I have been reading Blackwater, and Jeremy Scahill’s book: perhaps without intent, confirms a view I have been developing ever since I left the right in the mid-70s.
  Listening, again, to Thom Hartmann on his Thursday show I heard him repeat over and over the meme’ that the right’s wretched behavior is due to them, “hating Obama so much.” Now Thom and I have traded E-mails a few times over the years, so I’m sure he knows I don’t always completely agree with him, and this is one of those cases. I think this very publicly expressed hate is a very thin, first, layer resting on top of what’s really going on here.
  Indeed, I think if Hillary had won the presidency in 2008 we would be talking even more about how much they hate women, how much they hate Hillary and the Clintons. So they hate Obama, the Clintons, blacks and women? Well, I still believe, when it comes to the actual movers and shakers on the right for the past 20 years, this is as shallow as a small rain puddle in a desert.
  Barack Obama, Hillary: these are targets of convenience, with the added plus of rallying racists, jerking along knee jerk partisans and fanatics always willing to follow hate. Those folks are like puppy dogs following the very mean men giving out Milk Bones tainted with rhetorical toxin that poisons minds. “The very mean men” would be “the movers and shakers.”
 So let’s zoom out, see the wider perspective; encouraging this hate by over the top rhetoric is just to their advantage. Demonizing them simply serves the wider cause.
  So now, we must ask, what’s the “agenda?” What is this “wider cause?”
  Simple: making problems worse, smashing anything that might help us, then using that politically to push for even worse “solutions.” The “smash” is crucial, because it helps them frame government, and anyone to the left of them, as to blame. And it creates more fear.
  I think the scene in the book that really woke me up was when Blackwater’s Prince was questioned in Congress about several incidents where innocents were slaughtered, he turned that around as “evidence” they needed more Blackwater, and more of the same. One was where they came to an intersection and all eyewitnesses say they just started firing, assuming anyone there must be a terrorist. They murdered fleeing women and children. Then Prince lied, claiming them all suspected terrorists.
  Results: more contracts.
  Please note: according to rules set up by Bremer and Congress Blackwater employees cannot be held responsible for anything. Period.
  OK, it’s war, and I suppose since smashing things is a part of war, to a certain extent, all wars could be framed this way, though even that ignores the fact “solutions” provided, like giving over control corrupt warlords in Tora Bora, predictably always make all worse.
 Yet if “Hulk SMASH” was merely applied to war, none of this would be the overall agenda I am alluding to.
 Aging, cranky, baby boomers scared of black teens, some admittedly living in a culture that could lead, has led, to violence? Solution: education, a helping hand up, more services, counter the fear mongering? Nope! Open season on the teens via Stand Your Ground!
 Unhappy with the state of justice? Have judges elected so, instead of considering the law, specifics of the case, they have to run their courts so they will get reelected on public whim. Pump up fear and hatred so more judges will be elected who decide cases to be sure they get reelected.
  Public schools? Defund public schools while creating charter schools, offering vouchers for private schools: siphon off the best students. The result: public schools get worse, so offer more of the same, plus demonize teachers, and their unions. Result, it gets worse.
  Post office? Make a rule no business could survive: have benefits ready for employees that haven’t been born yet. A formerly profitable entity stumbles? Must be their fault.
  The agenda is to smash our infrastructure, create more dangerous enemies, make the public so damn scared they will do anything the right wing wants, willing hand over control. The very end of a representative government is the goal: a dictatorship of the right with, at best, phony elections. There’s even the corruptible electronic voting machines already in place to facilitate this.
  But for now, the real agenda is for the very, very rich to get richer, the poor and middle class poorer, and to use hatred and fear to herd the public like sheep.
 And the best way to achieve that?
  “Hulk smash!”

                                                    -30-
  Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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