Starting on Sunday, as Sarah Palin kept explaining that her version of the Paul Revere “Midnight Ride” was historically accurate, Palin fans emerged on Wikipedia to “fix” the Revere biography.

Sort of too easy, but…

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.”

I’m beginning to think a major enemy of humanity is a lack of self-awareness.

She didn’t say this, Michelle Bachmann did, but she may as well have:

I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.

Right now in my own private Bible time, I am working through Isaiah . . . and there is continually a coming back to what God gave to Israel initially, which was the Torah and the Ten Commandments, and I have a wonderful quote from John Adams that if you will indulge me [while I find it] . . . [from his February 16, 1809 letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp]:

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

. . . So that is a very long way to answer your question, but I believe that an explicit statement from us about our support for Israel as tied to American security, we would do well to do that.

No explicit mention of the End Times though – mainstream politicians aren’t going that far yet. But if anyone was to do it, it would be Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin remarked to Barbara Walters last week that she believes “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” Pundits are scratching their heads wondering what she meant. Could it have been a subtle “dogwhistle” allusion to a belief held by some evangelical Christians about the apocalypse? A faction of American Christian Zionists support the exodus of all Jews to Israel because they believe it would trigger the second coming of Christ and the end of the world.

And I don’t get too bent out of shape about Palin getting the Paul Revere story wrong. The more nonsense she speaks, the more her core supporters like her, because her entire fundamentalist worldview is based on nonsense. It’s almost as if she’s speaking in tongues.

(via)

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Morbid Curiosity Leading Many Voters To Support Palin

It has come to my attention that various mainstream news organizations are beginning to run an association between my 2007 performance piece/film, “Zeitgeist: The Movie” and the tragic murders conducted by an extremely troubled young man in Tucson, Arizona. They are also slowly beginning to bleed the obvious line between my 2007 documentary work, my film series as a whole and The Zeitgeist Movement, which I am the founder. Frankly, I find this isolating, growing association tremendously irresponsible on the part of ABC, NBC and their affiliates – further reflecting the disingenuous nature of the America Media Establishment today.

Make no mistake: The Social System is to blame for the rampage of Jared Loughner – not some famous online documentary which is known as the most viewed documentary of all time in internet history. Are the other 200 million people who have seen the film also preparing for murder sprees? I think not.

Really, it’s a similar argument being made be Sarah Palin and the right.  Her rhetoric didn’t cause the shootings.  Except there’s a distinct difference between speculation in a viral video and the rhetoric of a former vice presidential candidate who has a much different kind of influence.   In short, it’s more dangerous and needs to be called out.

Andrew Sullivan, who’s been pretty right on about this whole affair, I think gets it wrong on this issue:

9/11 Truthers are as ubiquitous on the far right as the far left, where government conspiracy theories thrive. But to a great extent, only the far right is obsessed with the central banking system.

The problem here is that it is lumping all conspiratorial rhetoric into the same boat – the mainstream right isn’t exactly calling out the Fed, except for the Ron Paul fringe.  However, Kucinich has also called out the Fed, as has Michael Moore in “Capitalism: A Love Story.”  But what Sullivan is doing is equating people who question the central banking system on the same level as those who call Obama a Marxist, and this just isn’t the case.

Paranoia about our currency (or the debt system as outlined in “Zeitgeist”)  isn’t really part of the mainstream dialogue.  And regardless, there is a difference between something that is conveyed in an underground movie like “Zeitgeist” and conspiratorial language coming out of the mouth of a major politician.  If a conspiracy theory is spouted by the likes of Glenn Beck and others in the mainstream media, this is far more legitimized than a video that’s spread virally on Youtube.  Just as Glenn Beck’s lunacy is justified by the millions of dollars he’s making, his listeners own paranoia is legitimized by Glenn Beck’s success.

Before you think I’m making an equivalency between Beck and “Zeitgeist,” I’m not.  The problem with the right’s rhetoric is how inaccurate it’s been – such as calling a drive to improve health care “tyranny.”  It’s this kind of overstatement that can be the most damaging, as it’s totally unhinged and will speak particularly to unhinged people.  And “socialism,” “tyranny”, etc. is the Republican party line. There’s a danger in making such broad inaccurate proclamations, especially since it deflects from very real problems we do have – such as the pervasive influence of corporate industry over government: something that Republicans enable while decrying “tyranny.”

This type of rhetoric on the right is separate from the message of a film like “Zeitgeist” – which has the major message: question the government, question dominant thought.  At its core, it’s an anti-fundamentalist movie, unlike the hard right, which encourages fundamentalism.  There are certainly some dubious things in the series, but really it’s a documentary, a work of art, which has different criteria than someone who’s running for office. On balance, “question the government” is a good message, even if it paints a scary portrait of where we’ve come.

