Conservatism
HEGE Series
Conservatism today is consumed by "evidence-free" conspiracy, which is nothing more than slander. To raise suspicion of conspiracy in the least requires some shred of evidence. Liberalism's counterpart to this are "me-too", "racist", and "hate-speech" accusations (by whose definition?) that likewise are "evidence-free" trials conducted in the court of public opinion, not based on facts.
Such slander illustrates how there is little to no difference between right and left, other than propaganda ploy to concoct constituencies for a superficial show of "democracy" that keeps the people divided and conquered. That way democracy can be "managed" so that no real change is ever effected, only status quo "Business" (Economy, Love of Money) as usual.
See — Taking the Risk Out of Democracy by Alex Carey
The sameness of right and left political parties is evident in how little difference there is in support of both parties for a rapacious, exploitative form of "Economy". But the most obvious indicator of the two-party monoparty is virtual bipartisan complete agreement on Foreign Policy, at least those aspects which sustain and drive Economy.
"Conservative" propaganda puppets typically look up to the wealthy as industrious and productive (instead of the idle rich they actually are), and down on the poor of all ethnicities as lazy, whereas "liberal" propaganda puppets tend to have bleeding hearts for the poor and minorities in a show of compassion that they wear on their sleeves, compassion that wears thin when push comes to shove because it's "all hat and no cattle".
Most conservative party platform "talking points" (Propaganda) can be traced back to the John Birch Society beginning in the 1950s which is rooted in abuses of McCarthyism, its influence reaching a flashpoint around the JFK assassination in 1963. Although suppressed afterwards until the Reagan era, such right wing conspiracy Propaganda went viral thereafter into the 3rd Millenium where political Liberalism eventually became infected as well with its own version of conspiracy mania — "wokeness". The principle by which such Propaganda operates is through appeal to emotion. The last thing propagandists want is to appeal to reason, lest such reasoning undermine their manipulation.
Both parties are emotionally charged magnets for zealots striving to uproot all evil — 'communism' and sexual immorality from the right, oppression of "minorities" from the left — blinded by their POV (Point of View) to actually being puppets (useful idiots) propagandized by the political party of their emotional attraction.
It's high time, and well past time, that all Americans recognize the US two-party system for what it is — a smoke screen by which both left and right political parties maintain Liberal Hegemony over the world through the US Military on behalf of Corporate America for benefit of none other than the 1% plutocratic oligarchy, through what in effect is an illusion of two parties, which are in fact a monoparty. It's time to recognize, for what they are, labels other than American and human (Identity Politics) that divide us into constituency for left-wing Liberalism — divisive Propaganda ploy that defuses, siphons political power from the American people, just as right-wing Liberalism (Conservatism) divides us over fear of "Creeping Socialism" (fanatical anti-communism).
Both Propaganda ploys only serve to separate Americans from their Common Cause. Neither US political party is good and the other evil, just as neither economic system (Communism or Capitalism) is good and the other evil. Communism and Capitalism both are forms of materialism, neither of which are godly, both of which are idolatrous by way of Love of Money (power) which elevate material concerns above spiritual ones and glorify violence of war.
The U.S. is forever pointing the finger at murderous totalitarian actions of others in order to demonize Communism and paint itself as The Champion of liberty, freedom, democracy and human rights, a veritable saintly knight in white hat on white horse. However, all the while Uncle Sam has far more blood on his hands than Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung and all other murderous totalitarians combined.
See — U.S. Empire Named Most Murderous Killing Machine In History
New study finds U.S. responsible for nearly 300 million deaths—and counting
In 1991, legislative work began using taxpayer dollars to build an idol to such US fanatical anti-communism, in which both political parties were complicit. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) is a non-profit anti-communist organization, authorized by a unanimous Act of Congress in 1993 for the purpose of “educating Americans about the ideology, history and legacy of communism”. The VOC sponsored the Victims of Communism Memorial (dedicated on June 12, 2007), a recreation of the Goddess of Democracy (sister of Goddess Lady Liberty), which was destroyed by the government of China in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
The VOC foundation more recently in June 2022 opened an entire Victims of Communism Museum™ in Washington, D.C, two blocks from the White House. Such official fanatical anti-communism now sanctioned by both political parties and enshrined in the halls of Congress and infrastructure of the nation‘s capitol further shows the monoparty dedication to Liberal Hegemony and the duplicitousness of the USA two-party System
Common Cause, not the political two-party System of Republicans and Democrats, represents the real political issues that should be of concern to all Americans. Established in 1970, Common Cause has had little success in reforming US Government, which gives little cause for hope. More recently, Common Cause lost a lawsuit (Rucho v. Common Cause) that could have been a first step in reform, due to politicization of the Supreme Court. Republican Party justices failed to exercise power to reform, claiming gerrymandering was not an issue on which the Court could rule. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion, critical of the majority: “Of all times to abandon the Court's duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court's role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.”
So it appears, Corruption of US Government will continue unabated to the end of time (along with wholesale destruction of Earth and humanity), down the path of Babylon that has been chosen by US power mongers (mammon worshippers). Once again we arrive at the conclusion that our only choice, our only hope is in the Lord of lords and King of kings.
