I really dug that NRA apocalyptic fantasy piece that Betty linked to:
Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face—not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival. It’s responsible behavior, and it’s time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that.
So I was sad to see this as part of the GOP’s rebranding effort:
Rule one: Stop talking like the world is going to end.
Do you think that all the end-of-the-world stuff turns voters off? Do you think the GOP can stop it?
I don’t think they can. Remember that the rebirth of the party began with Nixon and Buchanan scaring voters with talk of strapping young bucks mooching and looting and rioting. There’s nothing new under the sun on this one.
22over7
He forgot zombies.
greennotGreen
Except the one way in which the world as we know it is most likely to end is global warming…which the Republicans most assuredly do not want to talk about.
JoeShabadoo
Shoot those tornadoes and hurricanes right in the face! That’ll teach em!
Mark S.
Um, let’s see, their base is fundamentally stupid people who are afraid of everything. No, they aren’t going to change at all.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I think the base loves the apocalyptic talk, because it lets them feel superior as they “prepare” for the end of the world. The rest of the country is beginning to find it tiresome.
I don’t believe they can stop it; at this point it’s a force of nature within the Confederates. It’s reality for them, and it’s actually true. It’s the end of the world as they know it. White folks no longer rule the country exclusively and it scares the living shit out of them. The whole “who are you better than” dynamic is fucked up, and that’s devastating.
Mark S.
@22over7:
I do have to admit, playing The Walking Dead video game last week did make me aware of how important guns and ammo are during a zombie apocalypse.
So yeah, I’m opposed to any and all gun regulation.
Mudge
Go read that fear turns folks into Republicans article
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/brain-difference-democrats-republicans
They can’t stop feeding the base what it needs. Fear is, I think, one of the main reasons that the Republican base continues to vote against its best interests. Hatred (an offshoot of fear) is the other. They need to be afraid and to hate. It’s their nature.
ruemara
Fear is the little death, the mindkiller. Ergo, it is an important component of creating the lifelong republican. They will never be able to stop talking in terms of paranoia.
Face
Wouldnt a “lone criminal” be the reason to BAN large clips? Ya dont need 30 hollow points to take down 1 guy. Yet 1 guy with 30 bullets in a clip could seriously fuck up a theater or park or schoolyard. The NRA doesnt think these things thru, do they?
22over7
@Mark S.:
It’s a joke, right? Except I saw an episode of Doomsday Preppers that dealt with people who are actually preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
I can’t watch that show much, it’s too depressing, but I’m fascinated by all the different apocalyptic scenarios. Nearly every prepper has his own narrative, and it runs the gamut from flu to nuclear war to government breakdown to, well, zombies.
This is your modern conservative, and if the republicans try to create a “happy warrior” persona, they’ll get crushed.
scav
A) Do we really think the entirity of the cast currently under the name of “Republican” (in gold letters) is going to give up the utterendofworldish rhetoric?
B) Will the NRA roll out an effort advocating concealed carry on cruises to better deal with all the perils of the high seas? Concealed Carry Cruises. Could even sponsor a few so that aficionados could practice under realistic conditions and Nugent could pick up a few gigs.
Omnes Omnibus
I say don’t throw out the lifeline ’til they’re clean out of reach.
Hill Dweller
OT: Why is Squint Scarborough trying to “debate” Krugman on economics?
dingdong
Don’t forget meteors. 30 bullet ciips will take care of meteors
Anya
My hope is that 8-years under the secularist Nazi Muslim socialist Kenyan elitist will once and all put to rest the myth of young blackety black looting, rioting and stealing their women and guns.
I think once they realize that nothing actually changed in their lives (except maybe getting access to health care), wouldn’t they examine the lies they were fed about Obama’s diabolical hidden agenda? I think this might lead a lot people to re-evaluate their whole believe system?
Omnes Omnibus
@Hill Dweller: Because he’s an idiot.
Cacti
It’s going to take multiple electoral drubbings before the GOPers change in any meaningful way.
Almost 50 years of GOP politics has been based on doomsaying, and a violent to near violent contempt for those different from themselves.
I think a fair number are still in denial about the death of the southern strategy.
Sly
The GOP is in the grips of reactionary thinking, and reactionary thinking depends on an apocalyptic outlook: there’s no point in turning the clock back to a mythical Golden Age when the future is all rainbows and puppies.
