The Putrid Politics of Jesse Kelly's Super-Ego

Let's face it, the Giffords shooting brought out both the best and the worst in us: President Obama gave a fitting speech while pundits and politicians fought to prove who was to blame - and not to blame. And amidst this spectacle, we gave short shrift to some details which are now only emerging. 

We all knew that Giffords' election opponent, Jesse Kelly, used gun imagery (literally) in his campaign against Giffords. And we know that he wasn't at all apologetic about it. We also know that know that Kelly fully intended to keep his campaign alive after the election:

From Tucson Weekly  - DEC. 28:

The GOP rumor circuit is buzzing with word that Kelly will announce his plans to run against Giffords as soon as mid-January.


And, depending on how things go at tomorrow’s hearing of the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments, he may end up with a friend on the Independent Redistricting Committee.

That "friend" is one Christopher Gleason, whose ties to a right-wing religious group, Vision 360, kept him from being considered. The group "plants" churches in major metropolitan areas.

Vision360 is committed to furthering the message, the movement and the cultivation of leadership. As a church planting organization, our mission is to serve and empower a collaborative church planting community in 500 global cities by 2025. We believe through an investment in gifted leaders, we can change the spiritual trends of our country and the world.

Church planter Steve Johnson, together with Al Weiss, President, Worldwide Operations, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, felt a call by God to begin to multiply churches.  Originally the goal was to start 20 churches surrounding the city of Orlando, strategically using qualified and experienced church planters. 

The ministry's website also spouts fundamentalist biblical values which seem at odds with it other value statements concerning the now-pejorative social justice* (made so by Glenn Beck). To it's credit, however, it does not seem to ally itself with any fundamentalist denomination like the Southern Baptist Convention. Is it Reconstructionism in disguise? It's possible, since support of Jesse Kelly conveys the Reconstructionist premise of infiltrating government.

NO WORD


Tucson is oddly silent lately, maybe because Brian Miller, Pima County Republican Party chair, has called on everyone to take a break from politics for a while.. But with politics and politicians, nothing is really quiet from lack of activity. And while I haven't been able to find out any material on Gleason's appointment, sources say that Tea Partiers, Vision 360 and Jesse Kelly are busy laying the foundations of a new campaign. 

 

Of course, timing is crucial, but so is the strategy of not seeming too eager to pounce on the tragedy, especially with the poor judgment of his last campaign. So, in a sense, Kelly's future will hinge on several things: Vision 360's generosity and patience and the CD 8 constituents' patience and compassion for Giffords.

 

UPDATE: As of this writing, Jesse Kelly has taken on the job of development director of the website for Vision360 and is soon to host a new radio talk show called Spotlight Arizona, sponsored by - Vision 360. 

 

Sigmund Freud defined the super-ego as the moralizing role of the psyche. Behind Kelly's shoot-em up Tea Party campaign lies a super-ego that may be a far greater driving force than the hunger for mere political power. I wonder if we shouldn't be very watchful of Kelly's political moves and Vision 360's as well. Remember the motto of the unhinged (but dangerous) Repent Amarillo: "Politics Is Ministry." And we should remember this quote from Kelly in December:

“We have unfinished business here in southern Arizona. It’s time to finish what we started,” the e-mail flier to top donors in Tucson, Ariz., read. “I am running for Congress again, and I am asking you to join me. Early contributions will allow us to focus for two years on unseating Gabrielle Giffords!”

A strategy of Generosity - Patience - Compassion. A tall order for Kelly and his friends. A very tall order.

* Read Vision360's statement on "Social Responsibility"

The Bleaching of Arizona

"I'm not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it's a word I can't stand."

                                  - Steve Blair, KYCA-AM talk show host and Prescott City Councilman.

A mural on the side of an elementary school in Prescott, AZ is quickly becoming the icon of Arizona's legislative and educational goals. It depicts the actual children of the school in solidarity for green transportation. Sounds cool, eh? But one city councilman/broadcaster wants it destroyed. Because the most prominant child in the large mural is black. And most of the other kids are ...brown. 

While painting it, the local artists were subjected to the epithets of "nigger" and "spic" shouted out of passing cars. The principal of the school has decided that the best thing to do under the circumstances is to lighten the faces of the kids!

R.E. Wall, director of the Prescott Downtown Mural Project, described weeks of tense working conditions for the "Mural Mice," the group of artists responsible for the Miller Valley mural and several others around town.

