I have never been a love it or leave it kind of guy. [!?!?!!] I’ve always felt that people who have disagreements about what’s going on in our country have a constitutional right and obligation for that matter to express their opinions and do their best to change things.
He then proceeds to explain why he thinks pretty much every Democrat is a traitor to America.
In the process, he indulges in what I've come to think of as the football-game theory of war, the idea that victory or defeat depends on how loudly and enthusiastically the fans in the stands cheer for their team. It doesn't work that way, of course. But Chuckie and the rest of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders would be hard to convince.
The only real answer to this kind of thing is to quote our esteemed Vice President's most famous line, "Go [Cheney] yourself." But we might as well look a little more closely at Chuckie's latest expression of Chistian love.
Chuckie also says that Ward Churchill, Chuckie's Evil Injun, "is an admitted anarchist."
Is Churchill an anarchist, "admitted" or otherwise? Beats me. Of course, we might wonder whether Chuckie considers anarchists to be Democrats, too. Or whether Chuckie has any idea what an anarchist is. It would be pretty entertaining to hear ole Chuckie explain the concept of the General Strike. Or recounting the history of the Wobblies.
Now, as we saw in Chuckie Watch 88, one of the things Chuckie says he don't like about America his own self is that "our nation is divided to the point of polarization." Now he's complaining that the Democrats were giving aid and comfort to The Terrorists during the State of the Union address when they booed Bush's lying claim that Social Security faces a crisis, or has WMDs, or whatever bogus phantom he was conjuring that day. Calling people traitors is generally a good way to polarize a discussion.
It's hard to know in individual cases whether this kind of contradictory way of thinking is cynical posturing or plain fanaticism. Possible clinical explanations aside, I'm leaning toward the pure fanaticism explanation in Chuckie's case. Here's Chuckie's own purple prose on the Dems at the State of the Union:
I’m sure that every two bit slime ball terrorist on the planet with access to satellite television took great pleasure and comfort in your display of juvenile antics trying to show just how much disdain you have for the Commander in Chief who has the gonads to take them on and try to make this nation a safer place to live.
Chuckie seems to be under the impression that reducing Social Security benefits is critical to the war against The Terrorists. And for what it's worth - nothing to Chuckie, I'm sure - the Consitution makes the president the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, not anyone else's. To quote the actual language of Article 2, "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."
I think Chuckie should just start calling him Dear Leader Bush.
Unfortunately, this kind of sleaziness of calling people traitors for not agreeing with Dear Leader on something or other, foreign-policy related or otherwise, is really off the map. But it's becoming more and more common for Republicans these days. And whatever quirks of personality may make it appealing for particular individuals like Chuckie, there is a larger reason for it, too.
For the national Republican Party today, the three most important groups setting the tone and the program for the party are the Christian Right, postsegregationist conservative Southern white guys, and secular authoritarian types like Cheney or Rumsfeld. Any one of those groups is likely to regard its political opponents not just as opposition or competition, but as a deadly danger. Mix them all together as in theBush dynasty's Republican Party today, and you've got a major party that can't be satisfied with just winning and passing its programs. It has to destroy its political enemies, discredit and humiliate them.
And as goofy as he is, Chuckie is unfortunately a pretty good example of the Nasty Southern White Guy portion of that coalition. He overlaps with the Christian Right, of course, but doesn't bother much with stick-in-the-mud preacher-style talk.
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Other recent blog posts on the general theme of if-you-don't-cheer-for-Dear-Leader-you're-a-traitor theme:
Digby, The Company You Keep 02/16/05
Digby, Avowedly With Them 02/11/05
Kevin Drum, The Voice of the Right .... 02/16/05
Matt Iglesias, Traitors Everywhere 02/16/05 He refers to Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics which I discussed back on 12/30/04.
David Neiwert, The Apocalyptic One-Party State 10/10/04 (long).
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