I wish this were snark.
Donald Rumsfeld came out with a vicious screed against mom, baseball and apple pie today, launching a vicious rhetorical assault on the United States America.
In an especially candid interview, Rumsfeld compared Uncle Sam to a dim-witted Neville Chamberlain, stating that Americans were guilty of appeasement of fascists.
Of course, it’s not suprising that Mr. Rumsfeld has contempt for Joe Sixpack, given his intellectual elitism that leads him to believe he has a better grasp on history than the vast majority of Americans.
To top it off, apparently Rumsfeld believes that Americans are deeply befuddled about themselves and the world–not only on an rational level, but on a deep-seated moral and personal level.
I’m not kidding.
Rumsfeld said all this in a speech today to the American Legion in Salt Lake City, Utah. The transcript is not yet available, but certain quotes are, through releases in the traditional media.
As you read this, please keep in mind that a full 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of the Iraq “war”.
A FULL SIXTY-FIVE PERCENT OF AMERICA. That this were a presidential election, it would be a landslide of epic proportions.
And yet Rumsfeld truly believes that sixty-five percent of America are cowardly, traitorous, dim-witted, morally confused appeasers.
Some choice quotes:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq and counterterrorism policies of lacking the courage to fight terror.
That’s sixty-five percent of America he’s talking about. He just called America a nation of cowards. Personally, from what I’ve seen of America, we’re not a country to be messed with. We pull pre-emptive strikes on other nations and stuff.
If I hated America as much as Donald Rumsfeld does, I’d be worried; after all, look at what we did to Saddam Hussein–and he never threatened us at all!
More:
In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration’s critics as suffering from “moral and intellectual confusion” about what threatens the nation’s security.
I do wish most Americans had Donald Rumsfeld’s intellectual and moral clairvoyance. Most Americans are too stupid and too sociopathic to see how our troops are being greeted as liberators, how Saddam had huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, how the war has paid for itself in a few short months with Iraqi oil, and how Iraq is now a beacon of democracy for the Middle East.
Donald Rumsfeld has the moral vision and intellectual clarity to see it. Why doesn’t America?
Addressing several thousand veterans at the American Legion’s national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.
“I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism” he said.
My friends, this is NOT the same America that defeat Germany and Japan in World War II. This is a cowardly nation, a defeatist nation–a nation quivering in terror at Islamofascism. If liberals were in charge, we’d all be quivering in terror at airports, unable to bring personal possessions on a plane, and we’d be locking up, deporting, and denying entry to Americans simply on suspicion of being Muslim. Thank God that Republicans are in charge, so that we don’t have to live in liberal fear.
And frankly, since sixty-five percent of America apparently wants to live in Neville ChamberLand, I say, “to hell with America!” I am glad that Donald Rumsfeld agrees.
More:
“But it is apparent that many have still not learned history’s lessons,” he said, adding that part of the problem is that the American news media have tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive.
There goes that liberal elitist intellectual paternalism again. These people think that regular Americans don’t know anything, that we’re stupid to figure out what’s best for us.
Real Americans know that Iraq is a major front in World War III against IslamoFascists; that negative media images lost us the Vietnam War (thank God we hanged Walter Cronkite for Treason); and that pro-war propaganda was the only reason we won the Battle of Midway.
Of course, most Americans aren’t real anymore. They’re fake Americans. Sixty-five percent of ’em.
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I just have one question for the right wing at this point: “Why does Donald Rumsfeld Hate America?” He’s an intellectual elitist snob who thinks that Americans are confused, cowardly appeasers who are voting against their own self-interest.
After all, if it’s good for the goose, it’s gotta be good for the gander.
Right?
[Cross-posted from My Left Wing, and on the Daily Kos]
for victory.
I just read this before stopping in here at the pond. I could not believe what he was saying, especially to Vets. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black. This guy is totally insane.
he’s totally desperate. Apparently, there’s a big push for ratcheted-up rhetoric from ALL of the architects of the Iraq Occupation. For a fuller story, there’s an article on RedState about it here.
And they’re celebrating this very speech here.
Simply incredible.
ah yes, they love to rewrite history don’t they. They started blaming Clinton right after 9/11 and really haven’t stopped. I wonder when ol Bill will stop holding hands with the Bush family?
Passed this along to everyone on my email list.
glad to help the progressive cause.
When “stating that Americans were guilty of appeasement of fascists” and “I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism” He is absolutely right….
…it’s the reason he and his friends are in power.
The 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.” (The US dictionary definition has gotten somewhat squishier since then, as all the larger dictionary companies have been bought up by multinational corporations.)
That’s from a great article by Thom Hartman on the subject that can be found here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_thom_har_060828_thom_hartmann_3b_recla.htm
He very quickly looks at Vice President of the United States’ Henry Wallace’s 1944 article in the NYT warning Americans of the danger of fascism to the United States.
It doesn’t bode well. The problem is is that the Republican Party is now confusing Theocracy with Fascism, changing meanings, signs and signifiers within the popular culture until everyone is confused as to what fascism ACTUALLY is.
Somehow I am not surprised.
I don’t think the Repubs like Rumsfeld are a bit confused. I think this is a deliberate use of language that Democrats should be using against the current administration. It is operating in a fascist manner. It is conforming largely to the definition of fascism, class warfare, use of racism to divide people in order to seek the leaders own goals, etc. It is a deliberate and crass attempt a manipulation of vulnerable listeners (vets) to get them to fear raising objections to what is going on in the false guise of national interest.
But our “loyal opposition” as it used to be called, is almost totally cowed. When the Democratic leaders in Congress are accused of “class warfare” – which the right wing is certainly practicing with their unalloyed movement of resources from the poor, working, and middle class to the super rich, Dems run in fear from the label. And they remain silenced.
So, in a similar way, we lost “liberal”, that very good term. With what they’ve accomplished, the right wing is trying to move from taking away good positive labels and moving directly to applying negative labels to Democrats and progressives: cowards, unpatriotic, supporters of terrorism, and so on.
I hope that I didn’t imply that they, Republicans such as Rumsfeld, were confused. You are right, they’re not, but I wanted to say that they are confusing the term so that the general public is confused. They, on the other hand, as you said are very deliberate in their ideology, which I believe everyone here is very much aware of.
Heh, maybe my own writing was ‘confused’…