In times of crisis, we need firm leadership to take decisive action, intellectual rigor to develop judicious strategies, and an unwavering commitment to the sensible, factual, and true. That said, steer clear of each of the following people.
Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Alan Harper
Elected officials and law enforcement officers all have some guidance on how you can keep your family and community safe this holiday season. But one Alabama lawmaker has some rather unorthodox advice in this regard.
AL.com reports that an Alabama state representative, Republican Alan Harper, took to Facebook Monday to advise shoppers to avoid any stores that aren’t owned by “God fearing Christians.” He warns that spending your hard earned dollars at a business that doesn’t fear Harper’s specific god can make you implicitly support terrorism, since such vendors “send their profits back to their homeland and then in turn use these funds against our country to create turmoil, fear, and in some cases death and destruction.”
To his credit, Harper admits that he is “painting with a broad brush,” but in case you’re wondering how to spot the non-Christian businesses, Harper has a #protip for you: “Look behind the cash register. Most are owner/operators.”
Harper has apparently deleted the original post, but portions of it are quoted here.
ViaAL.com
4. Alex McFarland
Preacher, author, and purveyor of Christian apologetics, Alex McFarland beamed himself in to Dove TV’s Focus Today Thursday to apply his keen insight and deep love and knowledge of the Scriptures to the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. Naturally, he blamed the attacks on abortion and gay marriage.
From Right Wing Watch:
“People are saying, ‘Why didn’t God prevent this?'” McFarland stated, “Look, we’ve for 45 years told God to leave us alone. Fifty-seven to sixty million babies aborted, now our Supreme Court has deviated from natural law to case law and we’ve redefined marriage … God forgive us for the murder of the unborn, God forgive us for kicking prayer out of public schools, God forgive us for making sodomy mainstream and redefining marriage.”
“The greatest sin of all is abortion in our nation,” he continued, “and the judgment of God only escalate until we turn to the Lord.”
As the interview went on, McFarland — who markets himself with the slogan “Trusted, Truthful, Timely” — also admitted that he secretly suspects Obama of being a Muslim.
Next: Alex Jones and Donald Trump
3. Alex Jones & Donald Trump
“What happens when paranoid meets paranoid? A crossing of solipsisms. Clearly. The two patterns create a third: a moiré, a new world of flowing shadows, interferences….”
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
InfoWars host and patron saint of paranoid claptrap, Alex Jones, is the blowhard for whom the term “truther” does miserable justice. After all this is the same man who once dressed up as a blood-stained clown to warn Americans about the pope and U.N. conspiring to inject autism-causing vaccines into children for the purpose of molesting them.
Jones invited Donald Trump — the GOP frontrunner whose penchant for bellicose rhetoric had metastasized of late into full blown fascism — onto his program Wednesday. The 30-minute interview was a unsettling meeting of the addled minds with a fawning Jones singing Trump’s praises, calling him a “maverick, an original,” saying Trump had been “vindicated” for his debunked claims that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey were celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers en masse on 9/11.
What’s somewhat baffling is that Jones, who sees false flag operations in his cream of wheat, is utterly unbothered by Trump’s past coziness with the Clintons and the kind of shady business deals you’d think a Fox Mulder wannabe would jump all over. No, Jones is basically in the tank for The Donald, saying on another occasion: “He’s been so positive, just the facts he’s bringing up are so incendiary to the other side that we have to defend him because the ideas he’s putting out in general are very good.”
You can listen below to the GOP frontrunner and the man who believes the Aurora and Sandy Hook massacres were staged chatting it up on a variety of topics and congratulating each other for their integrity. We do live in interesting times.
2. Glenn Beck
But Donald Trump isn’t every conspiracy monger’s cup of curdled tea. Glenn Beck stands in contraposition to Jones, claiming that far from being the “maverick” savior of the Free World Jones thinks he is, The Donald is a Democratic sleeper agent and part of a nefarious plot to hand the general election over to Hillary Clinton as a third-party candidate. That possibility is, he suggests, “more logical.”
Where Jones chooses to avert his gaze, Beck zeroes in Trump’s inconsistencies, sketchy past, and spoken willingness to run a third-party campaign if he doesn’t claim the Republican nomination. His rant from his Tuesday show, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
“What are the odds that he is a spoiler?” Beck asked. “What are the odds that he got into this because he’s friend with the Clintons and he’ll get massive payback? If Hillary Clinton gets in because he ran third party, do you know the favor they’re going to owe him?”
“It makes no sense otherwise,” Beck insisted, asserting that “it’s more logical to believe that” scenario than the idea that Trump is actually a Republican or even someone who cares about the issues.”
Of course, if you’re Beck, the best proof you have that your theory is true is that you can’t find any evidence to support it.
1. Michael Savage
Michael Savage saw the video of Laquan McDonald getting shot by a Chicago PD officer 16 times and all he can say is “I pity the cops” who have to deal with these “street thugs.”
Many journalists and activists have questioned why the video went unreleased for a full year after the shooting. But Savage has that one figured out, as he explained on his show.
“Why was it released now?” he asks rhetorically. “Because Obama’s the biggest flop in the history of foreign policy, the biggest failure in the history of foreign policy and so release the tape and now have some riots in the streets.”
It’s a classic Savage feint, a head spinning turbo-transition from whatever is upsetting the shock jock this week to flaying the president alive. It doesn’t matter if it’s the “terrorist” organization ACLU, Syrian refugees, or the “post radio stress disorder” Savage has been inducing in himself. As I articulated months ago, the Savage Theorem states that for every X that irks Michael Savage, there is a rant less than 30 seconds long that blames X squarely on Barack Obama, the “deranged,” secret Muslim, ISIS co-conspirator.
Audio below courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
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Image: The Christmas card of Nevada lawmaker Michele Fiore and her entire family armed to the teeth (via Facebook)
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This post has been updated.
