Foster Friess, the crazy Republican plutocrat infamous for going on television and making a witless joke about how women used Bayer aspirin for contraception back in his day, AND who bankrolled equally crazy homophobe Rick Santorum’s presidential bid … is now even more crazy, apparently.
In today’s Washington Times, the DC newspaper that lives to publish every single belief, everyday, in Republican Crazy World, Friess has evidently come to the conclusion that it’s possible for his party of nuts rabidly homophobic people to win the gay vote.
How do they do this?
By telling gay people in America the GOP is their protector against the creeping menace of sharia law. That is, they will continue to try and beat up on Muslims in this country and that will make gay people like them more. (Or maybe he didn’t really mean it and was trying to do anything to avoid talking about gay marriage. And WaTimes editors are desperate to reinvigorate the party with the weirdest things that can be thought up.)
Anyway, there can be no doubt it is an ingenious strategy, right there with having a woman hold a pellet between her knees as birth control.
An influential GOP donor said Friday that Republicans should do more to make sure that gay men and lesbian women do not fall victim to the sort of Shariah law practiced by hard-line Islamists.
Foster Friess, the the multimillionaire who helped keep Rick Santorum’s presidential dreams afloat in the GOP primary last year, told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor that he wants to make sure that gay people are not killed in foreign nations because of their sexual preference.
Asked whether the Republican Party should embrace gay marriage, the 72-year-old investment manager said, “We have to protect the gay people in our country from Shariah law.”
There is no sharia law in the US. But every week, like clockwork, someone on the editorial pages of the Washington Times, insists there is. I always get a newsletter in my mailbox about it.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at that list. Soak in it, but only a little.
You could make a pretty bleak comedy about the diminishing group of white far right wing Americans and their needy character — a flaw that requires they shout to anyone in hearing how the president is like the German dictator.
The statement belies the photo gallery accompanying the piece. What that shows is a crowd of mostly older and predominantly white people, resembling nothing more than a dust-off of your standard Tea Party crew.
All the banners and T-shirts are present — the grievances against the president, assertions that he’s an impeachable traitor, the Gadsden flag, along with the cheap merchandising belligerence of “molon labe.”
Yes, there’s nothing that says one believes in all the principles of American democracy more than a huge banner with the phrase “Come and Take It” and an artistic rendering of a heavy assault weapon that shoots armor-piercing bullets.
While it’s Texas, noticeable here in SoCal are pictures of a crowd that didn’t quite rival what one might expect for a high school football game.
And that’s a bit of good news because it underlines that America’s gun nut demographic is a minority. The number of people actually ready to march on the White House or find some local Ft. Sumter to attack rather than play-act at being insurrectionists is difficult to discern. This part of WhiteManistan may not believe in the legitimacy of the democratically elected government but they’re not really in shape to do anything about it except push the same old slogans.
The Statesman coverage shows, too, how WhiteManistan is losing the national debate. If there’s a more ludicrous image to push than being paranoid and possessed by a group delusion that believes the Second Amendment is being repealed by an American dictatorship, I don’t know what is.
It does not, however, answer the question, “How to divest from WhiteManistan?” And what should be saved from its crabbed and authoritarian world view. Anything?
Today’s the time to go to your local gun store, or collect in a crowd of churlish white men at the capitol building in a red state, curse the president and liberals, vow you will defend the Constitution against tyranny, and menace everyone who isn’t in your tribe of play-acting insurrectionists.
From the wires:
Hundreds of people are gathering in state capitals nationwide to rally against stricter gun control measures.
An estimated 600 people turned out so far for Saturday speeches in Austin, Texas. Many are carrying signs with messages such as “An Armed Society is a Polite Society” and “The Second Amendment Comes from God.”
The “come and take it” thing is a derivation of the Greek “molon labe,” a phrase of defiance allegedly thrown at the Persians by the Spartans at Thermopylae. Of course, at Thermopylae, the weapons were pikes, spears and blades, not AR-15s and .50-caliber semi-automatic sniper rifles.
Co-opted by WhiteManistan, it’s now deadeningly used in merchandising, on asinine T-shirts, placards and flags which absurdly try to sell the delusion that crowds of mouthy fattish white guys with semi-automatic assault rifles are the only thing standing between America and tyranny. It’s just another part of the act in which gun nut WhiteManistan finds satisfaction in symbolically threatening others with (in the case of the photo at the top of the page) … heavy weapons.
Any American who needs an assault weapon for possibly making war on his supposedly dictatorial government is really contemplating another Civil War … At least the Civil War was about real issues, not the sour fruit of paranoia that makes some of today’s alleged patriots so dyspeptic …
Indeed, if you think you must have an assault rifle to fight your own government and people, you might as well think about joining al-Qaida and have done with it. I understand that if you join this month, you get a T-shirt and a complimentary bag of dates.
It can’t be emphasized enough. What this part of WhiteManistan is about is threatening others and denial of the legitimacy of the current democratically elected government.
The ongoing dilemma is how to escape and divest from WhiteManistan with the least amount of damage in the years ahead.
