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The Legitimacy Crisis

By Al Schumann on Saturday April 10, 2010 07:45 PM




Legitimacy of Authority and Hypothetical violence: still not as scary as actual violence cover it well.

There is no legitimacy crisis.

There are, however, a large number of claptrap artists attempting to mold empty formalism into legitimacy. Their focus, as always, is on the corporate performance art of the Tea Baggers.

A few more thoughts.

The choice of empty formalism is a marker of vulgar conservatism. The lower functioning righties are quite hostile to consideration of what is and is not constitutive of substance. They, too, see the ritual aspects of republicanism as more important than the steady delivery of social welfare services. In a pinch, they'll acknowledge a need for actual tangible benefits, but it always come in the form of adulation for violent coercion. The more people are killed or locked up, the more impressed they are.

Comments (7)

op:

"fascism " now a term used deftly
by the beck operatives
no longer a feasible label
to paste on various
cartoon power rustlers
by the prog-ortunists
leaves the Robbette with
a preferedly prigish vocabulary

lead off word
"sedition"
as in
our two delightful sedition acts
of '98 and '18
seperated in fact by 120 years an in spirit by
a nano second

obama might sign a new one
joining st woody in yet another
dimension of abuse of power

then again imperial office is constituted
by for and of
abusive power

-----
talk about prig-speak:

"sussing out which groups are benign and which ones are headed for trouble"

quite a expression there

"sussing out"

she reads like a mumbling dreamer
------

then we get

" in the latter stage, the talk turns overtly eliminationist....eradicate specific enemies"

eliminationists ???

i thought those were the folks
trying to "eradicate"
complex fats simple sugars
and free range salts
from the school lunch program

and add "tobacco " to the list
of publically un-speakable nouns
along with .... "cunt " and "deep fried"

"actively planning an attack on government offices or officials"

"the fairly-elected President of the United States isn't even a citizen. He's a Muslim, and thus in treasonous league with terrorists. The main goal of his administration is to turn the country over to the One World Government. He's a socialist. He's a fascist. All of these are direct attacks on Obama's fundamental legitimacy and authority to lead the country -- and thus a deliberate incitement to revolt against his administration"

prize gag line:

"free-market fundamentalists freebasing Hitler"


jaw dropper :

"reduces liberals to subhuman vermin that must be violently exterminated from the body politic in order to restore the virtue of the country. (For those who groove on that sort of thing, there's even a slight dash of anti-Semitism in the mix.) "


sharply draw factification
and measured assessment :

"..two, 100% gun-toting marches on Washington, D.C., are planned for this coming April 19. .... Carrying guns in public is now an essential symbol of how the the right defines freedom. It also expresses just how afraid they are, and what they're planning to do about that fear...hey no longer recognize the government's sole franchise on the use of force....actual target acquisition
...government offices, non-Evangelical houses of worship, clinics, theaters,...."

" Indian mounds and sites"

ahh so they're into
violating the sacred " force franchise "

cut down a totem pole for jesus
where's my axe !!!

Al Schumann:

Democrats are savvy consumers. When they're warming up for turning the state loose on a bunch of yahoos, they insist on the very best rationales. Robinson's arguments are wordier than the Beck Baggers', but they're no different in kind. She wants them hurt, and she wants someone else to do it.

op:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/544116/is_this_the_birth_of_a_nation


lacey rocks the podium crowd

we are facing a second redemption movement
not in the old dixie grounds
but where ever real amerika patrols the byways

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ouPoNevcJ1I/S6gxEvbIgFI/AAAAAAAAAcU/x4Gm2qaout8/s1600-h/birth-of-a-nation-klan-and-black-man.jpg


the tea party is the new klavern

read lacey:

"The Tea Party is a challenge to the legitimacy of the U.S. state. When Tea Party participants charge the current administration with various forms of totalitarianism, they are arguing that this government has no right to levy taxes or make policy. Many GOP elected officials ...joined as co-conspirators ....
I appreciate the parallels to the civil rights movement but they are inadequate. When protesters spit on and scream at duly elected representatives of the United States government it is more than act of racism. It is an act of sedition. ...Commentators and observers need to move their historical lens back a little further. The relevant comparison here is not the mid-20th century civil rights movement. The better analogy is the mid-19th century period of Reconstruction....During this decade black men voted, held office and organized as laborers and farmers. It was a fragile political equality made possible only by the determined and powerful presence of the federal government. Then in 1877 the federal government abdicated its responsibilities to new black citizens and withdrew from the South. When it did so it allowed local governments and racial terrorist organizations like the KKK to have the monopoly on violence, force and coercion in the South for nearly 100 years. "


"As I watch the rising tide of racial anxiety and secessionist sentiment I am not so much reminded of the Bloody Sunday protests as I am reminded of D.W. Griffith's Birth of Nation. "

ahh the legendary DW takes another nasty hack


"This 1915 film depicts the racist imagination currently at work in our nation as a black president first appoints a Latina Supreme Court Justice and then works with a woman Speaker of the House to pass sweeping national legislation"
shades of Griffith's
south carolina reconstruction legislature

".. no such government could possibly be legitimate and therefore frames resistance against this government as a patriotic responsibility. "

" We must now guard against the end of our new Reconstruction and the descent of a vicious new Jim Crow terrorism. "

my my my
the story grows biblical

joel's army awaits the honk of the ram's horn


Al: "Democrats are savvy consumers. When they're warming up for turning the state loose on a bunch of yahoos, they insist on the very best rationales. Robinson's arguments are wordier than the Beck Baggers', but they're no different in kind. She wants them hurt, and she wants someone else to do it."

Unvarnished. Truth. May I quote?

Al Schumann:

Jack, I'd be delighted by that. Please do.

The Tea Party is a challenge to the legitimacy of the US State?

Jeezus H. Bicycle-Riding Christ. Where the hell was Ms. Hyphenated Last Name when all hell was breaking loose in Seattle, and at the World Bank a decade ago?

God damn, I hate The Nation. I know I've said this here a zillion times, but I just can't help it. I can't believe my DW still subscribes to that rag -- doubtless due to the articulate, intellectual, and "civil" quality of the discourse in its pages.

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot...

Even inasmuch as I can agree that the Teabaggers are a bunch of nasty, vile, petty, ignorant fascist thugs, still -- I'm having a really hard time opposing the idea of spitting on politicians.

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