Preventing People From Dying is Just Like Genocide

These photos from the teabagger rally of Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) have thankfully been getting some exposure:



The sign says “National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau Germany – 1945." I first saw this item via Richard Blair of All Spin Zone. Distributorcap also has a brief item on this, and notes, "This was no Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin event - this was an event sponsored and pushed by the Republican leadership in the House and Senate - including Eric Fucking Cantor." Richard's post has contact information for Bachmann, Boehner and Cantor.

There's a point at which idiocy isn't funny, and being outrageous isn't so much offensive as it is grossly irresponsible and dangerous. It’s not as if there aren't legitimate criticisms of various health care reform proposals. But this isn't about respectable, 'different points of view' when one group is claiming that a government measure – one that could help people – is the same as one of the greatest evils ever perpetrated. One has to be pretty idiotic, or crazy, or irresponsible, to claim that giving people health care – which might save 22,000 – 45,000 lives a year, or more – is just like genocide, mass murder. And it's not as if this is an isolated incident, since this type of crap has been around for months now. This merely may be the most prominent example yet. It's sad that the light of day and being at the United States Capitol doesn't dissuade Michelle Bachmann, the Beck and Limbaugh fans, and the teabaggers from this poisonous bilge. Perhaps it only eggs them on.

I already linked an August post, "Deny Me Health Care or Give Me Death" in the previous post, and I have several more on the Holocaust. (Then there's more comically inept Holocaust references by right-wingers.) Sometimes Nazi analogies are appropriate, and sometimes they are irresponsible. I'm just very sick of the cavalier comparisons to Hitler and Stalin, especially when they're aimed at pretty centrist, establishmentarian politicians by far right authoritarians. It's all the more absurd when one considers - which group exactly is running around screaming about the dread menace of those who aren't real Germans, err, Americans, in our midst? This crap is dishonest, irresponsible, idiotically ahistorical, and just disgusting.

In late October, Scott Horton published a powerful short piece called "A Trip to Chon Tash" about novelist Chingiz Aitmatov and Aitmatov's struggle to deliver "a critical view of the legacy of Soviet rule in Central Asia and his native Kyrgyzstan." In 1938, Stalin had Aitmatov's father and 136 others among the intelligentsia murdered. This pattern will sound tragically familiar to those who know the history of Stalin. (Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror gives an overview, and I heard some heartbreaking stories in Russia during my brief study there.) In his piece, Horton visits the memorial erected near the pit where the bodies were buried (emphasis mine):

What transpired in Chon Tash occurred dozens of times across the vast frozen expanse of the Soviet Union, part of the policy that historians have come to call “decapitation,” the systematic murder of intellectuals and political leaders because of Stalin’s fear—part paranoid delusion and part real—that they would present some threat to him. Stalin’s object in dealing with the “nationalities” was to leave them leaderless and docile, and he was prepared to reach to the most brutal tools to achieve this.

In his novel [The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years], Aitmatov turns to the ancient Turkic legend of the mankurt. The head of a man taken prisoner is shaved and the moistened skin of a camel is applied to it. He is then sent into the desert, where the drying of the skin produces horrible torture. If the prisoner survives, his personality is destroyed by the process, and with it any recollection of the past. He is reduced to subservience to his master. The mankurt may look outwardly like a human being, but he is not. Aitmatov’s message, which struggled to escape censorship, was plain: this was what Stalin had done to Central Asia. And for Aitmatov, the lost memory was never more poignantly presented than in the fate of his father, a fate he learned only after the Soviet Union fell and the truth could be told.

Saturday was a brilliant autumn day in the foothills of the Alatoo Range of the Celestial Mountains. I traveled to Chon Tash to visit the memorial, ringed with blood-red roses, still in bloom after the season’s first snowfall. I went to pay respects to Chingiz Aitmatov, who died in June of last year leaving instructions that he be buried alongside his father at the site of that Stalinist act of terror. The sun shone with special intensity and the sky was cloudless. The willow birch trees had not yet released their golden leaves. A brook rustled in the valley below, and stately tall cypress-shaped pine trees could be seen on the hills above. A group of military cadets were there for an oath-taking ceremony held directly above the ground from which the remains had been excavated, and the message of the setting was clear to all: don’t forget the great wrong that can occur when the power of the state is wielded brutally and the spirit of the law is disrespected.