But these are scary times – there’s no getting around that.  Republican hysteria is a reaction to that, but they’re just obsessing about the wrong things and very often outright lying.  When this lying becomes part of the political establishment, there’s a problem.  But it would also be progress if politicians were more open about the dangers of our current financial system, environmental damage, the military industrial complex, etc.  Because mainstream politicians will not talk about the true state of affairs there’s an opening for a movie like”Zeitgeist.”  Unfortunately, there’s also an opening for liars like Beck to stir people up based on the premise that the Democrats are at fault – as if our problems are that one-sided.

“Zeitgeist” too is full of hyperbole – I wish it would totally excise the section where it talks about people being microchipped for the New World Order.  This part just seems like total baseless paranoia.  But again, paranoia from an independent filmmaker is far different from Sarah Palin suddenly saying “Obama wants to implant microchips.”  For one thing, it’s sending paranoia only towards the Democratic party – but more importantly, everything Sarah Palin says is amplified by the mainstream, thereby legitimizing it.

Equating the influence of far right conspiracy theory with general hysteria in the political spectrum – as Andrew Sullivan has done – is to suggest we can never ask these questions about government, as if fringe ideas are all equally unhinged.  In other words, all conspiracy theorizing is as stupid and dangerous as Sarah Palin’s gun sight map.  It’s not – conspiracies happen and don’t often get the attention they deserve.  Just as – ironically – Sarah Palin’s map or Sharron Angle’s “second amendment remedies” comment didn’t get enough attention at the time.  The mainstream media ignores these very real dangers in the quest to maintain the status quo.  To be status-quo questioning is not to be a lunatic.

I guess I’m sort of feeling the heat, as I was grateful that Palin was being called on her bullshit as this story first unfolded, and now see the light being shone on things like “Zeitgeist” or Philip K. Dick – as if anyone who questions reality is crazy rather than a visionary.  It’s not unstable to question reality, it’s unstable to have no empathy, as is the case with Loughner – clearly a total lunatic.

This madness is only going to continue if we keep operating like this.  Really, there does need to be a “revolution” to change how society and government operates.  Unfortunately, an actual revolution would just look like a bunch of Loughners over and over again – a bunch of random, senseless killings.  A revolution of ideas needs to happen.  If you look at how “Zeitgeist” is portrayed in the Daily Beast, they refer to the movie as “attacking” Christianity.  That’s one perspective, but “questioning” would be just as accurate.  There’s justifiable anger in how one religion has dominated this country.  One does not have to be overly aggressive to think that – in fact, it’s healthy.

But so long as the mainstream is so intent on avoiding questioning itself, and instead replaces it with the baseless anger of the Tea Party, it’ll just amount to people screaming at each other, and, occasionally, killing each other.  The Tea Party are totally justified in their anger, they’re just directing it towards the wrong issues.  Anger is not the problem, violence is the problem, as well as rage based on misinformation. The Loughner story is only half about the shootings – the other half is the reaction to the shootings and how people went into their corners as if we’re in the middle of an ideological war.

Put that all together, and this isn’t an indictment of “Zeitgeist” or Dickian fiction – but of the mainstream: the news and politicians who don’t address the state of affairs with sobriety, or even rationality.  In that climate, it should come as no great surprise that the country is slowly losing its mind.

If Sarah Palin is not some kind of a massive political joke in the USA, wheeled out to liven up the political scene from time to time with nonsensical and pastiche (one hopes) displays of sheer and utter ignorance, then it is worrying. It is even more so if anyone other than a manic depressive suffering from a chronic lack of lithium takes this…female…seriously.

Hockey Mum Sarah ex-Governess of Alaska is famous for her shrill shrieking style, displaying a pitifully shallow persona which one hopes is stage-managed to give the rest of the world a good chuckle at the Americans’ ability and unique quality to make fun of themselves, a real-life female version of Homer Simpson-cum-Belching Barney at Mo’s, giving us ever-more hilarious soundbites as she sets herself up as the dumbest woman on Earth.

I’m not sure I get the argument that she can’t criticize Obama. She’s free to, just not as the dumbest woman on Earth.

I can’t quite picture Palin as president, or even wanting to be. A president who never gives a press conference and never wants to meet with foreign leaders. She wants to be the president of her base, where there is no other media except fawning media and she can connect with “regular” people via Facebook – “regular” meaning people who consider the dumbest woman on Earth to be their intellectual superior, or equal. I doubt she wants to do the hard work of the presidency – she already quit one less-demanding job. I suppose she could be a figurehead and a puppet while other people do all the work.

Her book is called “Going Rogue” though and she seems to revel in not taking the advice or instruction from those who are smarter than her – i.e. most everybody. Actually fixing the country’s problems can’t be high on her list, because she seems to have no understanding of how the country works beyond the most mundane talking point tropes. The only things left are satisfying her own ego and her demented sense of manifest destiny. If she doesn’t like the “lamestream media” now – the very thing that’s made her who she is – she would have a presidency via Fox news. In other words, she would be a dictator for the Christian right. And she’s not even a fictional character.