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus, Immanuel, God Who Is With Us
See —
Oil (Petroleum), Babylon, The Beast
Albert E. Burke
William Cobbett
Pinocchio
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Labor, Poverty
Management, Wealth
Economy, Business, Consumerism, Propaganda, Advertising
Government, Politics, Liberalism, Foreign Policy, Spying, US spy agencies
America’s Future Is Texas
— With right-wing zealots taking over the legislature even as the state’s demographics shift leftward, Texas has become the nation’s bellwether. Jul 3, 2017
Study: Republican control of state government is bad for democracy
How the Texas GOP Became the Party of Big Government
Life IS cheap these days, but GOP thuggery is getting damned expensive
— For the dim and benighted (including the Donald), politics has become anything but a profitable grift road to riches.
Zeal that desires to uproot all evil is in fact the very worst evil. — St. Joseph of Optina (1837-†1911) The Puritan Origins of American Progressivism — Paul Krause [T]he left-right divide in America is the schizophrenic vision of America rooted in her very foundation: one puritanical and moralist, the other cavalier and individualist. The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. — G K Chesterton 1874-1936, author of Distributism The Complexity of Civility and Citizenship The world is a far more complex thing than modern radicalism, with its naïve contrast of “right” and “left,” has ever dreamed. – Edward Shils, The Virtue of Civility Seeing the Wood for the Trees The ‘salvation’ of the natural environment falls to man. He alone has the power to determine not only his own fate but also that of the natural environment. Far from Christianity being the one that surrenders nature to the arbitrary will and power of humanity, it is the non-Christian view that does this with astounding self-righteousness. — Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou
American Theocracy | Wikipedia
Reactionary | Wikipedia
Robust One-Nation Conservatism Is What Woke Globalist Elites Fear Most, Heritage Foundation President Tells London Conference
— Right wing political conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation continually talk about the problem of “global elites” as if they are all "liberals”, instead of calling out right wing politicians who do little more than aid and abet crony Capitalism, and are just as much cosmopolitan, international global elitists as any liberal politician. When criticism of their beloved Capitalism is made, right wing political "conservatives" are always quick to point out that what's criticized is actually crony Capitalism, as if the right wing Republican Party is the party of legitimate Capitalism, when it's impossible to separate the crony from the honest business world. The raison d'être of Capitalism is profit, greed for which comes from the profit motive (from the human heart), by which The System is corrupted by Love of Money into the worst form of Organized Crime there is on the planet.
The Jewish Racket Known as the Right to Life Movement
The Rise and Fall of Conservatism in Michigan
— “Conservatism died four years ago with the election of Donald Trump.”
The Gilded Age
American life in the 1870s-1900 is the model economic situation preferred by "conservative" (regressive) politicians in the US, which only confirms that the newly formed Republican Party of the 19th century only cared about ending Southern slavery in order to advance Northern industrialism.
See — Civil War (aka Second American Revolution)
The Gilded Age is a historical snapshot (following the Civil War) of how "progress" of unbridled (unregulated) urban industrial capitalism, under leadership of the Republican Party (as directed by the Robber Barrons, aka the One Percent), resulted in poverty for most and great riches for a select few.
The Grant presidency, the first post Civil War administration, was the most corrupt in US history. Only after liberal progressive reforms to curb corruption, World War II spending, and postwar (1945) growth in consumer economy would there be rise in Americans entering the middle class, what is routinely touted as the American Dream. But that rise would be brief.
By the 1970s, regressive ("conservative") assault on those reforms beneficial to creation of the middle class had begun in earnest, never actually having subsided. During the FDR administration, there had even been a regressive coup attempt (the Business Plot, the Wall Street (or White House) Putsch) that was foiled by the True Patriot Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, the only coup attempt in American history despite regressive continual claims (finger pointing at liberals) of communism and "creeping socialism", a sleight of hand intended to make one think such threat of coup would come from the liberal left by distracting away from the illiberal right.
By the time of Reaganism of the 1980s, libertarianism became the propaganda tactic by which the regressive "conservative" puppeteers in America enticed their constituency of useful idiots to effectively wreck the middle class which was enlarged in the golden Camelot years following WWII. Though the Republican Party was careful never to outright embrace the libertarian label itself, its regressive propaganda of "Free Market Fundamentalism" attracted libertarians to its ranks, who together with the Republican constituency of "useful idiots" actuated the "free market" style libertarian ideological ideals Republican political elites found useful for their propagandist Big lie that effectively through endless repetition reinstated the widening chasm between uber rich and poor, back not only to the extremes of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, but yet even much further beyond that.
By the 3rd millenium, the oligarchal rule of political elites beholden to corporate capitalists beholden to financial elites became openly blantant, which should no longer leave any doubt in the American mind as to Who Rules America.
We’ve fought monopoly power before — we can do it again
From one Roosevelt to another: How we cracked down on corporate power and built a middle class
See —
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
How The Other Half Lives
Adam Curtis - The Mayfair Set
Way of Thinking
"Creeping Socialism"
Agrarianism
Who Rules America
Plutocracy — the bloodiest, most violent repression of labor organization in the world occurred in the USA, simultaneously alongside the most opportunistic governmental aid and abettance of corporate business organization
The Gilded Age: Perspectives on the Origins of Modern America
Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today — Mark Twain
Gilded Age 1870s-1900 | Wikipedia
The Gilded Age (TV series) | Wikipedia
PBS American Experience
The Gilded Age - Gilded is not Golden | PBS — YouTube Playlist
The Gilded Age: Trailer
Chapter 1
Ida B. Wells in Brooklyn
Andrew Carnegie: Man of Steel
Carnegie’s Bookshelf
Golden Rule Jones
J.P. Morgan: The Financier
Mary Elizabeth Lease: The Advocate
The Vanderbilt Ball
Consuelo's Wedding
“Vanderbilt” by Anderson Cooper | YouTube
Gloria Vanderbilt: World Famous Socialite | YouTube
Henry George
Henry George: From Poverty to Politics
"He writes a book that he titles "Progress and Poverty", and it becomes a best seller. He diagnoses a problem that he and many, many other people are seeing. The system of industrial capitalism that is developing is rigged and that there's something wrong with it ...
