The World O' Crap Archive

Welcome to the Collected World O' Crap, a comprehensive library of posts from the original Salon Blog, and our successor site, world-o-crap.com (2006 to 2010).

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Friday, June 27, 2014

If You Have Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself, Then Make Fear-ade

Over at American Thinker, Kyle-Anne Shiver says that if Obama is elected President, “America as we now know it could completely cease to exist within a very short time under his leadership, especially with thebonus of a packed, liberal House and Senate.  This is not an out-on-a-limb, slim possibility.  It is, I believe, a strong probability.”
This is, of course, bad news for those of us who live in America, because we’re going to have to move, and after that re-fi we don’t have much equity left, so any country we could afford to buy probably won’t have the same amount of storage space, or covered parking, and might not take pets.  Even worse, they’ve tightened up lending since that sub-prime fiasco, so we might not pass the credit check; but I suppose if worst came to worse we could always move back in with our parents, assuming Great Britain still has that daybed in the basement.
However, the prospect of Armageddon doesn’t seem to bother Kyle-Anne nearly as much as Obama’s insinuations that fear is a bad thing, because as Nietzsche said, “Whatever scares the crap out of you without actually posing a threat only makes you a stronger Republican.”  And this is one woman who’s not about to give up her night-terrors and allow herself to be ground down into a bloody pulp by the Politics of Optimism.
This very positive force [fear] that innately urges all human beings to guard themselves from disasters, big and small, is one of the strongest protections we all have, and I’ll not give mine up just because some fancy-dancy, highfalutin “talker” comes along and tells me it’s a bad thing.  And as far as I’m concerned, anyone who does bow to this Obama idiocy is fit for the loony bin and a tight-fitting straight jacket.
It’s a pity that it’s so difficult to involuntarily commit a person for psychiatric observation nowadays, because if you ask me, there’s way too many people capable of making rational risk assessments who are just allowed to freely walk the streets!
Well, to be honest, some of what scares me about Barry and Michelle Obama in the White House does, in fact, have a little to do with the grains of truth in that now infamous New Yorker cover, showing Obama in Muslim garb and Michelle as a black militant with a machine gun, and the American flag burning in a fireplace.
Ah, where to begin?
Well, I assume you act this way because of some childhood trauma, so let’s begin with your toilet-training…
Let’s start with the flag.  Who would have ever suspected that Barack Obama holds America in less than perfectly high esteem, if he had not, in very fact, been so chummy all his years in Chicago with one of the most infamous, flag-burning, bomb-throwing, unrepentant domestic terrorists in United States history?
Ironically, they probably even exchanged pleasantries during one of those 4th of July block parties they’re so fond of in suburban Chicago, as Obama sneaked a quick cigarette and William Ayers tended to the plump, seditious brats roasting slowly over his flag-fired grill.
If Barack Obama has never been seen burning an American flag, he clearly doesn’t hold it against any of his companions, who most certainly have burned our flag and done just about everything else they could to destroy this Country.
So, if Barack Obama has so much difficulty understanding why an increasing number of Americans question his love for America, his patriotism, perhaps he should begin to question his own judgment when it comes to the company he keeps, instead of continuously questioning our judgment when we ask the questions.
I mean where exactly does this fancy-dancer get off?!
