Glenn Beck’s Faith

I watched Glenn Beck’s little get together this morning, and before that, I watched C-SPAN’s “pre-game” coverage.  Man, I tell you, those were four hours of my life I’ll never get back.  I let that schizophrenic pseudo-pious neo-con bullshit kill some of my brain cells, when I could have done that with perfectly good whiskey.  Then again, maybe it was worth my time, because it encapsulated everything that’s wrong with lamestream conservatism and the Repugnican Party.  If this is all we’ve got to go up against Obama, then we might as well lower our pants and let the communists rape us mercilessly.

I don’t know where to start or end, or whether even to start, so I guess I’ll just run down a few bullet points, as seems to be my habit on this medium these days.  James Edwards can handle the tour de force commentary.

*  Ralph Reed, who ran the Christian Coalition (into the ground) in the 1990s, was the guest on C-SPAN’s pre-game show.  Near the end of his part and the beginning of the rally, Reed said that he encountered an Afghan man in D.C., who was taken aback, and not in a positive way, that people would actually protest their President.  (Of course, this Beck rally wasn’t really that).  Now, does a good neo-con sicko like Reed have the ability to put the obvious two and the other obvious two together to make the obvious four?  There’s no turning these people in their own country into a democratic republic, no matter how many troops you deploy and no matter how much money you spend/waste.  Yeah, we should be “in” Afghanistan, but only to kill people and break things.  As far as that goes, we should have been done by now.

*  Al Sharpton supposedly held a counter-rally.  We knew that was going to happen, and I was expecting to see footage from the counter-rally, where black civil rights leaders denounced “white privilege.”  I just didn’t expect to to come from the rally itself.

*  About that:  This niece of MLK that was a feature speaker — She’s no conservative.  The only reason she’s running around with lamestream conservatives like Beck is because she’s on the outs with the rest of the King family, and it’s all got to do with money.

*  Does Glenn Beck not realize that real freedom and Martin Luther King’s vision on that very soil of 47 years ago are diametric opposites?  We lost a whole lot of freedom pursuing MLK’s Dream.  Ironically, one of the major bloggers associated with this event today advised people to go nowhere near D.C. neighborhoods and public transit stops that are associated with the people who we just had to extend civil rights to in the last generation.  Oh yeah, pander to blacks, but just don’t travel anywhere near them.  (UPDATE:  Said blogger is a big-time Democrat donor.  This article is wrong in stating that Arizona’s Jim Kolbe was the only openly homosexual Republican in the House at the time that Majors made his donation — There was also Mark Foley.)

*  Beck implied that MLK/CRM were entirely on the side of the angels, while the opponents were nothing more than moronic knuckle-dragging bigots.  I regret to inform you, Mr. Beck, but there was a lot of resistance to the CRM in the 1950s and 60s on the intellectual and cerebral level.  As loath as this publication would be to admit it today, half the anti-CRA intellectuals of those years worked for National Review.  At least two states in the South declared a certain day on the calendar to be “Race and Reason Day,” titled after Carleton Putnam’s book.

*  Just what does Glenn Beck want?  Best I can tell is that he advocates God.  That’s a really brave stand to make, Glenn.  He went on and on about how we’re all supposed to have this unity between churches, synagogues and mosques.  (Gonna make it harder for him to be against the G0M, isn’t it?)  I certainly believe in God, but I also know there are people who believe that there isn’t any such being, and there are people who are unsure whether there is or isn’t such a being.  I also fully recognize that atheists and agnostics have civil liberties and civil rights.

*  There were a couple of Vietnam vets featured prominently.  Sarah Palin featured one just before MLK’s niece spoke.  The irony of that is that the real MLK was opposed to the Vietnam War, and ramped up his vocal criticism in the latter few years of his life.  MLK’s two big problems with the Vietnam War were:  (1) It was hurting communists, and (2) The cost was “supposedly taking resources” away from social welfare spending.  There were right-wing JBS-style neutralitarians who were opposed to the War in Vietnam, but MLK was not one of them.

*  On to the local angle:  Tony LaRussa wouldn’t know “honor” if it hit him on the head like a ton of bricks.  Turn on 1380 AM at 2 PM on weekdays to find out why.

*  Ironically, Beck went on and on about how it’s so wrong for kids to turn screen actors and cartoons into heroes, rightly stating that real heroes are regular human beings who do the right thing when doing so is personally hurtful, then gives his hero award to a baseball player.

*  Oh, and one more thing?  Glenn Beck certainly has a lot of faith in Albert Pujols.  (BTW, that “Pujols Family Foundation” of his?  Nothing more than a fancy way to shield his baseball and endorsement earnings from income taxes.  Ever notice that every professional athlete has one of these “foundations?”  A lot of politicians do, too, such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, the same types who want the “rich” to pay more in taxes.  Now you know why.  Sure, you have to give a few dimes to charity every once in awhile.)  He better pray to the God in which he has so much faith that Pujols isn’t ‘roiding.  (Which I think he has in the past.  Don’t tell me “no positive test.”  There is no test for HGH.)  If he his, then Beck will be just one in a very long line of people and institutions whose credibility is shot in the direction opposite God.

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