I Don't Know If You Heard This One... But There Was This Guy (January 23, 2016)

     His name was Job.  He thought he was a pious man.  No, not that one.  I'm taking about Job Merle.  His parents were decent folk, hard working, salt of the earth farmers from a semi-rural state.  They believed in freedom and equality and all the things that made America a great place.  They never achieved great wealth, but they were comfortable, partly thanks to farm subsidies that kept their farm profitable and their overhead down.

     Now, there are some people who are born to be geniuses, they excel at everything they attempt and can intuitively grasp concepts like economics and empathy.  You can have children born of decent, upstanding, hard working people who grow up to be excellent human beings that love their neighbors and support others and do unto others and all that great Christian stuff.  But Job wasn't one of those people. Job wasn't a psychopath, exactly. No, Job believed that the color of his skin, the fact that he had a penis, the fact that he was attracted to women, and the fact that he believed some fairy tales about a man nailed to a stick made him special.  Those things meant that he should be given preference above other people that didn't fit all those criteria. Job also had no grasp of history or basic economic theory.  In his mind, that kind of Ivory Tower mumbo jumbo was just the government's way of manipulating the people and oppressing them. Of course, Job was a libertarian tea partier.  Job's idea of "patriotism" was to encourage people to hate the government, which most people would define as "sedition," but Job didn't know that word.  That's because Job, well, he wasn't the best reader.  In fact, he wasn't really that smart at all.  This didn't stop him from writing a newsletter called "Hearth And Home" that he somehow got local businesses to fund.

     Job used his freedom of speech to do some truly heinous things.  He disparaged minorities, belittled women, and encouraged people to take up arms against their duly elected government.  Not directly, of course, but he implied as much in many articles.  Job loved to rant and rave about President Obama, and how he was the worst president in the history of the United States.  But more than anything, Job complained about those damn welfare queens.  He hated people that got money from the government more than just about anything, except radical Muslims.  It just made him so gosh darn angry that his tax money was being used to help other people!  How dare the government provide people with food, clothing and shelter using his taxes when he worked so hard to make that money, all by himself with absolutely no assistance whatsoever!  That's not what Job paid  taxes for (or didn't). He wanted his tax dollars to go toward bombing people in Middle Eastern countries because they had the audacity to not believe in the same deity as him!

     If only there were something Job could do about this.  He wrote his editorial, week after week, and despite the fact that Job could feel his readership growing (there's really no way to know if people were reading his claptrap or just using it to line their bird cages.  After all, it's a complimentary newspaper, and Job really hated free things), nobody was out there stopping the Obama phones and HUD subsidized housing and keeping people from using food stamps to buy fancy things like coffee.  It was just so unfair, that Job and his parents worked so hard for everything he had, yet these people were mooching off him!  Why can't he get something from the system?  Why isn't the government paying for his phone, or his house, or his food?  He works hard tending his farm, putting his crops on trucks that go down the road to markets, trying to figure out this newfangled interweb thing to grow his business.  If it weren't for those checks from the Department of Agriculture, why, he might have to actually sell his farm.  And these lazy, no good, worthless welfare queens are drinking Caramel Macchiatos and playing the lottery! The nerve! Why can't they pull themselves up by their bootstraps like he did and earn their place in society? 

    Then, one day, Job hit it big.  Job's phone rang and the voice said those magical words he'd been waiting lo so many years to hear: "Is this Job Berle?  I represent the Will O'Hurley Element.  Will has been reading your papers, he'd like to meet with you."  Job was over the moon!  Finally, he would be recognized! People will hear him and the revolution will begin in earnest! He didn't even hear the rest of the discussion, just a date when they wanted him in New York.  He hung up the phone, kissed his wife Debbie, and they and their children went out to the Steak and Shake to celebrate.  Job even had two desserts, he was that excited!

    The next day, Job received an email from the O'Hurley people confirming his meeting.  He purchased two plane tickets for him and Debbie and a hotel room in New York City.  It was more expensive than he expected, but soon the money wouldn't matter.  "Gosh," Job thought, "I've finally pulled myself up by my bootstraps.  I've really earned everything.  We should go see a Broadway show while we're there! It would be a great treat for Debbie.  Nothing too filthy though, those homosexuals have completely ruined American entertainment.  Let's see... Book of Mormon, that sounds like a good Christian play!"  So Job also bought two tickets to that.

     Soon, the appointed day arrived, and Job and Debbie flew to New York. At the hotel, Job put on his best Sunday suit, Debbie wore the dress she bought for their son's wedding last year.  When they arrived at the Faux News building, they were escorted to a conference room that was all glass and chrome, overlooking Radio City Music Hall. Job and Debbie had never seen anything like it.  At the table sat not only Will O'Hurley, but three more men who had influenced his every belief: Mush Limburgh, Len Bock, and Job's idol, Shmalex Shmones.  Job couldn't believe he was meeting the four people he admired most in the world, in one day!

     He stood there, staring, jaw agape, when one of the other men in the room addressed him: "You must be Bob.  Hello, you spoke with my secretary on the phone.  I'm Chaim Goldfarbsteinberg, and I'll get right to the point: I represent these four men." He handed Job a letter, it was on really nice paper, but Job couldn't understand what it said.  There were lots of big words. About this time, Job realized that there were a dozen other people in the room. "This is a cease and desist letter," said Goldfarbsteinberg.  "My clients are outraged that you've stolen their intellectual property and appropriated it as your own." (so many big words, Job thought, what do they mean?) "If you do not stop publishing 'Hearth And Home,' we will be forced to bring a lawsuit against you, and, let me tell you, you will lose."