Then, there is the New Yorker’s portrayal of Michelle as a black militant, sporting an Afro and giving Barack the fist bump.  [Insert long list of wingnut grievances that prove Michelle Obama is uppity]  If all of these things do not imply a superiority to and condemnation of America, which have been the hallmarks of black militancy since the late 1960s, I simply do not know what would.
Yeah, that kind of thing would no doubt prove irritating if your preferred mode of contact with black people was limited to pancake syrup and curbside baggage Check-In.  But still, it’s not really scary.  Not really…  Can’t you make the story scarier, Mommy?
The fist bump itself seems to be an adaptation of the Black Panther power salute, so prominent in the 60s and 70s.
“You want scary, you ungrateful little bastard?  I’ll give you scary!  Blacks have acquired stealth technology, and are now able to conceal their expressions of revolutionary zeal from the FBI by rotating their arms 90 degrees!”
It might appear completely innocuous to some, but to others…
…like, for instance, people who are very scared of the very scary Negroes…
…it is a memorable remnant of a very explosive and, for many, frightening period of American history.  There are probably not too many Americans over the age of 50, who do not remember the black power moment at the Olympics of 1968 and the fear those raised fists could evoke in the shadow of American cities inflamed by riots and uncontrolled violence.
Michelle Obama did sit with her husband in Jeremiah Wright’s church for many years, listening unperturbed to racist diatribes aimed at every white-skin person in America.
Scary Negroes using the power of their Black Jesus to kill Whitey with their voodoo incantations!…  Quick! — Update the National Threat Assessment to PITCH!
If I had sat listening to the rants of a David Duke for years on end and then gave my husband some form of the Nazi salute in public…
…we’d call it “Wednesday.”
There may be only a tiny grain of truth to the black militant image of Michelle Obama on the New Yorker cover, but even a tiny grain may be too much for some. Now to the Muslim garb, worn by Barack Obama on the New Yorker cover.  As even the New York Times has pointed out, whether Barack Obama has ever actually been a practicing Muslim, is of no real concern to us, as Americans.  If he was, then it was under the authority of his parents, while living in a Muslim country, Indonesia, as a child.
Well, it wasn’t actually the Times, as it wasn’t an editorial, it was a highly arguable Opinion piece by Edward Luttwack, but it finally proves enough to get Kyle-Anne’s feargasm going before the batteries run out and the puffiness and chaffing set in.
Because “[a]s the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.”
And, as the same editorial goes on to confirm, this undeniable fact of Obama’s birth religion, as seen by Islamists, does have a bearing, however slight, on this election, simply because we are still at war with Islamic terrorists around the globe.
So it would be like electing Hitler president of the United States in 1944.  And if Obama does become president, that means that America instantly becomes a Muslim nation, according to Sharia.  But then we’d have to have another election to choose if we’re going to be Sunni or Shia.  And since both sides have money, this means weeks of Sunday morning talking heads dithering and fancy-dancing on camera as they struggle to decide which party is the most Suck-Upable.
Satire, like the New Yorker cover, can indeed be a powerful purveyor of ideas, and while the editors say they were intending to ridicule the unfounded fears of conservatives, it would seem to me, that all they have really done is add significant weight to the very grains of truth they have now highlighted for nearly every voter in the entire Country.
Except for those voters who have just returned from a day at the beach, because there’s a good chance those grains are just sand caught in the elastic band of your underpants.
Posted by scott on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 2:00 am.

