Cults Of Wingnuts
By Mark Adams
I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with wingnuts, but I was reminded of one in particular while reading Daniel De Groot’s rendition of the counter-conference Malkin and company were holding to bolster their lagging self-confidence in the shadow of Netroots Nation in Austin. I was physically accosted and called a commie for supporting Reagan.
Anyone really want to make the case that conservativism is anything more than a set of shallow authoritarian personality cults to rationalize socially destructive behaviour?
All they have is Reagan. And only their posthumous fictional version of him to boot. The one in office pissed them off by making nuclear arms reduction agreements with the Soviets.
I remember the Reykjavik conference, the one Reagan ended up walking out on, leaving most of us who were against wasting more money on more missiles and more nukes slapping our skulls and wondering how a geriatric moron could ever become president. (Some things never change.)
They had a special kind of lapel bling going around then that had both the Soviet and American flags crossed, and I got a hold of some as well as some stickers with both flags together. I was in law school at the time, and involved in running the Cleveland National Model United Nations Conference.
See boys and girls, way back when before the scary Muslamonazis threatened our very existence with dime-store box cutters, there was this guy named Gorbechev who had at his disposal thousands of nuke-u-ler missiles aimed at every square mile of this land-o-plenty on hair trigger release. And what did the great Saint Ronny Ray-gun do about this monstrous threat? He sat down and held face-to-face talks with him so we wouldn’t soot our missiles at them if they didn’t shoot theirs at us — and maybe they thought they might get rid of some of them since they promised not to use them anyway.
President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev entered into an unprecedented dialogue regarding their desire to eliminate their countries’ nuclear weapons. “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” Reagan said. Gorbachev replied, “We can do that.”
That was the theory, the “aspirational goal horizon” if you will. Of course Saint Ronny thought the best way to get an agreement for fewer missiles was to build more. The usual counter-intuitive wingnut nonsense. But the idea that the two leaders would talk face-to-face, that Reagan would meet with the head of what he labeled the “Evil Empire” was music to the ears of us lefties. Together they worked to keep the peace, just as the logo symbolized with each flag’s “pole” merged into the other, neither on top. Neither dominating the other.
So I was wearing one of these pins with both superpowers’ flags, using it as a tie-tac actually, and handing out the stickers to anyone in our lobby who might be interested in the Model UN conference. Then this huge guy came by to rain on my parade, calling me pinko scum and assorted other nasty things having to do with my heritage and politics because he saw the USSR flag.
I asked him if he knew what the logo symbolized, tried to explain what it was about, but he literally stuck his chest in my face, hollering and refusing to let me get a word in edgewise about his hero approving the pin, that it came from out own State Department. He didn’t care. He just “saw red,” and chest-thumped me a couple of times, trying to get me to throw the first punch — and I was tempted despite his six inch reach advantage.
I walked away to the taunts of liberals all being cowards and his buddies led him out of the lobby. This bully was a college grad. I know that since you have to be “educated” before accepted to law schoolm and he was indeed a fellow student. When it came flag pins and talking with our rivals he had no desire to be further educated. His mind long since closed.
No, you’ll never hear from me how there’s more to conservatism than belonging to a tribal culture who spit on the very idea that inspired this nation’s beginning, E. Pluribus Unum — or as Ara likes to say, we’re all in this together.
Speaking of uneducated wingnuts, I just about choked when I saw Mr Esmay’s comment on this post, where he claims that drilling for more oil in the US would lower domestic oil prices. To whit:
What a nimrod. Gas is considerably more expensive in Canada than it is in the US. Either he couldn’t be bothered to check, or the complex metric system defies conversion. Or if he was only discussing the price of oil, the same still applies. We pay the same as the resto of the world for the raw product.
What an ass.
See, the thing is, one thing Esmay isn’t is “uneducated”. The “we have to turn more federal lands over to the fossil fuel industry” is merely the latest in a long history of obviously stupid, self-destructive immoral sops to corporatist elites; basically what the “conservative” movement and Republicanism has come to stand for (other than opposition to liberalism and Democrats).
Long ago, Dean became my personal poster child for the power of socio/political fealty and authoritarian following to completely overwhelm: 1)knowledge, 2)intelligence, 3)reason and 4)compassion. It was quite a revelation at the time.
Offshore drilling is like scrounging behind the couch cushions — for a year — to get some spare change so you can make your house payment tomorrow.
P.S. What do y’all think of T. Boone Pickens’ plan?
I think it’s Texas-sized stupid.
Why retrofit or build a new fueling station infrastructure to the tune of $billions for natural gas automobiles when we’re already past that in automobile technology? Unless you’re trying to find a way to make the oil bidness more unnecessary profits, that is.
He may be half right on the fuel security issue – we could use our natural gas to fuel our electricity grid and move to the only sensible transportation model: plug-in hybrids and electrics (instant 100% torque, baby). But we’re still burning non-renewable carbons so we are still committing slow (or not so slow) suicide. Better to decentralize power generation, fueled by wind, solar, geothermal and renewables.
