{"id":4097,"date":"2009-09-09T12:29:44","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T17:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=4097"},"modified":"2009-09-09T12:29:44","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T17:29:44","slug":"why-i-am-disappearing-into-disney-world-for-a-while","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/4097","title":{"rendered":"Why I Am Disappearing Into Disney World For A While.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Starting&#8230;uh&#8230;well, right now actually&#8230;I&#8217;m going on a wee vacation.&nbsp; My birthday is Saturday and I am going to spend a week in Disney World.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve got a room inside the enclave, in The Caribbean&#8230;one of the middle-tier resorts.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve stayed there before and it is lovely.&nbsp; It&#8217;s also well located, almost right in the middle of the enclave, to get to everything. My plan is to go through the gates and forget about the world outside for a week.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s why&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/digbysblog.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/on-road-with-orly-by-digby-esquire-has.html\">On The Road With Orly<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>by digby<\/p>\n<p>Esquire has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/the-side\/richardson-report\/obama-birthers-movement-part-one-080409\">a great story<\/a> about the conservo-crazy cult which he colorfully describes as &quot;pus exploding from a wound.&quot; When you read the article, you&#8217;ll see just how apt this description is. Here&#8217;s just a little excerpt:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Almost immediately<\/strong> following the election, a rash of extreme but nonetheless important statements about Obama and his agenda started appearing in the media. Here&#8217;s a small but representative sample, lest we allow the latest Dobbsian rhetoric (or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.creators.com\/conservative\/chuck-norris\/what-obama-and-my-wife-have-in-common.html\">Chuck Norris<\/a>) to obfuscate the chorus:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Senator Tom Coburn<\/strong> of Oklahoma said the bailout was the start of America&#8217;s downfall. &quot;To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Congressman Pete Sessions<\/strong> of Texas said that Obama <em>intended<\/em> &quot;to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not kill it.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Congressman Ron Paul<\/strong> of Texas said that &quot;socialism&quot; was too mild a word for what Obama was doing because taking over corporations &quot;adds a fascistic aspect to socialism.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. Representative Michele Bachmann<\/strong> of Minnesota said she wanted her constituents &quot;armed and dangerous&quot; because Obama was planning &quot;re-education camps for young people.&quot; She also said that &quot;Thomas Jefferson told us having a revolution every now and then is a good thing.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. Ambassador Alan Keyes<\/strong> called Obama a communist who is trying to establish &quot;an American KGB.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>6. <em>Rush Limbaugh Show<\/em> guest host Mark Davis<\/strong> told a joke about a soldier who has only two bullets in his gun when he meets Osama Bin Laden, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi &mdash; and uses both bullets on Pelosi before strangling the other two.<\/p>\n<p><strong>7. Senator Richard Shelby<\/strong> of Alabama put his considerable weight behind the &quot;birther&quot; movement: &quot;His father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven&#8217;t seen any birth certificate.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>8. Legislators in thirty states<\/strong> filed Tenth Amendment &quot;sovereignty&quot; laws as a symbolic gesture of defiance to Washington.<\/p>\n<p><strong>9. Tens of thousands of YouTubers<\/strong> watched <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QuwvNDSEM_k\">a video called &quot;Revolution Now,&quot;<\/a> in which a masked man claiming to be a soldier and an &quot;anonymous American patriot&quot; warned of growing resistance within the military. &quot;There&#8217;s a revolution brewing,&quot; he said. &quot;We have allowed the tyrants to take over this country.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><strong>10. Seven percent of the country<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pollingreport.com\/budget.htm\">thought<\/a>, at a time when the Republicans were almost unanimously resistant to everything the Democrats proposed, that the GOP was being too <em>cooperative<\/em>. That&#8217;s roughly 21 million seriously alienated people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But nobody<\/strong> vibrated with the new sense of alarm more vividly than Fox&#8217;s new talk-show host, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/the-side\/richardson-report\/glenn-beck-fox-news-030309\">Glenn Beck<\/a>. &quot;The year is 2014. All the banks have been nationalized,&quot; he began one show. &quot;Unemployment is about between 12 percent and 20 percent. Dow is trading at 2,800. The real-estate market has collapsed. Government and unions control most of business, and America&#8217;s credit rating has been downgraded.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>In another, he sounded exactly like a militia member from the backwoods of Montana: &quot;They&#8217;ll take away guns, they&#8217;ll take way our sovereignty, they&#8217;ll take away our currency, our money. They&#8217;re already starting to put all the global framework in with this bullcrap called global warming. This is an effort to globalize, to tie together everybody on the planet!