General Stuck
I think this is true, and the good news is, it is almost a certainty to continue, unless the anti christ shows up with the required right wing charisma to tame the beast.
I also think, Miller has nailed a core problem of the conservative brand. They have mad it cool to be fiscally conservative, with little grief from the public, long as a reliable safety net was maintained, as well as easy and sizable amounts of credit.
When the historians write the ancient history of the American experience, there will be three main turning points to date, imho. The Great Civil War, The Great Depression, and TARP 1. The latter of which and most recent, has put a major crimp in the GOP message credibility with the public. Now suspecting they’ve been more a GOP mark than a constituency.
Along with Iraq, taxing the wealthy, and general economic trust, dems, helped by the nutters themselves, have pretty well captured those last three big right wing selling points, or at least damaged them. The old ways won’t work, and they haven’t really proposed any new ways yet, other than predicting the end of life as we know it on Planet America.
MikeJ
@Anya: I think Fox will tell them that violent crime increased 47000%, black men are now legally allowed to own white girls under the age of 13, and that food stamps can now be used to purchase F-35 strike fighters. And a significant number of Republicans will believe it.
Hungry Joe
In “A Paradise Built in Hell” Rebecca Solnit shows that disasters/catastrophes tend to inspire joyful altruism rather than violent, frenzied, I’ll-guard-mine-and-take-yours selfishness. But post-disaster anarchy freakout scenarios work on these Randian gun jerkoffs because they see themselves bravely blowing away crazed looters instead of digging a latrine, helping neighbors sweep up broken glass, and trying to get the goddam camp stove to light.
Still, you have to admit that altruism, while inspiring, doesn’t make for really fun movies.
oldster
@22over7:
When preppers talk about “zombies”, I thought everyone knew what that was code for:
the wrong sort of people.
E.g., blacks, mexicans, urbanites,
college professors. Whatever hordes you fear, coming from the ghetto.They aren’t actually fantasizing about mowing down the undead. It’s just a very common short-hand way of not saying the n-word: “I’ve got this arsenal on hand in case I have to protect my house from a horde of (wink wink) zombies”.
dr. luba
@Face: The NRA is merely the lobbying arm of the gun and ammo industry. So yes, they’ve thought these things through. Safety is not an actually issue for them.
mainsailset
And here I just thought that LaPierre was just envisioning a world where govt was residing in Grover’s bathtub and everyone was on their own. It is kind of a nice seg into that particular vision of a future.
angler
Next: fear of a moocher-meteor, coming to destroy the job creators.
Mike G
Shorter Republicans: “The only thing we have to
fearoffer is fear itself.”Their entire party is based around the idea that people get stupid when they scared. So they must be constantly hyped into a state of fear and kept in perpetual ignorance.
MattF
@Anya: No, I think not. That secularist Nazi Muslim socialist Kenyan elitist colored fella isn’t really a US citizen, so his stay in the Oval Office doesn’t count.
Bubblegum Tate
Asks Doug in the OP:
1. Yes
2. Not among the 27 percent they can’t.
For example, this thread is from 3 days ago. It’s packed full of end-of-the-world stuff, and whenever somebody points out that the original question of the post–“What is your line in the sand?”–is asked out of a sense of extreme paranoia, they are shouted down. These people have been preaching end-of-the-world dumbassery for years, always with the language of an abusive husband (“we’re gonna have Civil War II, and we’re gonna kill a lot of people, and it’ll be ALL OBAMA’S FAULT), never once with the slightest notion that hey, maybe thy’re gone a little bit ’round the bend.
This is just who they are: Deranged, paranoid, delusional.
Baud
I don’t think they can. Although we haven’t talked about it as much lately, a large component of the GOP power structure is the fundy set, and an eschatological worldview is a central part of their belief system. It’s in their DNA.
SatanicPanic
@Anya: Someone else here pointed it out, but sometimes nothing happening can push them over the edge- that idiot in Alabama who took the kid hostage was expecting the feds to come after him and when they didn’t… he made sure that they did. Self-fulfilling prophesy is still prophesy, I guess.
Maude
In Essex County NJ, over 1,000 guns were turned in on the first day.
Some guns are being made into bracelets.
NJ is really doing well with this.