The crimes of the old regime were on exhibition to those swearing an oath to uphold the new order. In the museum at the site the possessions of many of the victims were displayed with some biographical details. Documents from the archives of the NKVD/KGB showed the trappings of legal formalism that accompanied the brutal deeds, every murder judicially authorized with a sentence stamped and sealed. The execution of the sentence was scrupulously documented. And on one wall was a simple display that spoke powerfully: a portrait of Stalin, and below it a skull, resting on stones taken from the pit.

In America today, the name and image of Stalin are invoked heavily by fringe critics of Barack Obama. The critics disagree with his policies on health care and see in it the basis for increasing power of the state. The role the state will play in the healthcare system is a legitimate political issue on which well-informed citizens can have different views. But the comparison to Stalin makes clear that these critics really have no inkling of who Joseph Stalin was, what he did, and why his name lives in special infamy at hallowed spots like the pit at Chon Tash. This frivolous use of his name and image cheapens our nation’s political dialogue, and it is also a mark of disrespect to his victims. And it points to the fundamental crisis of which Aitmatov wrote so powerfully: the failure to know the past, to be informed by it, and to distill guidance from it. The age of the mankurt, alas, has not passed.

Horton puts it very well. What's true of Chon Tash and Stalin is true of Dachau and Hitler, and I would hope that at the United States Capitol some basic sense, and sense of decency, would prevail. There's a common thread that runs through every account of a Holocaust survivor I've heard, and every tale of Soviet oppression: memory can be an act of conscience. Simply remembering things accurately, or grieving and honoring the dead, can become an act of virtue. I've no illusions that the sort of noxious crap the teabaggers are shilling will stop any time soon. But there's no reason it should go unchallenged.

Update: I forgot to mention the teabagger slurs against the Rothchilds, but it gets worse. Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel denounced the Dachau poster, and in their wrath the teabaggers went even lower. Make sure you've got a strong stomach before reading the comments at the link.

Personally, when I read that crap, I think of a steady stream of obscenities, interlaced in a sentence like: "If Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel thinks your Dachau poster is inappropriate, you're on the wrong side of that argument, you historically illiterate people." Wiesel's short book Night remains one of the best introductions to the Holocaust, and I heard him speak back in the 90s. It's fine to disagree with the man on specific contemporary issues, but I felt he radiated a spiritual maturity, he spoke exceptionally well on the Holocaust, and it was a moving and inspiring address. The teabaggers are on one level experts at unintentional self-parody, as attacks on Wiesel show, but their authoritarian, delusional (and occasionally anti-Semitic) assaults aren’t just ironic – there's something dangerous there.

Glenn Beck, Stewart Style

This has been all over the blogosphere, but I'm still not tired of it, and it's an instant classic. Stewart plunges into the demagogic truthiness of Glenn Beck:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

If you're not familiar with Glenn Beck's shtick, Crooks and Liars has a good collection. The Daily Show has mocked him many times before, as has Colbert. I haven't written much on the guy, but this October post on Beck's McCarthyist style links several good pieces on him.

A few observations. Many Americans are feeling uneasy, with good reason. There are individual exceptions within them, but overall neither major political party is taking on the power players on Wall Street who nearly destroyed the world economy and are reckless about doing it again. Beck plays off of that real unease, although his main target is the teabagger crowd watching his show on Fox News, and their discomforts are more numerous, reactionary and alarming. Beck's a bit crazy, and he says grossly false, idiotic and illogical things all the time. But he's proven to be pretty successful as a demagogue because he knows his audience. Beck fans hear him speaking an emotional truth to them. He expresses their anxieties and he gives them scapegoats. I tried to cover some of the dangerous demagoguery on death panels and Nazis in an August post (" Obama can't be trusted because he doesn't hate the right people. And surely Obama must hate us as much as we hate him."). But as several others including Digby have noted, for Beck's audience, what he says doesn't need to make sense.

I've said it before, but The Daily Show and The Colber Report are truly brilliant with ridiculous frequency. That's very, very hard, and it's easy to take for granted because they make it look so effortless. This particular bit is also one of Stewart's best individual performances. Mocking the scoundrels and fools in power is extremely important, and sometimes all we have, so thank goodness for artists and comedians.

Amadou & Mariam - "Sabali"

The very last "bye-bye" is clipped here, and I wish the song was longer, but it's memorable.

Blue Gal Blogiversary

Champion of small blogs and scourge of the wicked, obtuse and humorless, the indispensable, indefatigable Blue Gal keeps the internet hamsters running. She also celebrates her fifth blogiversary today. Swing by to say hi.

The GOP's Non-Existent Health Care Plan

The GOP still doesn't have a health care plan. They never have. This has rarely seemed to bother them, or the media. It's been pointed out again, though, this time by Harry Reid. Maybe it'll get some coverage this time.

