You'd Think This'd Be A Book About Glenn Beck...
But it turns out it's (allegedly) by him.
Must be the first time anyone's ever written a whole book with crayons and those big, fat pencils...
But it turns out it's (allegedly) by him.
Must be the first time anyone's ever written a whole book with crayons and those big, fat pencils...
posted by Winston Smith at
10:30 PM
5 Comments:
I can't decide whether this is more or less ridiculous than Pat Buchanan's forays into Hitler apologia. I mean, this idiots are aware that Nazis are the bad guys, right? Or did they all cry at the end of Inglourious Basterds?
You know, I've encountered a surprising number of conservatives in my life who were eager to praise or defend Hitler in some way--usually in the he-made-the-trains-run-on-time way, but sometimes in the he-was-a-strong-leader or the (laughable) he-was-a-military-genius kind of way.
OTOH, though, it's even more amazing how many liberals and left-of-liberal-but-non-communists I've heard either praise or defend Stalin or Mao. (I've even met people on the left who go so far as to identify themselves as Maoists...)
It's all absolutely totally fekkin' crazy by my lights.
I mean, I can understand people dispassionately pointing out that these people were not bad in *all* ways--the Nazis were, to some extent, environmentalists, at least early on, for example.
But there often seems to be some kind of genuine admiration in play, and just barely beneath the surface...
It's the admiration that gets me. Simple fascination, I would understand. I went through a phase in high school where I wanted to learn everything I could about Stalin, because one can't help but wonder what causes a man to think that executing most of his army's high command while anticipating war was a good idea.
I haven't run into many Stalinist leftists, but I've read articles by avowed Maoists. I'm always surprised, because sometimes they're capable of making cogent analyses and bringing up valid points, but then you have to square that with their membership in this cult of personality for this dictator who was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a particularly nice dude.
At the risk of indulging in pop psychoanalysis, I can't help but see a hint of sociopathy in this dictator-worship, whether it's Hitler or Mao. There's a distinct undertone (sometimes openly stated, even) of contempt in the writings of the dictator-worshipers for the plebes who could be saved if only they stopped getting in the way of their own salvation. And so of course some of them will have to be executed or put in camps, for the benefit of the master race/greater good/whatever.
Yeah, praise for these guys should be the surprise exception. Y'know, Castro brought universal basic literacy and health care access - at the price of beggaring and regimenting his people and putting a large number of them into prison - or under it.
I jokingly call my parents Maoists because they made sure I understood labor first-hand by inflicting summertime construction jobs on me. But of course they got that idea from traditional small town values, not a little red book.
I have to admit that the re-education worked. After that summer working as a roofer, no college professor was ever intimidating again.
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