I have become sort of fascinated by the rightwing tizzy about phosphate detergent control (Redstate direct link for authentic goodness)
Washington State has turned its residents into a group of drug runners — crossing state lines to buy dish washer detergent with phosphate.
At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?
Why does this man, Eric the Redneck, feel this way?
I'll tell ya.
Because for 30 goddamned years we have had rightwing talk radio blasting people who will listen - and a lot of people listen - with a non-stop hate-infused tirade against "liberals". The word has become a baseball bat for these peckers.
Now, to make a long rant shorter, they have equated "environmental protections" with Nazism.
I remember the 2004 election with John Kerry. I was never that thrilled by him but he did have/does have some redeeming qualities and I basically think well of him.
At the time, I was still the main news editor for Marijuana.com. I suppose most people who read this have never heard of, let alone visited this site, but what you probably would NOT expect is that it was then (and remains today) a stoned version of Free Republic. I quit after the election in 2004, tired of fighting those assholes nearly alone. If you think republicans will relegalize your weed, I can't help you.
A couple of them seemed to have this meme that President John Kerry would be "like Hitler". I have always been sort of awe-struck by this hyperbole. (And I like my hyperbole, I am sure you know). So I have ruminated on this for some time.
And I have asked myself ""What would it have been like for John Kerry to be "Hitler"?
First thing that come to mind is that the invasion of Poland would have been MUCH later or would not have occurred at all. John Kerry, as we saw in his 2004 campaign, will be late to his own funeral. He shows no sense of reactive timing - he never responded in a timely manner to all the smears heaped on him. He never retorted like I am certain he can, particularly due to having seen active combat when most of his detractors had hemorrhoids or some other incapacitating medical condition preventing them from joining in the heroics of war.
If Kerry was Hitler, all those firey speeches would have been MUCH more sedate in tone, less war-mongering, less racist. In short, John Kerry would have destroyed what we know the Nazis came to.
Fast forward to now and wingnuts making clandestine Canadian border sorties to buy environmentally unsound dishwashing detergent.
Its not just laziness on their part you know.
Many people were shocked to find that products like Seventh Generation, Ecover and Trader Joe’s left their dishes encrusted with food, smeared with grease and too gross to use without rewashing them by hand.
Ok....so it IS just laziness.
We're Americans. Goddammit! We don't wash dishes by hands. We have machines and chemicals do it for us.
These bozos have conflated environmental protection with Nazism. Anything "we" do to protect the Earth, protect our health, protect our families (and theirs, whether they like it or not) is now just a bad thing and a sign this country is slipping into an environmentally conscious totalitarian state.
These dingbats RAIL about the false and repeatedly disproved dangers of "maru-ju-wanna" (I imagine this is how illiterate most of these numbskulls sound during speech) but they want to smuggle in dangerous phosphate detergents?
Talk radio and the Republican war on education, science, and general knowledge has been very successful with this demographic.
So, if liberals were actually really Nazi-like, how we would act? What would we do?
We would force corporations to stop lying, cheating, stealing, and ruining our lives, our country, and our environment.
We would provide healthcare to everybody. We would force it on them. We would make sure they have the OPTION to CHOOSE what they really need for themselves and their families.
We would research the best way to improve education across the board and indoctrinate every child with "education". Real liberal education full of other languages, real science, critical thinking, and...art. Gasp!
Thank God we aren't really Nazis, eh?
[I have thought about this for some time but MikeS's diary this morning set me off. It's just such a fascinating turn of events. Thanks Mike!]