Mike in NC
FOX News has done pretty well for itself pushing the Apocalypse, so don’t expect that to change any time soon. Same goes for talk radio.
22over7
@oldster:
Nope. The people I saw on the teevee really are talking about zombies.
Zombies are a powerful metaphor for the end of civilization. The zombie apocalypse means no government, no church, no community, no family. We become merely predator and prey.
But the yahoos we’re talking about here don’t do metaphor. They’re really planning for the day when their neighbors get up all gray and gnarly and start eating people.
RobertDSC
@Mike G:
I wish Dems would play up this angle really really hard.
MikeJ
@22over7: Zombies are a metaphor for a proletariat uprising. Vampires are the aristocracy feeding on society. Werewolves are puberty.
Alison
@SatanicPanic: Yup, these are the same people who claimed that they knew Obama was coming for their guns because…he wasn’t coming for their guns. They said it was all part of the plan to lull everyone into a false sense of security and then do a 180 on it. Which is also why we have Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists…
RaflW
I was talking with a professional acquaintance the other day who is a political liberal but also active in a very conservative Black church here. We talked about how the end-times seem to find their way into each adult generation of fundamentalist Christians.
To some extent, each generation thinks “this is getting messy and ugly and I can just tell that the end times I see in the Bible are coming.” We were talking about how fundamentalists seem not to care about the environment (her take is that her fellow religionists believe only the wicked will be left behind when the oil/water, etc, run out).
But this end-times paranoia also applies easily to moar guns! and other derangements like walled citadels in remote Idaho.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
I’m sure that a big part of the fantasy is that the looters are minorities who it is now socially unacceptable to shoot- or even to want to shoot- without some kind of justification. A fantasy social collapse scenario let’s them think about killing masses of “those people” without the social stigma of wanting to do it because they’re mud people.
Roger Moore
@dr. luba:
To the contrary, safety is a big issue for them. If people feel safe, they don’t want to buy guns for protection. Fear is crucial if they want to maximize sales.
Arthur Salm
@Alison:
Like the Congressman during WWII who, when it was pointed out to him that there hadn’t been a single reported case of sabotage or espionage by a Japanese-American, said that that proved how well organized they were.
Higgs Boson's Mate
The NRA’s scenarios, along with those of the gun nuts are all predicated on the following happenstances:
1. The bad guy doesn’t have the drop on you/advantage of surprise.
2. You will not fumble with your weapon while trying to cock it and/or get the safety off.
3. You will not panic and fire wildly, hitting everything except your target.
In close combat, with trained personnel, I have seen all of the above happen – sometimes in the same engagement. These people are living in a province of the RW fantasy world.
Yutsano
@Maude: Seattle wins. We got a rocket launcher.
Anya
@MikeJ: But FoxNews has been feeding them lies and non of it materialized. I think the overreach will finally break the spell. They’re not horrible people, they’re just confused and easily manipulated. They buy these lies because they don’t know any blacks, expect what the ones they see on the nightly news). I really believe that 8-years of Obama and nothing changing in their lives (like amazon lesbians forcing their women to have an abortion or something) will make a lot of people (the non 27%) re-evaluate all the lies they were told.
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
It depends on the politics of the person spinning the metaphor. Liberals have been known to use zombies as a metaphor for people brainwashed into conformity by big media. It’s similar to the proletariat uprising, but the people fighting against the zombies in the liberal version are the intellectual elite rather than the economic elite.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Big deal. Los Angeles got two rocket launchers.
Anya
@SatanicPanic: @MattF: I agree that the 27%ers are a lost cause; I am talking about the slightly crazy with fear crowd.
22over7
@Roger Moore:
Good point. Zombies are a true tabula rasa, which is why zombie films have so many points of view (Romero used a different metaphor in each of his movies) and can be used successfully in tragedies, comedies, or dramas.
Personally, I see them as the ultimate paranoid fantasy. They really are out to get you, all of them–your family, your community, your country, the whole world.
FlipYrWhig
@Anya: nah, there will be no wholesale re-evaluation. Low-information conservatives all believe that somewhere out there are enclaves of ungrateful (dark-skinned) moochers living it up and laughing at the hard-working chumps who foot the bill for it all. This is what conservatives think “the deficit” is, too.
