Beloved brethren and sistren, I posted this here one year ago today:

Without delving into an argument I’ve been having for decades, this is an example of how the very globalization wrought in the name of American values can wreak changes that frighten people who hold those same values. We have changed the world, and now we will either change with it or be changed by it.

The wacky right doesn’t get this. Republicans don’t get it either. Nor do they understand just how fundamentally they have changed the country’s course away from their ideology. And it will only get worse, because Obama ‘gets it’ in a way that no previous president has. These discussions about internationalism will grow more common in the next three years. On top of global currency, add a global energy grid and even global government. As we approach 2012, the Last Stand of the Culture Warriors will raise the stakes amid an atmosphere of Mayan calendar nonsense and End-Times paranoia. For a preview of Republican strategy, watch Glenn Beck.

Via Huffington Post this morning:

Glenn Beck: I’m not standing out on the street corner with signs or anything, but there are plenty of reasons to be concerned. There are wars going on in Iraq, Afghanistan; there’s the war on terror; genocide in Africa — and more people have been killed in warfare in this century than at any other time in history. Wars are a big sign to look for, plus there is a major shift towards one-world government.

America’s blatant move towards socialism has caught the eye of the world, especially those who love the idea of a one-world government. They think this could be their opportunity to achieve their goal, and they are attempting to cash in on socialism’s current favorable public view.

The sad part is they are succeeding. The world views the European Union as a wild success and other leaders want to emulate the EU. Why do you think that Obama had such huge crowds in Germany? Because he thinks like they do.

Newsmax lists one sign of the coming apocalypse:

Globalism
Satan shall “deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth,” and shall “gather them together” to encircle and attack Israel.
– Rev. 20: 7-9 The expansion of the European Union; NAFTA and global economics; a U.S. economy flirting with socialism and the election of an internationalist president in Obama. (Emphasis mine)

And why not? He’s obviously in cahoots to cut the US nuclear arsenal in half with Russia’s. Even though 1500 nuclear weapons are more than enough to end civilization as we know it, this deal somehow makes the world more dangerous.

Meanwhile, the president obviously means Israel harm because he isn’t budging on his demand Israel stop building in East Jerusalem. Throw in some birther nonsense and you have the outline of another “authority” quoted in the article: Tim LaHaye.

It strikes me that we need a new “end times” theology; Glenn Beck has been left behind. Right wing lunatics of every kind have been left behind. If we’re ever to install a future worth having, the apocalypse-mongers have to be marginalized.

Hold out a hand. If they choose to stay in the past of their imagination, let them. And whenever this meme comes up, we must all hammer it down with prejudice: “I HAVE SEEN THAT MOVIE.”

BECK: He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.

Meanings of barack and derivations: to kneel, to bless, to invoke blessings, to sanction, to be blessed, to enjoy or find pleasure or delight, to ask a blessing, to seek a blessing, to be praised, to be sublime.

A bierka is a pool or small pond, which is a sacred item in desert cultures. Check the Old Testament and you’ll find that Hebrews had some harsh treatments for anyone who poisoned a well; it was considered a crime against humanity.

There are other nouns based of the root barak: blessing, benediction, bounty. There is a negation meaning “misfortune” or “bad luck.” There are several parts of speech made from the root: when an Arab needs congratulations, you should say mabrook.

This information comes from from my taxpayer-supplied copy of the Hans-Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, which still smells of Kuwaiti sand.

Glenn, I understand your problem: you are a clown with a circus. You are forced to top yourself each and every weekday. Every morning, you must pray to god for inspiration to top the boiled frog episode. This would just be entertainment if not for the fact you serve a rotten agenda: to rally racists, idiots, lunatics, and otherwise good Christians to the banner of the Republican Party.

Not that I mind; you’re helping to marginalize your own side. But along the way, you’ve stolen the act of every wacknoggin in the history right-wing media from Alex Jones to Father Coughlin, and now you’re channeling Jack Van Impe. You never know what the hell you’re talking about because your reading list consists of John Bircher paranoia, Atlas Shrugged, and — apparently — Hal Lindsey. Not a far stretch for someone who believes in golden plates and spirit-wives, I know — but still, it would all be fine except for the part where you constantly fill the heads of millions with this kind of dangerous garbage.