Holy crap, turn my back for five seconds, and the whole website changes.
And my last comment disappears too!. Here it is again. Shep, we’re facing a future that has reduced energy of all types, including electricity. I think that the only sensible model for most people is going to be mass transit.
BTW, the blog looks fantastic.
Holy crap, turn my back for five seconds, and the whole website changes.
Yes. Well. It took more than 5 seconds to change it. Thank goodness for .htaccess file-based 301 redirects.
BTW, the blog looks fantastic.
That made my day! Thanks so much.
Feel free to offer any further suggestions:
araDOTrubyanATgmailDOTcom
Hey, remember that fertilizer stock suggestion? From today’s Forbes:
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Now, you have 5 minutes after submitting a comment to edit it. Try it and see how you like it.
“Shep, we’re facing a future that has reduced energy of all types, including electricity. I think that the only sensible model for most people is going to be mass transit.”
You mean, most urban-living people (for the moment “mass transit” for rural communities is impractical). And that goes to the really big impact: more centralization of the population – the exact opposite of what we’ve been doing (urban sprawl), people will be concentrating in cities, large and small. I’m actually optimistic about our ability to generate the electricity we need (once we stop wasting it flagrantly) from carbon neutral methods for the purposes of a powering a more regionalized grid that will support electric or hybrid powered individual transportation vehicles for those who are willing to pay for them. I predict that many people will be willing to pay for them for a very long time.
Ara, as I said before, the look is great. Nice banner too ;^)
You mean, most urban-living people (for the moment “mass transit” for rural communities is impractical).
Look at Europe as a model. Many small communities have active transit system, and major economic hubs connected by high-speed rail. Regarding really rural situations go, well, it’s going to be very expensive to commute that way.
As far as wasting electricity goes, I can’t imagine anything more wasteful than powering millions of tons of steel and plastic in the form of private vehicles.
“As far as wasting electricity goes, I can’t imagine anything more wasteful than powering millions of tons of steel and plastic in the form of private vehicles.”
Agreed. Unfortunately, we’ve built a very large society around private vehicles and I don’t see any way to change that in the near term. We’ve been killing ourselves and the planet just so we could drive around alone in 5,000lb. SUVs for god’s sake. Both practically and politically, building a regionalized (even highly localized) electrical grid powered by carbon neutral sources, dismantling urban sprawl, factory farming, outsourced manufacturing, etc. will be a tough enough sell. That, and getting people off of airplanes and urban highway commutes, using the information superhighway instead.
As far as getting people off airplanes, the recent ripping apart of the Australian jet — and the interminable, excruciating experience that airports, in general, have become — may take care of that.
I’d think that it won’t be a matter of having to convince people to abandon cars. As I’ve said in the past, their wallets will make the choice. And the cost of filling up with gas or charging up your battery will likely be comparable.
The powers that be have spent just about everything we have as a nation and a species to keep the owners of Exxon/Mobil and GM as obscenely rich as anyone could imagine. It would be foolish to think that they won’t try to find a way to keep the golden goose alive until it’s fully cooked.
Oh, and to make sure not to let the little people off the hook (I have a few “RVs” myself), this is the country that invented the SUV and NASCAR. We are car crazy – probably quite literally from your standpoint. If you don’t believe me, take a trip to LA or NY (both of whom have good mass transit options and are still clogged with cars). As far as that goes, your European model features shorter traveling distances, great mass transit, gas prices almost double what we’ve traditionally paid and they still drive cars. High gas taxes (the same disincentive as current market forces) caused them to do what we’ll do now: downsize and switch from gasoline to something else.
I’m not saying that’s what we should do, I’m saying that the costs would have to become seriously astronomical (do you have any idea what people already pay for car(s) + insurance + fuel + taxes/tags/titles + maintenance, etc.?) to get Americans to give up their personal automobiles.
I’m saying that the costs would have to become seriously astronomical
Yes. We’re finding out just how insanely elastic the price of oil really is.
What happens when the rubber band finally snaps?
“Yes. We’re finding out just how insanely elastic the price of oil really is.”
I remember saying that a substantial portion of the “the market value” of any Wall Street property was completely speculative, in other words, a lot of market value is based upon nothing but perception (as demonstrated by the sometimes wild gyrations in the DOW, S&P, etc.) and was met with an argument that there was real, substantive value behind the stock prices for these organizations. That was a few months before the tech-stock meltdown.
What has substantively changed since 2005 in oil market supply and demand? (Answer: not very much.) “Market value” is part elephant shit.
What has substantively changed since 2005 in oil market supply and demand?
A marked increase in Chinese oil consumption, and a notable lack of spare production capacity in oil-producing nations.
I don’t like looking into the crystal ball, as you know, but it seems to me that neither trend shows a realistic likelihood of being reversed at any time in the foreseeable future.
“A marked increase in Chinese oil consumption, and a notable lack of spare production capacity in oil-producing nations.”
$100 a barrel’s worth?! I’ll even spot you the decline in the dollar.