He uses the term "the one percent". He talks about the haves and the have nots ..."
Henry George | Wikipedia
Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy | Wikipedia
When Marx Attacked The Single Tax
“Georgism dissolves socialism; it is pro-worker and pro-capital at the same time. This is impossible for the socialist who believes to his core that labor can only win if capital loses.”
The History Channel
Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0 ?
Gilded Age
How the Gilded Age's Top 1 Percent Thrived on Corruption
How Robber Barons Flaunted Their Money During the Gilded Age
Why Did the Gilded Age End?
Inside Theodore Roosevelt's Gilded Age Upbringing
How Gilded Age Corruption Led to the Progressive Era
Ludwig von Mises
Mises lectured extensively on behalf of Classic liberalism in promotion of his non-interventionist Austrian School of economics while completely ignoring the stranglehold that the corporate capitalist upper class had on government. His ideology was quickly embraced by American conservatives (regressives) as a means of further enrichment of the few (oligarchy) via a "Free Market Fundamentalism". This came as a great pleasure to libertarians deluded by their rabid individualistic dreams, who embraced the Austrian School of economics under the Republican Propaganda banner of a "free market" free for all.
Ludwig von Mises | Wikipedia
Austrian School | Wikipedia
Debates within libertarianism | Wikipedia
Ludwig von Mises criticized libertarians for their cacaphony, inability to agree on anything. (Quote forthcoming)
Mises Institute
The Intellectual Incoherence of Conservatism
Libertarianism, Conservatism, and All That
Ludwig von Mises' "criticisms of the political right stretch from his 1919 book on European politics ("Every reactionary lacks intellectual independence") to his 1956 book on method, in which he argued that it was the conservatives who brought socialism to Britain."
Why There's a Left-Right Divide among Libertarians
Libertarianism
Libertarianism | Wikipedia
Neoliberalism | Wikipedia
Libertarianism is the propaganda tactic by which the regressive "conservative" puppeteers in America enticed their constituency of useful idiots to effectively wreck the middle class which was enlarged in the golden Camelot years following WWII, in order to reinstate the widening chasm between uber rich and poor, back not only to the extremes of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, but yet even much further beyond that.
The Republican propaganda banner of a "free market" free for all embraced by libertarians and Republican Party "useful idiots" constituency included other ingredients in addition to non-interventionism of Ludwig Von Mises and his Austrian School of economics, such as the delusions of Friedrich Hayak and his legacy, disciple and protégé Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics, Ayn Rand and her insipid pseudo-philosophy of "Objectivism", especially her groupie and cult follower (and later Chair of the Federal Reserve) Alan Greenspan, and the schizophrenia of John Nash through which he produced his Game theory.
See — Adam Curtis - The Mayfair Set, and The Trap where such ideological rationalizations are shown to play themselves out over time as the human hubris that they are.
Libertarians are the kissing cousins of liberal, left wing 1960s hippies, who claimed the "right" to do whatever their heart desired "as long as I don't hurt anyone but myself". Likewise, libertarians make unsubstantiated claim that their radical, individualistic free market economic antics work to the benefit of everyone, without harm to anyone. Even when reality of a back handed slap of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" of the "free" market calls their bluff, libertarians typically only concede that their antics solely work to their own, selfish benefit, but not that their strictly self-interested, selfish behavior causes harm to others.
Typically is the operative word here, because libertarians are typically highly contentious and agree on very little. But the one area where most can agree is on "Free Market Fundamentalism" as expressed in their support for Republican Party politics.
This is not to deny that American Government is a bloated bureaucracy, hugely wasteful of taxpayer dollars, and grossly overextended in its reach, but libertarian insistence on "shrinking government to the size that can be drowned in a bathtub" ridiculously ignores the fact that until corporate capitalist oligarchal stranglehold on American Government is broken and abolished, such "shrinking" is an appallingly dangerous thing to consider, a backwards putting of "the cart before the horse".
See —
The System
Free Market Fundamentalism
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
And there goes Republican free market ideals down the drain, when it's not convenient for campaign propaganda.
DeSantis’ targeting of ESG could cost taxpayers, pension fund millions of dollars
“States such as Florida, Texas and other Republican-controlled states have passed or are considering legislation to stop doing business with companies that embrace ESG [Environment, Social, Governance] when analyzing the risks of investing in stocks, bonds and mutual funds.”
