The Krar Effect

OK, so sometimes there's just so much wackiness and wingnuttery out there that a guy has a hard time making up his mind. I've got two things on my mind right now--one scary, the other...well, it ought to be scary, but it's just plain galling.

Scary first. Rick Santorum is a right-wingnut who is already a US senator, and who might just run for president (not that I think he'd make it, but jeez, that idea alone is enough to keep you awake at night). And Santorum is really scary because his exterior is so smooth that voters are obviously missing the wingnuttery, hell, the plain mean spiritedness-- that's just below the surface. If you read the news about the guy, you realize he's downright scary. But that's what I do--I read the news, so I've never actually seen or heard him talking before. I've always had this picture in my mind of him as red in the face and frothing at the mouth, but I checked out these clips that I found at Santorum Exposed, I didn't see the raving maniac that I'd come to know through the Internet. I didn't even see the "freak out" that was promised (unless you count being made to look really stupid on TV and stammering a lot as a "freak out"). What I saw was a calm, charming, really good-looking and telegenic guy who does a great job of coming across as a boyish Beaver Cleaver golly-gee aw-shucks leader of the people from the heartland. Kind of a "Mr. Intolerant Goes to Washington."

Then, this morning, I heard him on NPR. And what scared the shit out of me was that the guy actually made a fair amount of sense (damn. I can hear Dru screaming all the way from my house. I'll bet she never blogs me again). Not that I buy the hetero-patriarchal corporate anti-environmental bullshit, but the guy was making some reasonable, articulate arguments. Yikes.

So, where I had previously dismissed Santorum as a wingnut--so much so that I had to keep reminding myself that he's the third ranking senator in our Federal Fucking Government--I hadn't given him a lot of thought, long-term-state-of-the-nationwise. But now...

And then, on the other hand, there's the strange case of William Krar and Tre Arrow. Raise your hand if you've heard of either of these names. Uh-huh. At least a few. Now, put your hand down if the only one you've heard of is Arrow. Hmm. Not a lot of hands left up a'tall.

And why is that? One of these guys is accused--not convicted, not confessed, but accused--of destroying a total of $250,000 worth of trucks. That is a not inconsiderable sum (it might even buy you a house in Austin these days), and I'm sure as hell not going to say that arson isn't just a real goddamn serious crime. A quarter of a million dollars worth of arson. That's a very serious charge.

However. Bachelor number two has a lot going for him. Bachelor number two is convicted--not suspected, not accused, but convicted-- of possessing machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs, and all the ingredients to make a cyanide bomb capable of killing anywhere from hundreds to over a thousand people, depending on the conditions and his luck. Or theirs.

At any rate, bachelor number two had the goodies to make the London bombers look like a bunch of punks (OK, not that they weren't, but you know what I mean) in his East Texas storage unit. If bachelor number two's name were Ahmed or Abdul, we would still be hearing about it. But it isn't. It's William Krar, and the environmentalist who's accused of arson is Tre Arrow.

But don't blame yourselves for not knowing. I decided to run some Google searches to see just how much press these two men were getting. First I ran a search on their names in the Google "News" section. Results:

Tre Arrow 115
William Krar 2

But that's not really a fair test. Google News only goes back six months. So let's search the whole web, knowing that it will probably be grossly in Krar's favor because his story has been making headlines since 2003...

Tre Arrow: 17,800
William Krar: 928

...or not. Almost 2:1 in favor of Mr. Arrow (who now leads 30-Love). One more try. Just for tickles, let's try to see how many times the respective names appear with the word "terrorist." Again, this should grossly favor Mr. Krar--he, after all, hung around with people who shared a lot of Tim McVeigh's philosophies and stockpiled the fixin's for a genuine goddamn weapon of mass motherfucking destruction, that was designed to be used on people after all. Burning trucks is dangerous and anti-social, but given my choice, I know which one I'd pick. I know which one the Iraq Survey group, Hans Blix and the UN Security Council would pick. Fuck, I say invade East Texas. Yo.