     What? Job thought, This can't be! These men are my idols, I've patterned my life on them!  "What kind of Jew crap is this?" Job spouted.  "Are you really telling me that I can't say whatever I want?  I'll have you know this is America, and I have a right to Freedom of Speech protected by the Constitution!  I can say whatever I want!" Job was getting furious.  Didn't this Jew know that he was a white Christian heteronormative man and he had rights?

     "Regardless of any of that," Goldfarbsteinberg said, "I assure you that we have everything we need.  Either cease your publication or we will take everything you have.  Thanks to the Republican Congress, restrictions on lawsuits have been loosened, and we can pretty much sue you for whatever we want.  That's what happens when you de-regulate and strip government of all it's power."  At that, he motioned to the guards outside and Job and Debbie were escorted out of the building.

     Well, Job wasn't going to take this lying down!  No sir! He knew his rights, and he knew he had a right to a lawyer.  So he and Debbie skipped Book of Mormon and headed straight back home, where Job enlisted the finest legal minds in his county.  They told him exactly the same thing that Chaim Goldfarbsteinberg did: he was screwed.  Government regulators had stripped protections against frivolous lawsuits so far back that there was literally nothing that people could not bring a civil suit about.  Fair use in copyright was a thing of the past, and besides, Job's newsletter didn't fall under those meager protections anyway.  And the First Amendment didn't apply here because it wasn't the government, the people that Job had been so paranoid about all along, that was trying to shut him down.  It was a private enterprise.

     Job was distraught.  He did not know what to do now.  It seemed like a perfect subject for one of his trademark editorials, but he didn't dare risk publishing.  Maybe he'd join that Facespace all the kids were talking about.  Surely they can't shut him down for that.  And he can reach a much larger audience, a world wide audience.  People will have to listen, and the white, middle class, heteronormative Christian male will finally have a place to voice his opinions and have his struggle heard!

     Wow! What an amazing story! And it's totally not about a real person or anyone we know! I'm so inspired by it, to go and pull myself up by the bootstraps and make my fortune all by myself with no help from the government or the rest of society, at all, whatsoever! There has to be a moral in here somewhere, but who knows what it is? No, seriously, this is so rambling and incoherent, I'm not really sure there was even a plot.  That's what happens when you mimic Bob's creative insights.

  Honestly, the best part of Bob's whole rant this month is the end, where after spending a good 1000 words attacking "liberals" and stereotyping them as lazy, entitled, and pretentious, he talks about not judging people until you've walked a mile in their shoes.  No, really, he did that.  He literally says those words, then, in the same paragraph, writes "ninety-nine percenters are nothing more than a bunch of bottom feeding, lazy ass, no good loafers who want to stick their hands in the pockets of hard working people and take from them all that they worked hard for, because ninety-nine percenters never worked hard at anything their entire lives and think that just because they breathe air the world owes them an existence." I guess Bob doesn't think he's part of the 99%, or that he should take his own advice. The cognitive dissonance here is so great, I need to go lie down now. 

A Lesson in Free Speech (January 8, 2016)

     It's been 9 months since my last post, and what an interesting 9 months it's been (on a side note, I really hope Bob didn't think that I'd given up.  Life's been pretty busy this last year, so I had to eliminate some things. Doesn't mean I wasn't watching...) Looking at that last post, it amazes and saddens me how widespread the sort of extremist ignorance I've been writing about since 2011 has become.  I don't know this for certain, but I'm willing to bet that Mr. Robert Beierle of the erroneously named Creative Insight LLC is driving around with a Trump 2016 bumper sticker on his car.  He, and the alleged half a million people who "read" his magazine (side note: just because you print half a million copies doesn't mean half a million people are reading, much less agreeing with, your lunacy), are exactly the kinds of people that Donald J Trump has been aiming for.  It's gotten embarrassing, as an American who travels internationally, that this is the level of national discourse we're having, as well as scary that it's not just tolerated but seemingly encouraged by so many people.  More on that in a bit, first let's dive into what we've missed on my hiatus:

     In May we've got a wonderful little essay (and I use the term loosely) canonizing the Founding Fathers as saints of America, the men (and only men) who had the love, understanding, and faith (the right faith) to create this perfect country called America.  Who would choose any modern politician over them?  They were gods (ok, not gods, because that's blashpemy and we all know that Bob is a good Christian, but, you know, gods) who could do nothing wrong and had no foibles or compunctions or other shortcomings, especially when it came to writing that most sacred of texts, The Constitution!  Bob is trying so hard to defend The Constitution, and he just can't believe how the media and the government are allowed to shred the sacred text and nobody is doing anything.  Apparently, countries that seek America's destruction are making nuclear bombs (I'd love to know which.  North Korea? Seriously? Iran?) but our politicians are too worried about things that don't matter, like global warming and women's rights. ISIS is coming to destroy us and install Sharia Law because we've stopped acknowledging Bob's god in our government.  Apparently we're on the brink of disaster, and the only way to fix it is to bring back a true conservative like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.  Don't think too hard on this, or you'll wind up with mad cow disease like Bob.

     In June we get some nonsense about the light at the end of the tunnel.  First Bob blames the government for screwing up the economy (never mind that it was government deregulation, something he really, really likes, that lead to that.  Those pesky facts...) so they could steal our money and resources for themselves (I really wonder what part of "Republic" Bob doesn't understand? Is it the "Government of the people" part?) and the media is selling you a bunch of lies so you'll stay compliant.  As usual, Bob's here with the truth, the one Rush or Glenn or Alex or Rupert found up his ass somewhere and Bob just can't understand why nobody will believe it.  So, apprently, ISIS is off somewhere raping children and killing women and radicalizing our pets or whatever Bob's twisted imagination has thought up and our government is giving them HDTVs to watch and his son's dog is howling and Obama (personally) has spent trillions of our dollars to flush America down the drain and why should some illegal immigrant welfare queen get free food and a phone and an apartment and a Cadillac and all we get is screwed, huh?  This is so disjointed and rambling only a meth addict could have written it.

