Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power : The rise and risks of the conservative hate culture by Gerry Spence [book review].

Spence is a Western Populist and it shows. He is not afraid of speaking his mind, of broad strokes and bold ideas.

Spence starts on familiar and comforting territory. Aren’t those Republicans thugs, bullies and generally despicable people? If he stopped at chronicling the outrages of Coulter, BillO and others, this would be a useful title, but far from unique. He has much more on his plate.

He views the Hate Culture as a deliberate creation, a means for those that have to control those who have not. Spence views the cultivation of hate as a way to distract people from major issues. Thus we should be mad at the Dutch about how they let a drunken American teenager disappear in Aruba, but not with Congress for letting drug companies loot the treasury.

It brings to mind a Feingold moment. He was traveling in the Deep South and couldn’t understand how those with so little could vote for a party that was run for the rich. Southern newspapers took him to task as a Northern elitist. Apparently they have never been to Wisconsin, which is not an elite kind of place. It was because they let themselves be distracted, by either hate or something else, that Southerners could vote for people who can’t wait to sell them out.

He looks at the Nazis, which, in a lesser hand, would be a sign of desperation. Instead, he is examining the foundations of modern propaganda. The Nazi’s goals were to build patriotism as a cover for a free-floating anger that could be aimed where they wished. They tragically succeeded. Spence contends that this is what Rove et al are about and quite profitably.

He also shows just how successful all this is at quieting the opposition. Free speech is unpatriotic and even un-American if you can just spread enough hate. One look at what was done to Cindy Sheehan is enough to demonstrate the costs of standing up and speaking.

Spence is understandably worked up about lawyers. He shows just what happens with “tort reform.” Malpractice insurance doesn’t go down, but insurance company profits do go up. He explication of the McDonald’s hot coffee suit is enlightening. It never gets mentioned that the woman involved was hospitalized for a week and needed skin grafts for her third degree burns. She has holding the coffee over her lap trying to get the lid off when she was burned, so I’ll leave it up to your imagination where those skin grafts were needed. It is now nearly impossible to sue a major corporation, no matter how deliberately negligent they have been.

Spence is not just upset, he is ready to get Biblically righteous on them. He views the rise to power of corporations as an accomplished fact, one that may be beyond correction. He calls for radical reform, reform which he does not think will happen under our current corporate masters.

If you want a peak at Western Progressives and their critique of where the country is headed, this is a good place to look. If you want to re-perceive the crimes of the current administration and make sense of why Coulter and others are so valuable to the Republicans, this is essential. Don’t stop while he gets through the listing of the outrages and get to the real meat of his argument – how the hate culture is vital to enslaving America. His weakest section is his proposed solutions, which call for a radical restructuring of the political system and reflect his view on how serious this is,

1 – Hate Sells: Meet Its Prime-time Peddler, Nancy Grace

2 – The Queen of Hate: Ann Coulter

3 – Hate, the Road to Power, and the Elitists of Laura Ingraham

4 – For I Have Sinned: The Saga of Bill O’Reilly

5 – Hate, Hypocrisy, and the Pimps of Power

6 – The Noxious Garden: The Cultivation of Hate in America

7 – Freedom of Speech: The Unheard Voices of People

8 – The Ghost of Goebbels, Propaganda, and the Rock-Hard Right

9 – Hate for the Love of Christ: Pat Robertson and the Christian Right

10 – Kill All the Lawyers: The Rise of the New King

11 – Hate and the New American Slavery

12 – The Rise of the Fourth Reich: Entrance to Hell

13 – The End of Hate: Return to the Garden

What Paul Meant by Garry Wills [book review]

Garry Wills follows up his best-selling What Jesus Meant with What Paul Meant. In many ways, the follow up is a better book. Many authors have searched for the ‘real’ Jesus in the Gospels, with very mixed and inconsistent results. Indeed the results say more about the authors than about Jesus. Paul is much clearer.Diaries ::
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Once you clear away the Pauline epistles and set aside what Acts has to say about Paul and read what Paul has to say about Paul, you have a considerable body of work. Indeed, there are few ancients whose work is so well attested and so personal. It is in clearing away the debris around the historical Paul that Wills excels.

As in his previous books, Wills works to strip away the anachronisms. The Road to Damascus takes place in Acts, but Paul never mentions it. Paul would not have considered that he converted. He was a Jew among Jews, who came to believe the Jesus was the promised Messiah. There was no “Christian” church to convert to. Not only that, there was nothing that we would call a church.

Paul pre-dates the Gospels and is the only writing we are certain was composed within the lives of the Twelve, while there were many witnesses alive. Far from creating something out of the death of a carpenter, Paul emerges from his own words as a most faithful follower of his Risen Messiah. This is a book I highly recommend.

Wills, Garry, 1934-What Paul meant.
Introduction : “the bad news man”
1 – Paul and the risen Jesus
2 – Paul and the pre-resurrection Jesus
3 – Paul “on the road”
4 – Paul and Peter
5 – Paul and women
6 – Paul and the troubled gatherings
7 – Paul and Jews
8 – Paul and Jerusalem
9 – Paul and Rome
Afterword : misreading Paul
App – Translating Paul