Wall reports hearing comments such as "You're desecrating our school," "Get the ni----- off the wall," and "Get the sp-- off the wall."

"The pressure stayed up consistently," Wall said. "We had two months of cars shouting at us."

Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of the Miller Valley School (no student over 10 years old, Miller Valley being only a K-5 school). The artwork was chosen by both students and faculty. 

Steve Blair, the broadcaster/councilman says he is "ashamed" of the "diversity power struggle" that he thinks is depicted in the mural.

It hasn't been reported yet what the children in the mural think about their images being lightened to conform with Prescott's image of itself. Neither has it been said what they think of the people of Prescott who obviously hate them.

Prescott's image is getting to be the image of Arizona as well. 

The Law and The Wall

President Obama recently met with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to discuss the illegal immigration situation faced by Arizona. She was emphatic that the new law empowering law enforcement to demand proof of citizenship was not engineered for racial profiling. She also insisted on the 1200 troops promised to beef up border patrol and completion of the security wall at the border. 

She said that the meeting was "cordial." I'll bet. 

And the 3 R's

From Think Progress, April 30:

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Arizona Department of Education “recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English”:

Etnic Studies as Chauvanism:

[State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne] claimed the ethnic studies program encourages "ethnic chauvanism," promotes Latinos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States and tries to intimidate conservative teachers in the school system.

Unfortunately, the "conservative teachers in the school system" may be the chauvanists, literally trying to whitewash the school system while teaching that ethnicity is not "American." The slant of Arizona's new laws will definitely create a slope as slippery as snow on frozen rain: people WILL be profiled, children WILL be dicriminated against and taught only nationalism. Ugly racism WILL increase. Education WILL suffer. 

If Thomas Jefferson were here now, he would weep for the inequality of man in the southwest. Then again, his tears wouldn't matter - he's been demoted in Texas history.

 

Arizona: The Right's New War Zone - Because The Right Wants War - ANY War!

Civil War. Culture War. Immigration War. Race War. Genocide. Regicide. 

Pick one...or all.

You'd think that George Bush's taste for war would have slated any hawk's thirsty aggression, but it seems that our American species of hawk is never really satisfied. We gave them Iraq and Afghanistan to drink from, but besides an enormous bloodlust, hawkish Right-wingers have a kind of ADD that affects their leaders and journalists: "Wars? What Wars?" When's the last time you saw FOX News carry anything substantial about the Middle East NOT involving Israel or Iran?

Come to think of it, have you ever known a rabid Right-winger who was not a hawk?  Maybe it's in the genes: close-minded aggression seems to ooze from their pores. They were meant to bark orders as well as take them. Maybe it's in their traditions (check out the elite all male Hampden-Sydney College to get a taste of the mawkish-but-hawkish preppy life that has managed to survive).

Arizona Do Or Die

Today's most fertile ground for aggression is, obviously, the southwestern state of Arizona. And the war zone's headlines for today were truly chilling: it's new "papers or else" law is old news. Now it has gone as far as banning ethnic studies and firing teachers who have heavy accents. And the Southern Poverty Law Center has discovered that the lawyer who drafted Arizona's new racial profiling law is himself part of an anti-immigration hate group. The group is, ironically, called FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), but has nothing to do with fairness: some of its employees are registered members of the Pioneer Fund and various other white supremicist groups. The lawyer, Dan Stein, went head-to-head with Rachel Maddow, so it wasn't really a "fair" battle, and he came out looking very angry and on the "you're just trying to smear us" defensive. Maddow's  determination to get to what FAIR was founded upon is truly is awesome. Watch it below.

Battlecry for Texas: "Nullification First!"

Say what you will about the Right's "war fever, " it's systemic in some states. One year ago, Governor Rick Perry said this:

We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and a pretty independent lot to boot.

But today's Texas-line-of-reasoning from the website, Texas Secede! is more cautious (but nonetheless sinister):

Right now, unlike any other time in US history, a nullification movement has taken hold — and is growing — in most of the US states, including Texas. This means there is a strong, public-centered, and legally-informed opposition to the bloated despotism reigning in Washington, and a growing intent to invoke the Consitution itself to tell both the White House and Congress that their "federal laws" are null and void wherever they cross the line drawn by the Tenth Amendment.

A Rasmussen Reports poll found that 48% of Republicans in Texas favored secession. Polls of the nullification movement should prove to be even more enlightening.