With Florida’s retirement system still struggling, DeSantis, Cabinet remain focused on failing investment strategy
Gov. Ron DeSantis moves to prohibit state investments in 'woke' agenda
The Mythology of Roosevelt and the New Deal — Libertarian Propaganda at its “best”, all dressed up as Independent Institute while attacking its favorite target FDR, a usual tactic of right wing Republican Party cronyism on behalf of Corporate America
A Dim View of Libertarianism 1. What is Libertarianism? A half century ago, when liberalism was ascendant in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, libertarianism was a fringe curiosity. Now it has become a formidable political and economic force in the United States. ... No existing democratic governments fully endorse and implement libertarian doctrine, for no national electorate would tolerate so radical a system of political economy. (The Libertarian Party in the United States has never attracted more than one percent of the votes in a Presidential election). Nonetheless, libertarianism deserves careful critical analysis since in theory, if not in practice, it is the ideological "spear-point" of "free market reform" throughout the world. Furthermore, many of its prominent exponents, such as Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Robert Nozick, are highly esteemed by scholars throughout the world. Thus, while its principles may appear stark, unqualified and unyielding and its proposals over-simplistic, because of its widespread and growing influence, libertarianism must be taken very seriously. For all its acquired respectability in contemporary political discourse, I will argue in these essays that libertarianism is a grave threat to the very existence of the American system of justice and representative democracy as we have come to know it. Libertarianism poses this threat not because of the cogency of its doctrines but rather because of the enormous financial and media resources that promote it. 2. The Myth of Social Atomism The error of the libertarians resides in their embrace of the principle "good for each, good for all" as dogma, applied a priori to society and the economy, virtually without exception. By rejecting, implicitly, the principle of "good for each, bad for all" and vice versa, the libertarian recognizes no personal price that must be paid for the maintenance of a just social order, and pays no heed to the social costs of one's personal "pursuit of happiness." For the libertarian, the only legitimate functions of government are the protection of the three fundamental rights of life, liberty and property.13 Hence, the only legitimate disbursement of tax revenues is for the military (protection from foreign enemies), the "night watchman" police (protection from domestic enemies), and the courts (adjudication of property disputes). Because there are no "public goods," compulsory tax payment for public education, research and development of science and technology, medical care, museums, promotion of the arts, public and national parks, etc., is the moral equivalent of theft. According to this account of human nature and society, with the exception of the just noted protections of life, liberty and property, there is nothing that government can accomplish that private initiative and the free market cannot achieve with better results. As Ronald Reagan famously said in his first inaugural address: "government is not the solution, government is the problem." No regulation, no governmental functions beyond basic protection of life, liberty and property, no taxes except to support these minimal functions. Any governmental activity beyond this should, in Grover Norquist's words, be "drowned in the bathtub." Let the free market reign without constraint, allow all "capitalist acts between consenting adults" (Robert Nozick). As each individual, in Adam Smith's words, "intends only his own gain," then each individual will be "led by an invisible hand to promote ... the public interest." Good for each, good for all. In contrast, the progressive views society as more than the sum of its parts; it is what philosophers call an "emergent entity," with properties and principles of the whole distinct from those of its components just as, analogously, chemical compounds (e.g. water and salt) have properties distinct from their component elements. In this sense society and its economy is like a computer, an engine, an ecosystem, the clarity of a living language. If the system malfunctions, there are innocent victims -- the poor, the oppressed, the addicted, the uneducated -- and the system is thus in need of adjustment or repair or even overhaul and redesign. These corrections are best diagnosed and treated when the system is examined and analyzed, as a system, and not as an amalgam of distinct individual parts. And diagnosis, adjustment, regulation, repair, overhaul, redesign of the community-entity are legitimate functions of a government established to act in the interests of all and “deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.” 3. Market Fundamentalism 4. The Privatization Panacea 5. Corporations: Invaluable Servants, Ruthless Masters 6. The Necessity of Government 7. Concluding Questions
McCarthyism
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming | Wikipedia
The Russians Are Coming (1966)] Trailer, Title Sequence, Soundtrack | YouTube
McCarthyism | Wikipedia
Joseph McCarthy | Wikipedia
“During the 1940s and 1950s, corrupt politicians championed the politics of anti-communism in order to divert attention from the growing nexus between organized crime, big business and government.”
— Jonathan Marshall
See — Michael Woodiwiss, John Loftus, Corporations, Capitalism, Foreign Policy, “Creeping Socialism”
Abuses of McCarthyism are at the root of the right wing, "conservative" (illiberal, regressive) Republican Party resort to John Birch Society conspiracy "talking points" (propaganda) as basis for party platform. This conspiracy propaganda began with the abuses of McCarthyism to become the John Birch inspired "creeping socialism" parlor game in the 50s-60s (See — Albert E. Burke). The game exploded in the 3rd Millenium to include all manner of conspiracy nuttery, from "evidence-free" "Q"Anon accusations of election fraud to accusations of Democratic Party satanism and pedophilia. For all that any of the right wing "patriots" (useful idiots) know, they have been played by US intelligence agencies, the FBI being suspect in aiding and abetting some of the Jan 6 antics of stormtroopers on the Capitol.
Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition - An Oral History Red Scare is a vivid oral history of a time when subscribers to the Nation, devotees of foreign films, and even those who supported Franklin Roosevelt's fourth term came under suspicion of being Communists or fellow travelers, a time that Griffin Fariello likens to the Inquisition. This oral history of the anticommunist hysteria of the 1940s and '50s reminds us that the "red scare" launched by Senator Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI attacked not only communists but also progressives, civil rights activists, labor organizers, New Dealers and ordinary citizens for dissent or "nonconformity." Fariello, a freelance writer, interviewed, among others, screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr., one of the Hollywood Ten, who spent a year in prison for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee; ex-Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., who in 1954 gave Hoover carte blanche to bug whomever he chose; Nobel chemist Linus Pauling, denied a passport and hauled before a Senate committee for his peace activism and protests against nuclear proliferation; along with Alger Hiss, Arthur Miller, Kay Boyle, Pete Seeger and Robert Meeropol, son of convicted atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Also interviewed are FBI agents, professional informers and security officers empowered to police the thoughts and personal behavior of federal employees. A chilling and powerful indictment of the witch-hunt mentality [that has lived on well into the 3rd millenium in political propaganda of the Republican Party]. The Birchers & the Trumpers Right-wing conspiracy thinking survived the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe because it became an instrument not just of anticommunism but of expressing resentment of educated elites —which not only continues but has arguably increased— and also because social media can spread conspiratorial ideas instantaneously to a mass audience. The persistence of this evidence-free theorizing raises the question of whether conspiracy theories have become necessary to the Republican Party’s existence. Conspiracies are, in short, a way for the party to keep feeding its populist base while more quietly pursuing economic interests [for the few] (cutting taxes, opposing government regulation) that the party’s powerful, well-heeled members and donors find vital.