     July brings us Cowboys and Indians (yes, really).  What ever happened to the good ol' days, when you could play Cowboys and Injuns without some mamby pamby PC know it all telling you that's culturally insensitive?  Well what about BOB'S CULTURE, HUH?  After all, he's a white, Cristian, heteronormative man and he pays his taxes (maybe?) and he'll be racist if he damn well pleases because FIRST AMENDMENT, BITCH!  What happened to the days when kids could run around their neighborhoods with toy guns pretending to shoot each other? Life was so much simpler then, and if a kid got shot by a cop because he thought the kid had a real gun and was about to shoot him, well, that's just Freedom.  It's ok when children want to play pretend, though (not that they do in Bob's world, anymore, because TV and video games and that scary Interwebs), the problem is when adults do.  Like Al Sharpton or Rachel Dolezal or Bruce Jenner or that horrible liar Hillary Clinton (boo, hiss!). Yes, too many adults today are pretending to be something they're not, and dammit Bob is not going to go along with it! He refuses to accept Al Sharpton as a minister, he refuses to accept Bruce Jenner as a woman, and he refuses to accept that Hillary Clinton might have actually served her country, but we must accept him because he has rights and his white, Christian, heteronormative male beliefs (i.e. the only ones that matter) will not be infringed upon dammit!

     In August, we got some rambling claptrap about how the government are "magicians," spinning false narratives about global warming, marriage rights, the "war on Christmas," illegal immigrants "takin' ar' jerbs'" and all kinds of other tea party bogey men.  As usual, Bob shows us that he has no understanding of any of these topics, just anger, hate, and jingoistic propaganda that he has misappropriated from his usual sources. He goes on to deify (again) the founders of America, calling the media and our current government unpatriotic and evil for having the gall to point out that our founding fathers did things like own slaves or have sex out of wedlock or be human, all so they can take your freedoms away!  Bob must have been pretty worked up at being called a homophobe or a racist or a misogynist or something because he babbles about how butt hurt he is over being called those things just because he loves 'Murica so much that he viciously and ignorantly attacks anyone who dares question his twisted, ignorant version of it.   That's right, we've all been sold a false history of America so that the government can destroy the Constitution, but Bob's here to educate us on the true meaning of Christm- er, the real history of 'Murica, i.e. the white, Christian, heteronormative, male version of the history of 'Murica.

     I missed September and October, (well, maybe not missed, exactly) but November came roaring back!  It's Heerre!! is classic Creative Insight, by which I mean neither creative nor insightful.  Bob wants us all to know that the holiday season is starting, and he's setting up a branch in Texas! How exciting! After all, where better to find the kind of fools, imbeciles, and racists that buy into Bob's insanity than Texas?  Even people in mental hospitals get guns in Texas, Bob will feel right at home.  So Bob goes on to talk about our American Christian traditions (because none of the others matter).  Apparently Hanukkah is a Christian tradition in Bob's world, BTW, as is Halloween, Labor Day, Memorial Day, and the 4th of July.  Because, you know, nobody but Christians ever died in service of America; they were all baptized after the fact and become Christians by giving their lives for Bob's America.  And isn't it great that we don't live under Sharia Law?  But if you're hurting this holiday season, if you haven't reached that level of success you think you're entitled to, well, Bob wants to remind you that it's all the government's fault.  That's right, it's government's fault when you fail and if you succeed it's because you picked yourself up by your bootstraps and did all the hard work yourself and got no help from anybody, got that?  Ok.



     Which brings us to December, and Looking for Christmas.  Honestly, I probably would have ignored this if January's issue didn't make such a big deal about it, so I'm going to roll both into one.  Apparently, one of Bob's franchisees was "pressured" into putting a sticker on Bob's "creative insights" warning people that what Bob says is offensive.  Good for her, BTW.  This was apparently motivated by complaints about Looking for Christmas, and I just can't figure out why.  Just kidding, of course I can.  It's not because Looking for Christmas is exactly what you think it is: oh, woe is us, the white Christian heteronormative men of America, our burden is so great and our lot is so low that we can't even get more than 90% of the country to recognize that Christmas is mostest specialist day of the year! We are so oppressed in our own country because we have to not only acknowledge other religions and races and sexes and sexualities, but actually tolerate them and let them have their own beliefs! Woe!  It's not because Bob rants and raves about Black Friday and people being greedy and disrespectful.  No, it's because Bob goes full on racist.  Maybe go easy on the eggnogg next year, huh Bob?

    First, he talks about the BLM protesters chanting about "roasting pork" and that all the other people didn't want to be called "racists" for standing up to them.  He also notes how a group of black men confronted these protesters, and some "black on black violence" ensued, disrupting the day of the "Caucasian and Latino" shoppers.  Oh, and he manages to get a jab in at the police as well, talking about how the police must be showing up because there's a donut sale, not because of the riot he just described. But this is chump change compared to the obligatory attack on Muslims, complaining about "ninja people" and assuming they came here illegally through Mexico because that's how all Muslims get into Bob's 'Murica.  In fact, I'm just going to quote the whole thing, because it's truly beyond belief that not only did a supposedly thinking, feeling, rational human being write and publish this, but people paid him to do it.