Righteous Assasination

Lately, the rhetorical weapon espoused by the new "social conservatives" is anything but conservative: Republicans are calling President Obama everything from "monster" to "Anti-Christ." Ministers have openly prayed for the death of Obama and Supreme Court Justices as well. Name-calling, however, is probably the most cowardly weapon of choice for today's Right: when violence actually does ensue, they conveniently (and ludicrously) look the other way. The fact remains, however: rhetoric can kill. Today's legal minds have a name for the results of purposely inflamatory speech: righteous assasination.

"I am dedicating my life to the death of Obama and every employee of the federal government," the posting said. It ended with a call to arms: "This is war. Join me. Or don't. I don't care. I'm not laying down anymore."

This message was posted on Craiglist under the heading "Obama Must Die" by one Brian Dean Miller of Dallas, Texas (what is it with Texas?) He later stated that it was "fiction" but the Secret Service has not treated it as such. His mother has stated that Brian suffers from depression.

And on Twitter, several weeks ago, self-styled conservative blogger Solly Forrell openly called for the assasination of Obama, but then backtracked immediately to correct the act. 

Both threats were supposedly based upon the authors' disapproval of Obama's efforts on healthcare reform. Neither of them had read anything about the reform bill except from posts by right-wing activists. 

If You Don't Like 'Em, Deport 'Em, Or ...

By now, everyone knows that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer wants to see every Muslim in the U.S. deported (including ones who are U.S. citizens), but he has also come out with a statement that Arizona's new immigration law is ...Biblical. That's right. God has sanctified it:

Arizona's governor Jan Brewer explained to Greta Van Susteren this week that she signed this bill into law because, as governor, she has a responsibility to protect the safety and security of Arizonans. You can't get any more biblical than that.

Now, use of the Bible as a weapon in warfare is almost as old as the Bible itself, but like incendiary rhetoric, it's very cowardly. Simply put, it's a don't-blame-me-blame-God defense against critics of aggression. The problem that humanity now faces: the Right's religious battalion has been exporting its aggression to Africa. The "kill-the-gays" bill of Uganda has emboldened Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice to assist Zimbabwe and Kenya in re-drafting their constitutions. In the matter of abortions. As in no legal abortions even if the mother's life is in danger. 

And The Greatest Weapon of All: FEAR

As early as next week, the House Education and Labor Committee will start debating a bill that could do permanent damage to American liberty as we know it. Under this bill, the government will order businesses, including religious ones, to stuff their personal beliefs and hire gays and lesbians--even if the organization considers the lifestyle immoral. .... At the very least, it will force people out of business. At its worst, it will bully into silence every American who disagrees with homosexual behavior.

                                 - from "The War To ENDA All Wars" by Tony Perkins, President,                                            Family Research Council

Tony Perkins may have made his mark upon English literature with such awful-pun-headlining, but he is still considered by the Christian Right to be its knight in shining armor. In fact, his image will probably be immortalized on the side of a mountain (does it matter which one?) depicted as the valiant St. George slaying the dragon (Barack Obama). His daily missives have been full of sturm und drang about everything liberal, everything Obama, everything homosexual. And he knows that abject fear is the best source of donations. His acolytes, however, are even more virulent (and ultimately more violent?): Bill Donohue, Bryan Fischer,  Peter LaBarbera,  Janet Porter, and the ever-hoarse Lou Engle. 

What happens when unabashed Reconstructionists and Right wingnuts who are waging war with the rest of the world get together? They usually stand in front of government buildings and scream at them and the people who are in them (in this case , the backdrop was the Lincoln Memorial - go figure). They then ask God to rain down fire, brimstone, frogs, locusts, pestilence and anything else vial enough to make the American public go ape-sh*t with awe. They look like idiots, but we must always remember that they are very dangerous idiots who love war, need war. 

The clip below is very revealing: they might be "repenting" of sins like electing a Muslim to Congress, but it's clear that they won't repent of the abject hatred for anyone who disagrees with them. BTW - two things marred the event: poor attendance and poor MSM coverage. We'll see who inflates the numbers first.

And so it is: the Right is at war. Their enemies: all liberals, all immigrants, all homosexuals, all Muslims. Their current battle sites: Arizona, Texas, Washington, the entire Middle East, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda. Their rhetoric, their fervor, their money will create more wars.

Sad.

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