Entertain yourselves on this Christmas eve. Witness the lynching of yet another MilBlog kicking itself to the curb.
The New American Fascist Unveiled
We progressive Utahns are proud to have become the sole focus of one MilBlog in their Christmas message.
Most likely because my Jewish father escaped a Nazi camp, I was raised with an acute sense of the horrors of the Holocaust and the powerful admonition that we ‘never forget.’ So it came as a very unpleasant surprise to discover at the age of 44, that many Americans HAVE forgotten, or more likely don’t understand the Holocaust and that this evil lurks in America today.
Indeed, it was not until Bush’s re-election campaign that I became viscerally aware that the potential for true evil in varying degrees exists just below the surface in a portion of our species. Understanding this evil has become an obsession.
This is not about Jews. This is about a little known but well documented character trait in approximately 23% of our species who are subject to irrational even atrocious behavior under certain circumstances. I believe it stems from a languishing primal survival instinct called tribal loyalty, and it is the catalyst for all evil; race, class and religious discrimination, every genocide, massacre, crusade, and most wars including Iraq and the subsequent sectarian violence.
The self-organizing phenomena of social networking and blogs in particular, provide immediate access to people most at risk of condoning, supporting, facilitating and/or participating in such evil. Possible only now, right-wing blogs provide us with stunningly consistent confirmation of the traits that define the authoritarian follower -- as eloquently described in John Dean’s book, Crises of Conscience. I recommend listening to this interview before reading on.
MilBlogs (Military Blogs) are a veritable Petri dish of these dangerous communities and a proving ground for the primary traits of the obedience to authority and tribal loyalty.
In the last 24 hours a MilBlog called A Soldiers Perspective (ASP) illustrates these traits with military precision. John Dean describes one of the primary traits of a group that suffers from blind obedience; “there has to be an opponent and enemy to coalesce around to hold the thing together.”
At ASP, that enemy is an angry mother called ‘MilMom’ who armed with solid facts and emotion over the death of her son in Iraq (unbeknownst to the ASP readers) became the singular focus of attack in past two days.
True to form, of yesterday’s eight posts at ASP, one entitled Merry MilMom-Free Christmas announcing the banning on ‘MilMom’ received 22 comments (as of this writing) while the other seven posts averaged 3 comments each. The scuffle that resulted in the banning of MilMom generated a remarkable 67 comments. A quick review of that exchange shows how easily these people are provoked when faced with inconvenient realities. I will dissect that exchange in a subsequent post.
Even more frightening is the current front-posted Christmas video in which the blog owner in full-dress marine uniform next to a cowed looking wife, gloats about their united victory over “troll psychos”. Of course he is referring to ‘MilMom.’ The sickest part of this video is that the mention of “troll psychos” represents the only connected moment between the couple, in which they actually look at each other with glib approval as if the vanquishing of ‘MilMom,’ represents the substance of their emotional commonality.
Next comes the son, also in the full-dress Marine garb of the lowest ranking non-commissioned officer who astride his cherubic new wife, gives an obedience, silent, chuckle in a bonding gesture to his Dad, the full meaning of which is revealed only when you know that Corporal boy did the heavy lifting of banning ‘MilMom’ on the CO’s orders.
<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VFHzkD-q98A"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VFHzkD-q98A" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>
The most difficult and perhaps dangerous fact of this ‘type’ is that these people do not realize they are subject to evil and in the absence of an authority figure, may go through their entire lives without committing evil.
Unfortunately, along came Bush, Cheney, Rove et. al. In an era that might have otherwise witnessed a continued trend toward a more peaceful world, the neo-cons have actually managed to get seemingly peaceful people to believe and repeat the fantasy that AK-7 wielding Muslim terrorists are lurking right around the corner ready to fight it out on the streets of Shitferbrainsville, Kansas.