There was an orchestral version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and I thought to myself, as I let out a nice deep breath and a light sigh, ahhh, surely I will find the Christmas spirit here.  But that was kind of short lived too when I was knocked around by a half a dozen short female ninjas. You know, the karate people dressed from head to toe in black robes with only their eyes showing.  They were yelling something. And once again a tidal wave of people ended up pushing me towards where all the screaming ninjas were going... which was to a cash register where a very sweet young girl with dark hair and green eyes, who was terrified and was being surrounded by these ninjas as they were chanting something, raising their arms and calling out something to ollie [sic] or olive .. or something ... I don't know what. But I was quick to find out that they weren't ninjas.  They were refugees from some small obscure Middle Eastern country who came to our country illegally though our Southern border and these women who were dressed in burkas had no understanding of our culture or our traditions.  They could not speak a work of English, but knew enough to become totally offended and incensed if somebody in this country wished them a Merry Christmas.  Yes, that's right.  The refugee women in the burkas fresh from some small obscure Middle Eastern country were all up in arms, screaming jihad and caliphate and were all upset because that sweet little dark haired girl with the green eyes behind the counter happened to wish one of them a "Merry Christmas."  And the next thing you knew the ninjas were protesting to the store manager who was now firing the cashier to appease the screaming ninjas whose piercing screams could only resemble what I might imagine a barnyard animal would make if it was being assaulted form behind.  Perhaps it was a sound that they were familiar with in their native country.

    Yup.  That is a direct quote from Mr. Robert Beierle of Creative Insight LLC, written not in the 1950s or the 1920s or the 1850s but in 2015.  Just remember this man legally owns guns.  Not a gun, but guns, plural. This is the kind of racist mindset that we are allowing in our community.  Note that not only does Bob's racism include ignorance and religious intolerance, it also includes a healthy dose of misogyny.  He never says that the "sweet little dark haired girl with green eyes" was white, but we are meant to assume she was, and get really angry when she got "fired" (because that happened). Hey Bob, before you press that speed dial button for your lawyer, it's called "fair use," look it up.

     There's a theme that hasn't appeared in Bob's writing in a while, but it's the theme that  started this blog: namely, that Bob's right to free speech and equal protection under the law is sacrosanct, but yours is bullshit unless you agree with him.  Bob actually has the balls to complain about a group of people exercising their right to peaceful assembly during Black Friday.  He complains that people supporting Black Lives Matter actually have the audacity to assemble and protest in a place where hundreds of people simply want to beat up the person next to them so they can save $5 on a toy their kid is going to play with twice and break.  How dare these people bring their politics into this most sacred of capitalist holidays? He attacks people because they have a different belief than him, stereotyping and belittling them for their culture while complaining about how his is "under attack." 

     In January, Bob reiterates his assertion that his Free Speech is sacrosanct and the rest of you can just STFU.  Obviously, Bob's knowledge of the Constitution is extremely limited.  Even a 5th grader knows, though, that the Constitution only covers what government can and cannot do, and if other people want to shut down your seditious, racist, misogynist, homophobic publication by protesting to the people who sponsor it, they have every right to do so.  Bob is so ignorant, so tone deaf, so absolutely clueless that he doubles down on the hate speech with a story about a woman in a burka at the beach.  He complains about how persecuted he is because in some countries he wouldn't be able to publish a story about his family on Christmas. He compares people complaining about his hate speech to religious fundamentalists who will kill anyone who disagrees with them, then goes on to say that he's shut down someone who has done exactly that.  He actually thinks he's speaking "the truth" about the world and America's culture.   It's unbelievable how totally and completely oblivious Bob is.

     So here's your lesson in Free Speech, Bob: hate speech like yours may be protected by the First Amendment, but so is my speech that says I will not tolerate your hate.  It's good to know that I'm not alone, and it's good to know that some of your distributors and sponsors are actually reading the hate you publish and taking action.  I'm going to keep emailing and calling and talking to them, whether you like it or not.  I know others will join me. You want to stand up for free speech Bob?  Then you have to stand up for all free speech, not just the kind you agree with, not just the kind that supports your beliefs and your prejudices, but all of it.  Including the "ninja people" and the BLM supporters. I support that you have a right to say and publish the idiotic hate that you do, but I do not have to listen to it, I do not have to shop at the businesses that support you, and I will make sure that everyone that can hear me knows that what you are saying is wrong, it's not American values, and they should not support you either.

Random Thoughts

     A thought came to me last week as I was moving my collection of Our Town pennysavers from one side of the room to the other.  It occurred to me that in the three years I've been chronicling the bloviation of Mr. Robert Beierle of Creative Insight, LLC, he's gone from being just a seditionist, racist, homophobic, misogynist with a piddling "magazine" to something of a community leader, speaking at these new "Patriot Connectors" meetings.  It drew a disturbing parallel in my mind, one that I hesitate to make for several reasons, not the least of which is that it's made so often and so erroneously as to make it almost impotent, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

      Bob reminds me of another man, a man who called himself a patriot, who spouted anti-government rhetoric and blamed the problems of his society on competing political ideologies and minority religious groups.  A man who published his thoughts and spread them throughout the community with great fervor and fanfare.  A man who used violence, threats, propaganda, and fear to further his political goals.  A man who promised prosperity and unity if only people would adhere to his extremist philosophy.  A man who talked about how acceptance of foreign cultures and lesser peoples were destroying his country and society as a whole, who railed against what we today would call "political correctness" and socialism in all forms.  A man who preached liberty and freedom, but only for people with the "correct" skin color, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, and religion.  If you read this and can not figure out who Bob reminds me of, then I suggest you pick up a history book. After all, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and believe it or not, this man has appeared dozens of times throughout human history.

     Now, I don't think that Bob has the charisma or smarts to become the kind of totalitarian dictator these other men did.  Then again, I also thought that George W. Bush was literally too stupid to make it through the primaries, so it shows what I know.  I would also like to think that the American people are smart enough to see Bob for what he is and stand up to a man like that before he can infect others with his anger, hate, and ignorance. It seems, however, as if he's becoming more popular and gaining more followers.  I'm not sure if others hear what he's actually saying or if they simply hear "freedom" and "liberty" and cheer mindlessly in some kind of Pavlovian response.  Either way, I find it incredibly disturbing.

