Wingnuts: Hate and Paranoia is on the rise in the US

[Peter McKenna]

A good read about the proliferation of the fringe elements in the United States. The world wide web has provided a platform for every iteration of hate, fear, paranoia, and ridiculously contrived theories of how "They" are doing "It" to "Us":

http://www.amazon.com/Wingnuts-Lunatic-Fringe-Hijacking-America/dp/0984295119

"What is a wingnut? It’s someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum. they are the professional partisans and unhinged activists, the hard-core haters and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. And they are on the rise.

Pumped up by the self-segregated echo chamer of talk radio, cable news, and the Internet, Winguts see politics as ideological bloodsport, an all-or-nothing struggle for the nation’s soul. They are energized by dividing Amreica into “us against them.” And for those with a vested interest in stirring the crazy-pot, all all this is good for business. Hate is a cheap and easy recruiting tool. But it can be murder on democracy."

Take the Japanese Earthquake for instance. More than 28,000 dead or missing from the quake and tsunami. not one person killed or known to be ill from the accidents at the Fukashima nuclear reactors, yet it has soaked up more than twice the news coverage because it foments fear and paranoia.

Conspiracy theories abound for the Japan disaster, 9/11, Katrina, you name it. Why? Because it plays upon irrational fear and allows blame to be assigned to "Them".

We live in a society where blame must be assigned for everything, in order to address irrational fears.

Whole careers are being built on this.

Edited April 4, 2011 by Peter McKenna

[Duane Daman]

This reviewer got it right when he posted this on the web site promoting this book.

By Charles F. Lantz (San Francisco)

This review is from: Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (Paperback)

By pretending that the battle between the current Right and Left political wings is somehow an even battle, between two equally honorable foes, is naive' in the extreme. Simply put, this is a war between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. If you talk to a right-winger long enough, whether he or she is a member of the Tea-Party, a hard-core Republican, or a self-titled (and most likely fake) "independent", nine time out of ten you'll find a racist, a hater and a champion of ignorance. The fact that someone like Olbermann fights back against the hypocrisy of the Right as ferociously as the Right dispenses that hypocrisy does not make him a "wing-nut" by any stretch of the imagination.

[Peter McKenna]

This reviewer got it right when he posted this on the web site promoting this book.

By Charles F. Lantz (San Francisco)

This review is from: Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (Paperback)

By pretending that the battle between the current Right and Left political wings is somehow an even battle, between two equally honorable foes, is naive' in the extreme. Simply put, this is a war between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. If you talk to a right-winger long enough, whether he or she is a member of the Tea-Party, a hard-core Republican, or a self-titled (and most likely fake) "independent", nine time out of ten you'll find a racist, a hater and a champion of ignorance. The fact that someone like Olbermann fights back against the hypocrisy of the Right as ferociously as the Right dispenses that hypocrisy does not make him a "wing-nut" by any stretch of the imagination.

Um, .... The reviewer, then, has quite missed the point, LOL.

The point is that the lunatic fringe, from both sides of the aisle, and including the paranoid CT'ists, are hijacking the democratic process. You might try reading it or at least glance at the sections visible at Amazon. Your reviewer attempted to hijack the book review to wax about his left wing POV. That's just another example of a fringe element stealing soap box exposure to trumpet his own marginal points.. "a war between .... truth and lies,... Good and Evil"? Just more paranoia.

Duane, you are getting into the swing of things and utilizing the conspiracy theorists' MO; co-opting the sensible POV as a soap box for the paranoid fringe element.

The book is not about the right or the left, but about the lunatic fringe.

[John Bevilaqua]

This reviewer got it right when he posted this on the web site promoting this book.

