"Arrogance and Foolishness in the Same Package: How Efficient!"

Cluelessness coupled with alarmism: "Leadership," on the Appleton Model

If you can make it to the 4:18 mark in the most recent (April 9) edition of Art Thompson's weekly dronefest, you will be rewarded with the unvarnished truth about what he knows regarding the supposed menace of the RT (formerly Russia Today) television network:

"We have no real data concerning what and where this will all lead, only that it does not bode well if too many good people start to believe everything that they see and hear from this relatively new source for the news."

A clearer rendering of that thought would be: "I really don't know anything about RT, but I don't like it."

In any case, Thompson insisted, "When Moscow starts telling the truth, you can bet they have something in mind."

How devious of those perfidious Russkies -- telling us the truth! What chance have we to withstand this onslaught of Slavic guile? 

His mighty jowls tremulous with indignation, Thompson assails conservatives who recommend RT's programs as a better source of news "than Fox or CNN." He commends the example of the JBS, which has refused to grant interviews on RT "because we know what it is" -- except, as Thompson had just admitted, they don't. All they know is that it is a Russian government-operated news service, which means that it must be part of the ongoing and ever-escalating Communist assault on the Bastion of All Righteousness -- which, in defiance of any reasonable assessment of the evidence, Thompson insists originates in Moscow. Oh, and apparently Beijing is in on the deal, as well, since the wily Chinese are actually building business relationships in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Pay no attention to the hundreds of U.S. military installations pockmarking the globe; discount entirely the half-dozen wars (both direct and proxy) being waged by Washington in every continent and clime; plug your ears and scream really loud whenever someone points out that the U.S. military budget is roughly equal to that of the rest of the world combined. According to Thompson, America is "being surrounded by the Chinese and the Russians through the Communist empire in Latin America, while all of our people are overseas." 

At what point does cluelessness become a clinical condition?

 

To the extent that one can identify a point in Thompson's most recent harangue, it would appear to be this:

RT News is a diabolical Communist plot to distract conservative attention from the inspired agenda of the JBS -- as defined by Thompson, who as successor to Robert Welch (via palace coup) speaks ex cathedra on such matters. 

"There are three issues that, if we lose them, our free country could well be lost," insists Thompson:

*Extricating the U.S. from the United Nations;

*Withdrawing from the North American Union (formally called the Security and Prosperity Partnership);

*Supporting the "local" police to prevent them from being "integrated into a national police force."

"The Soviets are gonna getcha! Booga booga!"

 "Ask yourself: What other organization besides the John Birch Society is working on these agenda [sic]?" urges Thompson, who seems patently oblivious to a critical point:

None of the three issues he describes has anything to do with protecting individual liberty and property rights against State aggression.

We are already living under a State that is totalitarian in principle, and increasingly in practice. It already has a nationalized, militarized police force that is entirely unaccountable to the local population -- and preserving that monstrosity, rather than tearing it down, is the entire point of the JBS's revived Support Your Local Police campaign.

"Be very suspicious of people who promote RT, and attack the idea of ... 

supporting your local police," Thompson advises. Such people -- Yours Truly, presumably, among them -- are either paid agents of the Soviets, or unwitting tools of the Kremlin. 

No, really. That's what this fellow honestly seems to think.

 The senescent ideologues in charge of the JBS refuse to acknowledge that the "local" police -- which have always been the enforcement arm of corrupt municipal corporations -- have become the single greatest threat to the life, liberty, and property of Americans. So devoted are Thompson and his insular clique to the SYLP dogma that they recently recently fired TNA contributor Becky Akers after she published a splendid essay demonstrating that police have always been a standing army of occupation.

 

Regarding the police, the posture of the JBS ... no, wait; the word "posture" really doesn't describe a pose of supine submissiveness. Although Thompson will honk and grunt about making police "accountable" to local populations, the official SYLP manual makes it clear that any effort to enforce accountability  is to be regarded as subversive:

 

"The local police are not your enemy. Your committee is not here to attack them, blame them for violating the Constitution or your civil liberties because they are enforcing a measure of the Patriot Act or conducting a joint Federal and State anti-terror drill. Those are federal issues, which the local police in some cases may have already have little to no say if they are to continue receiving their additional Homeland Security funds, new equipment and weaponry.... We urge all responsible citizens in this community to work with us to ...[s]upport our local police in the performance of their duties [and] oppose all harassment or interference with law enforcement personnel as they carry out their assigned tasks.... [We must accept] our responsibilities to our local police, to defend them against unjust attacks, make them proud and secure in their vital profession, and to offer them our support in word and deed wherever possible." (Emphasis added.)

This paragraph frankly acknowledges that nationalization of the police is a fait accompli, and insists that among the "responsibilities" of citizens "to our local police" is the obligation to support them uncritically so that they can continue to receive federal subsidies. 

One of the most valuable things about RT is its coverage of atrocities committed by local affiliates of the militarized Homeland Security State, as well as the assault on rudimentary guarantees of individual liberty -- via the NDAA, the institutionalization of torture, the effective abolition of habeas corpus, summary assassination by presidential decree, and so on. They've also provided good coverage of the entrenchment of the corporatist oligarchy subsequent to the 2008 crash -- a situation not dissimilar to the rise of the Russian oligarchs during the early 1990s. 

If Thompson were a thinking person, he might suspect that the Russians, having lived through the kind of state America has become, are better equipped to recognize what's happening here and warn us about it.

It isn't "Soviet" troops who are kicking in doors and shooting Americans in their own homes; the black or olive-dram uniforms worn by the grim-faced, bucket-helmeted enforcers who patrol American streets don't display the Hammer and Sickle, or the UN seal; the thugs who abduct innocent people and spirit them away to be tortured in east European torture dungeons aren't employed by the KGB. This is all being done by the government in Washington. Thanks to the culpable incompetence of the people who call themselves its "leadership," the JBS is doing nothing of consequence to stop it.