    

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (February 23, 2015)

     This week's entry into the saga of Robert Beierle's Creative Insight proves that even in the Happiest Place On Earth, our man Bob can still find a way to be an ignorant, racist curmudgeon.  Bob's essay this week starts with a letter from his wife, Dorothy, explaining how Bob surprised her with a trip to Florida and Disney World for Valentine's day.  How sweet!  Dorothy's bit is the most competently written and least objectionable thing Our Town has ever printed.  Too bad it's only a few sentences long.

     No sooner does Dorothy's letter end than Bob gets into his usual "creative insights," for lack of a better term.  He starts with "the bad" things about Disney: having to be around people of other cultures and nationalities! Apparently, there was a woman in a burka who offended Bob and Dorothy.  She smelled bad, like all Muslims.  Bob knows, because Bob has been around a lot of Muslims and knows they all smell bad.  But he didn't say anything, because he just knew she would charge him with a hate crime, because that's what all Muslims do in Bob's world.  The PC liberal media can attack white Christian men all they want, but don't even think about mentioning that the woman in a burka smells bad, HATE CRIME! After all, where is the outrage, Bob wants to know, when Muslims are killing good innocent Christians and Jews? Why aren't THOSE hate crimes? No, really, he wants to know, because he finds that offensive, and I guess FOX News doesn't report on the people who are outraged over Muslim extremists, probably because if they did it would take up all 24 hours leave no time for them to blame Obama or find more ridiculous accusations about Hilary's email.

     Then comes the ugly: apparently there was a child running around on one of the lines while his "mama-San and papa-San" just sat there and watched.  Now, I don't know why Bob feels the need to point out that the child is Asian or use those derogatory terms to describe his parents, but I don't think that Bob is truly seeing the ugly in this tale.  He thinks the ugly is the woman who farts in the child's face when the child tries to squeeze past her.  Isn't that just so funny! Personally, I think the ugly is the racist telling the tale, but what do I know?

     Finally there's the good.  Bob's little black charcoal heart is touched when everyone waiting in line for the Seven Dwarfs ride starts singing "Heigh Ho" together.  Wow.  Disney World is truly a magical place.  Is it any surprise that Bob holds Walt Disney in such high regard?  A man who famously worked against unions, hated Jews and Communists, sympathized with the Nazis, and worked so many racist and sexist tropes into his films? That's Bob's kind of entertainment, the kind that reminds minorities to stay in their place and stop insisting on political correctness and fair treatment.  The kind that reminds everyone that America is a Christian nation built by white men, for white men, so you can just take your tolerance and go back to Russia you dirty red commie!

A Love Lost... (January 23, 2015)

     Well.  Here we are again.  I bet you thought I gave up, since I've been quiet for so long.  No, I haven't given up.  I won't give up, because to do so will be to surrender reason, common sense, and intelligent discourse in America, and I still believe we can have those things, if enough of us stand up to people like Robert "Bob" Beierle of the derisively named Creative Insight LLC.  So, you may ask, why have I been quiet for so long?  We'll I've been away from home, traveling for work if you must know.  See, that's why I have hope and that's how I know that people like Bob are dead wrong: I've been all over this great country and all over the world, and I've talked to Americans and gotten to know them and I know for a fact that the Bob Beierle's are far outnumbered.  He and his Fox News / Alex Jones / Glenn Beck type of rhetoric does not represent America but is held by a small, hateful, angry group of people who have determined to resist change, progress, and the American way to their dying breath. They wrap themselves in the flag and call themselves "Fellow Patriots" when they're nothing but ignorant, racist, misogynist seditionists. The thing is, nobody likes these people.  They're tolerated, which is a problem, because as long as we tolerate this type of hate speech and inflammatory sedition we allow it to perpetuate and infect civil discourse like a cancer.  I refuse to give up because I will not tolerate this sort of discourse; I will not suffer it silently and I will not allow theirs to be the only voice in the debate.

     Now, on to Bob's latest "creative" endeavor: this month, Bob tells us about how he has been flying his flag at half mast in memory of the Constitution.  See, when President Obama (at least he's using the President's real name again, instead of his usual slander) signed his executive order granting amnesty for illegal immigrants, that apparently signaled the death of the Constitution.  Bob so loved the Constitution that he's been in mourning ever since, which is kind of like a wife beater saying he misses his dead wife. 

     The next chunk of insight Bob excretes is a comparison of America to an anti-drug ad.  See, in Bob's narrative, America is like the girl in one of those don't-do-meth ads, once beautiful and vivacious but only a few years later destroyed and decrepit, because she's been on a horrible drug: liberalism!  Yes, liberalism, that terrible canard that foments such horrors as political correctness, equality, and even empathy! Oh, the horrors! Why, a person on liberalism might even try to help another human being, what terror!  Bob goes on to rant and rave against such liberal horrors as religious freedom, freedom of speech, and even due process.  Where could the liberals possibly come up with these perversions, these disgusting and thoroughly un-American ideals? (That's sarcasm, Bob, see, because those ideals are guaranteed in that little document you love so much, what was it called? Oh, right, the Constitution of the United States of America!)

     Bob spends several hundred words ranting about some fever dream he had (should have gotten that measles vaccine, Bob) where "countless numbers" of Muslim Islamic extremist terrorists are walking across the Mexican border after being released from Guantanamo to destroy America. It's truly disconnected from anything resembling reality, so much so that one wonders if Bob shouldn't be on lithium or thorazine or maybe something stronger.  How else can he connect Islamic terrorists coming into America illegally to take refuge in the "many" compounds harboring them to his being audited by the IRS in two sentences? Yes, that really happened. Bob believes he is being targeted for IRS audits by ISIS, through the office of the President of the United States of America.  This would be hilarious if he wasn't serious.