This comes via John Cole, who has some thoughts on the enduring myth-making around nasty partisan and policy dunce John McCain and his magical kumbaya powers.

Remember Republican hack Alex Castellanos telling Alan Grayson on CNN that the GOP did so have a health care plan? In addition to Castellanos making dubious claims, it turns out CNN failed to disclose Castellanos's ties to the insurance industry and the GOP campaign to kill health care reform. Speaking of Grayson – who movingly read stories of the dead on the House floor – there's a money bomb movement for him.

Why can't the GOP produce a health care plan? One answer is that they don't want to. Another is that they can't. As Anonymous Liberal points out, "The problem the GOP faces is a very simple one: it is impossible to translate their "principles" into a functional plan." The same goes for most movement conservative policies. Conservatives have opposed Medicare since its creation, and have constantly tried to slash it or destroy it altogether. Yet in the past few months, some prominent Republicans have pretended to champion the program, and claim to be protecting it against those evil Democrats. Added to this hypocrisy is the glaring incoherence of the GOP defending Medicare, a government-run health care program, while denouncing the evils of a national... government-run health care program. The lack of consistency and coherence is one of many tip-offs that they're bullshitting.

On the ideology front, we can see the same trend in the election in New York's conservative 23rd District. The local Watertown Daily Times has decided to endorse the Democrat, Bill Owens, over the right-wing teabagger Douglas Hoffman:

Mr. Hoffman is running as an ideologue. If he carries out his pledges on earmarks, taxation, labor law reform and other inflexible positions, Northern New York will suffer. This rural district depends on the federal government for an investment in Fort Drum and its soldiers, environmental protection of our international waterway and the Adirondack Park, and the livelihood of all our dairy farmers across the district, among other support. Our representative cannot be locked into rigid promises and policies that would jeopardize these critical sectors of our economy.

Again, this lack of grounding in reality is the case for most conservative policies.

On the incoherent, dangerous bullshit front, this also precisely describes Joe Lieberman. He's whining that people question his motives and won't debate him on substance when he's repeatedly shown he has no principles and no substance. His excuses for opposing reform (despite campaigning on it in the past) have kept shifting, and have never been coherent or sensible on their own, either. He is a corrupt shill for the insurance industry. His current position is radical and unconscionable. But for Lieberman, the only agenda is promoting Joe Lieberman.

Sufjan Stevens - "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."

"Music Video using educational films from the 50s and anonymous family footage. Dir: Claire Carré." In honor of the upcoming Halloween, here's a haunting song. It's from Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois, which is extremely varied and creative (and the rest isn't as dark as this song).

I Cannot Tell You What Being Pro-Life Entails

Chris Matthews has his moments:



Far right politicians and activists are often extremely dishonest about their views and goals. I'll never forget a C&L thread where some Ron Paul groupie started by saying that Paul didn't want to outlaw abortion; he just wanted to return the decision to the states. That's a problematic position as it is - states shouldn't get to remove essential rights - but the same commenter was calling a pro-choice, female C&L regular a baby-killer not long after that. The "states" argument was just a (rather transparent) tactic to outlaw abortion. Michael Long is more composed, but I don't think he's much different.

Long will shill a slogan but doesn't want to explain his actual policies, and certainly not their consequences. It's idiotic or dishonest to claim that making abortion illegal would actually cease it. It would just mean that women would once again die in unsafe, back alley abortions, as they currently do in some other countries where abortion is illegal. I have never seen any anti-choice person ever acknowledge that, let alone state the moral stance necessitated by their goal: "women dying due to unsafe abortions is a necessary cost for outlawing abortion." Members of the pro-life movement simply haven't thought that much about it. Similarly, Meghan McCain has described herself as pro-life, but has also said it's for a woman to choose. She's pro-choice and apparently doesn't even know it. Nor is she alone in that. Many "pro-choice" people fail to distinguish between their personal stance ("I personally would not have an abortion") and what the're imposing on others ("No one should be allowed to have that choice."). I've seen anti-choice zealots accuse pro-choice people of celebrating abortions and hating babies - even though plenty of pro-choice people have families. The fundamental disconnects are stunning, but then, in general social conservatives are not reflective people. The push to outlaw abortion has never made much sense outside of a greater agenda of social control, especially of women. About the only thing the anti-choice crowd has to offer on the abortion issue is disdain. Theirs is a consequence-free morality that offers them a feeling of righteousness, but nothing to those they would control. As it's often been observed, their "commitment to life" ends at birth.

Via.