As Disgusting As It Gets

Safely ensconced in Texas, where like-minded hate-minded are in abundance and will shelter him as if he's Osama in Abbotabad, loosed from the stultifying ethical constraints placed upon him by Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck, paragon of teabaggers, sinks further into the slime than even I, who thinks he'd have to bubble up from the bottom to be considered scum, would have thought possible. About the kids killed in Norway he smirks,

"As the thing started to unfold and there was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth," he said. "Who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."

Being completely wrong is of course irrelevant to one whose raison d'etre is the peddling of fear and hate and falsehood.

Torbjørn Eriksen, a former press secretary to Jens Stoltenberg, Norway's prime minister, described the comment as "a new low" for the broadcaster, who has frequently been forced to apologise for offensive remarks.

"Young political activists have gathered at Utoya for over 60 years to learn about and be part of democracy, the very opposite of what the Hitler Youth was about," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Glenn Beck's comments are ignorant, incorrect and extremely hurtful."

Let's make a superhuman effort and ignore the heartless dismissal of sixty or so murdered kids, the barely-disguised implication that they deserved it. What might be even more disgusting than all of that is his (can it be anything but deliberate?) ignoring of the fact that the very teabaggers over whose open mouths he squats lord-like, run proudly political and deliberately brainwashing camps for kids as young as eight years old. That which he condemns, he facilitates.

Really, there's no denying that the right wing has simply gone nuts. How can you deal with people who deliberately lie, distort, ignore; who are uninformed about everything they claim to know about America -- its founding, its laws, its traditions? What do you do, as president, when the opposition is willing to destroy the country to get its way, cares more about quashing the opposition than negotiating a future? Does the term "negotiate" even apply? When one side gives fealty to radio hosts who fill the air with hatred and stupidity, who peddle unfocused rage for a living, where's the way in for common sense? When a movement is built on falsehood and when its leaders consider lying its central modus operandi, when its vision is based on greed, selfishness, and ignorance, by what means can they be reached? When a party has no feet on the ground, where is the common ground?

I can no longer fathom it, if I ever could. We have a formerly legitimate political party (and enough people to elect them) that is so far off the deep end that there's no longer any reason for hope. Deliberately and very successfully dumbed down and made to believe nonsense, supporters of Beck and Limbaugh and Fox "news" and Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have turned democracy into this. From that unrelentingly and intentionally unenlightened place, where can we possibly go?