| Friday, September 15, 2006 |
| The winger mind |
The dictionary definition of authoritarianism is:
ADJECTIVE:
1. Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom: an authoritarian regime.
2. Of, relating to, or expecting unquestioning obedience. See Synonyms at dictatorial.
But authoritarianism is also a kind of idolatry; an unspoken agreement between a leader who desires above all, to be worshipped as the embodiment of the state, and a willing mass of followers who will subborn any indiginity or loss of liberty, in order to maintain the protection of their leader. Whether they do it out of ideology, or out of fear (fear usually stoked, for full effect, by the leader), the authoritarian followers can only follow, and they demand that others do the same. That demand is usually made with extreme hostility, because those who refuse to follow threaten not only the authoritarian follower's safety, in his or her own mind, they also threaten his or her reality, because dissent carries with the even more frightening threat of exposing the follower's own obsequiousness, cowardice, and shallowness.
One Wizbanger, who seems to be a new writer for Jay Tea and the other Bush-bots over there, has distilled the authoritarian follower personality down to a perfect sound bite (and I thought A.J. Strata had it nailed.)
So here, for your academic scrutiny, is D.J. Drummond, authoritarian follower extraordinaire:
George W. Bush is the President of the United States. Him, no one else. You either back him up or you are not supporting America. Yes, he earned that support, by getting elected. Like it or not, it comes with the job. One wonders if Mr. Drummond would literally kneel in Bush's presence.
This kind of obsequousness and supine worship of the president is usually combined with escalating hostility toward dissenters, whose independence threatens the authoritarian follower's world view, and of the "turncoats" in his own ranks who refuse to bow down to the president, and whose failure to believe is bringing the scary people closer, and closer! Those dissenters are usually dealt with harshly -- insulted and threatened ... they all should be thrown in jail, starting with the members of the press, whose truth telling spills the Leader's secrets to "the enemy." All of this is driven by a paranoid, nihilistic fear of "the enemy", which is everywhere, just waiting to strike, constantly drooling for our blood, and held back only by the benevolence of the Dear Leader, and his shhh!! top secret methods for "keeping us safe..."
It's actually kind of sad, and definitley disturbing, to see how many Americans are like D.J. ... how easily free people hand over their liberties to a government of men, in exchange for promises of safety. That's not just a send-up of the founding fathers, believe it or not, Neil Boortz said it last week. Pat Buchanan says it all the time. Even conservatives know a fascist movement when they see one. Let's get some wisdom from a REAL Republican: Teddy Roosevelt:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
D.J., I feel sorry for you.
You and the dwindling number of numb, terrified, unreconstructed Bush-bots clinging to George W. Bush's skirts and cowering in fear of "the terrorists" (who are less likely to kill you than your average city bus, by the way...); you talking point-memorizing pawns of the state who are raging against the New York Times for telling you that your government is spying on you (I don't want to know what the president is doing to protect me!!!) but not at the president FOR spying on you ... and who lap up every corn-pone utterance emanating out of the mouth of this president and his creepy administration cronies, even as everything they touch goes straight to hell in a war profiteering contractor's handbasket, along with your civil liberties... clearly don't understand what it means to be a free person, or to be an American.
To paraphrase Pat Buchanan (again...) the president of the United States is not Julius Caesar. Get off your knees and read the Constitution.
Update: While Jay Tea continues to believe that the world, and this post, revolve around him, D.J. Drummond continues to seize the stage at Wizbang, this time with this rather flowery, and rather tired, defense of his "support Bush or you don't support America" canard. My reply to him is in the comments section. Scroll way down (to JReid, whom I think someone there thinks is a boy... sigh. That seems to happen a lot...)
Tags: right wingers, Bush, fascism, Wizbang |
posted by JReid @ 3:27 PM   |
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