You People

" You let them in, and now they're everywhere..."- Shriekback, "Hammerheads"


Good Christ David Reinhard, will you shut the fuck up?

Yes, if only due to massive financial collapse, the political tide is turning, and as it happens, free market delusionaries are taking the beating they so richly deserve. People making stupid arguments about the need to keep a standing fighting force around the world so as to ensure our "credibility" will be regarded -rightly- as fools. And above all else, people who think that gay marriage is the greatest threat to civil society will be actively shushed and told that the grownups are talking, so just pipe down now.
Probably; although you never know with people. Point is, your guys get to be in the position of being Questioners for a while, and lucky for you, they will do so in an atmosphere in which your guys have made Questioning tantamount to treason.

At what point the asking of questions came to be viewed as No Decent Person's avocation, I'm not sure. Maybe it was always this way, and my dream of an idealized past in which citizens of this nation felt it was their duty to ask pointed questions of their overlords is Just That: an ideal. But I do know that above all else, this whole Everything Going To Shit thing has reopened the door of political discourse among the greater run of Americans, who are suddenly remembering that they're actually part of a society, and need to watch carefully to make sure that the drunks aren't getting the keys to the car.

Why do I have to listen to you whine about how mean and nasty everyone has become, when dammit, You People started this one? Hey; remember when that Fat Fucking Drug Addict that you guys like -Limbaugh, I believe his name is- decided that a decent criticism of President Clinton's policies was to talk about how ugly his thirteen year old daughter was? I seem to recall that Chelsea wasn't actively involved in policy-making at the time, so I found this surreal. Likewise, Mr. Limbaugh felt that a valid criticism of then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich was to note how short he was.
I could go on here. Point is though: that was your buddies who started the baby talk. Now the baby talk is mandatory, and for a little while, you guys are going to fail to profit from it.

I mean, all of what passes for the intelligentsia on the right has fled the ticket this year (and no, Charlie Krauthammer does not count as an intellectual), and the RNC has noted that all you've got left is the lynch mob vote. This particular demographic has been actively groomed and molded by you guys, and let's not act like that wouldn't eventually poison the well. These are your zombies; they're coming back for your brains.
Thing is, I genuinely don't believe that your average American is a murderous shithead, or even someone who only cares about themself. I believe they are encouraged to view life in this way by Someone, for short-term political gain. They really wouldn't spend so much time publicly endorsing torture, either, had they not been told to do so.

Remember? McCain started off opposing such things, and for understandable reasons. Unlike most people in America, he's been tortured. He has noted that, along with being unpleasant, it's a shitty method of gathering intelligence, and mostly serves as a pleasing source of personal revenge for the torturer.
Nowadays, he is stuck with the rest of you who have not been tortured, and feel that it is a fine, necessary thing. I've asked the question of right-wingers before, and I'll ask it again here, in the form of a hypothetical:

Okay, so say someone blows up the Eiffel Tower. The French government, reacting to a crisis, decides that it is meet and good to lock up all Americans on French soil. They justify this by noting how vocally Anti-French the greater run of Americans are, and further note that to really get to the bottom of this thing, the detainees will need to be tortured.
You, David Reinhard, are vacationing in France. Even though you don't know a damn thing about who blew up The Tower, you disappear from view of family, friends and your government, and are tortured. When you protest that you truly don't know anything about this insidious plot, they just torture you a little more.
And when you get out -if you get out- the only thing you truly know is that you sure would like to go back and blow up that station where they tortured you. Maybe you didn't start out as militantly anti-French, but you sure are now.

Last time I put that one to a right-wing blogger, he responded; "Never happen, as I'll never ever set foot in France." Touche, idiot. Other responses include: "Never gonna happen, as I'm one of the good guys. These other guys are the bad guys, and the only language they understand is brutality..."
This is why I think it's just precious that a know-nothing blowhard editor of a newspaper in a medium-sized west coast city notes that there have, finally, been some incidence of liberals acting like lynch-mob jackasses and has decided that it's an epidemic, or a movement.

No: remember that the last two presidential elections have been stolen, the Supreme Court and several lower federal courts are packed with reactionaries, the media refuses to ask decent questions, we're all poorer and much worse off than eight years ago and it would appear that there's not really anything we can do about it. So yeah, some people will be getting violent, I bet.
It was especially telling that you used a story that was proved to be a hoax -and that you even noted as being such- as an example:

"We learned Friday that a McCain campaign worker's claim that she was beaten up and had the letter "B" cut into her face because her car had a McCain sticker was a hoax. Such deranged doings are just as appalling when it comes from the right, though my sense is that this hate-filled intolerance more often comes out of left field."

Hey Dave: non-sequitur. That really doesn't follow. Your Guys were lying (again), and for some reason, it's evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy.


You have noted that you will be "leaving the business" after the election. Really? Because of a few death threats? My father wrote an editorial in his paper seven years ago, calling in the meekest of ways for us, as a nation, to not go off all half-cocked and destroy the world (and our standing within it) just because we were feeling mad. He not only received death threats, but lost a lot of his subscribers because of it. And that was your guys.
He said what he felt needed saying. As usual, those who don't think so good told him that he should not. This is almost always what anyone describing a distaff opinion at any point in human history can expect.

You're lucky that you're up against a bunch of peace-loving liberal pussies who feel that we need to try to curb the violence, and inject a note of civility into the otherwise inhuman realm of politics. Is that partially a pose? Yes, among Democratic politicians, certainly. But not so much around your average liberal. We're the ones trying to remind the rest of you that to live in a society is to have responsibilities, and that the Republican way doesn't even make you rich anymore. Class warfare? Yeah, with you guys doing all the shooting.
To wit: I don't believe I saw any Democrats in any angry mobs in Florida in 2008, trying to subvert the election process with brute physical intimidation. Why don't we start there?

On the other hand, I saw a lady downtown the other day who was wearing a t-shirt that said, simply, "Kill Bush". You fucking idiot, I thought. "But did you openly repudiate her?", you might ask, red-faced, of me at this point. No: I scowled at her, but didn't say a damn thing because she not only Is her own defeat, but what she represents is so small when compared both to the good work that genuinely is done by your average community activist and the overwhelming evil done by those cheerful sorts who want us to squander what little we have left of anything on keeping a police-like presence nearby what remains of the world's oil supply.

So, leavin' the business, are you? Don't make us wait, buddy: I don't think you have the stomach for this, nor the intellectual security to be told that you're wrong as often as you are. There are some conservative writers I don't mind reading, you know, and it helps to note that they are also the ones who are running as fast from McCain/Palin as they can. But at least they all can say that they are not another one of those talking-point lockstep jackasses who are ruining it for everyone.

And yes, I am aware that in my last post I described the target demographic of the Republican party this election cycle as those who shoot each other and molest their children. This is something I feel okay doing because this is an online diary and not something I am paid to say to an entire state. We say things differently, according to context.

If I had your job, I'd be trying to make everyone start talking to each other again, not just blowing off steam, like I am here.