I really do feel sorry for Republicans--I mean, the REAL ones
Last week, I clicked a link on eiredrake's LJ here, and I came to the realization that, for all the utter contempt I feel for a lot of Conservatives, for the most part, I feel really sorry for them. I feel sorry for the fact that a lot of their ideas, and most of their party, have been hijacked by wingnuts like these guys. And the problem with that is, if you look at the "crowd" that gathered outside the Supreme Court in order to protest the "unconstitutional" president elect (how many? a dozen?), you begin to see that these few people are just a bunch of fringe crazies who have persisted in the idea that they actually have a credible voice in this country.
Now, granted, for the last eight years, they have had a voice, and the voice was the prevailing voice when observed from the outside. Any space alien who decided to drop a microphone into the American atmosphere over the Bush years would have picked up on this nutburger ranting over a healthy portion of the airwaves. And no doubt the microphone would have been withdrawn and the aliens would have sped off at a high rate of knots to find something more interesting and less frightening to listen to, on the other side of the galaxy. But what the aliens wouldn't have known, and what we might have forgotten, is that not all conservatives are neo-cons. And not all Republicans embrace the modern bastardization of true conservatism, and never will.
And part of the reason why Barack Obama is president elect of the United States (45 days and counting--even so, come quickly!) is because these people only have a voice when George Bush is in office. He's the only person who is crazy enough himself to actually believe these guys. He's the only person who is out of touch enough to think that this strident, whining, illogical, completely insane voice is in any way worth listening to. He's the only president under whose administration that idiots like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh would have been treated like the credible media, instead of the guys being listened to only by conspiracy theorists in the basements of their saran-wrapped abodes.
But in the meantime, there are millions of Republicans and Conservatives who are as sick of these shitheads as we are, and we would do well to acknowledge that fact--and to acknowledge them.
I would venture to say that John McCain's big mistake in this election was that he failed to recognize that single fact. Every word he spoke, every move he made, every decision he rendered was based entirely on the belief that these were the people who mattered. What gave him that idea was the fact that, at the time he was doing that stuff, they were the voice that he could hear, because they sure as hell were loud enough. On the basis of this roaring, he went there and picked a freakish snakehandling witchhunter as a running mate, he went there and called Barack Obama's alleged associates "terrorists", he went there and decided to pander, in every way possible, to that voice. He turned his whole campaign into an episode of Jerry Springer, just to get the uneducated, illogical, jingoistic, religiously fanatic poor white trailer trash vote--thinking that it was in any way important.
His mistake was in not realizing that, for all the publicity the right-wing nutjobs have gotten in the last eight years, they are not the majority of Americans. Or even the majority of Republicans.
And they never were.
And I have to say that part of the absolute thrill I feel at the idea of having a smart president for the next four years is the fact that these people, finally, are going to have to sit down and shut the fuck up.
The reason this will happen is that the majority of the American people have finally spoken, the emperor's nakedness has been revealed, and people have had their eyes opened to the fact that it wasn't just them who were annoyed as hell at these fruitloops.
But at the same time, I feel badly for the people who have to continue to live under the shadow of these people, while the rest of us can safely ignore them--and those people are the people who identify, politically, with the same party as these freaks. I am embarrassed for them, and I'm angry for them, because anyone with half a brain in their head can understand that it was these imbeciles who lost the election for them, and turned a perfectly viable Republican candidate into a freak show.
They were the only people who didn't have a voice in this last election.
If I were a Republican, I'd be totally pissed, because these idiots are the reason they lost.
And they're still losing--holding sweaty and tearful prayer meetings in the attic rooms of their right-wing blogs with similarly minded catastrophizers who think that Obama is the Antichrist. Or HOPES that he is, so that Yahweh can unleash the legions of Heaven on the poor misguided country and Rapture them before they're allowed to indulge in sinful things like decent healthcare and tax relief and the raising of the minimum wage. Holding limp-dicked "protests" in front of the Supreme Courthouse, full of Supreme Court Justices who are looking at each other and wondering what the hell they're supposed to do with such a frivolous case while a dozen frozen, praying bunting wearers (who don't even have the patriotism or the religiosity to doff their dirty baseball caps to pray or salute the flag) mill aimlessly around outside.
I am not sorry for these jackasses. I am not sorry for the fact that they are being ignored more and more. I am not sorry that they are being seen for the lunatics they are. I am not sorry that they are being laughed at and being told to shut up. I am not sorry that they and their influences are shriveling as surely as their penises are in the cold.
But I am sorry that the Republican party, as a whole, is going to be saddled with the legacy of their mental illness until they finally round themselves up and toss them out. Because that's what it's going to take, you know--it's going to take Republicans like Kathleen Parker to get up in front of G-O-D and everybody and say, as loudly as they can, "These people do not speak for us. We hate them as much as you do, and we want them out."
These people are not going to go peaceably, I don't believe. Like their darling Sarah Palin, I think they're going to flap around and keep shouting for awhile, and it's possible that they're going to cling to those absolute absurdities that they continue to shout (like "George Bush kept us safe"--that's the one that cracks me up the most) for a good long time. But with any luck at all, the theocratic, Dominionist, neo-con genie has been stuffed back into the bottle long enough for the rest of us to feel safe living in America again--Liberals and Conservatives alike.
