Coming this Fall: the Battle for America’s Soul

Imagine that title in scary-movie-narrator-voice. Via Pascal’s Bookie, a simply magnificent piece of propaganda from Personhood USA.

This two-minute ad is superbly done. It frames Colorado’s 1967 abortion law as the beginning of the end, and Amendment 62 in Colorado, which aims to declare that personhood begins at the moment of fertilisation, as the beginning of the battle to save America. Amendment 62 is up for the vote at the mid-term elections in November.

What we have here is clearly not the work of amateurs, nor of itinerant cranks in trailer parks, as many (including myself) have mocked the Tea Party movement. It draws together all the conventional Tea Party wisdom about what’s wrong with America into powerfully truthy narrative: start with a misappropriated Jefferson quote; follow up with Semitic “men in black robes” who hate truth, justice and the freedom and “legislate from the bench”; portray the fringe radical rump of conservative white folk as a valiant oppressed minority group; intolerant millennial-cult hypervigilance as the American Way; Obamacare as morality and human life being bought and sold as a commodity (oh, the irony!); and most crucially, Obama himself as the Grim Reaper, the lynchpin of it all, with the caption “Then the Angel of Death arrived, and Hell followed with him”. The whole thing is capped with fireworks and the Statue of Liberty, a Daisy-esque girl fading to black and a fist-pumping don’t-tread-on-me baby. And the soundtrack really just speaks for itself.

The whole thing is absolutely barking. In the cold light of day it’s nothing more than a Dan Brown plot. It’s fevered stuff, wound up to eleven to inflame passion and suppress reason. But that’s the whole point: this ad is basically the movie trailer for the upcoming battle for America’s soul, coming soon to a screen near you. Just sit back, let it wash over you, and marvel at what that country has become.

L

13 thoughts on “Coming this Fall: the Battle for America’s Soul

  1. Holy shit that was intense. The fireworks and baby fist pump totally won me over. Where do I sign up against the angel of death and that “abortion industry” I’ve heard so much about?

  2. You can’t just sign up Boganette…. I think first you have to be vetted by one of the death panels??

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  4. No-one said that the Tea Party did not have money. There is $$$$ millions going in to it and this is the latest expression as America descends into
    Christo-fascism

  5. Most Americans believe in the heresy of the end of human dominion on earth – and the rule of a supreme leader over the world. That means they have no allegiance to their own democracy. Thus their religion ultimately allows fascism to become the major political force in their society.

  6. how the fuck could anyone not start laughing at the “hated american values” bit with a picture of the 1960s supreme court? It’s only a very ignorant person who’d take that stuff seriously…

    …and that’s the worry, isn’t it?

  7. It’s only a very ignorant person who’d take that stuff seriously…

    That would be the tea party membership yes…… It is really beginning to worry me the way the “cult of stupid” or “Vote for stupid” is being promoted by the right wingnuts.

  8. “Let it wash over you….and marvel…”

    Nup.

    Get angry.

    We let Orewa One “wash over us” and sniggered

    as did Jews lining up at the trench, machineguns in full sight

    Fight or lose.

    Ignore the tea party letters to ed: ignore talkback:

    Marvel if yu must

    But your mokos will reap the whirlwind.

  9. ak, you’re right, of course, but in the immediate there’s more utility in simply reflecting on — and trying to comprehend — how deep this well of crazy actually is.

    L

  10. This advert makes you realise that sanity and rational decision making in the USA is hanging on by just one slowly fraying thread.

  11. Pingback: Kiwipolitico » Blog Archive » On a lighter note: Machine of Death

  12. Thankfully in Delaware, masturbation was the winner on the day!
    O’Donnell failed. :-)

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