It's hard to say what caused it (spiked eggnog? Panama Red? a few too many bowl games?) but Kossacks hit unusually high peaks of wackiness during the holidays. One actually mounted a defense of the indefensible North Korean government, while another argued that some of the most bloodthirsty left-wing dictators of the 20th century would be at home in today's GOP.
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym. Happy New Year!
Niccolo Caldararo: North Korea's just another flawed nation, like the U.S.
...While North Korea may behave in a strange fashion at times, its political history is no less responsible toward its own citizens than the history of [South Korea], especially the recent history that was dominated in the 1960s to 1980s by dictatorial regimes that practiced torture and mass arrest. While we hear of starvation and torture in North Korea, these are far less well documented than the recent history of the South. As for the nuclear weapons issue, we should also recall that the USA has been the only country to use nuclear weapons, and we used them on civilians. If the world is to be afraid of the use of these weapons by a renegade nation, one should look at the definition of the word in the context of the Bush Administration waging war in violation of international law and by the use of evidence it knew was tainted. We cannot expect a world of law and respect after such behavior...
politicjock: The rich want a medieval society, or maybe a banana republic
...[I]n America there are people, the 1%, who would have no qualms to return this country to the middle-ages or even earlier, more brutal forms of slavery...
...[M]any Americans still seem unable to accept that given the chance, the 1% will gladly turn this country into a Honduran style republic where a tiny oligarchy which controls most of the wealth uses the government and death squads as a tool to repress a population of mostly peasants. Yet, the signs of this coming reality are all around us if one only cares to look...
chaunceydevega: Obama inspires Confederate dreams
...[T]he literal white washing of the history of a traitorous Confederacy...loom[s] large in the Conservative political imagination. Those dreams are amplified and made more imminent when a black man is President of the United States, because for the populist conservative, neo-Confederate crowd, nothing could be more of an abomination...
...Adults who dress up in Colonial era period clothing, believe that the Constitution is divinely inspired, and take the metaphor of "a shining city on the hill" as a get out of jail pass for America's shortcomings both at home and abroad, have little use for such facts. Selection bias, Fox News, and an embrace of a fantastical view of political and social reality, protects the Tea Party GOP faithful from any experience of cognitive dissonance...
Jon Stafford: American exceptionalism is a stupid religion
...[I]t's no surprise that a broad swath of Americans believe in the myth of American exceptionalism. Who doesn't want to feel special? And let's face it, a large majority of Americans believe in the existence of a magical being who created the universe, so a MENSA meeting they ain't...
I imagine there are a lot of people out there who pity the poor people around the globe who lack American leadership. I bet they picture emaciated African children lying in a hut, reaching out their bony arms and gasping "America" with their dying breath. If only Obama and the Democrats would let us help these poor people!
These are the people that then-candidate Obama described not incorrectly as clinging to guns and religion. Patriotism is a religion. These people believe. They believe in America's right to rule the world, and reshape it in our glorious image. These are people who do not want any immigrants to come here, yet have no problem with US forces occupying their territory there. These are the core constituency of the Republican electorate...
plf515: Hitler, Mao were Republicans in all but name
Recently, there has been lamenting that conservatives do not have their "A-team" in the race for POTUS...
But who would be the conservative A-Team?
...[T]he current meaning [of conservatism] seems to include a few variations: 1) Anti-government 2) Pro-fundamentalist Christianity (and anti all other religions) and 3) Anti-science, anti-urban, pro-"small town" value type of thing...
The anti-intellectualism, anti-urbanism, anti-rights, nativist positions are those that were most loudly professed by Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, etc, but none of these capture the anti-government fervor. However, they were an "a-team" in that they captured whole nations...
Extremist religious views have been common in many times, but Christians who hold these views have been less successful lately. For this A-team, we have to go back a bit in time, to the likes of Torquemada [and] Cotton Mather...For modern successful groups of this ilk, we could do no better than the leaders of Saudi Arabia, who hold with one of the most extreme forms of Islam: Wahhabism...
I am not saying that any of the current crop of Republicans are the people I list above; rather, I am saying that the people I list above are the natural exemplars of Republican attitudes, only more "successful" than the current crop of Republicans are, or, I certainly hope, ever will be.
