“If I am called to serve in that realm I would serve,” she concluded, “but if I am not called, I wouldn’t do it.”
Context is everything: Michele Bachmann said those words when arch-birther website World Net Daily asked if she would ever run for president. It’s a wingnut puff piece: the interview is jam-packed with every variety of fringe wingnuttery. Bachmann is a True Believer in Teh Crazy™.
Here she is telling an audience how God “called” her to run for office:
Can we stop it with the “Obama is not God” and “false prophet” nonsense? The wingnuts are the ones who think their politics are heaven-inspired.
Bachmann’s “call” from God began (predictably) with her kids’ homework:
Bachmann, a federal tax litigation attorney before serving in elected office, told WND that she is “first and foremost a mother.” In the late 90s, the mother of five and foster mom to another 23 children through the years, grew concerned about what her foster kids were bringing home from the public school.
“Through the Goals 2000 program, the federal government was pushing knowledge, facts and information out of classroom study, substituting them with a study of attitudes, values and beliefs,” she said, “but not necessarily the values that moms and dads would like.”
The actual “goals” of the Goals 2000 Program:
- Pre-K education for all.
- Raising the high school graduation rate to 90%.
- Reading, math, science, civics, foreign languages, economics, arts, history, and geography education.
- Reclaim global leadership in math and science.
- Adult literacy so Americans can meet the challenges of global competition and be good citizens.
- Getting drugs and guns out of school.
- Continuing education for teachers.
- Getting the parents involved.
Bachmann used the evangelical message-machine to remove Minnesota from participation in these goals — until cooler heads prevailed, anyway. In the world of Wing Nut Daily™, this is cause for effusive praise.
Presumably, Bachmann was upset by the part of the curriculum where students are asked to identify with children from another culture and religion. Like, say, Hawaii. We can’t have the kids think of other people as human.
One by one, the Wing Nut Daily highlights Bachmann’s stands against abortion, death panels, and compact flourescent bulbs. It’s a perfect storm of Teh Stupid™. In fact, Bachmann has something to say about Teh Stupid™:
“In some ways, it’s an honor, because it means that I must be effective. Otherwise, they’d be ignoring me,” Bachmann told WND. “The other side seems to have two tricks that they pull out of their bag: the Republican is stupid, or the Republican is crazy. … It’s straight out of Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’: they identify their target, then try to marginalize their target.”
Alinsky’s rules seem rather prescient:
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
Michele Bachmann is ridiculous. But as we’ve learned at our cost in this decade, giving ridiculous people political power pretty much guarantees disaster. So I’m proposing a constitutional amendment:
Anyone who submits to a Wing Nut Daily™ interview is ineligible to be president, no matter how good their birth certificate looks.
