Of course Chucky K doesn't want us talking about the "climate of hate" -- his livelihood depends on it

"Climate of hate"? "Climate of hate"? No "climate of 
hate" here, thanks. (A "culture of paranoia," maybe?)

by Ken

Today the Out-Front Stooge for the Compulsive Liars of the Right is Chucky "I'm Lying As Hard As I Can" Krauthammer, who's in a frenzy -- say, is he armed? -- over crazed socialist linkages, which he declares a "libel," between the Lone Tucson Crackpot and some mythical "climate of hate." Well, of course, Chucky doesn't want us talking about the Right-Wing Climate of Hate. It's directly responsible for every penny he's ever earned, and probably every penny he's ever capable of earning. If anything happens to it, and he's forced to fall back on his demonstrated skill set, he'll be lucky to glom onto a gig with a crew picking up roadside trash.

It would be funny if it weren't so tragic to hear the Compulsive Liars of the Right gibbering about their Lone Crackpot when they've done so much to marginalize understanding and treatment of mental illness, doing their best to make sure that no treatment is available and that the afflicted are dumped helpless into the general population -- along with all those sad suckers they've warped into functioning as if they are, insane, people so far gone that they not only have no clue what's going on in the world around them, they have no idea what's going on inside their own heads. They don't even seem aware that they've had all that unfocused rage inside them churned up and channeled into overtly threatening behavior that at least since 2008 has been itching to explode into violence.

Meanwhile Digby reports that in the comments section of her blog, "I’m mostly getting demands that I apologize for my violent rhetoric against the right." Think about it. Digby! "Violent rhetoric"??? Digby!

For days now I've been trying to think how to explain that the problem isn't "rhetoric," although of course rhetoric is used as a tool, but the creation of a pervasive way of thinking, or rather not thinking, that has been cultivated painstakingly at all levels of the Far Right, most importantly as a mechanism for keeping those unfortunate people available and useful to further the interests of the megacorporate superrich in their crusade for total control of the country.

It's more than just a climate, it's, well . . . "a culture of paranoia" is Harold Meyerson's phrase in his Washington Post column today, "Dangerous outcomes from a culture of paranoia." A culture of paranoia -- yes, I like that.

The New Yorker's current cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, a 30-year contributor to the magazine, recalls -- in a current blogpost on the subject of New Yorker cartoonists and the Constitution -- this cartoon he himself drew almost 20 years ago, when he thought it was "an exaggeration." Now, he says, "I'm worried it may be an understatement."


IF YOU WONDERED WHY PEOPLE IN POWER WANT
THEIR "DELIBERATIVE PROCESSES" KEPT SECRET . . .

I think maybe we need to keep repeating periodically these crucial paragraphs from Glenn Greenwald's July post, "The motive behind whistle-blower prosecutions":

Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance -- literally -- occurs behind a vast wall of secrecy, completely unknown to the citizenry. While a small portion of that is legitimately classified, these whistle blower prosecutions and other disclosure controversies demonstrate that the vast majority of this secrecy is devoted to avoiding embarrassment and accountability. It has nothing to do with "national security" -- one of the all-justifying terms (along with Terrorism) for what the Government does. . . .

[T]here is a perfect inverse relationship between the secrecy powers of the Government (which rapidly increase) and the privacy rights of citizens (which erode just as rapidly). The citizenry meekly acquiesces to the notion that it must sacrifice more and more privacy to the Government in order to deter and expose criminality, corruption and other dangerous acts of private citizens, yet refuses to apply that same rationale to demand greater transparency from the Government itself. The Government (and its private corporate partners) know more and more about citizens, while citizens know less and less about the actions of the government-corporate axis which governs them.

Today's entry in the Keep Yer Grubby Mitts Offa My Deliberative Processes comes from -- who else? -- our pal Al Kamen in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column. This item really and truly requires no additional comment, I think.

That's why it's a secret!

One of the favorite ploys used by government bureaucrats to thwart freedom-of-information requests (aside from just stalling) is the old B5 dodge. That refers to a section of the Freedom of Information Act that exempts from disclosure any information that the agency deems might be a sensitive part of the internal "deliberative processes" of government, such as inter- or intra-agency communications and such.

The National Security Archive recently won an appeal from the State Department over a B5 classification of something written by a department official on a proposed House resolution. The January 2000 resolution, sponsored by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives that Pakistan should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism."

A State Department official had written something on the proposed resolution that the department decided was exempt from disclosure. The Archive went through the department's appeals process and two years later won the right to see the hidden writing on the resolution.

It said: "What a bunch of crap!!"

Ah, the old deliberative process ain't what it used to be.

It makes you proud, or something. Now if the Teabaggers were mad as hell about stuff like this, and determined to do something about it . . . well, then they wouldn't be the Teabaggers we know and love, would they?

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