Organized Crime
See — Organized Crime
Hollywood Blacklist
Dalton Trumbo
Trumbo (2015) - Who is a Communist? | YouTube
Dad?
Hmm?
Are you a communist?
I am.
Is that against the law?
It is not.
The lady with the big hat said you were a dangerous radical. Are you?
Radical? rightly. Dangerous, only to men who fling cokes. I love our country and it's a good government, but anything good could be better, don't you think?
Is Mama communist?
No.
Am I?
Well, why don't we give you the official test? Mom makes your favorite lunch.
Ham and cheese.
Ham and cheese, and at school you see someone with no lunch at all. What do you do?
Share.
Share; well you don't tell them to just go get a job.
No.
Oh, you offer them a loan at six percent, oh that's very clever.
Dad!
Ah, you just ignore them?
No.
Well, well, tsk. You little commie.
Trumbo (2015) - There Were Only Victims | YouTube
Trumbo (2015 film) | Wikipedia
Dalton Trumbo | Wikipedia
Hollywood blacklist | Wikipedia
Arthur Miller
Why I Wrote The Crucible
I recall the weeks I spent reading testimony by the tome, commentaries, broadsides, confessions, and accusations. And always the crucial damning event was the signing of one’s name in “the Devil’s book.” This Faustian agreement to hand over one’s soul to the dreaded Lord of Darkness was the ultimate insult to God. But what were these new inductees supposed to have done once they’d signed on? Nobody seems even to have thought to ask. But, of course, actions are as irrelevant during cultural and religious wars as they are in nightmares. The thing at issue is buried intentions—the secret allegiances of the alienated heart, always the main threat to the theocratic mind, as well as its immemorial quarry.
The Crucible | Wikipedia —
“Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists. Miller was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.”
The Crucible (1996 film) | Wikipedia
The Crucible and Miller’s HUAC Testimony | YouTube
Arthur Miller: The Crucible | YouTube
Arthur Miller Society | YouTube
The Arthur Miller Society
John Birch Society
See — JFK Assassination
The worst excesses of McCarthyism are magnified on steroids by the "society" of conspiracy — beginning with founder Robert Welch's declaration that Eisenhower was a "communist".
A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism
A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism
The fascist revival: The inside story of the John Birch Society
Review: The World of the John Birch Society: Conspiracy, Conservatism, and the Cold War
Robert W. Welch Jr. | Wikipedia
John Birch Society | Wikipedia
John Birch Society | Spartacus Educational
The New American | Wikipedia
The New American
Robert Welch University | Wikipedia
Robert Welch University
The John Birch Society Is Back
The John Birch Society Sees a Renaissance in North Texas
How the GOP Surrendered to Extremism
Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted radicals in their ranks. Now they’re not even trying.
The history of far-right populism, from the John Birch Society to Trumpism
Long before QAnon, Ronald Reagan and the GOP purged John Birch extremists from the party
Did the Birchers win after all?
Did the John Birch Society Win in the End?
Modern conservatism was built by purging the right’s reckless conspiracy theorists—but now they’ve taken over.
A View From The Fringe The John Birch Society and the rise of the radical right.
We All Live in the John Birch Society’s World Now
In his lifetime, Robert Welch toiled in the mocked and marginal fringe. Today his ideas are the mainstream of the American right.
Growing Up in the John Birch Society
A new memoir exposes the trauma of growing up in an extreme-right-wing family—and the way those traumas were visited, politically, on the rest of us.
