My Name Is Legion

Driftglass explains why he disagrees with my advice to ignore Coulter.

A long time ago I believed in that quaint method of dealing with lunatics best summed up by Rameses II in “The Ten Commandments”. The “Let him rave on, that men will know him mad” school of thought, (which always seemed very reasonable if you assume the person involved isn’t Moses.)

I no longer believe this kind of benign neglect works, but many nice people still do. They wonder “Why waste precious adjectives on the likes of Coulter and Hannity? Limbaugh and Falwell?”

Why bother zeroing in on these obviously unhinged, obviously evil bottom-dwellers and the moral plague rats who blindly and orgiastically follow them down and down and down forever?

They and the homunculi who shower them with cash and cachet and oinky, monosyllabic praise are unreachable. As lost to the discourse of civilized society as the dead. As unmoved by reason, compassion or simple truth as an asteroid, their orbits are affected only by the gravity of hate and fear, lies and power.

So why speak of them at all?

Driftglass then goes on the describe (as only driftglass can) the roots of Blood Libel and draw the parallel with the current rightwingnuts and their hateful obsession with Liberals. He concludes thusly:

Like witch hunts, like McCarthyism, like modern Conservative Christopathy, once begun, the lie just goes on and on like a firestorm, gaining power and ferocity, destroying everything it touches until something stops in its tracks.

[...]

If Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity did not exist the Right would have to invent them, because they serve an incredibly important function in the overall plan.

Because each time Falwell opens his bibble spigot to, say, blame the ACLU for 9/11 and is not instantly defrocked by acclamation and run out of the country on a rail...

Each time Rush Limbaugh tells another lie and chuckles and doesn’t get his license pulled and fined into penury...

Each time Ann Coulter calls for the murder of political opponents and is applauded instead of jailed...

Each time the casually homicidal rhetoric on the Right is conspicuously ignored by the MSM while the fact that the Left uses the word “fuck” a lot sends them leaping onto their writing desks, shrieking and clutching their petticoats...

Each time one Republican Leader after another snuggles up to these loathsome freaks instead of denouncing them, the threshold for what is acceptable for the Wingnut Base to do and say gets lower.

And let’s face it, these are not exactly the kind of people who arrived at their positions by careful reasoning in the first place.

These are not people likely to give up their seats ringside at the book burning just because burning books is wrong and a betray in fact of everything they claim to love in theory, because for them it doesn’t matter. They follow a higher truth, and in so doing they believe – fiercely – that the nobility of their ends justifies any means, no matter how monstrous.

With God on their side and what they suppose to be a love of country in their hearts, they loudly and methodically betray everything their God stands for and every value that makes their country extraordinary.

[...]

Does anyone else hear in this a clear echo of the President and especially the Vice President of the United States, now sufficiently girded by the inflammatory words of the demagogues on the Right that they felt perfectly safe inferring that a vote for John Kerry was a vote to let your children be blown up?

That Democrats do not care about the safety of this country?

That if you do not uncritically support the Dear Leader, you are validating the enemy?

Rage-drunk on an imaginary cork from a non-existent bottle, every day the Right tumbles deeper into darkness. And history shows without any doubt what waits for us all if their trajectory is allowed to continue uninterrupted and they are permitted to drag this nation fully into the abyss behind them

[...]

This is why I believe it is not only worth expending a little precious time speaking of these modern witch hunters, but absolutely imperative that each of us confront them and their lies wherever and whenever we can, as directly, clearly and bluntly as conditions permit.

Because when fascists in robes or uniforms or suits and ties begin to bray, it is up to us – each one of us, as best we can – to drown them out and sit them the fuck down, every single time.

Up to each of us, in our own way, to play La Fucking Marseilles.

as loud as possible.