Oh please. This isn’t going to be scary. You know why not? Because Idol is on, that’s why. If all these people really were capable of being roused to action any one of a hundred things would have roused them by now. We heard this about Obama’s election and heard it again about health care and I’m sure at the headquarters of the post-apocalyptic wishf-fulfillment society that is the RNC these days they’re muttering it under their breath all day long, but absolutely nothing is going to get people out of their recliners.
(I have lots of thoughts about fanboy disaster culture at the moment, about how some people just want shit to go down because they’ve never pictured themselves as the guy eating rats in the alley instead of the guy leading the new feudal society from a ball pit full of hookers, and this kind of thing is no exception.)
I love my fellow old white people, I really, really do, but we lazy as fuck. We may watch a show, multiple shows, hundreds of movies by now, about the earth caving in, and I may make jokes about provisioning for the zombie apocalypse and learning to drive stick just as a precaution, but the kind of stones it takes to actually rebuild a society? If we had that, we’d rebuild THE ONE WE HAVE NOW. Forget Republicans: DoI think a revolution may be called for at some point? Have you met me? Of course I do. I always think it’s time to burn down the board. I think a revolution may be called foryesterday, and that is when things are, on average, pretty okay and I have a frozen pizza in my belly.
But let me tell you something, whenever somebody brings up this armed revolution crap, they don’t ever mean THEM. They mean somebody else should lead the armed revolution, some other guy whose parade they could cheer at. The danger isn’t that 44 percent of Republicans believe this shit. The danger is in the one guy who believes it, and doesn’t wait for somebody else to get it done.
A.
This is why I apologized to my children for allowing Bush to occupy the White House, and everything on down. I told them I didn’t have much, and was afraid of losing what little I have. I’m nearing sixty years faster than I want, and my energy and daring are way down. I know how to annoy people in power, but getting crushed is no fun.
This is likely one of the unintended consequences of the Southern Strategy. In the process of attracting the disgruntled southern Democrats, the GOP also attracted a lot of people with chronic Northern War of Aggression Syndrome, which the NRA has been inflaming ever since 1971. While most of us have a better understanding of the nature of the Second Amendment, the bitter enders of the South do not, and still think they need to defend themselves against the Federal government and, over time, that general belief has spread among the conservative base.
It’s an almost laughable fantasy, of course, to think that a bunch of drooling gun nuts are defending their “liberty” by owning military weaponry, but the right wing has been cultivating this fantasy for four decades, so it’s now well-ingrained in the wingnut psyche.
The next revolution in this country won’t be fought with guns. If it is, the results will be even worse than the last one fought with guns, the Civil War.
Everybody that fantasizes about revolution should ask where their coffee, wine, food, electricity, Internet and Social Security checks are going to come from. The Revolution Fairy? Seriously, if you’re yearning for the purification of Civil War you should just go to Somalia and let the rest of us luxury-loving sloths alone.
Shorter Athenae:
Wingnuts: “Let’s you and him fight”
Tommy