Part 2: Koch’s Roots — The John Birch Society — UnKoch My Campus
The Rearguard of Freedom: The John Birch Society and the Development of Modern Conservatism in the United States, 1958-1968
JFK Assassination
The Parallax View (1974 film) | Wikipedia — Trailer
See — JFK Assassination
Below is example of what Dr. Albert E. Burke called a dangerous new parlor game of "creeping socialism" which after having begun in earnest in political Conservatism of the 1950s-60s, proceeded to reach a flashpoint around the JFK assassination, after which it was suppressed until the Reagan era, when the "game" then began going viral into the 3rd Millenium where political Liberalism eventually became infected as well, with its own mutated strain of "woke" parlor game. —
The John Birch Society Sees A Renaissance In North Texas The Birchers & the Trumpers JFK & John Birch Society Dallas Hate-JFK Dealy Ad Welcome Mr. Kennedy To Dallas... The entire page 14 of the Dallas Morning News, November 22nd, 1963 [the same day JFK was assassinated], was devoted to an advertisement, ominously bordered in black like an announcement of mourning. ... Under the sardonic heading, "WELCOME MR KENNEDY TO DALLAS," an organization styling itself as "The American Fact-Finding Committee" — a local coordinator of the John Birch Society and Nelson Bunker Hunt, the son of H. L. Hunt, it later developed, were the committee's most prominent members — asked the President twelve rhetorical questions. He was accused of responsiblity for the imprisonment, starvation, and persecution of 'thousands of Cubans.' The ad declared that he was selling food to the Communist party, and asked, among other things, 'Why have you ordered or permitted your brother Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?'..."'Mr Kennedy', the ad concluded, 'we DEMAND answers to these questions, and we want them NOW.' — William Manchester, Death of a President 1967 | Google Books Wanted For Treason It was another 'Wanted for Treason' broadside. But there were two differences. This denunciation was reaching a vast audience through the pages of a respected newspaper [the Dallas Morning News]. And it was appearing within hours of the President's arrival. ... In 1963 the Dallas Morning News was published by a man named Ted Dealey [as in Dealey Plaza]. When criticized for it later, Dealey said that before agreeing to print the JBS ad, he'd read it meticulously and approved it, arguing that it 'represented what the Dallas Morning News have been saying editorially'. — William Manchester, Death of a President 1967 | Google Books Why Do They Hate Us So Much? 1983 | Texas Monthly — When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Dallas was my hometown. For twenty years my neighbors and I have suffered the world’s blame. Now it is time to lay our burden down. While everyone was religious, some were superreligious, and they thought of themselves as a spiritual vanguard. They were contemptuous of the rest of us—we might as well have been agents of the Devil. It was the same with politics. The political scale in Dallas began with Eisenhower conservatism and ran well past fascism to a kind of conservative nihilism. Earle Cabell was a far-right Democrat, present at the founding though not a member of the Dallas chapter of the John Birch Society, and yet he was routinely described by the farther right as “the socialist mayor of Dallas.” ... Across the country, but particularly in this new world, there was a certain adolescent bitterness, a suspicious feeling of betrayal, a willingness to find conspiracy lurking in every corner. “The mood,” as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., described it, “was one of the longing for a dreamworld [utopia] of no communism, no overseas entanglements, no United Nations, no federal government, no labor unions, no Negroes or foreigners [immigrants]—a world in which Chief Justice Warren would be impeached, Cuba invaded, the graduated income tax repealed, the fluoridation of drinking water stopped and the import of Polish hams forbidden.” No, it was not just Dallas, but my hometown was already gaining the reputation of being the capital of this new world. ... It was November 4, 1960, Republican Tag Day in Dallas, and the downtown lunch crowd was being canvassed by three hundred women in red-white-and-blue outfits. ... Several Tag Girls spotted the Johnsons arriving and rushed over to surround the car. As Lady Bird was stepping out of the Lincoln one of the pickets impulsively snatched her gloves from her hands and threw them into the gutter. Lady Bird went white. It was still a time when incivility was rare in politics, when public figures felt safe in crowds. No one, perhaps not even the Tag Girls themselves, was prepared to understand the ferocity of the anger in those otherwise happy and well-cared-for women. Johnson rushed Lady Bird into the lobby of the Baker, which was packed with jeering Tag Girls. ... Johnson was to speak at a luncheon across the street at the Adolphus Hotel. ... As the Johnsons made their way through the Baker Lobby the crowd closed ranks behind them, becoming bolder, but it was nothing compared with the mob that waited in the street and, beyond that, the packed crowd of Tag Girls in the lobby of the Adolphus. ... The demonstration in Commerce Street waited with catcalls and accusations. ... What was more surprising was that the sign carriers and catcallers were for the most part well-groomed women from some of the finest homes in the city, and yet as soon as the Johnsons waded into Commerce Street the women in red, white, and blue began to curse them and to spit. (Later, some members of the “Mink Coat Mob,” as they came to be known, claimed that they were not spitting, exactly—they were frothing.) Why? What accounted for the hostility (or to use her word, indignation) of the fashionable and affluent Dallas woman? In part she was simply a prisoner of her age: a women of unfocused ambition, intensely competitive but unemployed (the working wife was still a signal of economic desperation), lonely at home and given to causes. She may have been financially secure, but she was deeply troubled by some unnamed fear that her castle was built of sand and the coming tide would wash away her American dreams [fairy tale]. She named the tide International Communism, or Creeping Socialism. When Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev boasted to the West, “We will bury you,” the conservative Dallas woman believed him. Earlier that autumn Khrushchev had come to the United Nations and pounded on the table with his shoe—a gesture of such swaggering boorishness that it justified every qualm the Dallas woman felt about Russia, the United Nations, and American foreign policy. She worried about the missile gap and the spread of communism to Cuba. Moreover, people in her own country were talking enthusiastically about social change—Kennedy was already speaking of the “the revolutionary sixties”—and the Dallas woman knew those changes would come at her expense. She worried about the erosion of liberty caused by recent Supreme Court decisions (often delivered by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was the creeping socialist personified). The court was taking rights away from the Dallas woman and awarding them to pornographers, criminals, atheists, communists, and Negroes. The Dallas woman felt herself to be under attack at home and abroad. ... Although Nixon