Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said the Occupy Wall Street movement was “laughable” for its “hypocrisy” and alleged that the movement had ties to the Communists and Nazis in an interview Tuesday night with conservative media outlet Newsmax…. “I think the hypocrisy of this movement is somewhat laughable,” he said. “I would agree with them that we don’t need to have crony capitalism in the United States of America, where we have government picking winners or losers in the free market or trying to be a venture capitalist. But when I see signs that these people are holding up signs saying ‘end capitalism,’ then my question is: What do you replace it with?”…. “I think there is a danger in the people on Capitol Hill starting to embrace this movement, especially now that we know that the American Nazi Party and the American Communist Party are also starting to align themselves with this Occupy movement,” he said.
Tracking Allen West’s lunacy is really beginning to lose its challenge. Time was when his unvarnished, insensitive idiocy was almost hunorous. Surely, one could think, no lucid human being, even a Republican Congressman from Floriduh, could think so insensitively, intolerantly, and/or outrageously? Well, not only is West deadly serious about his stoopid, he’s aggressive about it. This from a former Army officer who was cashiered for firing a pistol near the ear of an Iraqi detainee in an clumsy attempt at intimidation. Yes, Allen West is just the example of rational American thinking and tolerance we want wandering the halls of Congress, eh?
As if to further burnish his credentials as a reactionary, brain-dead, reflexive Tea Party zealot, West is holding forth on what he sees as the anti-American threat that is Occupy Wall Street. Not content to merely dispute and disagree with the ideals of the movement, West, for reasons that will probably escape most rational and lucid humanoids, has decided to link Occupy Wall Street to…wait for it…Socialists, Communists, and Nazis. Yeah, it was just a matter of time before that happened….
So, how do you know when someone has no credible argument against Occupy Wall Street? How do you know when someone is afraid of organized protests from the Left but isn’t man enough to own up to it? In Allen West’s case, it’s when the best he can do is resort to the tired, careworn neoConservative tactic of smug arrogance and name-calling. The problem is that not only can West not be bothered to take the time to understand what Occupy Wall Street is about, he thinks that the Tea Party is the only legitimate, permissible expression of populist dissent.
West disputed, as President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have said, that the Occupy Wall Street movement is similar to the Tea Party.
“When you talk to somebody with the Tea Party, they can tell you what they want — limited government that’s constitutionally mandated, fiscal responsibility, they also want to see our free market and free enterprise systems adhered to, as well as our national security,” he said.
Right. The Tea Party? A legitimate and spontaneous (if also a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) expression of dissatisfaction with the overbearing role of the federal government. Occupy Wall Street? A ragtag collection of disobedient, ungrateful, unwashed woolly-headed Socialist, Communists, and Nazi sympathizers who believe that government can solve everything.
Say…is that hypocrisy I smell? Yes…yes, I can smell what West is cooking….
The sad reality is that Allen West is a sideshow, an entertaining alternative for those too smug and arrogant to come up with a coherent argument against Occupy Wall Street and what the movement stands for. What’s truly sad is not so much that West is wandering the halls of Congress and is allowed to vote. No, what’s truly difficult to comprehend is how a majority of voters in his district could see fit to vote for someone who shouldn’t be allowed to manage a Dairy Queen, much less have a vote in Congress. Then again, this is Floriduh we’re talking about, the cradle of (something close to) democracy (and hanging chads) and home to the Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000.
Yeah, I know…something about getting exactly the quality of leadership we deserve….
