled out very plainly to visa holders exactly when it expires and that they could be detained and prosecuted if they stay beyond whatever time. Not that ignorance is an excuse, but some compassion is in order when people make honest mistakes.
Luckily the person I know was in a developing country when it happened and he was able to bribe his way out while still in control of low-level officials.
And now that I typed that I have this big brother vision of people in uniforms busting down my door and interrogating me. I would like to think that things like that are far off but I really don’t know.
What? We owned the Panama Canal forever and J carter messed that up? Damn him to hell and those little brown people, too. No wonder the A-rabs hate us.
This woman was detained because she overstayed her visa twelve years ago. It’s absolutely ridiculous that there wouldn’t be a statute of limitations on a “crime” like that.
I can’t even read the right wing media anymore. Buchanan is racist and has horrible policy ideas, but at least he seems to have self-consistent beliefs, and he has good analysis of many issues. The right-wing media, on the other hand, like Noonan, they don’t even have self-consistent beliefs. They believe one thing one day, then something totally different tomorrow. They have doublespeak down. They are totally useless.
Buchanan is one of the few on the right who has some idea of what is going on and seems to actually care about this country.
Unfortunately, he is so worried about poor brown people (and non Christians) that he isn’t very useful.
The other thing about the incident with the unfortunate Icelander is that immigration authorities didn’t inform the Icelandic embassy that one of their citizens was being held. Seems to me that’s pretty basic courtesy towards a steadfast ally.
I laughed when I saw “principles” and “Ronald Reagan” used in the same sentence.
Imagine how the wingnuts would howl if this happened to am American citizen in a Pakistan or any other Muslim country. They would think it was grounds to launch a nuclear war.
I suggest people not break laws if they want to be treated better than a criminal.
Fair enough. Let this be a lesson to all you speeders and assorted jaywalking scofflaws. You may be held without notification to your family, twelve years after the event, and strip searched. That’s what you get for breaking the law, criminals.
9/11 was all Jimmy Carter’s fault. The bastard!
They like to say it was Clinton’s fault too.
I have trouble following the logic of people like this on the Carter thing, because I seem to recall that they also believe terrorists everywhere were shitting themselves during Reagan’s inauguration. That would suggest that any damage Carter might have done vis a vis making the U.S. look “weak” was negated, wouldn’t it?
Clinton-haters, of course, will say that the only reason anything bad has happened during the Bush years is because of the delayed reactions of Clinton policies.
Now, I try to be open-minded, I really do. I try to listen to the other side, even if I can’t stand the person speaking (like a Hannity, for instance), particularly when I haven’t got extensive knowledge of the topic. Nevertheless, it’s always struck me as a pretty amazing coincidence that things didn’t really start to go south until after Clinton left office. Not only after Clinton left office, but during the very first year he was out of office to boot.
Excellent point. I wonder how many serious crimes, violent ones even, have got statutes of limitations shorter than 12 years.
This person would be singing a different tune if they’d ever gone through something similar. Quality of food has got nothing to do with it.
I’m a regular reader here, but I don’t really want to post this under my screenname.
Something similar happened to me a few years ago. My entry-exit patterns were very sporadic at the time because I was trying to attend an American university, but I was very depressed and kept having to withdraw and leave in the middle of the semester.
On this occasion, I was trying to visit some friends, and I guess I caught their notice. I was held for twelve hours and questioned repeatedly. I was photographed and fingerprinted… and the person doing it made sure to twist my fingers around painfully. They yelled at me and four people watched me take my anti-depressants.
Eventually, they finally sent me back to Canada and I have not been allowed to return, even though I have a parent living in the US.
My doctor had just lowered the dosage on my anti-depressants because I had been doing so well, but after this little incident, I had to have it doubled. The new dosage was the highest that it had ever been. It was weeks before I could really function again, and I had to start a different degree from the beginning at a new university. My old program would have put me in a field that needed security clearance when I finished, and after this incident, I doubt I will ever pass a background check.
I’m still very depressed and not even close to finishing. I wish I could go back to the school in the US that I really wanted to go to, not this one that I’m at because I have no choice, but obviously, that’s not going to be possible.
Because I have a parent in the US, I’ve been going through a process so I can be allowed to visit again. They’ve lost my paperwork three times, and rejected me once. I had submitted my passport with my paperwork, and it was not returned to me. We have appealed the decision, and in the meantime, they still have my passport. Apparently, they will return it when they make their decision on the appeal, but I have very little faith in their ability to not lose my passport. I’ve been instructed (by them) not to write or contact their offices while they make their decision.
I still have anxiety attacks when I remember how they treated me, and I have anxiety attacks when I see their seal/logo/symbol because I remember all the paperwork that I’ve had to fill out, and the number of people that yelled at me.