carried Dallas County by a landslide, Texas went for the Kennedy-Johnson. ...It was the closest presidential election in the nation’s history, and it was decided that day in the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel [where the Johnsons being accosted by the rich Republican Tag gals received television coverage]. People said afterward that they were not voting for Kennedy so much as they were voting against Dallas. Against us. For the first time people in the city learned about guilt by association. Until then Dallas had had very little national identity, but we found ourselves now with a new municipal image: a city of the angry nouveau riche, smug, doctrinaire, belligerent, a city with a taste for political violence. Many Dallasites were shocked to see our city represented that way, but it had little effect on the way we thought of ourselves. ... There was, in fact, a chip of defiance on the city’s shoulder, encouraged by the Dallas Morning News. The News is the oldest business institution in the state, having been founded in 1842 when Texas was still a republic and Dallas little more than a heady presumption. Under George B. Dealey the News had been a progressive newspaper, leading the scourge that drove the Ku Klux Klan out of Texas. The name “Dealey” would become famous because of the queer, fan-shaped park known as Dealey Plaza, directly across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, where a bronze statue of G.B. Dealey stares at the now magnificent skyline of downtown Dallas. Many citizens believe it is perfectly appropriate that Dealey’s name should be irrevocably tied to the assassination, even though it is his son they blame. ... E.M. "Ted" Dealey, the son, succeeded his father as publisher of the [Dallas Morning] News, and in his hands it became the most strident, red-baiting daily paper in the country, excepting only occasionally William Leob's Union-Leader, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Like many intensely conservative people, he found his paragon in the movies and politics of John Wayne. As a matter of fact, reading the News each morning was like watching a brawl in a saloon, in which the newspaper's editorials flattened the "socialists" (read: Democrats), the "perverts and subversives" (liberal Democrats), the "Judicial Kremlin" (the U.S. Supreme Court), and virtually every representative of the federal government whose views differed from those of Ted Dealey. Immediately after the election the News’s principal object of contempt became President John F Kennedy, who the paper suggested was a crook, a communist sympathizer, a thief, and "fifty times a fool". Ted Dealey went to the White House in the fall of 1961 with a group of Texas publishers to meet the man he had maligned so frequently in his newspaper. He used the occasion to attack Kennedy in person. "We can annihilate Russia and should make that clear to the Soviet government", he advised the president, to the discomfort of his colleagues in the room. He accused Kennedy and his administration of being weak sisters (a favorite Dealey phrase). "We need a man on horseback [e.g. Johnson?] to lead this nation", he concluded "and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle". ... Kennedy was still thinking of his encounter with Dealey when he spoke later that year of people who “call for ‘a man on horseback’ because they do not trust the people. They find treason in our churches, in our highest court, in our treatment of water. They equate the Democratic Party with the welfare state, the welfare state with socialism, socialism with communism.” With his prescient political eye Kennedy saw that the new world [of which Dallas is the "capitol"] was being created, and it stood opposed to everything he represented: East Coast liberalism, mainstream Democratic party politics, Ivy League learning, the customary restraints of educated society. Although Kennedy was popularly understood as a man of his time, a thoroughly modern president, in many ways he was the last of the traditionalists. He called his administration the New Frontier, but his successors—Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan—would show that the real frontier in American politics lay far away in the new world. During his presidency the atmosphere in Dallas approached hysteria. “The historical conservatism of the city,” wrote Dallas’ most prominent merchant, Stanley Marcus [of Neiman-Marcus], “had been fanned to a raging fire by the combination of a number of elements: the far right daily radio ‘Facts Forum’ program by Dan Smoot sponsored by the ultraconservative wealthiest man in town, H. L. Hunt; the John Birch Society; the oil industry’s hysterical concern for the preservation of what they considered a biblical guarantee of their depletion allowance; the ‘National Indignation League’ founded by a local garageman, Frank McGeehee, in protest of the air force’s training of some Yugoslavian pilots at a nearby air base; the consistently one-sided attacks on the administration by the Dallas Morning News and the semi-acquiescent editorial policy of the Times Herald, which had previously been a middle-of-the-road, fair newspaper. For the lack of courageous firemen in the business and intellectual segments of the community, the fire raged on.” ... Dallas was gaining notice. The leader of the American Nazi party, George Lincoln Rockwell, opined that Dallas had “the most patriotic, pro-American people of any city in the country.” The compliment may have embarrassed a few, considering its source, but we believed that about ourselves. To the radical conservatives, Dallas had become a kind of shrine, a Camelot of the right. ... Once again—it wasn’t just Dallas. But we who lived there had the feeling that we were in the middle of a political caldera, a grumbling, reawakening fascist urge that was too hot to contain itself. I wonder what might have happened in Dallas if Kennedy hadn’t died there. The most conspicuous and despised symbol of fuzzy intellectualism was Adlai Stevenson, a former Democratic presidential candidate and the current American ambassador to the United Nations. There was also something intensely personal about the hatred of Stevenson. He was the last word in eggheads, Mr. Humpty Dumpty himself. His urbanity didn’t wash in Dallas. Intellectual charm was suspect; besides if you took the trouble to be witty you probably didn’t have it where it counted. Stevenson was a weak sister. In fact he was a sincerely courageous man, and he decided to beard his enemies by marching straight into their camp. He agreed to speak at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium on October 24, 1963—United Nations Day.... The mob immediately closed him in. The hysterical woman, who was the wife of an insurance executive, brought her placard down on Stevenson’s head. A college student spat upon him. When the policeman finally rescued him, Stevenson wiped the spit off his face with a handkerchief and asked aloud, “Are these human beings or are these animals?” ... [The "new" world: then as now, no matter how much things change, they still remain the same. That "world" may have toned it down a bit after the JFK assassination, but it was always roiling beneath the surface, and as soon as the effects of 1963 wore off enough, that world came boiling forth again with its usual vengeance. Read on (the full article Why Do They Hate Us So Much?); it only gets "better".]