     This whole thing is just a thinly veiled excuse for Bob to regurgitate the anti-immigrant and anti-Islam invective that he ingests from Fox News and whatever other paranoid delusional websites he's managed to find through AOL or whatever knothole he uses to look at the world.  As usual, reading the entire thing is an exercise in masochism. Seriously, Bob, the ellipsis is not a pause. Stop abusing it. It's called a comma, try it some time. Bob is such a put upon person, with his being white, Christian and male making it so difficult for him to get anything in this world run by white, Christian men.  If only those damn liberals weren't trying to take away his rights and give them to all the immigrants and Muslims!

     It's hard to tell exactly what Bob believes in, except maybe the Tea Party.  He seems to be mostly libertarian, except when it comes to the military, which he thinks should be waging war in every Muslim country and any country that dares disagree with America.  His militaristic, nationalist, racist zealotry smacks of fascism, and it wouldn't be surprising to find a copy of Mein Kampf on Bob's bookshelf.  While comparing anyone you disagree with to Hitler has become such a common occurrence on the internet that there's a shorthand for it (Godwin's Law) and it's certainly one of Bob's favorite tools (Islam is the greatest threat to world peace since Nazism, really?), in this case, it really applies.  Bob doesn't have an anti-Zionist bent, but the way he writes about Muslims is damn close.  He is fiercely nationalist, believing whole heartedly in American exceptionalism.  His anti-immigrant stance borders on race purity and eugenics, and his views on unions, liberals, feminism, and homosexuality all line up with fascist ideals.  The only thing missing is a little mustache and an arm band.

     At the end of his "creative insight," Bob compares liberals to both North Korea and ISIS.  Now, this really highlights Bob's ignorance, because North Korea and ISIS are about as polar opposite as you could get.  One is an atheist totalitarian dictatorship, the other is a religious extremist group.  In Bob's diseased mind, all three are out to curtail free speech, and so they're the same thing.  It would be humorous, Bob's attempt to make liberals seem evil because there are some who would stop at nothing to make him shut up, including threatening violence, if it weren't so myopic and narcissistic that it borders on sociopathic.  Honestly Bob, do you not read what you are writing?  Do you not hear yourself calling for the restriction on the human rights of other people?  People don't hate you because you're speaking truth, they don't hate you because they're afraid of you, they hate you because you are a self-centered, egotistical, ignorant bigot.  America is sick, Bob, and the cure is cutting out cancers like you.

Oba + Lbr ... ... = (October 23, 2014)

     I implore you to read this all the way through, then think about what was said, because no BS, domestic terrorist "Fellow Patriot" Robert "Bob" Beierle of the insipidly named Creative Insight LLC is back with a heaping helping of fear and paranoia.  Bob's campaign of terror this week focuses on ebola, and how illegal immigrant Muslim terrorist atheist Hollywood liberals are going to spread it to everyone and destroy America by using political correctness to make the government so big that it will destroy everything. You may think that last sentence was facetious, but I assure you that every single one of those groups gets not only mentioned but blamed for the coming plague.  And just to prove that Godwin's law doesn't apply only to the internet, we even get a comparison to the Nazis in this article.  It's a true Fox News libertard circlejerk of epic proportions.  I can't believe Alex Jones and Glenn Beck haven't found this guy yet, I'm sure he's their biggest fan.

     Bob's abortive attempt at a title shows us that his math skills are just as bad as his writing and punctuation skills.  In his fevered brain, "O^ba + L^br ... ... =" is the mathematical formula for the end of America.  Let's break that down: apparently, "O^ba" is supposed to represent Obama, because if we can't blame him, who can we blame?  "L^br" stands for liberals, those dastardly politically correct, unqualified, big government loving red herrings that Bob and his ilk love to blame for everything.  I'll at least give him credit that he's stopped using the pejorative "LIEberals," but I still maintain that Bob doesn't know what a liberal is, only that Fox News says they're bad, so he hates them.  The doubled ellipsis is a mystery, except for the fact that Bob really seems to love them and have absolutely no clue how to use them, peppering his "editorials" with them.  And  is, of course, Death!  Because when Obama and liberals get together, it means death! So be afraid, because politically correct liberals are keeping the border open and Obama is lying about it so that Muslim terrorists can bring ebola into the US and kill us all.  I wish that was a sarcastic joke and not the actual summary of Bob's essay, but sadly it is not.

     In what can only be described as a stylistic choice, Bob gives us a list of the kinds of people there are when a "true, honest to God danger is approaching," as opposed to all those fake, made up dangers that are blown out of proportion by a 24 hour news media and idiots with pennysaver magazines who consider themselves "patriots" but are in fact domestic terrorists.  First you have the "preppers," the morons "patriots" who stockpile food and ammunition for the coming apocalypse.  They're nothing new, they've been around for centuries carrying a sign that says "The End is NEAR" and taking every comet in the sky as a portent of the apocalypse, it's just that they now have a TV show.  Every once in a while an actual disaster does come and they use that as a twisted justification of their paranoid delusions.  They're the people who are constantly crying "the sky is falling" every time something they don't like happens.  Any time society changes, the world gets a little more accepting of lifestyles and people of which they do not approve, it's the beginning of the end.  They're rigid, small minded people who cannot think of anyone but themselves and live their lives in constant fear.  Bob seems to count himself among these people, and it's really not surprising.

     Next there's a few classes of people who basically live their lives, until we get to the "most dangerous," the people who downplay the coming dangers and alter facts to deceive you into thinking there's no danger for political reasons (as opposed to the ones who blow every sneeze out of proportion for political reasons).  These people are the ones who keep the sheep in line (yup, sheep).  They twist facts and tell you that the "preppers" are "extreme whackos ... racist, homophobe, anti-American, closed minded, paranoid people."  Well, Bob, excuse me for calling a spade a spade, but you are an extreme whacko.  Your writings are racist, homophobic, anti-American, closed minded, and extremely paranoid, not to mention ignorant, asinine, dangerous and incomprehensible.  Anyone with a whit of intelligence can see this, yet somehow your rag winds up in hundreds of businesses across my state.  