23 Responses to “If You Have Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself, Then Make Fear-ade”

If I had sat listening to the rants of a David Duke for years on end and then gave my husband some form of the Nazi salute in public…
…we’d call it “Wednesday.”
That’s some funny shit.
If I had sat listening to the rants of a David Duke for years on end and then gave my husband some form of the Nazi salute in public…
…we’d call it “Wednesday.”
That’s some funny shit.
If her husband gave some form of Nazi salute in public to her, wouldn’t it be a “Seig Kyle-Ann!”?
Hey, howabout that National Review cover.
Sweet Lordy-Gordy, what a screwball. But I guess if I had a name like “Kyle-Ann”, I’d probably have more issues than a news stand.
If I had sat listening to the rants of a David Duke for years on end and then gave my husband some form of the Nazi salute in public…
…we’d call it “Wednesday.”
That’s some funny shit.
Even if there’s a grain of truth in it? A kernel? A neutrino?
This very positive force [fear] that innately urges all human beings to guard themselves from disasters, big and small, is one of the strongest protections we all have
So, yours wasn’t working throughout the Bush administration, or did you just switch it off?
There are probably not too many Americans over the age of 50, who do not remember the black power moment at the Olympics of 1968 and the fear those raised fists could evoke in the shadow of American cities inflamed by riots and uncontrolled violence.
Yes, because who among us is not a cosseted white suburbanite who’s been nursing racial fears for five decades?
(I have to give Kyle-Anne some props for using “inflame” to mean “set fire to”, but then I’m a big fan of Late Middle English, and anything that speeds its return I deme quemeful.)
(Of course the violence which actually inflamed inner cities in 1968, as we use the term nowadays, was the violence that separated Martin Luther King from his previous ability to use oxygen.)
I also remember that those fists were attached to names–Tommie Smith and John Carlos–and that non-scary white Australian silver medalist Peter Norman (whose name I had to look up) wore a patch signifying his support. And I remember the real reaction–beyond people like Kyle-Anne, whose boot-shaking had, no doubt, been a more or less permanent condition since the mid-50s–was, in fact, what we seem to do best: an easy suburban outrage unburdened by fact or understanding. And I remember that Avery Brundage, the IOC president and one of the slimiest bastards ever to not rule an Axis power in WWII, threatened to throw the entire US Olympic team out if the two weren’t expelled.
And, of course, it turned out that America need not have worried; Ronald Reagan would soon make People’s Park safe again, and in four years George Foreman would begin the conversion of the Olympics to a quadrennial flagasm.
And Tommie Smith and John Carlos, like Jim Hines (100m) and Lee Evans (400) would spend a good portion of their lives giving back to their communities.
With that much fear in her, she’d better hike up her depends.
Isn’t “Scared Conservative” redundant?
Well Kylie-Ann just needs to relax and get down with the bros cuz when Obama’s president he’s gonna get Berry Gordy to pimp the Department of Cool and the whole country’s gonna be fancy-Dancin’ in The Streets!
Is anyone else around here old enough to remember that when Martha and the Vandellas came out with Dancin’ in the Streets it was banned from a lot of radio stations because it was thought to be scary Black Man Code for rioting? Good times, good times.
This very positive force [fear]
The only thing we have to fear is positive force itself!”
“William Ayers tended to the plump, seditious brats roasting slowly over his flag-fired grill.”
For a brief, shining moment there I was hoping that Ayers was getting rid of the next generation of Wingnut Welfare babies, but then I realised that you meant BRATWURST. Crap…
Then, there is the New Yorker’s portrayal of Michelle as a black militant, sporting an Afro and giving Barack the fist bump.
What? You say Michelle Obama doesn’t really have an Afro? But I saw it on the cover of a magazine! How dare she!!
I grew up in a mostly white small town with a young black kid whose father was a Radiologist. You can imagine our concern, their upstanding-ness aside, that this man was so close to such dangerous near-WMD materials.
Barium, for instance. Barium, people! Barry Obama? Say what?!? That’s right… And don’t even get me started on his use of “X-rays”… hello, Malcolm X???
You think I’m kidding? Let me hip you to some Truth, brother.. (see, they totally brainwashed me!) I used to have blonde hair and blue eyes – 25 years later, I have… mousy brown, slightly graying hair! My Scandinavian freckles? Gone! My blue eyes? More nearsighted than ever, yet somehow I need reading glasses. Odd, no?
I can only imagine what will happen, should Obama take the Presidency. Orale!, mijos and mijas, we can’t take that chance! Oh no… it’s already starting!
this means weeks of Sunday morning talking heads
Shouldn’t that be Friday morning talking heads?
and in four years George Foreman would begin the conversion of the Olympics to a quadrennial flagasm.
Actually, Foreman did his little flag-wave thingy at that same Olympics (1968). By 1972 George was the #1 contender and preparing to destroy Joe Frzier in January ’73.
Don’t these people have anything real to be afraid of? Positive force, my ass. Try growing up with PTSD from it. Fear is a crippling disease. *Caution* is a positive force, and these nutjobs haven’t been anywhere near caution in decades.
The problem for the reichwingers is that many of the things about which they should worry-global warming, a government increasingly in the pocket of big business, sending jobs overseas, etc–are things they support. That makes it hard to them (“I worry about our dependence on big oil, which I think is great!”) so they invent stuff to scare themselves, usually involving minorities (racial, sexual or religious)
[...]who most certainly have burned our flag and done just about everything else they could to destroy this Country.
No one’s ever really explained this one to me: how exactly does burning a flag destroy a country? Enough American flags have been burned to cover every square inch of land at this point, so why is the U.S. still here?
Stubbornly durable lot, you folks.
Damn, General, thanks. How’d I confuse Foreman with Teófilo Stevenson?
Shorter Kyle-Anne: “. . . the editors say they were intending to ridicule the unfounded fears of conservatives, it would seem to me, that they succeeded.”
A friend of infamous domestic terrorists? Obama was a buddy of Tim McVeigh? Who knew?
And regarding that 1968 Olympic salute: I was a nerdy white middle-class high school kid at the time, and I thought it was cool. It actually made me proud to be an American. Fortunately I grew up and learned the difference between personal heroism and dumbass nation-worship.
Damn, General, thanks. How’d I confuse Foreman with Teófilo Stevenson?
They didn’t have hi def in the 70s and both sell grills now.

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