“The world is a beautiful and radiant place.”

IN THE FILM Michael Clayton, an evil agricultural products conglomerate tries to hide the fact they’ve incancerated* over four thousand people with a weed killer after they knew it was a deadly carcinogen that could easily seep into the water table, but manufactured and sold it anyway.  

Arthur Edens, one of their corporate barristers assigned to keeping their immorality from ever reaching the light of day, accidentally glimpses the contents of his soul one night while distracting himself with a twofer blow job from a pair of red-headed twins, and, surprise— he discovered there wasn’t much there.

Arthur discovered it doesn’t matter who or where you are in life when the light comes in.  If you dare to open the door, it’s going to come in— no matter what.  You can easily push it aside;  you can ignore it,  you can go on living just as if it wasn’t there at all.  But Arthur Edens decides to let the light shine in his soul, and becomes an eccentric but determined whistle-blower— determined to take his meager light and shine it on the dark, ugly underbelly of a corporate monster just as determined to go on festering in the dark.

However, as a promo poster for the film says, “The truth Can Be Adjusted.”  This isn’t a nod to the fact that all truth is relative;  or that there are career professionals out there adjusting the truth completely out of incontrovertible facts;  even facts that can not be denied or disputed by marginally sane people.

…the entire Republican party now openly defines itself
[as] blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary,
and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve heard the screamers, the birthers, the deathers, at a town hall: “Why should I pay for your health care?”  In this one question, you have the full stench of selfishness and hypocrisy rolled into one, ugly question.

Bob Burnett

Beginning with the lie that the Obama Administration wants to suspend the second amendment and deny Americans the right to bear arms, Glen Beck has promoted armed resistance. Falsely claiming Obama has “surrounded himself by Marxists his whole life,” Beck proclaimed the Obama era is reminiscent of “”the early days of Adolf Hitler” and suggested America is rapidly becoming ” a totalitarian state.” The Republican Party and closely allied lobbyists promoted thuggery that disrupted town hall meetings. Now the Republican Party teeters on the edge of the signature tactic of fascist movements: sponsoring paramilitary groups.

In a self-indulgent exercise of egomaniacal power, Glenn Beck is seeking to destroy our government— the established order;  in essence, he is seeking and encouraging outright rebellion.

He is practicing the propaganda of agitation.

Sara Robinson

it’s easy to trace how American proto-fascism offered redemption from the upheavals of the 1960s by promising to restore the innocence of a traditional, white, Christian, male-dominated America. This vision has been so thoroughly embraced that the entire Republican party now openly defines itself along these lines. At this late stage, it’s blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage. Worse: it doesn’t have a moment’s shame about any of it. No apologies, to anyone. These same narrative threads have woven their way through every fascist movement in history.

[my emphasis]

That’s one way to adjust the truth; make up lie after lie and repeat it until the Great White Stupid simply succumbs and falls over;  it’s a bit like swinging a helpless child around in a circle until they’re completely dizzy, and then urging them to “stand up for freedom.”  In the struggle to make sense of their unreasoned fears, these “helpless children” identify themselves as Dittoheads, birhters, deathers, Beckers, Baggers, Bachmanniacs, and on and on. What did we expect would result from our willingness to tolerate an enormous underclass of Americans without any secondary education, who get their information from a traitorous “news network” propaganda tool that exploits their fears for political gain?

Our culture has gone crazy.  The failure of America’s leaders to recognize the importance of unifying her cultural factions by finding ways to bring them together in respect and intelligent patriotism, in ways that reflect our nations highest, truest values, has resulted in an all-out culture war that has polarized politics, castigated real religion, demonized science, and destroyed our sense of unity as a people.

We simply must move forward from where we find ourselves.  But no social system or political regime which denies the reality of God can contribute in any constructive and lasting manner to the advancement of human civilization. And here’s the appalling irony:  Christianity— as it is subdivided and secularized today— stands as the greatest single obstacle to its further advancement.

* in·can·cer·ate·d   confined to cancer

UPDATE:

What a coinky-dink— Life imitates art imitating life:

16 Cities Sue Manufacturer Of Atrazine Weed-Killer For Contaminating Drinking Water