But after reading that woman’s story, I realize that they were actually NICE to me in comparison. They tried to feed me and take me to the bathroom, but my body shuts down when I’m upset and I wasn’t hungry and didn’t need to go. And I wasn’t carted off to jail.
Some troll will probably show up and rant about how I deserved it, or about how I’m a baby, just like they did to that woman. I hope that nothing so traumatizing ever happens to them. It’s too awful to wish on anyone.
What should really worry you is that those commenters literally have no conception whatsoever of due process. They are literally wholly unable to distinguish between arbitrary mistreatment by law enforcement officials and penalties enacted after a trial and finding of guilt. Now that is frighteningly authoritarian.
>Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t escape from the >European system of “justice” one of the driving forces >behind the writing of the Constitution in the first place?
Not really. The Constitution was created because the Articles of Confederation failed to provide enough power to the central government to deal with the issues of the 1780s which were crushing the 13 colonies:
War Debt
The British occupying Forts in the Midwest
The Spanish trying to take control of the modern states of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama
The nation’s military impotence in the face of angry Indians
Disputes between the states over who owned the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi
States charging tariffs on goods from other states and other forms of trade war
Civil Disorder such as Shay’s Rebellion
Indeed, the Bill of Rights, which addresses issues of rights in the face of authority and the law, was only added after people protested the lack of such guarantees, especially since they were increasingly common in State Constitutions at the time.
And the biggest reason we got the protections in the face of the law that we did was that a large chunk of the elite were involved in smuggling in the 1760s and 1770s and were faced with much more ruthless law enforcement than before the 1760s. They wrote in protections they wished they’d had when they were being tried by the British navy and having their goods seized by it. (It’s not for nothing that the first man to sign the Constitution was a smuggler whose ship, the Liberty, had been seized without a Massachusetts Court Warrant in 1767.)
In other words, our constitutional rights are essentially the result of a ‘War on Smuggling’ leading to accused (and quite often guilty) criminals setting up measures to ensure rights for the accused. Though a fair number of those rights are grounded in English common law which had been overrriden by the new laws that cracked down on smuggling in the 1760s.
John Biles
I was having a conversation over the weekend with my mom about how Christianity hates women. I think it does, she thinks it doesn’t. She told me “I don’t obey any man.” and then proceeded to lay out why it’s a good thing that the hierarchy goes God->Jesus->Husband->Wife. I think part of the problem is conservatives tend to think the rules don’t apply to them. It’s like they can’t imagine ever being oppressed themselves, because after all they’re a god fearing good citizen, right? Right?
Well, I forget just how or why I was just looking at a link in Wikipedia about the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, but it led me to an online publication of the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia regarding that subject, and from there regarding Adam, and thence to this page on “Woman:”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15687b.htm
The insanity just got more and more batshit the farther I went along these lines; this page, written in 1912, is incredibly whacked. But there it is.
I tried to include a block of quotation from the article under the subheading “Nature” but I think it is way too long and I don’t want to edit it as that would distort the balance of the arguments made. They mitigate the raw impact of their fundamental assertion that women are indeed subordinate to men in many subtle ways, but that does remain their bottom line.
Following a link to Thomas Aquinas on the subject of women was less than helpful.
Very educational to be sure. I’m going to stop suggesting that there is any feminist element in the Catholic tradition whatsoever.
What’s interesting is it’s probably the way that the Reagan GOP treated the Iranians in their plot to buy the hostage’s release that really seeded islamic attitudes of ‘americans’.
I’m sure that it looked rather odd for the GOP to come with money in hand to Iranian terrorists to ‘win’ the release of the hostages to humiliate Carter.
Blowback is a bitch, isn’t it…
Hey, is anyone else having trouble with the links in this post? None of them are working for me.
Ronald Reagan’s principles that cheating on your spouse and informing on your friends is fine as long as a few corporations make big money?
I read this part of Naomi Klien’s book Disaster Capitalism and was impressed and frightened.
It hits across so many levels. Healthcare and security and so many, most actually, levels of government.
It’s just astounding that the president that swore on the Bible to protect the constitution from ‘those enemies both foreign and domestic’ has enacted an agenda that has systematically made this country more and more beholden to the ‘money changers’ and charlatans of the business world.
It’s just amazing… I’m afraid to get the book because I think I’ll need Xanax and a new passport…
The link: is here.
(REPOST)
I read this part of Naomi Klien’s book Disaster Capitalism and was impressed and frightened.
It hits across so many levels. Healthcare and security and so many, most actually, levels of government.
It’s just astounding that the president that swore on the Bible to protect the constitution from ‘those enemies both foreign and domestic’ has enacted an agenda that has systematically made this country more and more beholden to the ‘money changers’ and charlatans of the business world.
