Carnival of the Liberals #98: Fearmongering Edition

Hello, and welcome to the spooooooky Halloween edition of the Carnival of the Liberals! Since conservatives have been devoting themselves to terrifying the American public for political gain for years, I thought today would be an appropriate day for liberals to return the favor. So I’m proud to present: the Fearmongering Edition of the Carnival of the Liberals, with a procession of frights and phantasies hysterical enough to make Glenn Beck look tame. Pregnant women and people with weak hearts, use caution when proceeding!

Two headed
To begin with: It’s the two headed monster! But don’t fear… the heads of the monster are eating each other! “There are two very different views of the Republican Party running loose on America’s streets at the moment.” Hide the children! Philip H. at DC Dispatches: Healthcare Reform & Bobby Jindal – Cracks in the Republican Armor.

Headless horseman
Now here comes The Headless Horseman! A warrior in foreign lands, with no vision of what it’s fighting, where it’s coming from, where it’s going, or how it’s going to win. “It has now been eight years, thirteen orbits of Venus, and the gods continue to fire wayward arrows into the sun without any memory of what came before.” Eric Michael Johnson at The Primate Diaries: Afghanistan’s Arrow and the Cycle of Imperial Hubris.

Night-of-the-living-dead
Next in our horrorshow: The Zombies! The dead that somehow live and walk! They shamble, they shuffle, and in a terrifying yet pathetic imitation of humanity, they can say only one word over and over: “No!” “On October 9, 2009, the Republican Party surpassed the anti-American rhetoric of the desperate remnants of the Taliban, in condemning the efforts of the United States to make the world a slightly better place while solidifying our status as the most envied nation in the world.” Jacob Johnson at Common Sense Caucus: The Olympic Lesson Revisited.

Evil-priest
And now we come to a classic character in horror fiction: The Evil Priest. He’s not in league with Satan; he’s not trying to stop you from deciphering the secret code of truth; he’s not a secret pagan who’s going to put you in a wicker basket and set you on fire. He just wants to write his religious views into law, taking away your civil rights while he’s at it. And in the state of Maine, no less! “Frankly, I’m tired of hearing this argument that the religious institution of marriage will fail if gays are allowed to marry, and I’m tired of hearing you treat religious marriage and secular marriage as the same thing, because they aren’t.” floslib at Spirited Script: Protect Marriage in Maine. (Carnival host note: The referendum on same sex marriage in Maine is happening this Tuesday, November 3. It’s not too late to take action!)

Robot army
What compendium of horrors would be complete without an Evil Robot Army? A sterile, monolithic, mechanical army relentlessly marching with one mind towards one mindless goal: profit. “Insurance companies are doing business the ‘right’ way — they’re for-profit, publicly-owned and -traded companies, after all. Making the most money they can is what they’re supposed to do, under the free-market, capitalist way of operating.” The Ridger at The Greenbelt: “doing business another way”.

Lion
But we don’t need supernatural or technological horrors to chill our bones. The natural world has terrors enough to fill a thousand nightmares: the primitive savagery of nature, red in tooth and claw. Or is it? Is cooperation one of the instincts of social animals — an insinct with applications to politics and economics? NOOOOO! “Social darwinists like Skilling have learned the wrong lessons about the natural world.” Eric Michael Johnson at Seed: Survival of the Kindest.

Village-of-the-damned
We don’t even need to stay in the adult world to fill our souls with dread. The spectre of evil children has filled horror stories for generations. And what legion of doom could be a more twisted perversion of childhood innocence than… The Boy Scouts? “How ironic it is that the Boy Scouts of America, an organization that purports to dedicate itself to making boys’ lives better and more productive, has decided that gay boys are not good enough.” Andrew Heath: Why It Is Important Not to Support the Boy Scouts.

M Poster
The sexual deviant is another classic icon of horror. But more horrifying even than this are the institutions that protect these deviants from coming to justice… and the institutions that attempt to legitimize this miscarriage of justice. “Thirty Senate Republicans voted to keep rape victims who work for defense contractors from having their day in court. How?” Madeleine Begun Kane at Mad Kane’s Political Madness: Ode To Pro-Rape Republicans.

Deliverance
And at least in American horror, The Scary Yokel is one of the most persistent characters. Barbaric, hateful, out of touch with every basic law of human decency, caring only for their twisted view of the world and their sick ability to brutaliz
e it into submission… wait, we’re talking about a justice of the peace? And has banning same-sex marriage been the first step to the establishment of a right wing theocracy? “We sit by as the Vocal Minority does their ranting about the sanctity of marriage and how Gays will destroy that and quietly, in the swamps of Cajun Country, some banjo plucking elected official is denying marriage to interracial couples because mocha babies are just too much for him to handle.” Paul Reyes-Fournier at coupledumb.com: WTF of the Week: Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License.