     Finally we get to the "sheep," the fifth class of people on Bob's list.  These are the ones who, I kid you not, "during the reign of the Nazis, turned in their neighbors."  They blindly follow the propaganda spread by the evil media and Hollywood, by professors and teachers.  That's right boys and girls: don't listen to educated people when they tell you that there is no danger, listen to Pennsatucky white trash!  Clearly Bob knows more about infectious diseases, illegal immigrants, radical Islam, and political science than all those dirty, corrupt, politically correct liberals at the CDC, the NIH, Harvard, Yale, and Holly-weird, amirite!  After all, according to the government's own statistics around 125 people fly into the US from West Africa every day!  It's a mass migration, and they're all carrying ebola! Panic! Fear! The sky is falling!!!  Apparently, there's a government up Bob's ass that is making up statistics, because that's the only place I can figure he got that number from. 

     From here, the "editorial" turns into this foolish rant about how the government is somehow downplaying ebola because of political correctness.  Clearly, Bob has as much a clue about political correctness as he does liberals: Fox News says it's bad, so he hates it.  Never mind that you can count the number of ebola cases in the US on one hand, never mind that you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than contracting ebola, never mind that reason, logic, history, or common sense dictate that freaking out about this is about as productive as running around the street screaming "ebola" at the top of your lungs.  It's all a government conspiracy to, what, exactly?  Maybe if Bob had some kind of rational conception of say, why the government would downplay ebola or what possible gain could be achieved by deceiving the American people about this disease there might be a case here.  Instead, Bob uses this as yet another opportunity to bitch about the things he hates: Obama, liberals, political correctness, the IRS, illegal immigrants, the government, radical Islam, etc, etc.  If aliens landed tomorrow, he would probably blame that on the same things.  

     If anyone doubts what Bob's true purpose is in these "editorials," I would like to direct your attention to his closing sentence. "Love God, protect your family, defend the Constitution, pray for the best, prepare for the worst, and lock and load."  That's right: yet another call to domestic terrorism in the name of "defending" the Constitution.  Espousing violence for the furthering of a political ideal; that's terrorism to the letter.  The real virus we should be worrying about is people who continue to spread fear and paranoia, who continue to write seditious lies and call for insurrection against us.  Inoculate yourself and your community by letting the businesses who display and advertize in the Our Town pennysaver know that you will not patronize their business as long as they continue to support a domestic terrorist.

The Second Amendment - October 8, 2014

     Well, it's official.  Mr. Robert Beierle, of the fatuously named Creative Insight, LLC, publisher of the Our Town pennysavers circulated throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of New York and Maryland has now officially moved from seditionist blowhard to full on supporter of domestic terrorism.  That's really the only way something like this can be interpreted.  When we have a man running around the woods of Pennsylvania, killing police officers and another writing about how the Second Amendment guarantees our right to rise up in violent revolt against our government, what else could he be?  Incredulously, Bob actually has either the gall or the total lack of self awareness (based on his past writings and his insistence on referring to himself as a "patriot," I'm going to go with the latter) to try to disassociate himself from this violent psychopath; as if his brand of rhetoric and vitriol is not the exact sort of encouragement that would lead someone to shoot at the authorities.  I'm not saying Eric Frein was one of Bob's readers, because I can't prove that, but would anyone be surprised if he is?  Hell, for all we know, Frein was at the "Patriot Connectors" meeting where Bob spoke, and it was Bob's misappropriation of the phrase "If not YOU, then who? If not NOW, then when?" that encouraged Frein to set up his little duck blind in the woods and kill the 38 year old father of two.

     Let's do a little break down of Bob's misguided attempt at explaining the Second Amendment. As you might expect, it's nothing but NRA fairy tales, half truths, and insurrectionist wet dreams. For starters, Bob is convinced that the Second Amendment is second because the hallowed Founding Fathers believed that the right to own a gun is second only to the right to free speech.  Even a cursory inspection of the Wikipedia page on the Bill of Rights shows that not only was the right to bear arms the fourth proposed amendment to the Constitution, but James Madison (you know, the Founding Father who wrote the damn thing) didn't even want it included.  Hell, even Bob's sacred freedom of speech was the third proposed amendment. There's some reality for you.  By Bob's reckoning, the Founding Fathers thought that how much money Congress got paid was more important than freedom of speech.  There's your truth, Bob.  Open a damn history book once in a while.

     Next, I have to address this insurrectionist fairy tale that Bob is so hot for.  First, I want you to download and read a paper called The Hidden History of the Second Amendment. It is an eye opening, scholarly paper that explains exactly why the Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights.  I'll get to the crux of that paper in a bit, first, let's address the problems with what Bob is saying.  For about 40 years now, the NRA and the firearms industry have been promoting this idea that the Founding Fathers included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights for two reasons: first, they wanted to be sure that they could raise a militia to defend the US from invading British or Native American forces, and second, they wanted us to violently overthrow the government every 25 years or so and rebuild it.  This is so wrong headed and ignorant it hurts.  Anyone with a cursory knowledge of history, especially the American Revolutionary War and post war period, knows that this is a flat out fabrication, and a damaging one at that. It's not surprising that Bob would perpetuate these lies, after all, he probably does not know any better.  They play to his world view and support his twisted, destructive reasoning.  Unfortunately for Bob, history, and the facts, do not bear him out.