In terms of publicity, the gun nut demographic has spent the last few weeks fucking the dog under the spotlight. It has built a repugnant image, laughably so. The president understands this and it now remains to be seen whether the nation can make something happen in gun control.
One of the common motivations now on display by the gun nut minority in WhiteManistan is the need to appear threatening. One must either appear on websites or on video, or in pictures, talking about killing others, revolution, or doing something that amounts to waving a gun or assault rifle in the face of average citizens.
Behaviorally, it’s profoundly anti-social, nothing an actual civil society would be proud of. It is not a demonstration of freedom. More accurately, it’s the behavior of people who are more interested in bullying entire swaths of society. And it doesn’t take a degreed expert in human psychology to get it.
The media mainstream has a hard time dealing with it because it comes almost exclusively from white male America, a demographic which has, up until now, been shielded from substantial and continuing pressure and criticism. It’s the equivalent of a symbolic pistol whipping, the behavior part and parcel with the surge in gun and ammunition hoarding, a retail arms-buying stampede in which it has not been difficult to find any number of belligerent white guys proclaiming they’re ready to offer the government armed resistance.
Those flaunting weaponry never admit to why they’re actually doing it. The service is always about generously educating others, allegedly furnishing some social good by showing the safe carrying of assault rifles.
From the Salt Lake City Tribune:
Cindy Yorgason was in line at the J.C. Penney in Riverdale on Wednesday when she looked up and saw a shopper with “a large gun.”
Yorgason said the rifle was slung across the back of the man in front of her. When she looked closer, she saw that he also had extra ammunition clips and a sidearm in a holster on his right hip …
On Thursday, 22-year-old Joseph Kelley identified himself as the man in Yorgason’s pictures. Kelley described himself as a firm believer in Second Amendment rights and said he decided to bring the guns to the store to demonstrate that they are not dangerous in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
According to Kelley, the rifle was an unloaded AR-15 and the handgun was a loaded Glock 19C. He said he has a concealed-carry permit, is a former member of the military and contacted police dispatch before leaving his home to tell them about his plans. Kelley also said he was told that he was “well within his rights” and that bystanders’ reactions were positive.
Opinions vary.
“I thought that he was pretty much an idiot,” Yorgason told the newspaper.
Drouin videotapes these encounters and uploads them to YouTube, part of an effort, again alleged to be educating people on their second amendment rights.
Drouin qualifies as an aggravating public nuisance, someone who goes into a neighborhood toting his assault rifle in the full knowledge 911 calls will ensue with the police dispatched to check on him. The local authorities have not been able to creatively figure out how to put an end to it although enforcement of laws to remove vagrants or curb flashing, public urination and other similar disturbances would seem to have some application.
In addition, one questions the mental status of someone who is jazzed by the idea of others calling 911 when he shows up in their area with his AR-15. And whether he should even have a gun permit in the first place.
During the Blair administration, Britain came up with a remedy for nuisances called ASBOs, or anti-social behavior orders.
The application of them has been patchy with much debate about their necessity.
Under section 1C(2) CDA an order on conviction may be made by a court following conviction for a relevant offence if the court considers:
That the offender has acted, at any time since [1 April 1999], in an anti-social manner, that is to say in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as himself, and
An order under this section is necessary to protect persons in any place in England and Wales from further anti-social acts by him.
The case of Gosport Borough Council, R (on the application of) v Fareham Magistrates Court [2006] EWHC 3047 (Admin) states that there should be some evidence before the court that the behaviour in question has caused or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
The order is given to prevent the individual named from repeating the nuisance activity.
The display of AR-15s in department stores or ex-urban household neighborhoods — well, DD thinks a case can easily be made that it constitutes activity which the perpetrators implicitly know many in the general public, not in their family, will find harassing. And that’s a big reason why it’s done — the full knowledge that it’s very noticeable, uncivil and intimidating.
Hear Ted’s false teeth whistling. Really — don’t take my word for it. He also calls the president a “subhuman mongrel.” Around 5:30, he again implies there will be a revolt against the US government by the people who bought “the most ammunition in history” over the Xmas holiday. As has always been part of this routine, Nugent dances right up the edge of making direct death threats.
Near the end: “[The President] hires, appoints and associates with communists … He is an evil dangerous man who hates America and hates freedom and we need to fix this as soon as possible.”
You see how this works and why the US Secret Service gave Ted a visit. As last April, this latest Nugent blurt comes at another big gun show.
Nugent’s career as a pundit from the extreme right is built on the use of threats, delivered obviously but with always enough implication or weaselly constructions to keep him out of the hands of the law. It is what his like-minded audience demands and what he delivers.
“It not time to start shooting anybody,” he now says.
What’s the difference between Ted Nugent and James Yeager? It’s not a trick question. Yeager was a lot less seasoned in his delivery than Nugent. And not the same magnitude of reactionary celebrity from the right.
I met Pete Seeger a couple times, both incidences for interviews on American folk music, its history and Woody Guthrie. Seeger was just as you would imagine he was if you ever saw or listened to his performance of “This Land is Your Land.”
I’m sure he’d be be rendered speechless by cheers for a song called “Arm Yourselves,” played in a coffee house.
