The Neocons, pt. I

¡Hola! Everybody...
Ok, first? Stop it with the beating up on PETA. They ain’t say nuthin’ too harsh. OTOH, what I noticed immediately was that the brother snatched the fly right out of the air! As my friend, Rippa, noted that is some ninja shit right there! LOL

BTW, while we’re talking about swatting flies, the SCOTUS may very likely trash the Voting Rights Act. Yeah, that’s right... today. Let's see you take your black or brown ass to the election booth next time!

Which reminds me... time to take the kid gloves off, eschew the Astroglide, and shove some truths up the neocon gazoo! While they’re reeling from two consecutive electoral defeats and the specter of having to face the cold facts of their failed economic policies, I want to kick these bastids while they’re down (because I do not fight fair).

First in a series (to be posted next week) -- a [brief] history of the modern neoconservative movement. Or...

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-=[ Of Cuckoos & Neocons ]=-

Facts are stupid things.

-- Ronald Reagan, 1988, a misquote of John Adams, “Facts are stubborn things.”

The best analogy I’ve heard regarding the neoconservative movement is the one using the nesting habits of the cuckoo bird. Cuckoos employ a rather interesting reproductive strategy involving what is known as “nest parasitism.” Briefly, the female cuckoo lays an egg in the nest of another species of bird (after first removing an egg from the host’s nest). Upon hatching, the baby cuckoo goes on to banish the remaining eggs and hatchlings of the host, at which point it becomes the sole focus of the host parent’s interest.

By now you’re probably asking why the host parents don’t push out the alien egg before the troubles begin, or at the very least abandon the parasitic baby cuckoo once it has grown to a size far larger than host parents themselves.

The problem, of course, is that birds lack the thinking skills necessary to recognize the parasite. They take note of the eggs, of the sight of a baby bird’s features and cries, and follow a “care for egg/hatchling in nest” instinctual pattern. It does not demand much of a masquerade on the part of the cuckoo to abuse the host’s instincts. All that is necessary is the initial neural imprinting by the parent host on the baby parasite’s signals.

One cannot help but be struck by the remarkable parallels between the nesting line of attack of the cuckoo and the infiltration of the conservative movement beginning in the 1970s by the neo-conservatives or “neocons.”

Just as the parasitical cuckoo bird ingratiates itself into the nest of an unsuspecting host, eventually driving out the rightful offspring, so did the neocons come to dominate, to the point of exclusion, what passes today for “conservatism” and “the right.”

Intelligent men and women assure me that there are reasonable conservatives capable of logic, so this will be the only point I will cede on their behalf. Next week, I plan to post a series of blogs showing that the neoconservative movement, which came into prominence during the Reagan years, is a mutation of true conservative ideals. I will also show that neo-conservatism grew out of racist and classist ideology. I will show that neo-conservatism is characterized by a resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality; and that some of the common psychological factors linked to neo-conservatism include fear and aggression, dogmatism, and an intolerance of ambiguity

First, I have to begin with the Biggest Lie -- the myth of Ronald Reagan. I have had it up to here

::grabs testicles::

with the constant idolization of what was in fact an incompetent (and very likely mentally impaired) president. In the pantheon of the neocon iconography, Reagan is only slightly lower than the Baby Jesus.

What? ::blank stare::

Even Reagan disciples like David Stockman have long since admitted that no one was home at the Reagan White House, that then-Vice President George Bush the Elder was out of the loop, and who today in the right mind could deny that the “Trickle Down” approach to tax reform was a disaster? Even Reagan shill Peggy Noonan admitted in her book “What I Saw at the Revolution,” that he didn’t “really hear very much,” and that his appearance of constant good humor was connected to his deafness. He missed much of what was not said directly to him, but he assumed it was good.

In other words, he was not all there -- senile!

Now, I don’t say this to poke fun at a very serious disease, Alzheimer’s. I know people struggle with this disease and I am aware of the suffering it entails. However, we had a president who was quite likely not all there and his adherents constantly attempt to paint him as something great when in actuality, he set in motion many of the dynamics that have contributed to the collapse we’re now experiencing. It didn’t start with Bush the Younger, it started with Reagan.

Hopefully, historians will prove less easily convinced, I dunno...

Love,

Eddie