Intellpuke: This commentary was written by Alexander
Cockburn, co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter
CounterPunch. He is also co-author of a new book: "Dime's Worth Of
Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils". This commentary was posted
on TruthOut.org's online edition for Friday, Sept. 18, 2009.
Was there ever a society so saturated with lunacy as ours? One
expects modulated nuttiness from the better element, particularly those
inhabiting the corporate and legislative spheres, but these days,
insanity is pervasive, spreading through all classes and walks of life.
For years, we have been treated to pinstriped fugitives from the asylum
like Pete Peterson urging the nation into ruin by slashing the deficit,
but on Monday, there in Washington in tens of thousands were the
sans-culottes screaming for fiscal propriety as though channeling the
ruinous orthodoxies of Montagu Norman or Andrew Mellon.
Many among these Glenn Beck legions were surely one stroke or
tumor away from financial ruin, yet are still ready to tear any
advocates of publicly funded health insurance in tiny pieces as though
they were hawking the Communist Manifesto at a revival meeting.
Inspiring, was it not, to see such self-abnegation on the part of so
many people prepared to die in the name of free enterprise!
Many of the Glenn Beckers are "Birthers," too, making
delusional forays into the supposedly dubious documentation of Barack
Obama's delivery in a hospital in Hawaii. Sometimes I think that the
White House should knock these surmises on the head by releasing all
relevant documents and testimonies. But of course, this would merely
throw napalm on the flames.
Once, when writing some caustic remarks about the occupants of
another ward in the national asylum, the 9/11 Truthers, I suggested
that the "missing people" on the plane that hit the Pentagon had been
kidnapped at an earlier stage in the operation, and flown to an airbase
in Louisiana - the very self-same airbase where George Bush briefly
touched down in his erratic flight from Florida on 9/11/2001. George
Bush then personally executed the captives.
It was a satirical sally. But I swiftly received serious
letters from people vexed by the lack of detail. Where had Bush shot
them? With what type of weapon? A summary burst from a machine gun? Or
a .22 bullet behind the ear?
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