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Making Light compares George W Bush with Dilbert’s infamous pointy-haired boss, and finds an awful lot of parallels. A long post covering rejected would-be authors and those awful motivational posters parodied by despair.com, before arriving at this:

George Bush is running national policy on faith – but it’s not faith in God. It’s become something far stranger and more idolatrous.

What he’s put his faith in is George W. Bush, which is not the same thing as saying he believes in himself. He can’t believe in himself; he knows he doesn’t know anything. But instead of seeking more information and better counsel, he’s abandoned the frustrations of dealing with the factual, external universe. He’s now basing everything on the instincts of George W. Bush. That’s where the smirk comes from.

He’s certain he’s right. So was every dotcom investor. So is every blackjack player in Las Vegas.

Proof, if such were needed, that studying the methods and beliefs of the Bush administration can drive you gibberingly insane. (Link from Making Light)

I begged the Dean not to make me teach “Modern American Politics” this semester. I knew that in order to teach it properly I would have to delve into the secrets of the Bush administration. I knew that I would learn THINGS THAT HUMANS (as we say in these post-sexist times) ARE NOT MEANT TO KNOW. I feared that this would drive me insane; into shrill unholy madness. And so it has.

But up until now I have still able to teach my course. I am proud of that. Far gone in shrill unholy madness as a result of the incompetence, mendacity, malevolence, and disconnection from reality that I am, I could still communicate with my students in English and. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Krugman R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn! Aiiiiiii!!!

Apologies. The fits come and go. They come more quickly now. By proper effort of will I can sometimes. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh. Stop them. There. But I fear that tonight I have taken another step, and will no longer be able to intelligibly communicate with humanity. I have learned more. So shrill as to be inaudible to human hearing. But the dogs will still hear me, for a while at least.

You have been warned. Are the Freepi really Deep Ones? Is George Bush a bigger fan of Ümläüt than he is of Manowar?

I’ve often wondered if at least some of the infamous “101st Fighting Keyboarders” could be described as Fascist. The belligerent and intolerant rhetoric from some of them, often inspired rightwing talk radio hosts and frothing media pundits like Michael Savage and Ann Coulter, certainly smells unpleasant. But Fascism is a word devalued through overuse. Are they really Fascists, or just a few isolated bigots?

This long article by David Neiwert, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis gives a disturbing vision of how the far right has infiltrated mainstream conservatism in America. As summarised by Mark Rosenfelder (from where I got the link):

Neiwert estimates that far-right extremists make up about 4% of the electorate. That’s enough to be extremely valuable if they can be persuaded to support a major party — and the Republicans have invited them inside. They’re comforted with coded messages of support, and in return the rightist media helps spread and mainstream their message. A nice dance has been perfected: fascist sentiments (such as calls for physical attacks on liberals, or for interning Muslim Americans, or the equating of welfare recipients with chimpanzees) are spread by conservative pundits, who can claim to be joking if anyone protests; the extremists take it quite seriously.

The constant ratcheting-up of acceptable hate speech is one of the marks of fascism on the rise; indeed, Neiwert considers the far-right venues as a sort of trial laboratory for anti-liberal extremism. The virulence that resulted in the Clinton impeachment circus, for instance, was mooted about years earlier in far-right groups.

Anyone, especially conservatives, who wonder if I’m exaggerating should read Neiwert’s pages. I think there’s much that will shock reasonable conservatives; and there’s a clear moral and historical point: if you want to distinguish yourselves from these people, kick them out of your Party.

The whole thing is pretty long; it’s taken me much of the evening to plough through it. But it’s worrying, and it doesn’t look as though we in Europe can do much about it. But it’s not just American’s problem. As Neiwert say in his final line.

European fascism was a terrible thing. An American fascism, though, could very well devastate the world.

I think Scott would appreciate this one!

Neocon Riots Rock DC

Large areas of the nation’s capital were in ruins as violent protests continued for the third day against a bill that would revive the military draft, but only for neoconservatives.

The bill, officially called the Bellicose Resources Deployment Act but informally known as the Roast Chickenhawk Initiative, would supplement the nation’s dwindling supplies of mindless belligerence by drawing on inexhaustible deposits found in seething think tanks, frothing newspaper columns, fulminating talk-radio programs, frenzied Sunday morning television and publications owned by Australians. It would then be shipped to the Middle East, where it is urgently needed.

If only… Read the whole thing, as the saying goes. (Link from The Light of Reason)

Wave of Right-wing Spam Floods Germany

Thursday morning a flood of spam was released on the Internet containing German-language right-wing propaganda. Experts say extremists are using a “spambot” to spread their xenophobic messages as widely as possible.

