Why the Collectivists are going nuts about "You LIE!"

"Communists are just socialists with guns." -- A favorite saying of "Mad Bob."

Statler & Waldorf -- Hecklers par excellence.

A heckler is a person who shouts a disparaging comment at a performance or event, or interrupting set-piece speeches, for example at a political meeting, with intent to disturb its performers or participants. The term originates from the textile trade, where to heckle was to tease or comb out flax or hemp fibres. The additional meaning, to interrupt speakers with awkward or embarrassing questions, was added in Scotland, and specifically perhaps in early nineteenth century Dundee, a famously radical town where the hecklers who combed the flax had established a reputation as the most radical and belligerent element in the workforce. In the heckling factory, one heckler would read out the day's news while the others worked, to the accompaniment of interruptions and furious debate. Heckling was a major part of the vaudeville theater. Sometimes it was incorporated into the play. . . In the 1970s and 1980s, The Muppet Show, which was also built around a vaudeville theme, featured two hecklers, Statler & Waldorf (two old men named after famous hotels). Heckles are now particularly likely to be heard at stand-up comedy performances, to unsettle or compete with the performer. Politicians speaking before live audiences have less latitude to deal with hecklers. Legally, such conduct may constitute protected free speech. Strategically, coarse or belittling retorts to hecklers entails personal risk disproportionate to any gain. Some politicians, however, have been known to improvise a relevant and witty response despite these pitfalls. One acknowledged expert at this was Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister in the 1960s:

Heckler: (interrupting a passage in a Wilson speech about Labour's spending plans) What about Vietnam?

Wilson: The government has no plans to increase public expenditure in Vietnam.

Heckler: Rubbish!

Wilson: I'll come to your special interest in a minute, sir.

In an era when it was not uncommon for rotten fruit and vegetables to be thrown at speakers, Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley once exhorted his audience to lend him their ears, paraphrasing Mark Antony. Immediately, a large cabbage landed on the stage. Chifley replied "I said your ears, Sir, not your head". -- Wikipedia.

Heckling, even of a president, is as American as apple pie. Indeed, it is a fixture of free societies. Suppression of heckling is a requirement of tyrannical ones. Hitler was so obsessed by personal disrespect that he had a British cartoonist put on a hit list during the war for the sin of his savage caricatures of Der Fuhrer. Germans (and Soviet Russians) who were caught lampooning the Great Leader were routinely arrested and shot. No one dared interrupt their speeches. The Communists call this "bourgeois anti-party sentiment." It is punishable by death. Communists have no sense of humor, except unintended and unconscious irony.

The one thing that sends tyrannical regimes into a tizzy is any challenge to their "dignity" and thus to their legitimacy.

To suggest that the Leader is a liar is particularly heinous to a collectivist, simply because collectivism deals in lies big and small -- it is their main meat -- and they cannot afford to have the truth pointed out without punishing it, swiftly and publicly.

Mindful of "Mad Bob's" favorite dictum that communists are simply socialists with guns, the fact that Joe Wilson is being punished by Orwellian public denunciation is a good thing. Let them knock down the rule of law a bit more, let the commissar's pistol ride more comfortably at their hip and they will simply stand him against a wall for his temerity, and his denunciation will come in 5.56 caliber.

There is no greater sin against the cult of personality that supports the tyrannical regime than to publicly disrespect the Leader. None. Thus, the way they are reacting to Joe Wilson's outburst merely reinforces the notion of their herd mentality -- and their tyrannical ambitions.

Mike
III