Barack Obama in the White House and O.J. Simpson in jail--it would appear that America is becoming a saner, more wonderful place to live.
I think I'm going to take January 20th off--this is going to be too good a day not to celebrate.
Now, granted, for the last eight years, they have had a voice, and the voice was the prevailing voice when observed from the outside. Any space alien who decided to drop a microphone into the American atmosphere over the Bush years would have picked up on this nutburger ranting over a healthy portion of the airwaves. And no doubt the microphone would have been withdrawn and the aliens would have sped off at a high rate of knots to find something more interesting and less frightening to listen to, on the other side of the galaxy. But what the aliens wouldn't have known, and what we might have forgotten, is that not all conservatives are neo-cons. And not all Republicans embrace the modern bastardization of true conservatism, and never will.
And part of the reason why Barack Obama is president elect of the United States (45 days and counting--even so, come quickly!) is because these people only have a voice when George Bush is in office. He's the only person who is crazy enough himself to actually believe these guys. He's the only person who is out of touch enough to think that this strident, whining, illogical, completely insane voice is in any way worth listening to. He's the only president under whose administration that idiots like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh would have been treated like the credible media, instead of the guys being listened to only by conspiracy theorists in the basements of their saran-wrapped abodes.
But in the meantime, there are millions of Republicans and Conservatives who are as sick of these shitheads as we are, and we would do well to acknowledge that fact--and to acknowledge them.
I would venture to say that John McCain's big mistake in this election was that he failed to recognize that single fact. Every word he spoke, every move he made, every decision he rendered was based entirely on the belief that these were the people who mattered. What gave him that idea was the fact that, at the time he was doing that stuff, they were the voice that he could hear, because they sure as hell were loud enough. On the basis of this roaring, he went there and picked a freakish snakehandling witchhunter as a running mate, he went there and called Barack Obama's alleged associates "terrorists", he went there and decided to pander, in every way possible, to that voice. He turned his whole campaign into an episode of Jerry Springer, just to get the uneducated, illogical, jingoistic, religiously fanatic poor white trailer trash vote--thinking that it was in any way important.
His mistake was in not realizing that, for all the publicity the right-wing nutjobs have gotten in the last eight years, they are not the majority of Americans. Or even the majority of Republicans.
And they never were.
And I have to say that part of the absolute thrill I feel at the idea of having a smart president for the next four years is the fact that these people, finally, are going to have to sit down and shut the fuck up.
The reason this will happen is that the majority of the American people have finally spoken, the emperor's nakedness has been revealed, and people have had their eyes opened to the fact that it wasn't just them who were annoyed as hell at these fruitloops.
But at the same time, I feel badly for the people who have to continue to live under the shadow of these people, while the rest of us can safely ignore them--and those people are the people who identify, politically, with the same party as these freaks. I am embarrassed for them, and I'm angry for them, because anyone with half a brain in their head can understand that it was these imbeciles who lost the election for them, and turned a perfectly viable Republican candidate into a freak show.
They were the only people who didn't have a voice in this last election.
If I were a Republican, I'd be totally pissed, because these idiots are the reason they lost.
And they're still losing--holding sweaty and tearful prayer meetings in the attic rooms of their right-wing blogs with similarly minded catastrophizers who think that Obama is the Antichrist. Or HOPES that he is, so that Yahweh can unleash the legions of Heaven on the poor misguided country and Rapture them before they're allowed to indulge in sinful things like decent healthcare and tax relief and the raising of the minimum wage. Holding limp-dicked "protests" in front of the Supreme Courthouse, full of Supreme Court Justices who are looking at each other and wondering what the hell they're supposed to do with such a frivolous case while a dozen frozen, praying bunting wearers (who don't even have the patriotism or the religiosity to doff their dirty baseball caps to pray or salute the flag) mill aimlessly around outside.
I am not sorry for these jackasses. I am not sorry for the fact that they are being ignored more and more. I am not sorry that they are being seen for the lunatics they are. I am not sorry that they are being laughed at and being told to shut up. I am not sorry that they and their influences are shriveling as surely as their penises are in the cold.
But I am sorry that the Republican party, as a whole, is going to be saddled with the legacy of their mental illness until they finally round themselves up and toss them out. Because that's what it's going to take, you know--it's going to take Republicans like Kathleen Parker to get up in front of G-O-D and everybody and say, as loudly as they can, "These people do not speak for us. We hate them as much as you do, and we want them out."
These people are not going to go peaceably, I don't believe. Like their darling Sarah Palin, I think they're going to flap around and keep shouting for awhile, and it's possible that they're going to cling to those absolute absurdities that they continue to shout (like "George Bush kept us safe"--that's the one that cracks me up the most) for a good long time. But with any luck at all, the theocratic, Dominionist, neo-con genie has been stuffed back into the bottle long enough for the rest of us to feel safe living in America again--Liberals and Conservatives alike.
Barack Obama in the White House and O.J. Simpson in jail--it would appear that America is becoming a saner, more wonderful place to live.
I think I'm going to take January 20th off--this is going to be too good a day not to celebrate.