Why Does Glenn Beck Hate America?

On his Fox show last week, it seems Glenn Beck, noted professional terrible person, had a panel including ex-CIA and ex-Army officers discussing a supposed coming civil war in the US.  Greenwald:

[H]e convened a panel that includes former CIA officer Michael Scheuer and Ret. U.S. Army Sgt. Major Tim Strong.  They discuss a coming “civil war” led by American “Bubba” militias — Beck says he “believes we’re on this road” — and they contemplate whether the U.S. military would follow the President’s orders to subdue civil unrest or would instead join with “the people” in defense of their Constitutional rights against the Government (they agree that the U.S. military would be with “the people”) [Emphasis mine.]

Even for a vile, eliminationist blowhard like Beck, this is shockingly blatant (and I’m a bit surprised Dave Neiwert hasn’t written about it yet; he probably has a piece in the pipeline, though).  I probably don’t even need to bring up the kind of enormous storm of fauxtrage we’d be seeing from the right wing, if a Rachel Maddow or a Keith Olbermann or a Michael Moore had said something even a fraction as inflammatory as this.

This bears empasis, so pardon my repetition: Glenn Beck, a professional political commentator employed (presumably to the tune of a rather large number of dollars) formerly by CNN and now by Fox News (sic), just ran a program promoting the idea that there will soon be a civil war in this country, in which in violation of their oaths the military will side with survivalist-type civilian militias against the (Democratic-Party-controlled) government.

This is insane.  And it’s unconscionably, dangerously irresponsible, especially in light of recent, tragic proof that this kind of violence-promoting rhetoric is not just a gimmick to boost ratings (and the question of whether Beck himself thinks that it’s just a gimmick is essentially irrelevant to the horrific results) has real, and terrible consequences.

The only remotely conscientious, responsible course of action for Fox is to cancel Beck’s show immediately and require him to deliver an on-air apology.  They won’t do that, of course, because they aren’t conscientious or responsible.

Update: See also Cosmic Variance.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is, presumably, turning over in his grave.

This morning on the BBC World Service’s NewsHour program, broadcast on WBUR, they played an interview with Justice Antonin Scalia, who among some other very dubious arguments, said by way of justifying the idea that treatment which is Constitutionally prohibited when applied to convicted criminals, is nonetheless not necessarily even bad when applied to people who have not yet been convicted of anything, but who are reluctant to give information, that you should be able to “smack a terrorist in the face” to get him to tell you “where he planted the bomb that’s about to blow up Los Angeles.”

Leaving quite aside the shocking bad faith of pretending that what the torture arguments in the US are about is a “smack in the face” rather than violent, painful, terrifying, techniques which (even when, as the arguments for waterboarding tend to claim, they don’t leave obvious physical damage, like bruising or broken bones) can have major long-term physical and especially psychological impact on their victims, and (to stick with waterboarding for a moment) which have been universally recognized as methods of torture for centuries, I’d like to point out something else, perhaps equally horrible, about Scalia’s argument.

The “bomb about to blow up LA, so you smack a guy in the face” scenario is lifted directly from the TV show 24 (the tendency of which to legitimate, if not glorify, torture is something I think Fox has to answer for, morally speaking). Scalia is attempting to make a convincing legal argument about what the US Constitution does or does not permit based on fiction. (Nor indeed is this the first time he’s fallen back on the 24 argument.) He might as well try to support rulings about police procedure based on what works on CSI, or claim that since it worked out so well in that book by Mr. Heinlein, and since “Islamofascists” are so similar, really, to hordes of giant space insects, we should consider whether military service ought not be a prerequisite to citizenship.

It’s really incredible — in the literal sense of “impossible to believe” — that anyone, let alone a Supreme Court Justice would have the gall, or the ignorance, to claim that fictional scenarios ginned up to bring in Nielsen ratings should be considered a reasonable basis for public policy and jurisprudence.  It’s even more incredible that so few people seem to be up in arms about this.  What the hell is wrong with us?

The Problem of "Hillary"

I’ve been noticing a trend in media coverage of the Presidential campaign lately which I find rather disturbing. Or rather, this trend is one of several disturbing things about modern Presidential campaigns, but it’s the one I’m going to talk about here.