"Those Mean-Spirited Liberals?" -- Let Them Eat Cake! Part 1

The newest fashion on TV and radio for unabashed Neocons has been to pretend they have been slandered by the complaining masses. Recently, the complaint from Neocons about the Liberal backlash has been deafening. They speak as if people should feel sorry for them and that things others are saying are "out of line, mean-spirited, unpatriotic, un-American", ad nauseum infinitum.

It began with self-styled trash-mouth fascist commentator and Bush apologist Ann Coulter while apparently fantasizing she was Marie Antoinette ("Let them eat cake" to those who rebel). She was reacting to Al Franken and the like and their "attacks from the left". Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right was the first honest thing otherwise decent liberals had released in the history of "fighting back".

It spoke a manifesto that, despite its parody of name calling reached back to the days of Paddy Chayaevsky's, Network-1976, when character Howard Beale (Peter Finch) gave a stirring, orgasmic and vitriolic challenge to his viewers:

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
Howard Beale: [shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
[shouting]
Howard Beale: 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
Howard Beale: [screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

What amazes most Americans is the outrage by the power elite and smug mouthpieces like Coulter, (How to Talk to a Liberal [If You Must]: The World According to Ann Coulter), and shock-jock Michael Savage (Liberalism is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions).

Coulter has been spouting jaw-dropping remarks since day one, and networks have treated her as if she were a legitimate journalist in an attempt to coddle the right-wing fringe and to appear to be above reproach in their objectivity. Only after Coulter referred to democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a "faggot" to a crowd of little old Republican ladies, who applauded her and laughed. Meanwhile, networks like Fox "News" have such a blatant slant, it appears more like a polished 700 Club (Roberson), and though Fox may not pray to have Supreme Court Justices die, they might as well, in their calculated exclusion of any views that oppose fascist regime-building.

This cast of seemingly harmless, comic characters has been indignant that 70+ plus percent of America has finally stopped trying to be polite. "We are mad as hell" that our government has ignored us and sent our troops off to defend empire-building on the backs of the poor and middle class. That they are somehow insulted by being compared to Hitler as if that description doesn't fit; to being called Nazis and Fascists, when their actions force them into the textbook definitions of these clear terms.

Moderates and Liberals in America are finally coming together in a recognition that Bush and company are not a joke and can't be taken as one. They just keep moving forward, smiling and laughing their way to the bank, while stealing the rest of us blind. That we have let them, has been a testimony to our patience and decency; but at what point are we to realize we are "schmucks".

Whatever will it take to clear the way for America to return to its position of worldwide respect and moral authority? That we allowed people like Nixon (Watergate), Reagan (Debate-gate, Iran/Contra Gate), Bush I (Nicaragua and CIA Drug Dealing), and now Bush II (outright destruction of rights and blind eye to his sworn constitutional duties). That King George the Decider thinks we are stupid and weak, he has proven. That we are, we have yet to prove, but in our decency are very close.

It is the basic willingness of the left and moderate wing to forgive--upon which the Fascists depend. Maybe we are bleeding hearts and the people we are feeling sorry for are those twisting the knives, causing the bleeding.

It is time to tell Hannity (Fox) that he is an idiot despite his tailoring. It is time to tell Coulter she is a sickening, fowl-mouth skank who is polluting our American sense of decency. It is they who should be suffering the torture at Guantanamo and endless secret prisons across the land. It is time to realize Bush is NOT just a harmless, good-ole-boy, just because he laughs when he gives us all the one finger salute and moons us with his ignorance of the law. It is time to tell them we refuse to die for their profits anymore and we will defend our lives with appropriate anger and due force if necessary. And it is time we demand our representatives do the same in our names.

Now is the time, not after we have been further raped and killed. Now is the time, not after we have been disarmed and weakened by theft and corruption. Now is the time we show them we are not just men and women of words and intellect but of action!

How dare they pretend they are the victims, when the victims fight back? How dare they close their ears in a passive aggressive frenzy of neglect? How dare they refuse to take a joke when they have made it clear they have nothing but disdain for our righteous indignation?

If this disease of weakness is not cured by the patient, maybe we deserve what we get. If we have fallen into this crevasse of insensitivity only because we have endured so much of it, will we sit by and let them finally take away our last right and eventually more of our property and more of our lives?

This free-thinking, liberal, All-American patriot has had it up to his chin, and the water is rising. I will not drown. This Patriot who says and does what our forefathers said and did, will not sit by and let them get away with pretending to be true Americans.

I will remind them of the words of a man who knew why we insisted on the right to bear arms:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants"- Writing to William Smith (1755-1816), John Adams' secretary and future son-in-law, Thomas Jefferson seemed to welcome Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts: "god forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion . . . the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure." Jefferson was confident that rather than repression, the "remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them."

Thomas Jefferson
Letter to William Smith

Part 2 - A Rose By Any Other Name