Minutemen versus Bundy

The Minuteman movement was mentioned on the internet recently in one of those "where are they now?" stories.

For those who don't remember, the Minutemen were a group of people, or more precisely a group of groups, who wanted to secure America's southern border and get rid of the illegal immigrants in this country, and who took direct action to try to force the government to comply.

A big problem for the Minutemen is that even though there's a legitimate case to be made for securing the border and getting rid of the illegal immigrants, the cause has a racial component, especially along the southern border. Even if the core of the movement is not racist, it's the kind of activity that will attract racists. I know. I met some of them.

That gave the Minutemen an image problem with some people. Others could see the bigger picture but disagreed with the Minutemen's conclusions. Nevertheless, the Minutemen tried to be lawful in their protest against the federal government, and that puts them in sharp contrast with another case of people acting against the feds.

How's that Republican Rebranding Going?

Unless I misremember recent history, the Republican Party said a while back that it needs to rebrand itself. Looks like they finally accomplished the mission in ironic fashion when Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy burned his Circle Idiot brand deep into the GOP's hide.

The first rule of deceptive communication, whether it's the mild deception of marketing or the intense deception of propaganda is don't believe your own bullshit. There's a good reason for that. To be effective, deceptive communication has to have some correlation with reality. It's those tiny links to reality that give the deceptive part of the message an air of plausibility.

If you start believing your own bullshit, you lose those links to reality. Not only does your message lose plausibility, it also gets weirder. Instead of creating a fiction that's grounded in reality, you create a fiction that's grounded in a fiction that's grounded in a fiction.

In other words, you go loony.

Can We Have the Old Conservatism Back Now?

Now that the Tea Party/talk radio crowd has all but killed American conservatism, can we get try to revive it?

The Nevada standoff led by Deadbeat Bundy and His Rowdy Cowgirls shows just how morally and intellectually screwed up conservatism has become. Now, there are some genuine human rights abuses in our nation, some genuine big-government problems.  Attacking such abuses is one of claimed goals of the Tea Party types.

But the Tea Party lives in a different reality, a world defined by the imaginations of radio entertainers and the sales pitches of politicians. They're oblivious to real examples of out of control government, like the massively expensive, rights-crushing failure of the war on drugs. Instead, they pick a different victim.  At least, he looked like a victim to the talk-radio conservatives. How'd it turn out?