      Let's start with point one: the Founding Fathers wanted a ready militia to defend the United States.  This is one of those truly damaging lies that continues because it has the ring of truth to it.  We've all heard stories of the brave Minutemen, farmers who were ready to fight the Redcoats in under a minute and win our freedom.  It's a great bit of American folklore, and not much more.  The reality is that the militias were not held in very high regard by the Founding Fathers.  They were the reason the Americans were driven from Breed's Hill (you may know it as the Battle of Bunker Hill) resulting in a British victory.  They failed to protect Washington's regular army as the British drove him from Brooklyn all the way across New Jersey in the fall and early winter of 1776.  In fact, Washington didn't have a very high opinion of militia at all. The fact is, while the Founding Fathers were no fans of a standing army, they didn't put much stock in the idea that your average untrained farmer was going to be much worth if the British regulars came calling again either.  The truth is, the militia question was one of the driving forces behind the Constitutional convention in the first place.

     Under the Articles of Confederation, the Federal Government existed to defend the United States from outside forces like the British or Native Americans, but had no power to deal with interior problems.  Which is why, when a group of farmers lead by Daniel Shays decided to rebel in 1787, the leaders of the new United States got together and wrote the Constitution, which provided the new Federal Government with the powers to call up a militia to deal with such insurrections.  In fact, the first time the Federal government called up the militia was to put down just such a rebellion. Mostly, however, the militias were called out to put down slave rebellions, like Nat Turner's, Harper's Ferry, and the German Coast Uprising in 1811. The truth, which racists like Bob Beierle don't want to acknowledge, is that the Second Amendment exists not to provide for the defense of the United States from external threats but to provide for the defense of white slave owners from their slaves.

     See, as The Hidden History of the Second Amendment explains, the only Founding Fathers concerned with the right to keep and bear arms at the Constitutional Convention were Southerners like Patrick Henry:

"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."

The Southern delegates were worried that Northern representatives, who would outnumber them due to the higher populations of northern states, would use Article I, Section 8 as a way to destroy slavery by not arming the Southern state militias.  Without arms, they could not control a slave population that outnumbered them in some states almost 3 to 1. The Founding Fathers were less worried about defending the country from the English than they were about the monster they were creating in slavery.  This, and not the fairy tale Minuteman ready to defend the United States, was the reason for the compromise that is the Second Amendment.  During the 1970s and 80s, however, with the threat of the Soviet Union hanging over the world and rising crime rates, gun manufacturers realized that they could sell a lot more guns if people thought they would be defending their homes from the Red Army or some cracked out inner city "thug" (that's Fox News code for "black person," BTW), so they spread this fairy tale of the American duty to own a gun and protect their homes, despite mounting evidence that homes with guns were more likely to be victims of gun violence. (Also here, here, and here. I know these come from "liberal" sources like Harvard, Yale, and the National Institutes of Health, but hey, science is science and facts are neither liberal nor conservative. So take your bias strawman and shove it.)

     The second, and possibly even more dangerous, fairy tale that Bob perpetuates here is the insurrectionist fairy tale: the idea that our Founding Fathers wanted us to have the ability to violently overthrow the government.  Not only does this confound all logic and reason, but it is simply not supported by anything.  Most famously, the proponents of this delusion quote Thomas Jefferson as saying "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Not only is this always taken out of context, but it was a sentiment almost universally opposed by Jefferson's peers.  For starters, it was part of a private letter Jefferson sent to the son in law of John Adams which was never meant to be made public. The statement is in response to an inquiry about Shays' Rebellion, which every other Founding Father decried as treason.  Jefferson took a great deal of criticism for his position, with no less than Samuel Adams saying "in monarchies the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death." Clearly, the Founding Fathers did not want bloody rebellion once a generation.

     If you doubt this, think on this: the Americans had just spent the better part of a decade fighting a bloody and costly revolution that they had only barely won.  It left them deeply in debt and left the populace war weary and distrustful.  What possible reason could they have for wanting to do this once a generation? This quote from John Adams sums it up nicely:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Finally, the Constitution of the United States creates a system whereby the government can be peacefully changed every 2 - 6 years.  The men who wrote this document set this system up in such a way that the States would determine who could vote for Congressmen and other representatives.  In most states at time, the only people who could vote were land owning white men. So answer me this: if the Founding Fathers set it up so that less than 1/3 of the population could change the government through peaceable means, what kind of twisted, idiotic logic makes you think they wanted everyone armed and able to do it violently?

     Now, I know there is no convincing people like Bob that these facts prove him wrong.  He has feelings on his side, so he doesn't need facts.  But this is reality.  This is the truth.  Bob actually says at one point that he doesn't have "an issue with opposing viewpoints that are thought out, well debated, and use facts."  Well, maybe Bob should try some of those things some time, because none of his arguments are thought out, well debated, or remotely factual.  He talks about extremists as if he isn't one.  He talks about a domestic terrorist as if his own writings do not support and encourage the very actions that man took.  He acts as if letting a gun manufacturer spread his lies and fear mongering in his magazine doesn't make him a shill.  Bob is truly the most despicable type of human being.  He makes me ashamed to be an American.  You can lie to yourself, Bob, but you're not fooling the rest of us.  We see you for the treasonous terrorist you are.

     One final thought: Bob has a pullout in this week's rag advertising a party he's throwing this weekend for all the other bundhists.  In a truly tone deaf and disgusting bit of irony, there's a bit about how they're holding an auction to raise money for the family of the PA State Trooper who was murdered in cold blood by one of Bob's "fellow patriots." I really hope his wife throws your money back in your face, Bob, but I doubt she even knows who you are or what you stand for. How about this Bob: instead of raising money for a real Patriot who gave his life in the line of duty, you stop printing your seditionist lies and insurrectionist fairy tales?  How about instead of encouraging people to take shots at the police and the government, you act like a real patriot and support it?  Like another great patriot, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson once said: "The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either."

A republic is a government of the people, Bob.  Maybe start acting like one.