Glenn, you’re pandering to religious extremism and invoking the culture wars somewhere they absolutely don’t belong. I get the timing, because religiosity is hot: first there was Brit Hume, then Rush Limbaugh, and of course we have the highly-questionable testimony of Tim Tebow’s mom coming up in the midst of the f***ing SuperBowl this Sunday.

But this is really, really dangerous. You are telling your cult of worshipful know-nothings that the president serves the dark side, and by doing so you encourage very un-Christian divisions. Fear and hate are the tools of darkness. The truth is that YOU serve the dark side, Glenn. Your entire line of attack on Obama is psychological projection, like when you call Obama a “racist” and then pander to racism.

In fact, as long as we’re on the subject of things you project, consider your employer’s cozy relationship with the Chinese communist party. Hey, look — I connected YOU to actual, living, breathing, non-imaginary commies in one step — and without a chalkboard prop to make people think I maybe know what the fuck I’m talking about.

As long as I’m on a roll: the president might have changed his name to Joe Wilson or Bobby Jindal; but he instead chose to keep his birth name “not (as) some assertion of my African roots … not a racial assertion. It was much more of an assertion that I was coming of age. An assertion of being comfortable with the fact that I was different and that I didn’t need to try to fit in in a certain way.”

Get that, Glenn? Barack Hussein Obama kept his name because America is already enlightened enough to vote for a black man with a funny foreign name. Which just goes to show that you’ve already lost. The most you and your colleagues in the wingnutosphere can hope to accomplish is to make it as likely as possible to come to violence — just like the fight against progress did in the 1860s and 1960s.

Oh, which reminds me of one other thing: I’m sick of you pretending to know what “progressive” means. You’ve filled up endless hours of airtime with horse manure about a movement you don’t understand one tiny bit. I’ve done a better job of explaining the history of the progressive movement in a five-minute rock video than you have done in your entire career:

We’ve all been in those mind-numbing, stomach-churning, sleep-inducing conversations with people whose brains seem to be smaller than their mouths. They’re always endlessly long, painfully agonizing and hopelessly futile. I’d attempt to get past the screeners and tell you all this myself, Glenn, but it would be pointless. Just grow the hell up, you stupid racist bastard.

H/t to Simon Malloy at Media Matters

To the Editor:

Recently, Mr. Wayne Cosby said “there may be good reason to question the accuracy of some Internet information, but it represents a forum where we, the average citizens, can get what the national media has covered up.” This much is true. We bloggers do engage in journalism – in every phase of it, including the editorial process. No one can quash our stories if they might offend advertisers or public figures.

The flip side is that we have no Mike Goens to check our facts or quotes, either. Yes, bloggers report all kinds of things withheld by the gatekeepers of media; for example, depending on the Web site you visit, Earth is controlled by Zionist Jews, the Masons, aliens, or a subterranean race of reptilian-human hybrids.

Thus, when stories cross over from the Web to the so-called “mainstream media,” or MSM, reporters and editors exercise more than the usual diligence. Of a dozen leads on Joe the Plumber developed by bloggers, only three penetrated the mainstream media; the others were misleading or mistaken.

Mr. Wayne Cosby has fallen victim to the dark side of Internet journalism. “The fact … is that Arabs, Muslims, were responsible for 9/11,” he says. (Several Web sites aggressively disagree with this presumption, but I digress.) “It is reasonable that persons with like ethnic and religious affiliation should be viewed with suspicion.”

What rot. Islam requires the public confession of faith. There is no such thing as a “secret Muslim;” ask any professor of comparative religion. And Obama is no more an Arab than is Wayne Cosby – ask any ethnologist. These inventions don’t become true just because someone posts them on the Internet.

Fantasists have made a handsome profit convincing people like Wayne Cosby that Obama was already perpetrating a vast fraud while in the womb. When he says “The crisis looming over (Obama’s) place of birth will not go away,” what he really means is that a few million people want to believe in a conspiracy so much that they will see one. Occam’s Razor has never convinced UFO enthusiasts or 9/11 theorists; neither will it convince Mr. Wayne Cosby. Regardless of the evidence – or lack thereof – they will not let it go for eight years.

The paranoid will always be with us.

Matt “Hussein” Osborne

Florence