{"id":6990,"date":"2009-09-14T20:38:18","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T02:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ncobrief.com\/index.php\/archives\/clouds-of-illusion\/"},"modified":"2009-09-14T20:41:32","modified_gmt":"2009-09-15T02:41:32","slug":"clouds-of-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/archives\/clouds-of-illusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Clouds of Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am amused to note a lot of amusing new and old media fall-out, after the massive Tea-party inspired rally on the Mall on Saturday \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which, depending on which media outlet and which political orientation you read \u00e2\u20ac\u201c may have been as many as two million people or just one or two of them walking a million times around the Capitol Building. They were all carrying Nazi symbols, and Confederate banners and getting their hate on, according to some of the more \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 ahem \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 outspoken commentators, such as this one, whose illustration for his post<\/a> takes the absolute cake for condescension and arrogance \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 although apparently, the Tea Partiers did pick up the trash when they were done, for which I think they ought to get some credit. And no, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read much past the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcteabagger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 reference in the linked column. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s according to my new principle of considering that as akin to the n-word. This Daggatt person is supposed to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a meticulous political blogger\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to David Brin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blog at Open Salon<\/a>, and offer a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 a truly excellent appraisal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yeah, that David Brin. Guess he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get out all that much. <\/p>\n

Quite honestly, I am left shaking my head in weary disbelief, reading the picture that is painted of the Tea Party and conservatives\/libertarians in general on the leftist blogs and media \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in a similar way that I used to be shaking my head at the portrayal of the military, in similar venues. People would write the most astonishing things, insist that every word was true, and the most horrible things were going on in the military \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t accept that what they were saying wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anything like the military that I actually lived in. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d think that a military veteran and someone active in the Tea Party would have some credibility with them, for \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 you know, actually being there, and being able to speak with authority regarding their particular concern \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but no. Their minds were already made up – and who should I believe, them or my lying eyes?<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, there is another ruckus brewing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c fortunately this involves Hollywood and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not Kanye West, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fairly minor, rating only a long and amusing thread at John Scalzi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Whatever<\/a>. Apparently the pearls are being clutched, over the inability of this film to find an American distributor because \u00e2\u20ac\u201c get this! Those fundamentalist American yahoos are just so anti-the-teaching-of evolution that no one will touch a costume drama about Charles Darwin with a ten-foot pole.<\/em> Oh, spare me the attack of the vapors, people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the grownups in this country who eschew Michael Bay and all his works and his ways eat up this high-toned, historical costume-drama Merchant Ivory stuff as if it were a quart of Ben and Jerry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Chunky Monkey, and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you even try telling me otherwise.<\/p>\n

See, both these parties appear to have something in common \u00e2\u20ac\u201c besides a stratospherically high estimation of their own superiority \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and that is, they think they know something, and everything they read, hear on TV, and at cocktail party chit-chat with their friends all reinforces that thing that they think they know. The producers of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Creation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or more likely, the marketing guru who they have hired to gin up some controversy, attract some attention, and with luck, snag an American distribution deal, all know that Americans (to quote the acerbic Mr. Scalzi)<\/em> are knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Creationists. All nice, creative, brilliant and witty Brits know this, and they know this because they read it in their newspapers and hear it on the BBC, and all their nice, creative, brilliant and witty friends say so.<\/p>\n

And so it is also with our very own dear media and intellectual elite: they just know that the Tea Party folks are ignorant, racist, knuckle-dragging hicks, who are puppets of (pick one or all<\/em>) Fox TV, the Republican Party, or the insurance industry, because all the very best people say so, and really \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the New York Times say so, and so does NPR. Well, there you go. I think that what these people have done is to create a simulacrum in their own minds of what an American is, or a semi-libertarian conservative Constitutionalist is, which has some tiny and almost coincidental resemblance to what they are, really \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and for one reason or another, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just easier, or more comforting to believe in the simulacrum. <\/p>\n

Well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kinder than thinking they are all just nucking futs, which was my first reaction. Hey, I at least did the courtesy of at least trying to be understanding. I live to serve, people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am amused to note a lot of amusing new and old media fall-out, after the massive Tea-party inspired rally on the Mall on Saturday \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which, depending on which media outlet and which political orientation you read \u00e2\u20ac\u201c may have been as many as two million people or just one or two of them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1,17,13,83,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aint-that-america","category-general","category-politics","category-rant","category-tea-time","category-thats-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}