Two Minutes Hate

Seriously, someone in the administration has taken Orwell's (now, ever so prescient) novel and turned it into a political strategy:

Times beyond number, at Party rallies and spontaneous demonstrations, she had shouted at the top of her voice for the execution of people whose names she had never heard and in whose supposed crimes she had not the faintest belief. When public trials were happening she had taken her place in the detachments from the Youth League who surrounded the courts from morning to night, chanting at intervals 'Death to the traitors!' During the Two Minutes Hate she always excelled all others in shouting insults at Goldstein. Yet she had only the dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what doctrines he was supposed to represent.

Apparently, the latest Two Minutes Hate that the administration's cheerleaders rabble-rousers are inculcating amongst their fatuous disciples is the claim that this puff piece in the NYT Travel Section is clear and demonstrable proof that the NYT wants the terrorists to assassinate Cheney and Rumsfeld as they sip their scotch on their back porches of their summer homes manses.

Well, I had to find out what all the fuss was about. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction! Get a load of this gem (emphasis mine):

The houses have names. Mr. Rumsfeld's is Mount Misery and is just across Rolles Creek from a house called Mount Pleasant. On four acres, with four bathrooms, five bedrooms and five fireplaces, built in 1804, the Rumsfeld house is just barely visible at the end of a gravel drive.

[...]

But there is some historical gravity to the name, too. By 1833, Mount Misery's owner was Edward Covey, a farmer notorious for breaking unruly slaves for other farmers. One who wouldn't be broken was Frederick Douglass, then 16 and later the abolitionist orator. Covey assaulted him, so Douglass beat him up and escaped. Today, where the drive begins, Mount Misery seems a congenial place, with a white mailbox with newspaper delivery sleeves attached, a big American flag fluttering from a post by a split-rail fence and a tall, one-hole birdhouse of the sort made for bluebirds — although the lens in the hole suggests another function.

Mount Misery? A home with a history shrouded in torture?! Another classic entry for the Annals of Unmakeuppable Sh*t.

But, back to the main thesis of this post. As Glenn points out, this latest string of anti-NYT demagoguery is a concerted and seemingly coordinated effort to plant fear and hatred in the minds of the mindless that the real enemy is the enemy within; the librul press, spearheaded by that bastion of northeast liberalism islamofascism, the New Yawk Tahmes and its evil, unpatriotic, al Qaeda-sympathizing, America-hating editors. Glenn concludes this entry with the following:

He's urging people to find the names and addresses of New York Times editors and reporters in order to "hunt them down and do America a favor." And he said that right after he posted the link to the address of the Times photographer. And this is just the beginning of this syndrome, not the end.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Greg Sargent sums it up nicely:

But the most extraordinary thing about this whole sorry spectacle wasn't the fact that these charges were completely insane. No, the really amazing thing was that the big news orgs happily gave a platform to those making these allegations, thus giving them a patina of respectibility and ensuring that they reached large audiences of people who don't get their news exclusively from right wing sources. Bizarre charges of treason and surreal talk of imprisonment filled the airways. A talk show host who said she'd happily see Keller hauled off to the "gas chamber" was granted the right to make her case on MSNBC. And on and on. The result of this legitimacy? Well-meaning people across the country took seriously the paranoid and delusional notion that the media is treasonous, forcing Keller and Baquet to defend not just the particulars of this specific news judgment, but their motives and patriotism, too.

Here's the situation in a nutshell. Those hurling these reckless charges of treason at the Times have a very specific agenda: First, they want to reunite the Republican base, which is fracturing because of the Iraq war, the GOP's betrayal of various conservative principles, and the fact that Bush's Presidency is so obviously a failure that all but the most diehard supporters can see it. And second, they want to convince great masses of people that there's a traitor in our midst that would weaken America -- an obvious ploy designed to divert attention from the catastrophic failures of the Bush administration, the Republican Party and, most important, the discredited ideas which drive them. At bottom this is all about salvaging a political movement that's in real trouble.

The sad truth is that it is the Cheney Bush administration that is weakening America through (inept) prosecution of an unnecessary, and unprovoked, war that is sapping our treasury, its its cowardly and impotent policy of using torture, and its subversion of the Constitution at every turn, all in the name of "protecting us from the terrorists".

Had enough?

Update: I hesitate to link to this, as it only will increase its weight. But frankly, this is getting out of hand, and people need to see what the Bush crime family have wrought with their divisiveness. Frankly, this guy is seriously unbalanced. He needs help.