It’s just amazing… I’m afraid to get the book because I think I’ll need Xanax and a new passport…
The link: is here.
The Republican party is morally bankrupt and has been for decades.
Now the Social Darwinists must face their Creationist kissing cousin and get married as she is pregnant with the fascist theocracy they’ve both helped to spawn.
Both will be looking to us to foot the bill for the child support and why not? Ronnie sucked in most of America for that long ago.
I hope we get out of this mess sooner than I think we will.
Hey, you heathen thinking that David Vitter is a hypocrite and a jerk, ake this: here.
He’s ‘bringing home the pork’ for you ungrateful people…
Hypocrites need to be supported…
Rather not, do you have a lawyer?
If not, get one. If my close relative’s situation serves as an example, it helps a great deal to have somebody constantly saying “cut the goddamn shit and get your act together” with authority.
Mark twain quotes I found…
Mark, that 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia article is exactly the same one that whacked me upside the head years ago when I was trying to argue to one of my CCD students that no, individual Catholics might [have] oppress[ed] women, but the Church per se didn’t and never had, and I went off to look up authoritative sources and blammo - only I found it in the actual hard copy edition of it at my alma m.’s library, nihil obstat, imprimatur, etc etc - pretty damn humiliating crow pie dished out there; and if you think that’s bad, you should check out the articles defending church-over-state domination (iirc it’s under Divorce), and also the bits defending the Inquisition against the Cathars (shorter CE: yes, they were treated brutally, but they were evil and would have destroyed civilization if they hadn’t been stopped!!1! Plus ca change, yanno…)
I’m going to stop suggesting that there is any feminist element in the Catholic tradition whatsoever.
It occasionally tries to pop its head up, only to be ruthlessly crushed by the hierarchy and denounced as heresy.
IOW, people have tried, so some writings by some theologians along those lines exist, but no go as far as being actual policy or teachings.
I think the most accurate way to put it is that Christianity can be detrimental to women, but is neither the most nor the least harmful system of beliefs out there.
Compared to some belief systems, Christianity can be quite repressive. Compared to other belief systems, Christianity is quite progressive. It is not Christians or Christian cultures who are selectively aborting female fetuses. Honor killing, which is common in some parts of the world, is explicitly prohibited by none other than Jesus himself (John
A fair amount also depends on the denomination of Christianity. It would be difficult to make the case that a church like the United Church of Christ or the Episcopal Church hates women, yet there are plenty of other churches that clearly do.
A large part of the reason behind these differences is the simple fact that the Bible contradicts itself, much more than most people realize. On one hand, Paul said
On the other hand, Paul also said
Without arguing the point you made, I would like to observe that there really are two nearly distinct Catholicisms - the one operated by the hierarchy, and the one experienced in the pews.
Seen from the inside (until I got summarily pitched out when I came out of the closet), it is often amazing how completely different what the institutional church says and does is from what the local parish says and does.
I suspect some (but not all, fer shure) of what your mother was commenting on was that her experience of being Catholic didn’t reflect to her the very clear misogyny that you see in Catholicism.
In my experience, most Catholics treat Rome the way most British people treat the Royals - glad they are there, feel they are important in some more or less unspecified way, but not in any meaningful sense a part of day to day life.
So for your mother, what is important about HER Catholicism is how she and other women are treated in their parish, not what some theologian writes.
And the biggest reason we got the protections in the face of the law that we did was that a large chunk of the elite were involved in smuggling in the 1760s and 1770s and were faced with much more ruthless law enforcement than before the 1760s. They wrote in protections they wished they’d had when they were being tried by the British navy and having their goods seized by it. (It’s not for nothing that the first man to sign the Constitution was a smuggler whose ship, the Liberty, had been seized without a Massachusetts Court Warrant in 1767.)
You are confusing the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence, I’m afraid. John Hancock, the guy to whom you are referring, was elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but did not attend.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/marryff.html
i remember i was on a bus to canada from NY and i was sitting next to a woman who told me she was going to Canada to go live with her boyfriend.
we got to the LaColle border stop and she was held over for approximately an hour. she was taken into a small room and a woman typed on a computer for at least half an hour and whispered to other customs officials and did not inform her of anything going on. she said it was pretty scary because she had basically dropped everything in the US and she had no idea if they were going to try and send her back to nothing. eventually, they told her that her visa was not valid.
‘what do you mean, my visa is invalid? i have the papers right here in my hand.’
‘no, you have the wrong type of visa, blah blah blah’ you know, bureaucratic bullshit.
‘ok, so explain to me why i was allowed to get this type of visa, and why i have documentation for a valid visa, then.’
eventually, they let her in, but like GumbyAnne said, visas are not clear cut and they don’t necessarily make sense, and mistakes are pretty easy to make.