By John Brummett
This is the kind of thing that happens when you elect oddballs to the state Legislature at the very time social media explodes with people possessing Facebook pages.
Oddballs thus have the direct opportunity to go public with whatever goes haywire in their shorted-out brains.
There is this primitive life force — its name is Nate Bell, and it is a freshman tea party Republican state representative from Mena — about whom I wrote briefly once before.
That was in the legislative session when Bell said the reason he got elected to the Legislature was to undo federal health care reform, about which he could accomplish not a blasted thing, being (1) not in Congress and (2) not in any evident command of policy or reality.
So the other day Bell typed on his Facebook page that there are certain Hitler/Nazi implications in some of this modern Arkansas legislation presumably designed to help children. He cited a supposed Hitler quote about how people will fall for anything if you couch it as beneficial to kids.
Some of these Arkansas Democrats’ proposals — like the one banning texting while driving through a school zone during school hours — are “way easy” to compare to Nazi initiatives, Bell wrote in a Facebook follow-up.
Alas, this ought to go without saying, but, apparently, it doesn’t: Nazi is an unspeakably insensitive and offensive label to invoke in regard to anything American, indeed in regard to anything human.
What the child Anne Frank was enduring in Amsterdam, keeping a powerfully dramatic diary as she and other family members hid because Hitler would imprison or kill them simply because of their religion, and eventually dying of disease in a concentration camp — that occurred in an entirely different galaxy of human horror from what someone endures in American suburbia today when denied the privilege to take his or her hand off the SUV steering wheel and send a thumbed-out text while accelerating across an elementary school crosswalk.
Bell also likened to Nazi-inflicted atrocities recent Arkansas bills to require that restaurant hamburgers get cooked to a certain temperature and that soccer goals on public fields get affixed to the earth, the latter, actually, a proposal by a Republican.
A couple of bills indeed might have been an over-indulgence of the nanny state. But American nannies and German Nazis are not remotely synonymous.
There is an important difference between mildly overzealous protection of innocent children and wholly rabid murder of innocent children. One is compassionate. The other is evil. That is all.
Bell has declined to respond in detail to media requests for elaboration on his Facebook brain dysfunction. He merely issued a vague statement — e-mailed to me and three reporters — about how he didn’t really mean Democrats were Nazis although we need to be careful with some of this stuff we propose in legislation.
We see the hint of a trend: Tea party types say a wild thing or pull a wild stunt, then decline to account to the mainstream media, probably by accusing the mainstream media of bias, but possibly out of fear of accurate representation.
Rep. Mark Biviano of Searcy, for example, still hasn’t responded to queries about allegations that his vehicle clipped another in front of the Capitol Hotel and that he just drove away.
What is to become of us when people who are this breathtakingly misguided on history and this arrogantly unaccountable for their actions achieve important public office?
For one thing, and in the immediate term, it may be that our government’s credit rating will be downgraded to the point that interest costs will rise for beleaguered Americans’ mortgages and car loans.
Then, over time, things might really get messed up.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
July 28th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Let me make two points here. First, the term Tea Party is being used by Brummett for any right wing person he does not like.
Second, Brummett claims it the Republicans who want to default, but is the Democrats who are refusing to cut the budget in a way we can lower this 1.7 trillion deficit for this year!!!!
The huge deficits are the problem. People want the debt ceiling raised, but if the huge deficits continue then what is the use? The article below shows how our government will have their credit rating devalued UNLESS WE STOP RUNNING UP BIG DEFICTIS EVERY YEAR!!
“Dueling Debt Ceiling Proposals vs. the Rating Agencies,” by Alison Acosta Fraser, July 25, 2011 at 10:16 pm:
Americans, and global financial markets, are watching Washington nervously for a real plan—one that will put the nation squarely on a path to solving our twin crises of spending and debt. Without strong structural changes in spending, our debt will balloon out of control.
At stake are two issues. The short-term is obvious – will there be an increase in the debt limit before August 3? Despite the President and his team practically begging Wall Street to collapse, the markets and the rating agencies believe that there will be an increase and the federal government can safely avoid the chaos of prioritizing its bills in order to service the debt…
Moody’s response is similar:
The outlook assigned at that time to the government bond rating would very likely be changed to negative at the conclusion of the review unless substantial and credible agreement is achieved on a budget that includes long-term deficit reduction. To retain a stable outlook, such an agreement should include a deficit trajectory that leads to stabilization and then decline in the ratios of federal government debt to GDP and debt to revenue beginning within the next few years.
