Can we at long last PLEASE get the whole backstory behind Glenn Beck’s mysterious “disappearance” a few years ago??? Someone, somewhere must know what cave he was hiding in… What breakdown he was having… What straitjacket he was struggling in… What Space Alien he was channeling… What substance he was worshipping… What Dominatrix he was paying… Anyone?? Hell, it doesn’t even have to be a True Story! HE certainly doesn’t worry about a little thing called truth!

It is time to bring this slug out from under his rock. He is mentally imbalanced, and it is hurting the country.

Jane, I don’t know how you do it. You bring us good, inspiring stuff; you write great, even more inspiring stuff.

I just sit here, angry and discouraged, writing an occasional poisen pen e-mail to the idiots at the DNC, DCCC, DSCC and OFA who continue to pepper me with pleas for money that they can then funnel to Health Schuler and Mike Ross.

For the 12 months leading up to November 2008, I was a busy, excited, energetic person, focusing on getting Obama and other good Democrats elected. I tried the patience of my friends with my countless e-mail pleas and exhortations. I gave [$$$] and gave and gave again.

Now, nothing but the angry e-mails. There’s nowhere to go. [I got a feeble e-mail tonight from the “Democratic Party of Hawaii” that didn’t even have anything happening on this island and was barely coherent over what was going on on Oahu.]

Anyway, I don’t know how you manage to be so energetic and inspired [and inspiring]. I salute you, as I grieve for our country. Man, is Obama a disappointment!!

How can you ask from us what you won’t do for us?

yes it is an incredible piece – it’s an ahah moment many of us across the progressive community (see TBogg frontpage) have recently been experiencing. a certain blonde free range warrior and her team have been writing about it for a while now . . .

politely suggest anyone with the time please read the comments to Mr Turner’s post – get a good look at the state of denial/magical thinking in our own backyard

If a psychotic a$$hole like Glen Beck has the power to stall change, then this country is doubly-doomed.

Turner’s piece about birthers, deathers, and those who accuse President Obama of racism and socialism coming from the same place and engaging in a form of terrorism to pursue their political objectives, together with Bill Moyers’ comment about the crackpots on the right, “Forget what you learned in civics about the Founding Fathers — we’re the children of Barnum and Bailey, our founding con men,” and Henry Giroux’s description of the “culture of cruelty” are indeed alarming.

Eric Hoffer’s classic, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, has great relevance to our times. Hoffer’s insight about mass movements was that they are an outlet for people whose individual significance is meager in the eyes of the world and, more important, in their own eyes.

Hoffer said: “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”

People who are fulfilled in their own lives and careers are not the ones attracted to mass movements: “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding,” Hoffer said. “When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”

What Hoffer was describing was the political busybody, the zealot for a cause — the “true believer,” who filled the ranks of ideological movements that created the totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century. “It is the true believer’s ability to shut his eyes and stop his ears to facts which in his own mind deserve never to be seen nor heard which is the source of his unequalled fortitude and consistency.” “The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.”

Hoffer is describing the political busybodies, the zealots for “the cause,” the “true believers,” who are filling the ranks of our current crackpot right wing ideological movement.

Hoffer’s words should serve as a warning, “Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden…We join a mass movement to escape from individual responsibility, or, in the words of an ardent young Nazi, ‘to be free from freedom.’ It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?”

How many feel like they should go back on the campaign trail retracing your steps to knock on doors and apologize?

Speaking of Nazi’s it’s revealing to see how the right in the U.S. has used many of the similar tactics and arguments to insure a paralysis of effective government and to intimidate their political opposition. It has worked brilliantly for them so far.