Black_Hole_in_the_universe
Finally, we have perhaps the most terrifying creature in the entire horror pantheon — The Void. Its representative today: Michele Bachmann, a hideous creature of entropy and petrifying barrenness, incapable of any positive achievement, but still emitting inhuman shrieks and noises that will curdle your blood. “Her stated philosophy is to do as little as possible in congress, and she does not believe in the use of Federal money for … things. So it should not be a surprise to her constituents that she has been personally responsible for almost no positive action that has helped her district.” Greg Laden at Greg Laden’s Blog: Michele Bachmann has done almost nothing as a congressperson.

My own contribution, which my deep-seated fear of seeming arrogant and egotistical keeps me from putting in the Top Ten: Same Sex Marriage, and Why You Passionately Care About Maine.

Also scary, but not quite making the Top Ten:

Leah L Burton presents Bachman-Style Census Paranoia According to 1 Chronicles? posted at God’s Own Party?.

Meg presents Severed Heads posted at Simpson’s Paradox.

Neosnowqueen presents Profanity Isn’t Poison posted at Winter Harvest.

Steven Handel presents The War on Drugs Is Up In Smoke posted at The Emotion Machine. (Note: This is a libertarian blog, not a liberal blog; but the content of this post is consistent with a liberal politics carnival, so I’m including it.)

Philip H presents The failures of Democratic “Leadership” In America posted at DC Dispatches.

Leah L. Burton presents Blog Forward… Interview w/Mikey Weinstein posted at God’s Own Party?.

Rick Foreman presents Healthcare Cost or Cost of No Healthcare? posted at Waiting for the Singularity.

Paul Reyes-Fournier presents Society Smackdown: Homosexuality posted at coupledumb.com.

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Bystander President? posted at Mad Kane’s Political Madness.

Andrew Bernardin presents Sunday Sacrilege: Plexiglass of the Sacred posted at the evolving mind.

The Ridger presents That’s Capitalism, Baby posted at The Greenbelt.

Marcella Chester presents Looking At Why Winona State University Named 11th Safest in USA posted at abyss2hope: A rape survivor’s zigzag journey into the open.

Doctor Biobrain presents Belief Is Not Enough posted at And Doctor Biobrain’s Response Is….

And that concludes our Halloween Fearmongering Edition of the Carnival of the Liberals. The host for CotL #99 is Liberal England, on Nov. 28. In the meantime, lock your doors, take your heart medication, and keep watching the skies!

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Carnival of the Liberals #98: Fearmongering Edition
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5 thoughts on “Carnival of the Liberals #98: Fearmongering Edition

  1. 1

    The mechanical success of our civilization has led many to basic materialism. Are western men divided into those humanists who think that there is ‘only this material world’ and those who believe in a spiritual world ? Humanists now proudly work for many praiseworthy goals, but also accept malthusiastic concepts such as overpopulation. So they declare some to be ‘ unter-menschen’, killing babies before they become human and easing away the senile. In contrast, the laws given by spiritual decree forbid unprincipled behavior by believers. God made our world for successive generations and plans to shut it down when the number of saints is full.
    A new book, ‘(obvious attempt to self-promote product unrelated to the topic being commented on deleted – GC)’ (available from Amazon.com) looks at some teachings of the Galilean. They are ridiculous and cannot happen if there is ‘only this world’. But viewed in the light of Flatland’s contiguous dimensional worlds, they make simple mechanistic sense. This is the way of science: to look at phenomena to see if they are explained by a theory. If they are, that theory is accepted as true. So the Galilean logically based his statements on a spiritual world that truly exists and is superior to ours. ‘(obvious attempt to self-promote product unrelated to the topic being commented on deleted – GC)’ discusses teachings about the Trinity, soul, resurrection, judgment, hell and Satan and others.
    As Jews, Muslims, and pagans learn that the spiritual world of Christ is real, wars and terror will pass and the reign of Love will ennoble our world for the wellbeing of all.
    GeorgeRic

  2. 3

    Anyone who compares a woman choosing to not have a child to the murder of six million Jews is a horrible monster, and their ideas do not merit serious discussion. Anyone who insists on writing hundreds of nearly identical comments and posting them on dozens of blogs, topical or not, is an obsessed and repetitive jerk. Anyone who promotes their book in every comment is a spammer. GeorgeRic is all 3.

  3. 5

    Greta:
    I’m confused…how is the concept of getting along with your fellow man a bad thing?
    Or is it the overall stupidity of the author’s argument that you find so terrifying?

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