When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled
Michelle Bachmann made an ass out of herself again today, this time bragging that if she were President, and Iranians over ran the US embassy the way they did the British embassy this week, she’d wouldn’t pussy-foot around. No siree, she’d shut that facility down. Because nothing says courage quite like running away. What made it hilarious is Bachmann and company were apparently not up to speed on one widely reported fact:
(TPM) — There’s just one problem: The U.S. has not had an embassy in Iran ever since the Iranian hostage crisis, when revolutionaries from the budding Islamic state held 52 Americans for 444 days.
You see shit like this and face meets palm. How could anyone, let alone a sitting US congresswoman who serves on important foreign policy committees, be so ignorant? Easy. When a movement depends on rickety foundations of lies held aloft on pillars of deception, ignorance is not a weakness, its strength.
Ignorance worked beautifully in times past, for centuries, allowing a tiny sliver of decadent predators to live high on the hog, dancing on the backs of millions of uneducated peasants locked in an endless cycle of short lives, grinding poverty, and back-breaking labor. Ignorance fueled the Confederacy, where hundreds of thousands of dirt-poor southerners volunteered to be cut to pieces by musket and cannon fire so that a few dozen super wealthy families could sit safe and fat back on the plantation for a few more years. It works to this day, as any poll with edu crosstabs amply demonstrates.
Bachmann, Perry, Cain; they are simply the figure-head descendants of the same tried and true system: legions of serfs sacrificing everything they have, for a handful of lords who have everything. That system cannot thrive in an informed democracy. Depth of knowledge and critical thinking skills, the twin columns of science, are the extreme right’s kryptonite. It’s no wonder the Bachmann’s and Cain’s of the world celebrate ignorance and wear it like a badge of honor, it’s no wonder they wave people into the darkness as fast as they can. Ignorance might as well sign their hefty paychecks.
In fairness to those poor whites of the Confederacy, many refused to serve. something like 25% of the Confederate army was AWOL by 1864 and about 120,000 southerners (white) served with the Union army in some fashion. Many others served in the CSA because they were drafted. In fact, it’s impious that the southern states would have seceded had it been put to a referemdum, which is why secession was done through legislatures and conventions controlled ny slaveholders. It’s sad that so many southerners now believe the great myth that the CSA had great popular support.
Should have previewed. “Unlikely” not impious.
Maybe Bachmann wants to open an embassy in Iran just to close it, the way some people get offended by a newspaper article so they order a subscription so they can cancel it.
Well said. The problem is that most of the “ignorant masses” in the US these days are willingly ignorant. They run away from real facts and only accept things that reinforce their world view. I really don’t think it’s as much a matter of the powerful keeping them down. What the rich and powerful have done this time around is somehow convince the “masses” that they are part of the rich and powerful (or on their way to becoming rich and powerful). That’s why people on unemployment actively vote for candidates who are for cutting unemployment and people on medicare don’t want government controlled healthcare.
So if michelle bachmann weighs the same as a duck… then she’s made of wood…
Every Confederate state except for Mississippi fielded a fully equipped volunteer regiment in the Union Army. These regiments were some of the most loyal and most fierce troops the Union had.
But yeah, poor southern volunteers fighting for the !% class of the Confederacy is a pretty good analogy for how the South, and much of the rest of the country, operates today.
Small scale slavery had burned itself out exactly as the Founding Fathers expected it would. Racial lines were blending, and not just because of rapey relationships like Jefferson had, indentured white women often took ambitious black men as husbands. Benjamin Bannaker was the result of just such a relationship.
But the cotton gin changed everything. Plantations with huge numbers of slaves became profitable, even as slavery was winding down elsewhere in other industries. Racial lines were made absolute, and everything went wrong.
Fox News viewers are the Confederate volunteers fighting against their personal interests.
Those neo-Confederates should turn off their televisions and get to Freedom Plaza in New York, Tranquility Park in Houston, or wherever else Occupiers meet.
Varying degrees and areas of ignorance among the electorate, regardless of political leanings, are regrettable but not unexpected. These kinds of repeated displays by several “serious” candidates for POTUS are pathetic, depressing and inexcusable.