FlipYrWhig
@Anya: nah, there will be no wholesale re-evaluation. Low-information conservatives all believe that somewhere out there are enclaves of ungrateful (dark-skinned) moochers living it up and laughing at the hard-working chumps who foot the bill for it all. This is what conservatives think “the deficit” is, too.
FlipYrWhig
@Anya: nah, there will be no wholesale re-evaluation. Low-information conservatives all believe that somewhere out there are enclaves of ungrateful (dark-skinned) moochers living it up and laughing at the hard-working chumps who foot the bill for it all. This is what conservatives think “the deficit” is, too.
Citizen Alan
For me, now and until the end of days, “Zombie Apocalypse” will be a metaphor for the rise of the Tea Party movement. Shambling, mindless hordes who herald the death of civilization itself.
Citizen Alan
For me, now and until the end of days, “Zombie Apocalypse” will be a metaphor for the rise of the Tea Party movement. Shambling, mindless hordes who herald the death of civilization itself.
jamick6000
Sounds like the chief lobbyist for arms dealers is giving a sales pitch for why you should buy some guns! The arms dealers make a lot of money off the end-of-the-world shit, just like the people selling gold on the right wing radio shows. Throw in the right wing evangelical churches with that too.
This stuff gets a bigger audience when the economy sucks. So I think as the economy starts to suck less, those groups will be doing less business and so we’ll be hearing less of them.
Citizen Alan
For me, from now and until the end of days, “Zombie Apocalypse” will be a metaphor for the rise of the Tea Party movement. Shambling, mindless hordes who herald the death of civilization itself.
On Rascal Scooters.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: sorry for the dupes. Site acting up.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
They’re right about everything except the dark-skinned part.
The CEO-class are the ones laughing at them, while feasting on the fruits of their labor.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@22over7:
Oh you blaggard! Thanks to you I flashed on a zombie production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.”
Michael Finn
This is what America needs.
A Domestic Arms Race. Not only do you need a gun, you need a gun that is more powerful than your neighbors!
Uncle Ebeneezer
The only way to stop a bad tornado…
indycat32
I’ve never understood “Obama is going to confiscate all the guns therefore we must buy more guns.” I don’t think they’ve thought this through.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
I think it’s important to separate the true believers in the 27% from people who are just poorly informed. There really are people who buy the misinformation but who can learn if they have personal experience. I think the biggest reason public opinion is moving as fast as it is on gay rights in general and marriage equality specifically is because personal experience is trumping propaganda. People are meeting out and proud gays and discovering that they’re pretty much like anyone else, or they’re seeing that a decade of marriage equality has completely failed to bring about the end of society, and this is causing them to reevaluate their opinions about gays. It takes something big to make them stop and rethink their opinions, but they are able to do so when presented with a big enough reason.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: solid point. But I think in the conservative thought process, the CEOs and bankers and such often get treated as on the right side of the culture war because of a sort of solidarity around hard-working-ness. That’s the legerdemain of things like the original Rick Santelli rant about bailing out people with underwater mortgages. “We” (including everyday people and commodities traders) don’t want to help out “them” (people who can’t keep up their payments because they’re just not working hard enough, boo hoo).
Jay in Oregon
@JoeShabadoo:
Fixed.
BC
If you are the hero in your own fantasy novel, where you out-Rambo Rambo and out-Die Hard Bruce Willis, then you can fantasize about being the hero in your own end of times scenario. Problem is, these people are trying to govern based on their end of times scenario.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: That’s a helpful parallel, but I’m not so sure, at least when it comes to economic issues. Maybe if the economy is doing better, it will be less seductive to conjure up the moochers and parasites whose fault it is that everything sucks. But I really, thoroughly believe that when conservatives talk about “the deficit” they actually are thinking of all the same things that they also call “soçialism,” and that’s why so little of it can be refuted by talk of the beneficial effects of Keynesian deficit spending and such.
CItizen_X
There’s a billboard up around town, from a local fundie megachurch, that shows the smiling huckst–er, preacher, and says “CONFIDENCE In The Future” Right on the other side of the Preacher’s pic is a highway-type sign that screams “END TIMES“.
Cracks me up every time I see it. Have some confidence in your Apocalypse, everybody!
Bobby Thomson
@Roger Moore: consumers of guns care about safety. Sellers don’t. They just know it’s their main selling point. What, you think crack dealers really want junkies to be happy?