Donald Trump
See — Donald Trump<
Raymond Oliver Dreher Jr.
See — Raymond Oliver Dreher Jr.
Frank Luntz
Frank Luntz | Wikipedia —
2010 Lie of the Year award
Refusal to release poll data (lack of transparency)
Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan & Kevin McCarthy: Plot To Sabotage US Economy with Frank Luntz
‘Don’t be like America’ Leading pollster warns cultures wars WILL destroy Britain May 17, 2022
— Luntz's latest schtick for his latest gig.
‘Be thankful you don’t have our poison’: US pollster Frank Luntz’s warning to UK Jan 28, 2022 —
— Luntz suffered a stroke on Jan 10 2020 that he claims changed him, but he still puts most the blame for his political poison making that contributed to the culture war elsewhere than on himself.
Like Dreher Jr., Luntz uses his presumed changed attitude to excuse his past failings: “I’ll take my blame for the stuff that I did 20 years ago. But I figured it out.” Such is expression of his arrogance, that “he” figured it out. Seems more like his change came from a blinding by the light due to his stroke and his coming face to face with his own mortality, by which he's managed to express a small drop of penitence, but still has a long, long way to go for full repentant accountability.
Luntz claims to be warning UK about not adopting US culture war m.o., but he still speaks like the manipulative advertising PR professional that he is: “If you want to bring people together, you do it over their children. You guys are divided on just about everything; this crushes that divide. This brings people together and it’s not been done before. I’m waiting for a political party or movement to capture the next generation as their focus.”
If it weren't for the political management “work” of Luntz, UK and other countries around the world would not be facing a culture war that has spread from the US. Luntz has done nothing but aid and abett The American Way (The System of Organized Crime) by helping the US Republican Party further obfuscate such malfeasance by Propaganda ploys of play on words under the guise of stating “facts” to debate political issues.
Luntz is one of the Advertising, Public Relations types that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings thinks are just horrible.
No, I most certainly do not think advertising people are wonderful. I think they are horrible, and the worst menace to mankind, next to war; perhaps ahead of war. They stand for the material viewpoint, for the importance of possessions, of desire, of envy, of greed. And war comes from these things. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953)
Let Them Eat Words: Linguistic lessons from Republican master strategist Frank Luntz — September 1, 2003
How the Right Made Racism Sound Fair–and Changed Immigration Politics
— “A 2005 memo by GOP strategist Luntz perfectly captures the talking points relied upon by anti-reform Republicans to kill any reform measures. Luntz is known as a word genius for popularizing terms like "death tax" for estate tax and turning oil drilling into the friendlier-sounding "energy exploration." In his immigration memo, he instructed Republicans to "always refer to people crossing the border illegally as ‘illegal immigrants’–NOT as ‘illegals.’ "
This was a nod to the long-term danger Republicans faced in demonizing undocumented immigrants: losing the Latino vote. As Luntz wrote, "Republicans have made significant inroads into the Hispanic community over the past decade, and it would be a shame if poorly chosen words and overheated rhetoric were to undermine the credibility the party has built within the community." (Remember, this was 2005–pre-Tea Party.)”
The craft of communications and the coming culture war June 10, 2020
“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language‘
Luntz Should Not Be Welcomed — April 25, 2018
— “Luntz is a major source of the hyper-partisan polarization currently roiling our country. He was the primary architect of the 1990 Newt Gingrich GOPAC memo coaching Republicans in how to demonize Democrats and Democratic policies as “sick” and “traitors.” He and the adulterous former Speaker of the House started the incivility that bedevils U.S. politics today.”
The Spin Word Project 2005-2008
“My job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion. Words alone can be found in a dictionary or a telephone book, but words with emotion can change destiny, can change life as we know it. We know it has changed history; we know it has changed behavior; we know that it can start a war or stop it. We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful
force known to mankind.”
— Frank Luntz, political consultant for the Republican Party
The GOP’s climate change dilemma: It’s Frank Luntz vs. Grover Norquist in a battle for the GOP’s future. Aug 13, 2019
— “Luntz had a come-to-Jesus moment on climate change when he was forced to evacuate his Los Angeles home in the face of the Skirball Fire in 2017.”
Now Luntz is IMBY instead of NIMBY, but he's still ever the Advertising PR shill who will always wish-wash waffle to the tune of the rising tide of public opinion and how that can best be coopted and manipulated.
How Frank Luntz Created a Mess Inside the Los Angeles Times May. 28, 2021
— Luntz uses focus groups for his PR research, just as does Advertising, to explore public opinion and find what works to the advantage of his choosing, thereby revealing the slant or spin of choice.
“Luntz’s questions have occasionally publicly irked survey participants, who felt he was biased toward particular candidates and ideas.”
How do you persuade Republicans to save the planet? June 29, 2022
— Luntz seemingly wants to use his wordsmithing to bring voters together on divisive issues such as climate change (aka global warming), but which ones? Ultimately, it's Luntz who decides which makes him King and Dictator by deciding which issues he'll work on in an inclusive rather than divisive way.
Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear | Amazon
“Christian” Nationalism
Christian nationalism | Wikipedia
Ever since the presidential campaign and presidency of George H. “W.” Bush, the Republican Party has trafficked in the politicization of pseudo-Christianity.
One Underrated Way to Enrich Your Christian Political Witness: Be a Better Christian
The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life
Why Is Texas the Epicenter of Christian Nationalism?
See — Donald Trump