July 28th, 2011 at 9:27 am
@halting–That’s all nice, but care to defend Mr. Bell?
July 28th, 2011 at 10:20 am
I agree with Tolbert that it was ill-advised. Jason Tolbert gave us the big picture when he noted:
You almost have to feel bad for Arkansas Democrats…almost. With the last remaining Arkansas Congressional Democrat, Mike Ross, announcing he will not run for re-election, they are facing the realization that the entire Arkansas delagation – save Sen. Mark Pryor who is not up until 2014 – could turn red in the next cycle. They are just coming off a tidal wave 2010 election which saw Republicans in the state capitol close to double in ranks. And with the unpopular President Obama leading their ticket in 2012, it is likely to get even worse for them.
It is so bad that Politico this week had the healine “Arkansas Democrats Face Extinction.” Ouch!
It is almost understandable then that they are doing everything they can to hang on to power – whether it is creative map drawing or trying to seize every opportunity to paint Republicans as crazy extremists. Granted, frequent e-mails circulating the Internet make for easy targets. But the over-the-top reaction to an ill-advised Facebook post from a Republican state representative has been both amusing and a bit annoying at the same time.
July 28th, 2011 at 10:39 am
ill-advised? understatement, you think? for the record, i care much less whether democrats or republicans win arkansas political races than whether the republican party can extricate itself from the cranks and kooks and affronts to advanced civilization represented by this kind of outrageously ignorant comment — a process a couple of republicans could begin right here right now by denouncing this guy’s outrage on specific merit and in unambiguous terms, not dismissing it defensively for purely partisan motivation.
July 28th, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Primitive life force? Shorted out brains? Oddballs? Kooks? Cranks? Ignorant? Affronts to advanced civilization? Didn’t Hitler use these terms to demonize Jews? It appears to me that you do a most excellent job of proving Bell’s controversial comparison more accurate than you care to accept. Hitler’s advanced civilization ideas seem eerily similar to yours. Tolerance? Your rant looks like hate speech to me.
July 28th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
If you look at the unbelievable comments that Democrats have made the last two years when they have crammed Obamacare down our throats then you could really come up with so crazy comments. Obama says the whole Obamacare debate will be on CSpan then he retreats with Nancy and does it in private and she says, “You will find out what is in it when we pass it.”
I still think that Tolbert has it right. It makes me think that the Democrat Party of Arkansas is acting much like Florida Alantic’s announcer did last year in the ASU game.
I give Florida Atlantic color commentator Dave Lamont credit. The guy is passionate about football, the team he covers, and most of all: THE RULES.
With Arkansas St. leading 37-16 late in the game, Lamont lost his marbles after FAU quarterback Jeff Van Camp scrambled, slid and then took a hit in the head by an Arkansas St. defender.
It should have been a flag. But, as we are reminded on a weekly basis, sometimes officials miss calls. It happens. Well, Lamont was in no mood for oversights. And his subsequent on-air rant was hilariously intense. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9REY0kS1Ek&feature=player_embedded
Keep up the good work John. Your articles are always thought provoking.
July 28th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
all right then. i will refrain henceforth from calling people names unless they are such primitive life forces and kooks and cranks and affronts to advanced civilization that they equate my calling them names with systematic murder, extermination, human oppression. thank you for your credible critique of my name-calling before you crashed over the cliff.
July 28th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
halting: thanks for the compliment. as to the rest of your comment, please reconsider the “yeah, but he did something bad too” defense, specifically as to whether you might want to leave it for the grade school playground where it belongs. you’re better than that.
July 29th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
John, do you think it matters that the supposed Hitler quote was a fabrication invented precisely for the purpose of anti-liberal propaganda?
http://arkansasmediawatch.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/nate-bell-hitler-quote-update/
http://arkansasmediawatch.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/republican-hitler-quote/
Btw haltingarkansasliberalswithtruth is not “better than that”. He is precisely what he shows himself to be.
July 29th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
yeah, matters. should’ve mentioned it.