Deniamentia in Wingnuttia

I made an unplanned trip to Wingnuttia just today. It was a mistake. I have been there before and thought I knew something about the place, but it changed since I last visited. Used to be there were just a few crackpots wandering around waving around flags with rattlesnakes on them and words saying ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ and ‘Time To Reload’. A lot of those people seemed to be Social Security types - on the ‘government dole’ if you will, not that it seemed to matter to them while they are whining about the expenses of the US government.

There are more younger people in Wingnuttia these days - strident and militant, demanding, irrational sounding people. Leadership appears to be transient and rotates around among Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and some guy named Rick Santorum to name just a few. The message has not changed, except it is more grim, and the mania has gotten worse. Quite a few of the Wingnuttian leaders are limping around with injured feet, apparently from shooting themselves in the foot while snap-shooting from the hip I suppose. Many others show bruised lips and tongues from the disease very common to their culture: FITMD, or “Foot In The Mouth Disease”, sometimes referred to by others as “Shitlips” in the vernacular.

But, I digress. I wasn’t headed to Wingnuttia when I landed there, but Norway, where a tragedy of epic proportions occurred yesterday. I simply wanted news about that and went online to check the story. Turns out the author of this unspeakable act was a Christian fundamentalist, racist and right wing extremist - the very same sort of person as the inhabitants of Wingnuttia.

While still in the Norwegian story, I unfortunately strayed to take a peek at some of the online comments to the story, only to find myself instantly transported deep into the heartland of Wingnuttia. Blam! There I was!

Wow, those Wingnuttians sure get exercised when anyone associates their kind with anything like this! I think it’s a form of deniamentia. Wingnuttians as a culture, are accustomed to laying blame on ‘anyone but us’ and when anything strikes close to home, collective fuses seem to start shorting out all over the place.

The Wingnuttia national news organ - Fox News - did not even mention the ‘right wing Christian fundamentalist’ component at all until virtually every other news organ on the planet spelled it out for them - in stark, simple terms. Then, it was ’Katie, bar the door!’. Wingnuttians came out in swarms to defend Christianity, extremism, right-wing nuttiness, racism and fundamentalism - while taking zero acknowledgement of their roles in the nurturing of such acts as happened in Norway.

Today’s Fox News headline banner reads for example, “Puzzling Portrait Emerges of Gunman ….” as if the fact that he is a rightwing, racist Christian fundamentalist is totally irrelevant. And comments from Wingnuttians to Fox News and others were rabid in their deniamentia. Here are just a few examples (Note, I’ve left the spelling and syntax just as it appears in print):

From the Portland, Maine Press Herald: “A Christian is one who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christ never went around murdering people., This man is not a Christian. Before folks claim the title of Christian they really should find out what it means.”

From ‘roberta7709’ to Fox News: "Evidently the liberals in Norway have opened the floodgates to immigration from the dark-skinned world. A lot of the kids killed are dark skinned and are connected to the liberal/labor political party.  The country has much larger entitlement programs than the US.  I understand that when you get married in Norway, the government gives you a few thousand for furniture and to set up your new home. So, it is easy to see why the immigrants would flock to Norway, and why the natives would be unhappy."

(Gosh, that one rolls racism, immigration, ‘entitlement programs’ [wingnuttease for ‘socialism’] and liberals all into one neat package! Impressive!)

‘quidestveritas’, comments to Fox News: “This guy was a Christian by NAME ONLY.  He obviously wasn't a practicing Christian . . . “.

And, one posted by nw5052001, again to Fox News: “Its a fact the rest of the world has been making warnings about multiculturalism being a failure..the liberals support it and laugh at the warning......thinking only they know best…”

Posted by ‘dleebro’ to CNN: “What a tragedy! Also regretable is ABC's repetition of another news source that the man arrested is a Christian fundamentalist.”

Another to CNN by ‘shalvah_42000’: “He is not a Christian nor represents Christians or conservatives. If he was a Muslim you would all have a different attitude so I don't appreciate the anti-Christ and anti-conservative point of view.”

And, by ‘jls1950benn’ to CNN: “Just because a christian goes out and murder ...proves that that person was never in fact a Christian in the first place: he was merely making a pretense - a self-deluded imposter . . . “

See what I mean? Deniamentia is rising to be an extremely serious epidemic in Wingnuttia. I’m so sorry I had to go there today - and I couldn’t even get my passport stamped. . . .

Famous Last Words

Subject: Marksmanship

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist . . . ."

    ~Confederate General John Sedgwick the instant he was killed by a Federal sniper's bullet at the battle of Spotsylvania, 1864.

Subject: The Titanic

"There is no danger that Titanic will sink. The boat is unsinkable and nothing but inconvenience will be suffered by the passengers."

~Phillip Franklin, vice president of the White Star Line, operators of the Titanic in 1912 before her maiden voyage.

Subject:  The Stock Market

" Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

~Irving Fisher, early 20th century stock expert three days before the 1929 stock market crash.

Subject: Pearl Harbor

 “Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.” 

~Frank Knox, U.S. Secretary of the Navy,  Dec. 4, 1941

Subject: Television

"Television won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

~Daryl Zanuck, movie studio executive in 1946

Subject: Online shopping

“Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop - because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds."

~Time Magazine in 1966 - in 2010 nearly $173 Billiion was spent in online shopping.

Subject: US Mail

“Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.” 

~Arthur Summerfield, US Postmaster General in the Eisenhower administration. It still takes four to six or more days to get a letter from the east coast to the west coast

Subject: Atomic energy

"Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.”

  ~Winston Churchill, 1939

Subject: The Internet

“(the internet) will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”

~Robert Metcalfe,founder of the 3Com digital electronics company and a professor at The University of Texas at Austin.

Subject: The Beatles

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." 

~Decca Records, 1962.

 “(they are) so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music.” 

~William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review,1964

"The only thing different is the hair, as far as I can see. I give them a year.”

~Ray Bloch, musical director for The Ed Sullivan Show, 1964

Subject: The End of the World (and ‘some people just never learn')

"When September 6, 1994, arrives, no one else can become saved. The end has come." 

~Reverend  Harold Camping- 1994

"And now, we have no option. We can't say 'maybe' 'it's possible' 'it looks very probable...' No way! We have to say this is what the Bible teaches! This is fact! May 21, 2011 is the day of the Rapture, it is the day that Judgment Day begins..." 

~Reverend Harold Camping 2011

"Thus, we must realize that October 21, 2011 will be the final day of this earth’s existence." 

˜Reverend Harold Camping, 2011