Thanks to RC Romine for the inspiration- KWC
the physical changes there were very obvious. Rick and Morty recently had an episode where creatures wrapped around the mouth took over their victims, or “Unity” controlled the minds on many planets.
The irony in that last one was that the conquest actually created better beings than the non-possessed slime they replaced. This is not that kind of story.
There are far too many of these fictional plots to mention. And “plot,” in a different, non-fiction, sense is the latest result of an invasion into the minds of our countrymen and women.
What exactly possesses a moderate, well ‘moderate’ by today’s Republican Party standards, named Elise Stephanik, to turn into a Trumpette? I’m sure wish we could blame some alien creatures, but we really can’t. Not if we are to have the kind of country that’s anything like what we have aspired to.
It’s a crucial question. It’s not just power. It took years of competition between talk show hosts to create the trend where they push to offer the next far more inane, far more insane, even more extreme statement. It took the shamelessness of year after year of consecutive Benghazi investigations run by the same party, each one NOT bringing charges: running the last right up to an election. Now the tactic is when an investigation is started; no matter how necessary, dilute it or start the zillionth investigation of what has been investigated to death already. By them. A big plus if they can destroy a political opponent using the public’s taxes as a politically partisan slush fund.
It took these same pols adopting this talk show slime parade tactic of increasingly extreme slanderous statements to get us to this point in history. It took using their tactic of accusing the other side of being the extreme ones. It took a leader of their party to show them how devolving into lying about the actions of insurrection might pave the way for worse behavior than planting pipe bombs, beating cops with flag bearing pipes, punching them with metal spiked gloves, dragging at least one face first down steps to continue the beatings, erect gallows, attempt to hunt down Pelosi and Pence to hang them.
This is where we are now: what they demand we ignore, what they attempt to label as if the insurrectionists were peace loving hippies. Where to next? America really doesn’t need to find out. But we will.
Don’t start with me about the summer protests concerning police brutality being equal in any sense. They weren’t even close to this: no matter HOW anyone attempts to frame them. If for no other reason than who was beaten, the sheer numbers of those killed. It’s a case of brutality to police vs. police brutality. The insurrectionists obviously LOVE brutality.
To use the term “conservative” here is about as bad a joke as calling all the Jew jokes in 30’s Germany humor worthy of laughs. Or the lynching of blacks worthy all the smiles seen in postcard pictures as the lynched hang from trees, or after they had been burnt to death. All of this would have been condemned by Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater. Those who behaved like this were what the Buckleys attempted to purge from the Conservative Party. Now they are a Proud Boy part of one of 2 major parties.
”Don’t start with me” because I know: I was there. I was on that side of the fence in the 60’s and early 70’s. While we would disagree deeply these days they did try to purge the Birchers, the racists, the more insane from the Joseph McCarthy days. The Kochs, to provide one example, had to run one brother on a Libertarian ticket. The Kochs who also helped fund the Birchers, or as one Berkshire resort mocked with by naming their outhouse: The Birch John-ers.
Conservatives and Republicans didn’t want them.
It’s as if over the years they have increasingly become controlled by alien beings out to exterminate those they can’t possess, who dare to disagree. But they have no crooked little fingers that indicate they have been possessed, their legs don’t suddenly bend backwards to show they really aren’t human anymore. Some maybe never were. This is possession by a fascistic ideology where lying and violence are acceptable tools: no matter how insane the acts or lies are. The gas chambers, the ovens, the nooses, the firing squads will be out in the open: because they have the odd idea that that makes their extremism acceptable, even legal. It has been compared to Hitler, to Stalin, but even Stalin and Hitler tried to cover their acts, say acceptable things, make peace and treaties.
Nixon’s crimes weren’t only they hid those crimes. Illegal is illegal, Unconstitutional is unconstitutional. Just like insurrection is insurrection: no matter what pretty framing face you attempt to put on it. Or was Benedict Arnold just trying to kiss the Brits, just as the insurrectionists “kissed” Capitol police with metal studded gloves?
This behavior is more Independence Day-ish: “Peace? No peace. DIE.” A future that may yet arrive on our doorstep with live beheadings of anyone who dares to disagree might be in the offing. It’s all so Turner Diaries-like. I fear this is no mere comparison. They are becoming Brownshirts and authoritarians: out to exterminate those they hate, those they consider politically incorrect, those whose immigrant, color or intellectual nature offends them. A world where being kind and considerate is considered evil. Longing to enforce their own brand of political correctness where their revenge is a dish served cold in a 1984 and Fahrenheit 451-ish way. A dish leaning heavily on a strong Khmer Rouge rue. Not a world where space aliens are to blame.
This evil is all too human.
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years, first published in fall of 1972. 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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