Not just Germany. Like any other junk email, this hate spam knows no national boundaries. So far I’ve received several of these racist screeds at my work email, to which I’d not previously seen a single spam. Judging by the cc list the spambot seems to be generating random addresses for my work domain, and by chance a few of them turn out to be valid group mailing lists. Although the big flood appeared across the net today, I got the first one on Monday.

MaxSpeak annouces the winner of the Vicious Instapundit Blogroll Contest!

The judges’ comments:

We also observe in these quarters the sophomoric desire to shock liberals. The quoted bloggers express a desire to win the vote. They think their viciousness is a badge of machismo, like suburban white boys who affect ghetto gangsta postures. We had the Beastie Boys, and now we have the beastie bloggers. They try to act dangerous, but all they really want to do is become commodities, and they don’t even know it. There is no reason to fear nameless little people with keyboards. Rather, the approach is clinical, like the study of bugs.

I just hope that the right wing of the Blogosphere isn’t representative of the American right as a whole. One shouldn’t judge a whole nation by it’s wingnuts.

I meant to link to this yesterday. Making Light has written a piece on the events of Abu Ghraib that says it far better than I ever could.

I’ve taken down my flags and put them away until after the war is over. I love my flag and my country as much as ever, but I’m mourning actions that have been committed by our troops, under our banner.

This war against Al Queda (and just what did Saddam have to do with Osama?) is as much a war of memes, of values, as it is a war of shooting and blowing things up. The propaganda war is at least as important as the shooting war, and the real battleground is the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims and Arabs. If American (and sadly, British) troops are going to behave badly and commit these sorts of atrocities, they we’re simply not going to win.

And talking of End Times fundies, Slacktivist continues his dissection of the excrable “Left Behind”. He’s going through the hell of reading this awful book, so that the rest of us don’t have to.

I’ve often considered the Guardian’s George “Moonbat” Monbiot a bit of a wingnut; too often he can be the sort of enviro-leftist loon that gives both the left and environmentalism a bad name. But in this article on American fundamentalism, he might just have a point.

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel’s occupation of the rest of its “biblical lands” (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all “true believers” (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.

The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be.

Read the whole thing, as the saying goes.

I’ve started to fear that Christian fundamentalism in America, particularly the ‘End Times’ crowd have now become as dangerous to the security of the world as their Islamic counterparts. The danger takes a completely different form: Followers of the twisted version of Islam commit individual acts of terrorism, often on a large scale. The danger of the twisted form of Christianity is more subtle, it that it uses it’s voting power to influence foreign policy of the United States in dangerous ways.

Of course, I accept the possibility that I might be wrong. Just as some American commentators conjure up apocalyptic scenarios of an Islamised Europe which flies in the face of reality, it may be that we Europeans exaggerate the power and influence of the lunatic fringe of religious right in America. But with someone as extreme as John Ashcroft in such a position of power, may we do have cause to worry.

In the aftermath of the atrocity in Spain, the usual suspects of Warbloggerdom are trotting out the predicatable stereotypes of ‘European appeasers’ and spouting garbage like “Welcome to the real world, Europe” (one of Tim Blair’s commenters). That last asinine quote reminds me of an obnoxious troll from Denmark immediately after 9/11 who had the same line in his .sig, except with “America” replacing “Europe”.

Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias is rather closer to the truth.

For the record, anyone who think this may be the incident that forces Europeans to get serious about terrorism is a moron.

Most Europeans were plenty serious about terrorism before this happened. So was the Democratic Party. It was George W. Bush who, along with José Maria Aznar, Tony Blair, and Silvio Berlusconi who decided that terrorism was such a serious problem that it should be pretty much ignored except insofar as it was a useful rhetorical prop for the selling of an unrelated war.

Unlike Stalinist twits such as George Galloway, I don’t think the overthrow of a vile a brutal dicatorship is a gross moral outrage. But I still believe it was a strategic and tactical mistake to invade Iraq the way we did. It may well be that we’d have had to deal with Saddam Hussein sooner or later, but the timing always seemed to me to be more driven by the American electoral timetable than anything else. And there are some very serious questions to be asked about apparent lack of though in planning for the aftermath. But maybe the Dr.Strangelove and Milo Minderbinder types in the Bush administration really did believe they could parachute in a bunch of exiles with no power base in the country and expect to smoothly start running things.

The biggest problem I have with the invasion of Iraq is the way it’s divided the west. When Bush’s administration doesn’t even have the confidence of half his own people, it’s hardly surprising that European leaders and peoples regard him with deep scepticism. With his parochial world-wiew he doesn’t seem remotely interested in the concerns of anyone outside his narrow domestic power base. But he still expects European leaders to put their own civilian populations in the firing line to support purely American policy goals that had little to do with the real threat we faced.