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When crazy meets money
America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system's ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable. Paul Krugman - New York TimesSo now we are being told that president Barack Obama is Adolph Hitler... just like Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad or (fill in name of whosoever the American right wants to bomb at the moment).
They want to talk about Hitler? Lets talk about Hitler.
According to John Tolund, who most experts consider Hitler's definitive biographer, as early as 1918 German army doctors had diagnosed Hitler as a "psychopath with hysterical symptoms".
How did someone literally insane go so far?
It happened because Germany's top industrial families were so terrified of the communists in the context of the then collapsing German economy that they thought that the the triumph of the weird and wacky Hitler, the failed watercolorist from Vienna with his campy brown shirts, would favor their interests.
You could say that their bet paid off: although Germany was burned to the ground in WWII and perhaps 8.5 million Germans died, most of the great German industrial fortunes of the 1930s are still great fortunes today. If the communists had carried the day in Weimar Germany, quite possibly today's Krupps and Thyssens might be bussing dishes on the Ku'damm and sleeping rough in the Tiergarten... an outcome they were naturally eager to avoid.
From Germany's industrial oligarchy's -- albeit minority -- point of view, backing Hitler and destroying Germany was a reasonable business decision.
Who knows, perhaps, America's "good and the great" may be taking similar decisions today in order to defend what they, quite correctly, see as their interests, which perhaps are not the same interests as those of most of the rest of us.
Is the "Obama = Hitler" really crazy stuff?
You betcha.
But the crazy part is not the real story because for historical reasons, due to its origins as a refuge for religious eccentrics, the United States has always had much more than its share of crazies. Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken had endless fun exposing America's deep vein of primitive weirdos. America treasures its crazies, they make us unique. Crazy is not the story.
The story is the money.
The question today is to determine who is paying for this particular campaign of organized insanity aimed at leaving America without a health plan.
Way back in May of 2007 I posted about the opening of a "Creationist Museum" in Kentucky that cost a cool $27,000,000, I entitled the post "High Rolling Holy Rollers with a Big Bank Roll". This snippet from my old post is relative to today's story:
One of the essential roots of American culture from the earliest days has been religious nonconformity and even religious manias. (...) What distinguishes today's holy rollers is the money they are finding to express themselves with. Traditionally these people, by definition uneducated refugees from a Flannery O'Connor short story, have always been dirt poor and outside the system. The $27m that this creationist museum cost is the real novelty here. Where is all the dough coming from for this "know-nothing Disneyland"?For sure this campaign against health care is costing a lot more than the creationism museum and it is doubtful that it is being financed by the "widow's mite" of those whom Chris Rock so pungently described as "Broke-ass white people, livin' in a trailer home, eatin' mayonnaise sandwiches, fucking their sister, listening to John Cougar Mellencamp records..."
So here is the real job for America's investigative journalists and political junkies: cherchez l'argent... follow the money. History hinges on the money trail.
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William A. Wirt carried the banner for the moneyed interests in 1934 to counteract the threat of Bolshevism. The astroturfers are anything but a 'grass roots' movement. They are the woefully gullible flag bearers of those with the most to lose from the potential reform of the healthcare sector.
September 1, 2009 2:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thats the Flinstone museum, right. Flintstones hit when I was in the fourth grade and I watched five minutes and I remember thinking, this is stupid. Dinosaurs were dead fifty million years before we ever appeared on the planet. Besides it was that new kind of cartoon that did not have the 'motion' of Disney.
Good to hear from you Senor.
Sorry to say that most of the people carrying the signs know nothing of history. Not even a 'properly' revised history like those pumped out by the fascisto Buchanan who contends we fought on the wrong side in WWII.
Oh well.
Good post. I covered a least three of these points in my last three or four blogs. But you are more focused of course. hahahaha
September 1, 2009 2:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I stand on the shoulder of giants :^)
No, seriously, I've been away and couldn't read your post.
September 1, 2009 2:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
What a thoroughly enjoyable post.
September 1, 2009 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's good to have you back, David.
September 1, 2009 2:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome back David.
September 1, 2009 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I believe you have it exactly right. Knowing where the money originates is knowing what we're up against, an historical curiousity would be to see who are the families that have attained power in the former Soviet Union. It seems that the folks in the Party and the KGB have simply turned in their uniforms to enable them to be less obvious and therefore more effective at stealing the nation's wealth. After all, when wealth reaches a certain point, who feels they need a nation anyway?
