First a quote:
"The greatest danger was that terrorist organizations secretly financed and supported by a foreign power would smuggle a nuclear weapon into the US and explode it in a large city, probably Washington, D.C., or New York. This was inevitable. The proposed solution was the formation of task forces to use counter-intelligence and then the utmost punitive measures against these terrorists and whoever backed them. It would require special laws that would abridge the rights of American citizens. The scenarios acknowledged the impossibility of these laws until somebody finally succeeded at blowing up a good portion of an American metropolis. Then the laws would pass easily."
---Mario Puzo, Omerta
Mario Puzo died in July of 1999, just after completing his ms for Omerta. In an odd way, it was a shame that he never lived to see 9/11. The passage of the Patriot Act would not have surprised him, and he would have been relieved the attack itself wasn't worse. The Patriot Act was ready and waiting, based in part on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), years before 9/11, and would have passed regardless of Bush vs Gore and the overall balance of Partisan elected officials.
The Patriot Act will be in full effect during "Tea Parties." Robert Ludlum called spying "the world's other oldest profession." The technique of using agents provocateur to lure the most fanatic radicals out of hiding is a practice older than the US itself. Some of the biggest, nastiest, noisiest Joe the Dickhead teabagger types will be spooks trying to incite violence in order to short circuit it. Get a Chuck Norris poseur calling for civil war cells to attend, and the Patriot Act crawls right up their asses. Domestically, I bet 99% of teabag seditionists are a bunch of out of shape, lifelong civilians with bad information talking tough; but the other 1% pose as real a terrorist threat as any radical Muslim. At some point, teabags who are sincere in their tax protests need to make a distinction among themselves in order to be taken seriously. Bringing Westboro Baptist types and white supremacists out of the woodwork will not hasten any legitimate Republican return to power, and reasonable Republicans know it.
As for Glenn Beck, a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quote fits nicely:
"'I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be likened unto a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such a snaggle toothed thought machine, driven by a standard, or even substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in hell.'
The boss g-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of (the Rev. Dr. ) Jones. "You're completely crazy." He said.
Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at it's circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.
Hence the cuckoo clock in hell keeping perfect time for eight months and thirty three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours one second, then jumping ahead a year.
The missing teeth, of course, are simple obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten year olds, in most cases.
The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing w/o certain obvious pieces of info... that was how Rudolf Hoess, Comandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz great music and calls for corpse carriers-that was how Nazi Germany could sense no important differences between civilization and hydrophobia-that is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I've seen in my time." ---Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Mother Night
That conservatives are complicit in our present day situation, a tooth Glenn Beck chooses to file off. That nobody dared accuse Cheney of Socialism when he funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into a corporation he himself once ran, a conflict of interests that not just Republicans, but millions of Americans let him get away with in broad daylight-another tooth to file off. That the stimpak was already on the table when President Obama was just a long shot candidate, another tooth to file off. That sixty-six million, eight hundred eighty two thousand, two hundred and thirty people voted for Obama, another tooth. That the majority of young voters sided with Obama, and yet the old men throwing each and every monkey wrench they can think of into his machinations accuse him of "generational theft," another tooth. That the very same people accusing the President of the United States of being a foreign mole march at the beck and call of the Australian, Rupert Murdoch, another tooth...
Here's some more Vonnegut:
"'There are plenty of good reasons for fighting,' I said. 'But no good reason ever to hate w/o reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate w/o limit, that wants to hate w/God on his side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. It's that part of an imbecile,' I said, 'that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.'"
---Ibid.