By Charles F. Lantz (San Francisco)

This review is from: Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (Paperback)

By pretending that the battle between the current Right and Left political wings is somehow an even battle, between two equally honorable foes, is naive' in the extreme. Simply put, this is a war between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. If you talk to a right-winger long enough, whether he or she is a member of the Tea-Party, a hard-core Republican, or a self-titled (and most likely fake) "independent", nine time out of ten you'll find a racist, a hater and a champion of ignorance. The fact that someone like Olbermann fights back against the hypocrisy of the Right as ferociously as the Right dispenses that hypocrisy does not make him a "wing-nut" by any stretch of the imagination.

Um, .... The reviewer, then, has quite missed the point, LOL.

The point is that the lunatic fringe, from both sides of the aisle, and including the paranoid CT'ists, are hijacking the democratic process. You might try reading it or at least glance at the sections visible at Amazon. Your reviewer attempted to hijack the book review to wax about his left wing POV. That's just another example of a fringe element stealing soap box exposure to trumpet his own marginal points.. "a war between .... truth and lies,... Good and Evil"? Just more paranoia.

Duane, you are getting into the swing of things and utilizing the conspiracy theorists' MO; co-opting the sensible POV as a soap box for the paranoid fringe element.

The book is not about the right or the left, but about the lunatic fringe.

It is a shame that this site is home to some of these lunatic fringe elements who spout theories about "faked Moon landings" and the OK Bombing and 9/11 as U.S. Gov. sponsored

events. Why even give them the chance to add fuel to the paranoid fires?

[Len Colby]

Though I liked Olbermann he was a bit over the top

[Duane Daman]

This reviewer got it right when he posted this on the web site promoting this book.

By Charles F. Lantz (San Francisco)

This review is from: Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (Paperback)

By pretending that the battle between the current Right and Left political wings is somehow an even battle, between two equally honorable foes, is naive' in the extreme. Simply put, this is a war between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. If you talk to a right-winger long enough, whether he or she is a member of the Tea-Party, a hard-core Republican, or a self-titled (and most likely fake) "independent", nine time out of ten you'll find a racist, a hater and a champion of ignorance. The fact that someone like Olbermann fights back against the hypocrisy of the Right as ferociously as the Right dispenses that hypocrisy does not make him a "wing-nut" by any stretch of the imagination.

Um, .... The reviewer, then, has quite missed the point, LOL.

The point is that the lunatic fringe, from both sides of the aisle, and including the paranoid CT'ists, are hijacking the democratic process. You might try reading it or at least glance at the sections visible at Amazon. Your reviewer attempted to hijack the book review to wax about his left wing POV. That's just another example of a fringe element stealing soap box exposure to trumpet his own marginal points.. "a war between .... truth and lies,... Good and Evil"? Just more paranoia.

Duane, you are getting into the swing of things and utilizing the conspiracy theorists' MO; co-opting the sensible POV as a soap box for the paranoid fringe element.

The book is not about the right or the left, but about the lunatic fringe.

Peter,

I have no doubt that if you wrote a book about the "lunatic fringe" element in America, it would be a best seller among the Sarah Palin/Rush Limbaugh/Glen Beck/etc. tea party crowd.

Here's another book written by someone I have no doubt you would also consider to be one of "lunatic fringe", but unfortunately for all of us, he speaks the truth, even if your closed minded, state of denial, mentality refuses to beleive it.

Here's a excerpt from Jessie Ventura's book about government conspiracies and cover ups.

The book you’re about to read is undertaken in the same spirit. I’ve divided the book into five parts, starting out first to show links between deeds our government perpetrated in the past and what’s going on today. If you don’t know your own history, you’re doomed to repeat it. You’ll come across documents on some pretty scandalous behavior, including:

• The CIA’s secret assassination manual and experiments to control human behavior with hypnosis, drugs, and other methods.

• The military’s Operation Northwoods, a chilling attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stage a terror attack on our own citizens and make it look like Cuba was behind it – using a hijacked airliner, no less!

• After President Kennedy was trying to get our troops out of Vietnam, the military faked the Gulf of Tonkin attacks in order to expand the war.

• Our chemical and biological warfare capability back in 1969, leading you to wonder about the real origin of things like AIDS and lyme disease.

