Notes from Cambodia…

Walking through the city last night, I passed a small crowd of Khmer in a park.  They were playing aggressive rap music and dancing what looked like an Asian version of the hokey-pokey.

 

I got a strange phone call.  Someone called yesterday and said he wanted to meet me.  It sounded really shady.  He kept asking me where I was.  He was talking kind of quietly, and referred to my old job that I’d left.

I pretended I couldn’t hear him and hung up.

I stopped around at the school that I figured might have been calling to offer me a job.  (But why would they want to meet me?)  After a tortured conversation, the receptionist checked and told me that the man who called me was “in the provinces.”  We agreed he could email me.

That was yesterday.  Today, I got the phone call again.  He wanted to meet me.  He sounded bolder.  I kept asking who he was; I think he might have given me the name of my old landlord, several moves ago.  Finally, he came out with it:

My visa (he said) was no good.  Did I know the law in Cambodia?  He would report me to the Embassy.  He said something about the police, too.

Whacko Kills 13: The Real Tragedy Is That This Will Make People Dislike Muslims, Imams Say

Yeah, okay; so the guy was under psychological pressure, and it’s a coincidence that he said, “Praise Allah!” just before he opened fire.  Isn’t a strong religious background supposed to help you cope with psychological pressure?

While the media wrings their hands about what a U.S. soldier killing other U.S. soldiers in the name of Allah will make the American public think about Islam, Muslims ideologues tell us how deeply hurt they are that people might think that Allah wants Muslims to murder.  It seems to me these folks are confused:  I’m fine with Allah not wanting Muslims to murder.  They don’t need to tell me; they need to tell people like Major Hasan.

A PowerPoint slide from Major Hasan’s presentation to the military.  This presentation raised eyebrows, but no red flags.  Officials explained they didn’t want to discriminate.

Beck-FOX death toll begins: FED slaying

Well, what did you think was going to happen?

After months of pumping incoherent rage into the media, some of Beck’s more loyal followers, some inbred-Jed types – who don’t understand that Beck is owned by FOX, which is owned by big business, and that the goal is not to tell the truth, but to torpedo health care reform – have taken action.

Let’s back up a moment.  Let’s see how we got here.

How have the conservatives run the country into the ground?  Let us count the ways:

1. Started a needless war in Iraq for oil, on false WMD claims.
2. …which siphoned military force away from the war that was about terrorism, in Afganistan.
3. Ruthlessly de-commissioned government regulation of American business.
4. Taxed the rich less, in order to…
5. Cut government spending that benefitted the poor, while…
6. Increasing government spending that benefitted U.S. businesses, which in combination with the Iraq war resulted in…
7. The creation of ballooning national debt.
8. So these “pro-business” policies caused the U.S. economy to implode, at which point the GOP had no choice but to…
9. Spend trillions of dollars to bail out the companies that created the problems.
10. And there’s some other stuff in there, about turning Federal criminal inquiries into a political tool, imprisoning people with no trial, torturing them, and (oh yes) appointing people to positions of great responsibility (running FEMA, sitting on the Supreme Court) because they’re old friends or support Bush, without regard for their competence or ability.

Finally, after eight years of cluster-fuck-ism, the nation has the audacity of electing a progressive moderate President, who is what a conservative ex-military acquaintance of mine quite candidly calls a nigger.

And Beck and his ilk spew lies villifying Obama and the Democratic party.  Obama is an Arab; he’s a terrorist.  Obama isn’t really an American citizen.  The Democrats want to create death panels.  They want to control what doctors you see.

And now we apparently have Inbred Jeds in Kentucky killing some guy and scrawling FED into his chest because he works for the U.S. Census.

It looks to me like this killing needs to be laid at Beck’s feet.  Beck didn’t do it, but he is the public face of the propaganda machine that created the anti-Federal sentiment that lead to the killing.

We really need to start getting a grip on the truth in this country.  The GOP managed to gang-rape the economy in the first place with repeated lies, about just about anything:  The swift boat thing, for example.

And the problem is that the news media play the lies without calling them out as lies.  Because they’re supposed to be “objective.”  Because being “objective” means being respectfully servile to anything that a politician says, even when it’s a lie.  And the GOP know how to use that.

So, now people are killing Census workers and carving “FED” into their chests.  Great, guys.  Congratulations, Beck.  You must be very satisfied to know that the hatred and lies you’ve been vomiting into the airwaves are working so well.

Jesus.