This got some blogger talking.
Charles Johnson at LGF:
In this clip from the Glenn Beck Comedy Hour, former CIA agent (and complete wacko) Michael Scheuer says the only thing that can save America from illegal immigration is for “Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”
Good grief.
Beck, of course, nods and agrees with this warped analysis, and says, “Which is why I was thinking this weekend, if I were him that would be the last thing I would do right now.”
Conor Friedersdorf at American Scene:
In recent months, I’ve had several people ask me why it is that I criticize “my own team” in blog posts. The answer is sometimes that I think they’re wrong, that I care about public discourse more than any political movement, and that anyway honest criticism strengthens a movement.
But the answer for some people I criticize is that they’re just not on my team, and they shouldn’t be on yours either
What’s striking about this clip is how closely it tracks some of the key tropes of nutroots paranoia during the Bush years. Now as then, it’s assumed that the greatest threat to the country is its own government. Now as then, the “solution” to getting the nation back on the right track involves some ghoulish catastrophic failure of national security (losing the Iraq war in Bush’s case, failing to prevent a new attack in this one). And now as then, because the president acted in a legally controversial way in one circumstance — Bush on “torture,” Obama on corporate takeovers — he’s instantly suspected of ruthless designs on the Constitution itself, irrespective of whether he actually has the support he’d need to change it. (If you think Blue Dog Democrats are going to vote for a massive gun grab, you’re kidding yourself.) The only major difference between then and now is that the nutroots indictment was limited to Republicans whereas Beck and Scheuer keep it bipartisan. Thank heaven for small favors, I guess.
Adam Sewer in Tapped:
This gets to the essential creepiness about Beck’s emotional display introducing his whole 9/12 project–the man wasn’t weeping because he wished the country was as “unified” as it was after 9/11; he was weeping because the country is no longer in a such a state of petrified fear that it will acquiesce to whatever extreme measures the right deems necessary. Beck wasn’t crying for the country; he was crying for himself, crying because people are no longer frightened enough to agree with everything he has to say. Understand, he only wants to hurt you because he loves you.
But understand, this is not unpatriotic. You can wish all manner of horrors on this country, but as long as these horrors might serve a specific political agenda, you’re not being unpatriotic. Unpatriotic is a public health-care plan. Unpatriotic is a judge modifying sub-prime mortgage loans to keep a roof over someone’s head. Unpatriotic is phosphate-free detergent. Patriotic is wishing for a terrorist attack on the United States.
Patriotism is dead, long live patriotism.
Words fail me.
And Jon Stewart opened with it last night.