Part two delves into a series of government, military and corporate secrets, opening with excerpts from two recent reports on how our military and intelligence outfits put Nazi war criminals to work after World War Two. From there, you’ll see some eye-opening documents including:

• The CIA’s “Propaganda Notes” designed to shore up the Warren Commission’s lone-gunman conclusion.

• How Oliver North collaborated with Panama’s drug-running dictator Manuel Noriega.

• What America knew, and ignored, about the genocide happening in Rwanda in the mid-1990s.

• How we still turn a blind eye to Gulf War Illness and our veterans.

• The frightening background for our military to intervene in domestic affairs, set up “emergency relocation facilities” for our citizens, and establish a Civilian Inmate Labor Program.

• How failed inspections and ignored science are impacting our food supply and our bees, while we push to promote Monsanto’s biotech agenda.

• What our military really knows about the dangers of climate change.

• How companies like CitiGroup and Koch Industries promote their “plutocracies” at the expense of the rest of us.

Part Three I’ve called Shady White Houses, starting with “Tricky Dick” Nixon and his astounding plan to bring peace to Vietnam by pretending to nuke the Soviet Union! You’ll also learn about:

• How the Bush White House stole the presidential elections in 2000 and again in 2004.

• The Obama State Department’s call for our own diplomats to spy on the United Nations.

• Whether “cybersecurity” could mean the end of the Internet as we know it.

Part four focuses in on a subject I’ve explored a great deal in recent years, and that’s whether we’ve been told the truth about the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

• A think tank called the Project for a New American Century anticipating “a new Pearl Harbor” to promote its agenda for “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”

• Clear warnings the Bush Administration ignored that something was coming.

• The “Stand Down” order that kept our military from responding on 9/11.

• Evidence that Building 7 was taken down by a controlled demolition.

• The role of insider stock trading in advance of 9/11.

And finally, part five examines the so-called “war on terror” and the terrible price we’re paying in terms of our liberties and the lives being lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. You’ll first read excerpts from a long memo by Bush’s Justice Department that subverts the Constitution by shredding a number of civil rights, followed by Bush’s justification for America’s torture of “unlawful combatants.” * The “Media Ground Rules” that keep the truth hidden at Guantanamo.

• The torture techniques, and medical experiments, being conducted there and the paper trail on the CIA’s destruction of 92 torture videos.

• Decapitation of a detainee in Iraq, by our own troops!

• How the CIA “spins” the war in Afghanistan, and the fact that drugs are fueling that country’s economy.

• The State Department’s revelation that Saudi Arabia is actually “a critical source of terrorist funding.”

• A report by the Rand Corporation showing that military force has never worked in combating terrorism.

Following the 63 documents, you’ll find an Epilogue of Internet resources to use in your own pursuit of the truth about what’s going on behind-the-scenes.

Here’s what should concern us all: if you look back at the US Patriot Act that Congress passed almost unanimously in the wake of 9/11, the Bill of Rights was already in peril. Let me offer a brief outline of how things changed:

The First Amendment is about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the right to assemble. The Patriot Act says that the government is free to monitor religious and political institutions without any suspicion of criminal activity. The government can also prosecute librarians or the keepers of any other records (including journalists) related to a “terror investigation.”

The Fourth Amendment speaks to our right to be secure “against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Patriot Act says the government can search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without probable cause.

The Sixth Amendment entitles anyone accused of a crime to “a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” The Patriot Act says the government can jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.

The Sixth Amendment says an accused person has “compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.” The Patriot Act says the government can monitor conversations between attorneys and clients in federal prisons and even deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.

The Sixth Amendment also says an accused criminal must “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” The Patriot Act says Americans can be jailed without even being charged, let alone face any witnesses.

What troubles me more than anything is how Congress can simply vote to supersede the Constitution. They’re not allowed to do that, to vote in new rules arbitrarily. Changing the Constitution requires you to go through many hoops. How can we allow this kind of unprecedented change to happen?