&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Beck called for resistance and talked about storming Washington, selling T-shirts blazed with the pitchfork of an angry mob &mdash; and all of this led to startling success. Debuting last January in a weak 5 P.M. time slot, Beck shot to the No. 3 cable-news slot overnight, right behind Bill O&#8217;Reilly and Sean Hannity with 2.5 million viewers.<\/p>\n<p>And all of this was nothing compared to the alarmed citizens raging away on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.glennbeck.com\/\">his Web site<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>* Obamacare meant that &quot;bureaucrats are going to decide who lives and dies,&quot; one said.<\/p>\n<p>* The new pro-union card check law was &quot;possibly the greatest threat against American free enterprise ever,&quot; said another.<\/p>\n<p>* People were &quot;better off trusting their mattresses&quot; than the greedy bankers, said another.<\/p>\n<p>* There were &quot;35 terrorist training camps spread across the U.S.A.&quot; that were run by Sheikh Gilani from Pakistan, said another.<\/p>\n<p>* Homeland Security &quot;deliberately ignores the border and the redistribution of wealth is NOT constitutional,&quot; said another.<\/p>\n<p>* Others solicited signatures for a new &quot;martial law early alert&quot; system and suggested that people download a video that &quot;completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>* &quot;GET YOURSELVES HUNKERED DOWN WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS,&quot; one woman advised. &quot;GET PASSPORTS AND START LOOKING NOW FOR INEXPENSIVES SAFE PLACES TO GO &mdash; THE U.S.A. IS OVER AS WE HAVE KNOWN IT.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh&#8230;and <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20090812\/ap_on_re_us\/us_militia_movement;_ylt=AqoBS09lSSsYkzbuaTsaWODM9bQF;_ylu=X3oDMTJtczR1ZnN1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwODEyL3VzX21pbGl0aWFfbW92ZW1lbnQEY3BvcwM2BHBvcwM2BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDb2ZmaWNpYWxzc2Vl\">This<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends.<\/p>\n<p>The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the report from the <span class=\"yshortcuts\">Southern Poverty Law Center<\/span> says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration.<\/p>\n<p>Bart McEntire, a <span class=\"yshortcuts\">special agent<\/span> with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he&#8217;s seen in more than a decade.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;All it&#8217;s lacking is a spark,&quot; McEntire said in the report.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Swell.&nbsp; Just swell.\n<\/p>\n<p>I was saying all during the Bush years that the shit doesn&#8217;t really hit the fan until the kooks start Loosing power.&nbsp; That&#8217;s when you&#8217;ll see the crazy start.&nbsp; Well.&nbsp; Here we are.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/images\/tea-0.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/images\/tea-1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"291\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/images\/tea-2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"291\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/images\/tea-3.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Swell.&nbsp; Just swell.\n<\/p>\n<p>I need to remind myself what the world looked like back when I was a kid.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"270\" height=\"409\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/images\/tea-4.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Especially these days.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>No, no&#8230;&nbsp; Not merely cartoon mice and Mary Poppins.&nbsp; But that world where the future was always going to be brighter, where technological progress made life better, not worse.&nbsp; Where science and the pursuit of knowledge weren&#8217;t just good things, but great adventures.&nbsp; Where you could smile at the stranger you passed on the street, and not have to wonder if they wanted to stab you in the back.&nbsp; Where it really is a small world after all.&nbsp; People forget that this is what Disney was all about once upon a time too.&nbsp; I&#8217;d forgotten it until that first trip I took down to Orlando, and then it all came rushing back.&nbsp; There was a world I was delighted to be living in&#8230;once.&nbsp; I need to go visit it from time to time now, in my adulthood.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t an escape from reality.&nbsp; This is reminding myself why the struggle for that better tomorrow is worth it.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"321\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/images\/disney_moon.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting&#8230;uh&#8230;well, right now actually&#8230;I&#8217;m going on a wee vacation.&nbsp; My birthday is Saturday and I am going to spend a week in Disney World.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve got a room inside the enclave, in The Caribbean&#8230;one of the middle-tier resorts.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve stayed there before and it is lovely.&nbsp; It&#8217;s also well located, almost right in the middle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[78,12],"class_list":["post-4097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-the-struggle-for-america","tag-the-struggle-for-our-lives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}