September 1, 2009 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greg,
I suggest reading Naomi Klein's new book, "The Shock Doctrine", where Russia and much else are revealed.
September 1, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
To all 'good' businessmen making money always trumps country. So, yeah, they are willing to bankrupt and destroy it, if it is in their best financial interests to do so. Capitalism is a greed motivated system, and while not trying to get overly religious, there is a reason why greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. And right now the right for the rich to reap obscene wealth has been elevated to one of our cherished, bedrock principles. Money isn't the root of all evil the pursuit of it is though.
September 1, 2009 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Follow the money. Nobody seems to have learned this lesson as well as congress and particularly those of the senatorial persuasion. If I was interested in turning over rocks that is where I would look first.
September 1, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the end of the 19th century many Americans were alarmed by the flourishing of foreign criminal operations in the USA such as the Mafia, the Black Hand and the Chinese tongs.
Mark Twain remarked that the only criminal class native to the USA was the US Congress.
September 1, 2009 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
That sounds about right Dave. Mark Twain, along with some other notables, unerringly had so much figured just right that it is peculiar we haven't made note of their observations.
September 2, 2009 5:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it any wonder that this country ended up in the hands of two oil men, who reported for duty with pre-drawn plans for invasion of oil rich Iraq? Who only after deals were cut for American oil companies to manage the fields, decided the war has been largely won and troops can come home? A couple of weeks ago Josh posted that John McCain was weirdly tweeting from Gaddafi's tent, of what a good meeting he had with him. Within days, the Libiyan bomber was released from prison and everyone suspects there was an oil deal on the table. McCain and Lieberman say, they told Momar not to give him a hero's welcome. But, I didn't hear them say, they told him the US was flately against his release. This country has visited the Dockery Plantation, where a deal with the devil has been made. Malcom was radical, but he was not all wrong. We shall reap what we sow. The blow-back will only increase over time, if the right-minded people who are left, don't take this country back!
September 1, 2009 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post.
I have been trying to find anything substantive about McCain's codel to Libya. About all I can find is that Graham, Snow, and Lieberman accompanied him. I was curious to begin with, after the jokes about them "palin' around with terrorists." McCain seemed free with his talk about Congress being willing to expand ties with Libya, (though we have concerns about human rights issues, ahem, ahem.) And there were apparently discussions about sending "non-lethal defense" items from the US. But when the Scots let the Lockerbie bomber go, allegedly (denied by Blair) to work out some more oil deals, it spiked my interest as to the REAL aim of McCain's visit.
I thought of sending Josh an email to see if they could Muckrake it, but it was Teddy's week and all.
Um, can McCain speak for Congress that way? Did the State Dept. and Hillary, not to mention the Prez, have anything to say about it, before, or after?
Then there was the rogue Mike Huckabee telling the Israelis that they should not halt the settlements...Of course, he's just a Teevee host right now, not a member of Congress
...
Whassup with it?
September 1, 2009 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Samo, samo, Wendy. Terrists ain't terrists when they're are terrists. Look at those oppressive fundamentalist Islamofascists in Afghanistan or Iran; not like those modern democratic leaders in S.A. or Egypt on our side just like God. Not like the Israelis blowin' up that junkyard called Gaza or Lebanon, or for that matter, our own damn selves blowin' up Iraq to protect truth, justice and the American way.
September 1, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Pallin' arouond," I meant. Palin was a freudian slippery, I mean slip.
September 1, 2009 9:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a good idea when quoting a definitive biographer to (in the spirit of definitiveness) spell his name right: Toland.
September 1, 2009 9:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Writing from memory, my bad, sorry.
September 2, 2009 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is such a good post, David! Yes, where is the money coming from? Who profits? I have even begun to wonder if it is in fact sovereign wealth funds that are playing craps with our nation.
I have the feeling that any investigation as to who ia bankrolling thia modern crop of goosesteppers would see the SAME witches' sabbath that backed the last endemic of fadcism: pharmaceuticals, banks, munitions, and speculators for who war is the only safe bet.
September 2, 2009 12:34 AM | Reply | Permalink