Our national nervous breakdown has begun (by Larisa Alexandrovna at HuffPost)

[marmar]

Larisa Alexandrovna

05.25.2007
Our national nervous breakdown has begun (27 comments )

The country is reaching critical mass and even if you were not a witness to Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck's near cat fight on national television, you likely have noticed a palpable national nervous breakdown building all around you. I don't mean the rabid hate and death threats issuing out of the right wing circus and its bigots of patriotism or the pundits of malevolence who get paid to spew forth venom on Fox.


No, sadly that rhetoric is the normal condition of bitter, self-hating, and corrupt mental midgets striving for attention in a world where they can no longer disguise themselves in bed sheets and declare themselves to be the superior race. While O'Donnell and Hasselbeck had a tiff, to be sure, it was Fox guest Curtis Sliwa who actually threatened violence, openly and on national television expressing his wish to take a baseball bat to O'Donnell and beat her like a "human piñata."

Violent Hate

Obviously such misogyny is normal for men of little intellect and commonplace among the Fox propagandists. But it is not what these lunatics say that is at issue; rather, it is how the country reacts or does not react that is of concern.

Historically, the normal reaction of the civilized world towards these ethically vacant kooks has been to cast them to the periphery of society, from which their deranged and violent world view can do little harm.

After all, hate unchecked but so carefully publicized was one of the major contributors to the rise of Nazis. No, the normal reaction of even a mildly ethical society would be to make someone like Sliwa an outcast among decent people, and certainly to keep him at a distance from the female citizenry. One has to wonder if he beats his wife or girlfriend when she gets a bit too mouthy. In our culture, however, with its politics of hate, such rhetoric is treated as normal Worse still; there is no reaction from a society which claims to have "values" and the ear of "God."

Desperation

But our national nightmare and our soon to be national nervous breakdown are far beyond the prevailing normalcy of the culture of hate and the almost open-armed acceptance of it by uber-nationalists and sane people alike. We have entered a whole other stage of panic and fury, one in which our pompous President actually threatens a journalist's children on television in a sort of wink-wink mob-like suggestion that one might find coming out of the mouth of Tony Soprano:

"They are a threat to your children, David,' he said to NBC's David Gregory"......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/our-national-nervous-brea_b_49396.html

[wildhorses]

1. this is NOT just another 19th nervous breakdown. n/t

[1620rock]

3. These are the fruits of 15 or more years of hate talk radio. The...

...country has never been so divided with an "us against them" attitude.

[wildhorses]

4. trudat

:thumbsup:

[IndyOp]

11. At least 37 years of conservative policies that have attacked government and

undermined the middle class -- and 15 or more years of hate talk radio and television and internet...

:(

[Demeter]

2. It Is What Follows This Excerpt That Really Needs to Be Read

basically, the Nazis have scared the Krups.

[yurbud]

8. a lot of the rich know the basic calculus--don't screw people so little that you don't make a profit

or so much that you incite a revolution.

The Bushies don't seem to realize there's an upper limit of ass reaming the rest of us will take.

[jasmeel]

5. So true Larissa! You say it perfectly. I still have avoided watching

the fight between Rosie and EH because it's too physically upsetting and I refuse to do that to myself. That's also why I stopped watching pundits of any kind on TV. That's just so sad.

[Rydz777]

9. A point well made. We become hypnotized by TV and absorb

its trauma. It's a two dimensional world full of "sound and fury," very entertaining, but ultimately debilitating. On a spring time day, there is a three-dimensional world out there that has so much more to offer than a flat screen.

[pscot]

6. Events are in the saddle and ride mankind

Rage, fear, frustration, the desperate sense that things are spinning out of control; these are new sensations for Americans. For the last hundred years we've been the straw that stirred the drink. We had the world on a string. Suddenly things are falling apart. The whole article is worth reading. The national mood is grimmer and more bilious than anything I can remember. There's not a lot to feel good about right now.

[yurbud]

7. she nailed it. We have been hostages to violent mental patients and when the guys in white jackets

showed up, instead of putting straight jackets on the mental patients, they just gave them milk and cookies.

[Pooka Fey]

10. K&R

[whirlygigspin]

12. but I was sleeping so soundly...

wow, things are getting so bad, we might actually have to get up and DO something about it.

how novel, might be fun.

[cassiepriam]

13. The US is in the midst of a civil war, one fought with words and ideas.

Started by the repugs to gain power and money.

As long as they can keep the US and the world in turmoil
they can rob us blind.