At the same time, it’s recently been reported that our government is building up a huge domestic spying network to collect information on us all, involving local police, state and military authorities feeding information into a database on people who’ve never been accused of wrongdoing. Homeland Security has given billions of dollars in grants to state governments since 9/11, and there are now more than 4,000 organizations in the domestic apparatus. The FBI keeps the ultimate file, with profiles on tens of thousands of Americans reported to be “acting suspiciously.” (I’m sure I’m one of them.) Also the technologies we’ve developed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now being used by law enforcement agencies at home – hand-held fingerprint scanners, biometric data devices, unmanned aircraft monitoring our borders with Mexico and Canada.

In other words, we the taxpayers are funding our own government to keep tabs on what we do! This is outrageous, but it’s been a long time coming. Our tax dollars have paid for mind control experiments and assassination attempts and fake attacks to draw us into war. Our tax dollars have funded drug runners and “extraordinary rendition” of detainees. And they’ve not been used in places where they should be going – like to help our veterans cope with Gulf War Syndrome and to keep the nation of Rwanda from mass genocide. What right does the government have to abuse our money like that? This is diabolical!

I’ve put together this book because it’s become crystal-clear that our democracy has been undermined from within and it’s been going on for a long time. We the people have got to wake up and start demanding accountability! Let’s never forget the words of Patrick Henry: “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

http://piersmorgan.b...nt-you-to-read/

As for your belief that the battle between truth and lies and good and evil, is just "more paranoia" all I can say is that the word naive doesn't even begin to describe your particular mindset.

[Duane Daman]

It is a shame that this site is home to some of these lunatic fringe elements who spout theories about "faked Moon landings" and the OK Bombing and 9/11 as U.S. Gov. sponsored

events. Why even give them the chance to add fuel to the paranoid fires?

What's a real shame is that closed minded people like you dominate this forum to the point where certain conspiraces ( like 911 and Apollo ) are impossible to discuss in a polite and rational manner.

It's ok to have your own opinions about certain subjects without describing those you disagree with as being "paranoid".

[Evan Burton]

Oh come Duane - you are on moderation because you can't discuss things in a polite manner! And that has been true for a number of forums, hasn't it? You are either moderated or banned from them... including a pro-hoax site, IIRC! So please, no pot calling the kettle black.

[Duane Daman]

Oh come Duane - you are on moderation because you can't discuss things in a polite manner! And that has been true for a number of forums, hasn't it? You are either moderated or banned from them... including a pro-hoax site, IIRC! So please, no pot calling the kettle black.

Oh come Evan .. The real reason I'm on moderation is because you disagree with my opinion about Apollo and I called you and your Apollogist friends a tag team of disinformationists .. I have never bad mouthed you the way you do me, behind my back, on other forums like BAUT and apollohoax.net.

Half of the members of this forum post rude and unkind remarks to those they disagree with, yet I don't see any of them on permanent moderation.. You're only half way "polite" to me on this forum because you have to be, and have admitted as much on apollohoax.net.. Don't be such a hypocrite.

btw, what pro hoax site was I banned from? .. If you're referring to the MSN forum I started with another hoax believer, then you have your "facts" wrong.. I left that forum on my own accord after discovering the only reason he started it was to conduct immature mud slinging contests with the pro Apollo crowd.. The only forums I've been banned from are Unexplained Mysteries and The Supernatural World... Not because I was rude, but because the pro Apollo moderators on those forums wanted me silenced.

[Evan Burton]

I see - it's always because they wanted you out. I believe you. Really.

[Duane Daman]

I see - it's always because they wanted you out. I believe you. Really.

It really doesn't matter what you believe, since you wouldn't recognize the truth if it jumped up and slapped you in the face.

You never answered my question .. What does IRC stand for? .. If I'm going to be falsely accused of being banned from a pro hoax site, I would at least like to know the name of it.

Edited April 18, 2011 by Duane Daman