I haven’t forgiven them for thevile thingsthey saidaboutJohn Kerry and I likely never will, and just because you finally wake up and smell the coffee doesn’t mean you’re entitled to a spot at the breakfast counter, but this is quite a turnaround.
Why I Parted Ways With The Right
Opinion | Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 6:49:45 pm PST
1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert
Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat
Buchanan, etc.)2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)
3. Support for throwing women backinto the Dark
Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue,
anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the
entire religious right, etc.)
What I’m especially fond of is the idea that this is anything NEW. The idea that conservatism has changed. The idea that now, this, images of Obama in a turban or with a bone through his nose, dumb folks in patriotic windbreakers, this is a bridge too far. I like that a whole lot. Honest to blog, the GOP appeals to racists and sexists and authoritarian nutjobs all of a sudden? No shit, knock me over with a feather from a very tiny hummingbird. Jesus H. Samba Dancing Christ on a Custard Cream, you’re kidding me. I would never have thought that the party that prated about “states’ rights” and was just fine with cities tearing themselves to pieces so long as it could make a buck off peddling “law and order” was full of fuckwads. Who would have goddamn thought?
Now granted, the conservative crazy’s no longer cloaked in respectable intellectualism, not these days, so it’s getting a little harder to take. You can no longer go the parties and pretend you’re not a racist sexist authoritarian lowlife because there’s a really bitchin’ raw bar. You have to stand in the street with the teabaggers and their ill-spelled signs and their Capri Suns these days and eat fucking corn dogs, you want a conservative good time on the cusp of a new decade. It’s hard, isn’t it, now that William F. Buckley and his be-cravat-ed ilk aren’t around anymore to give you a reason to feel okay about being a totally amoral scumbag monster?
But come on. They have been like this for years. Where do you think Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann and Mike Huckabee CAME FROM, for God’s sakes? Do you think they just woke up one day and decided, “You know what? Today I’ll be racist and crazy and it’ll be AWESOME?” You nurtured them for years with Saint Ronnie and Ralph Reed and yes, even good old batshit Uncle Pat, who hasn’t gotten any nuttier the past couple of years, just louder about it. You have to just sack up and admit that these are the feral critters
you had chained up in the basement all along, that you fed on raw meat
and Red Bulls, and now they’ve slipped their shackles and are demanding
the right to walk among you. It sucks, that you can’t just close the
hatch and tell your very civilized dinner guests the screams they think they’re
hearing are just the noises of your washing machine on the fritz.
And you were fine with it so long as you could still kid yourself. You and lots and lots of others.
A.