Palin writes that she was taught as a child that JFK’s speech reconciled religion and public service without compromising either. Now, she says, she’s realized that Kennedy “essentially declared religion to be such a private matter that it was irrelevant to the kind of country we are.”…

In other words, religion should be the driving force behind how you govern. Meanwhile,

Settlers for Palin

She said in 2009 that “I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

This comes from a pro-Palin post (”A marvelous memoir by a very smart, high-spirited woman”):

Raymond J. Lawrence, expressed the fear that a “believer in the Rapture with his or her fingers on the nuclear trigger might even be tempted”—apparently in the hope of advancing the Second Coming—“to bring on the Rapture.”

Lawrence reckoned that while Americans were prepared to accept reassurances from John Kennedy that he wouldn’t be taking orders from Rome, it’s not so easy to get around what he sees as the danger of a president who believes in the Rapture. “The problem is both more simple and more worrisome. The public must presume that Palin believes in the Rapture, since it is one of the central doctrines of her church. Furthermore, the American people should assume that Palin’s personal religious beliefs will have consequences in her decision-making as a President.”

Continues Lawrence: “The press and much of the public seem reluctant to engage Palin on her religious views, considering them to be a personal matter. In certain respects that is admirable restraint. We do not want candidates for office grilled on their private religious views as long as those views do not impinge upon the public welfare…. However, a belief in the Rapture as an historic event toward which history is rapidly moving, is a belief with potentially catastrophic political implications. Do the American people want a believer in such a fantasy to hold in her hands the nuclear power to destroy civilization?”

The worry is that this could create a religious test environment:

The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is found in Article VI, paragraph 3, and states that:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

This is going to lean fascist, but at what point does this clause become totally unrealistic when you need a test to ensure that we don’t head towards fascism?

In a celebrity driven world, this is exactly how the world ends. An extraordinarily corrupt leader comes to power. Sarah Palin doesn’t even need to have fascist control of the media where she controls bad stories about her. When it’s being reported that her TV show is a hit because 5 million people  watched it – out of the 300+ million people in the country, and the 50 million who voted for her last time – she has the media’s support no matter what happens.

I understand that she’s an interesting story to follow – certainly more interesting than the graying men in the rest of government. But she is dangerous.  Try to see past the beauty queen to the implications of her beliefs.  Every fluff story about her is like having a fluff story about a potential despot.  She’s an intellectual 9-11.

The real point here is that the third party fantasy is irrelevant. If there’s a double-dip recession and unemployment is over 10%, then odds are good that any GOP nominee would win.

Yes, Palin is very unpopular right now, no question about it. That hurts her chances of winning the nomination. But if she does manage to do that, well, we’re not talking about today’s Palin any more. Republicans would rally around her; newsmagazines and network news poobahs would do features on how she’s grown since ‘08; I don’t need to tell you how enthusiastic the folks at Fox News and conservative talk show hosts will be. She will have won GOP presidential debates (doesn’t matter how she performs; since we’re assuming she’s nominated, that means she won the primaries that followed the debates, which means she’ll be declared the winner).

Obama got elected in on a wave of celebrity. Part of the dissatisfaction with him now is that celebrity has come crashing to earth.  The media loves celebrity, and so could easily change their tune on Sarah Palin – that she already gets so much attention shows that the entire media has no sense of balance. Given that it’s a given that the economy gets worse, a hard-Christian right president could come into power, regardless if it’s Palin or not.  She may just be setting the stage for a more moderate-seeming Christian right candidate that appeals to both parties – s/he’s better than Palin.  Maybe my whole paranoia about celebrity worship has been fear about how damaging the veneer of celebrity can be – beyond the confines of Hollywood.

So what’s going on with Karl Rove?  Just trying to be relevant?  Or does even he see that dingbat plus wingnut  is a dangerous combination?  Nevermind this could be said about George Bush:

“There are high standards that the American people have for it [the presidency] and they require a certain level of gravitas, and they want to look at the candidate and say ‘that candidate is doing things that gives me confidence that they are up to the most demanding job in the world’. . . With all due candor, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of ‘that helps me see you in the Oval Office.’”

“We have to realize that, at the end of the day,” Palin warns in the interview, “a nuclear weapon in that country’s hands is not just Israel’s problem or America’s problem — it is the world’s problem. It could lead to an Armageddon. It could lead to that World War III that could decimate so much of this planet.”

Palin’s reference to Armageddon, described in the Bible’s book of Revelation, refers to a final battle between the forces of good and evil over the existence of the state of Israel.

Palin is saying the exact opposite of what she means – attacking Iran would begin the End Times, not stop it from happening. She clearly knows who she’s speaking to.

Lobbying for Armageddon:

At the center of it all is Pastor John Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. While Hagee has long prophesized about the end times, he ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, “Jerusalem Countdown,” in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West.