Anyway, the results?
"Tre Arrow" "terrorist" 8,370
"William Krar" "terrorist" 813

Surprised? No, me neither. Game, Set, and Match to Mr. Arrow, by a factor of over Ten to One. Jeez.

And the connection I see between the two stories?

• Krar is flat out dangerous as hell, and a wingnut to boot.
• Arrow--if guilty as charged--is grossly irresponsible and could easily have caused loss of life with his protests, which probably did more harm than good to the environmental movement (thus making him a wingnut too, BTW).

But of the two, who did we hear about? Of the two, who fit the reigning notions of "who's dangerous and who's not?" What I'm going to call the "Krar factor" tells me that in the current media/cultural/political climate, people are less responsive to what's actually dangerous, and more responsive to what they're told is dangerous, and what looks dangerous. And we've got the entire right wing telling us that Rick Santorum is a maligned and persecuted defender of the family suffering vicious attacks from the Left, not an anti-choice homophobic wingnut who wants to run for president and who seriously needs to be called on his bullshit (In other words, he's not attacked because he's pro-family, he's attacked because he's a bigot. Anyone who can't see the difference between a lesbian couple raising kids together and a man fucking a dog is either a raving homophobe or really, really, really needs to get his eyes examined).

More tidbits:

• Santorum doesn't believe in a right to privacy. Zip. Zero. Nada. He was quite clear about that this morning, and he's been quite clear about that in the past. He thinks it was all a colossal mistake. I am not making this up.
• Santorum stands by his accusation that Boston's liberal atmosphere was partly responsible for the church molestation epidemic. It's not the scurrilous attack on Liberalism [See Mommy? John Kerry = grown men molesting altar boys], it's the bizarre impunity to logic he seems to feel. People keep bringing up to him that priests were molesting kids all over America, in the bluest of blue states and the reddest of red. So there's no fucking way that Boston's liberal culture could be shown to have anything to do with the--let's not mince words here--rapes. Yet he continues to repeat his message, smilingly, charmingly, absolutely impervious to the fact that what he's saying is pernicious and makes no fucking sense [know who he really reminds me of? That creepy mayor from Buffy. Evil fuck].
• OK, just for a minute, forget abortion. How about this: Rick Santorum thinks birth control in any form is harmful to women, society and our country. Jeez. Where do I go with that one?

But I didn't write this just to bash Santorum (no, The Lantern Project does a much better job of that. Read the "greatest hits" section. It'll curl your toes). My real point here is that we are fighting for truth and justice against duplicity and complacency. I still love the NYT, but after the whole Judith-Miller-as-Mouthpiece-for-Ahmed-Chalabi fiasco, it's been obvious that even the Grey Lady is seeing what she's told to see, hearing what sounds reasonable. I'm afraid that today I don't have any slick way of tying this all together. I'm still trying to figure it all out. But I do know this: The reason Tre Arrow is ten times better known than William Krar is the reason that Rick Santorum stands a significant chance of winning the presidency come 2008.

My wife and I, after reading Handmaid's Tale discussed how bad things would have to get before we started gathering things like fake passports and laying plans for a quick exit to Mexico, should it become necessary. And I will tell you this in all seriousness. If Rick Santorum wins the presidency--fuck, if he wins the Republican Nomination--I will be investigating methods of acquiring a new passport.

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And in parting, I swear, if I hear another right-wingnut spout off about "Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman," I think I'm going to get arrested for assault and slappery. Jesus Christ, read some history, would you? Read your own fucking Bible that you love to quote so much. How about "One man, Seven Hundred so-called "wives" who are really your sex slaves, war prizes, status symbols and offspring producers, as well as three hundred concubines?"

[Granted, Solomon was punished by Jehovah, but not because he made the beast of two backs with a thousand different women. It was because those evil women turned him away from Jehovah. See, Ricky? It's not about "Family Values," it's about the patriarchy's ability to control women. If Solomon could have reigned those harlots in and continued to worship the Uberpatriarch, he could have done the dance of the wild monkey with as many chicks as he liked. Jehovah had no prob with, ahem, "non-traditional families."]

Jeez.