PsiFighter37
@Bubblegum Tate: And one must not forget that the 27% of the country that is nucking futs is a majority of the 47% that Mittens got.
Ergo, the GOP will continue to be rules by the crazy and those who dress up like its the 18th century because that’s the time period they’d like to return to.
Suffern ACE
Evangelicals will stop focusing on prophesy and the end times when New York urban hipsters stop serving spruced up comfort food like truffled tater tots in their restaurants. The whole movement is wired to be moved by the Holy Spirit to interpret the books of Daniel and Revelations as happening right now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Anya:
Hahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahahah. Hahahahahaahahaahahahahahahahahahhhahahahaaa!
You need to take that on the comedy circuit.
Keith
The whole NRA fantasy reminds me of Bill Murray’s trailer for the “Scrooge” movie from “Scrooged”. “Acid rain…drug addiction…international terror…freeway killers. Now more than ever, it is important to remember the true meaning of Christmas.”
chopper
@Hungry Joe:
i think disasters do tend to bring out the good in a lot of people. but i think some of that is based on the sincere belief that the event is temporary. it’ll be over and we’ll be back to normal and law and order will be reimposed soon.
you convince people that what’s happening is the ‘new normal’ and it’s just shit all the way from now until forever, and i think altruism would start wearing off. that’s what worries me about climate change.
bemused
@Keith:
I love that line.
Redshift
Rachel Maddow made a very good point last night — in addition to generating sales through fear, LaPierre’s purpose is to act outrageous so people focus on him, rather than the gun manufacturers. Everyone knows the NRA and Wayne LaPierre. Nobody knows who the CEOs of the major gun manufacturers are, and they’re the ones behind the curtain.
We should know. Name and shame.
MikeJ
Oldham tie it up in the last seconds of stoppage time against Everton. They’re not in the Premier League. They’re not even one step down. They’re in League One, which is two down from Premier. 2-2.
FlipYrWhig
@PsiFighter37: hey, man, don’t diss the 18th century. Science, enlightenment, secularism, FTW! OK, also slavery and the birth of global capitalism, but on balance better than most centuries for most people.
FlipYrWhig
@MikeJ: league one is two down? Is that like how the first story means the second story over there?
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
@Sly:
Who was it that said that both conservatives and liberals want a restoration of the 1950’s, except that the liberals want to work there, while conservatives just want to go home there?
Alison
@FlipYrWhig: It goes Premier League, League Championship, League One, League Two :)
And that was a cray ending to that game. Way to go, Oldham.
PaminBB
@Redshift: Excellent point. A little research project is in order.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@MikeJ: And Blackburn, one league down, beats Arsenal. Wild day.
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
Before the formation of the Premier League in the early 1990s, the professional game in England consisted of the First through Fourth Divisions. When the First Division clubs decided to run their own league and keep all the money, they formed the Premier League; the other divisions became the First, Second and Third Divisions. Then the new First Division decided it too wanted to have its own league, and became the Championship. So now it’s the Premier League, the Championship, League 1, and League 2.
El Cid
@Hill Dweller: Because remember, according to all the known tenets of conservative epistemology, you don’t have to know nothing ’bout economics in order to talk about “economics”.
Also, Scarbo is very handy with the most important conservative intellectual skill, which is loudmouth boorishness and continual affectations of outright shock that anyone could dare think anything different than what he knows ‘in his heart’ is right.
22over7
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
This thread is long (un)dead, but in case you check back: last fall I saw a zombie production of HMS Pinafore. It was fantastic.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): You’re right about the base, but that end-of-the-world bit doesn’t pull in anyone but the far-right loonies. It turns off most people. As has been pointed out a number of times now, the Republican party crawled into bed with the loonies 40 years ago and have been cuddling them ever since. They’ve courted and won that hand in marriage, but all it got them was the 27% whack-jobs and other low-information voters.
Matt McIrvin
I know a Rothbard-quoting libertarian guy who recently said that the reason zombie movies are so popular is that, in our hearts, “everyone knows our culture is dying,” and the zombie apocalypse is just a safe way of expressing that certainty. He says that even liberals really know this, were they to admit it honestly to themselves; all we disagree on is precisely how it’s dying and who to blame.