I was really hoping some of this would just amount to epic trolling, like this Confederate flag guy can’t possibly be real, can he? But they’ve been like this since 9/11, at least, and it keeps getting sadder, and more desperate, and while I don’t feel sorry for these people exactly, I get them.
Outside the Tea Party, do people really not look at these antics and say, are we really in such a moment of high drama? I think most Americans see a much more workaday world, one with problems and possibilities. But not this. I’m not sure it’s precisely the historical moment they’d choose but I look at these folks and it’s like a mix of insecurity, self-regard and a very different perception of their own identity and place in American society is making them feel like they’re in a perpetual London May 1940.
What drives me crazy is the idea that you have to wait for, or manufacture, a moment to be a hero. IT’S EVERY GODDAMN DAY. If you do not feel like you are living the life you see in a Bruckheimer movie, sport, there are opportunities all around you. Simplest is that the army is perpetually hiring, hardest is that somewhere within a rock’s toss of your house is a food bank and you could clean out your pantry and give somebody else the Cheetos for once.
Or go be a firefighter. I swear everybody loves firefighters. And even the ugly ones are hot.
But that wouldn’t be satisfying enough, would it? These dipwads are daydreaming of Agincourt and Orleans, of leading the vaward or driving the whole host of enemies away with only God at their sides. They want the soundtrack and the chick in the stands clapping for them. They want the grand gesture, and they want to be the only ones making it. It’s like the desperate fanboy post-apocalyptic fantasy where sure, in this life you’re living in your mama’s basement, but when the shit goes down, man, the popular girl will have to fuck you then, for food or candles or whatever the new currency will be in the kingdom that you make.
They want that moment to come to them, instead of making it for themselves. They want everyone to come to them on bended knee and humbly beg oh please, lead us out of darkness now. They think that’s how it happens. It’s so poisonous I almost can’t stand it. It’s so lazy. It’s so small.
Nothing heroic ever comes to you, still less a moment worthy of an Oscar-season film. And life isn’t like that all the time anyway, not anybody’s life. Guys came home from the Bastogne and they still have to change the oil on their cars. The bullshit of life never goes away. But somewhere in there, among the chores that need doing and the litterbox that needs cleaning, you get up every day and you try to be an upstanding human being. It’s the kind of thing history books skip over, and movies deal with in a quick montage, so that they can get to the culmination of all that effort, all that boring, miserable, backbreaking effort.
That’s the only way you get the moment these fucknuts think they created by waving traitor’s banners outside the White House gates.
A.
I’m repeating myself, but again it’s the reasonably intelligent/adults versus the mental juveniles. They’ve convinced themselves of their heroic, individualistic virtue without thinking that in the reality based world, they’re…mere consumers.
Consumers before they even wake up in the morning, much get dressed in Asian-manufactured clothing, waddle to their multinational-fueled SUV (itself the product of a multinational supply chain), and queue up in the drive-thru for an Egg McMuffin and bucket of fries before crawling along in rush hour traffic to their jobs.
And when they get back home, not only are they a consumer, they’re also a product. Just so many eyeballs for rent to the hightest bidder.
I’d say Walter Mittys, but that might be a little highbrow…unless Walter Mitty was a professional wrestler.
Ha…if any of these yahoos were actually at Agincourt or Orleans they’d be running away as fast as their little feetsies could carry them.
I often admit, when outlining my detailed Zombie Apocalypse Plan, that my compatriots should most likely kill and eat me during Week One, since Internet Smartass isn’t actually a skill that’ll be in high demand after the collapse of modern society.
A.
I’ve known way too many folks who have a need to be the center of attention so they do outlandish things to attract attention.
Why are we hating on “Henry V”? Can’t we use some other symbol of jingoism? Some of us have long-ago thesis subjects to protect.
Let’s consider whether, via indiegogo or something, *we the people* might buy back the debt, and then use that stick to beat the Teawadhadjinutjobs back into the dark and smelly places they crawl out of.
This paragraph from Molly Ball at the Atlantic has been bothering the shit out of me:
“Taking the stage at the Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of religious-right activists, Cruz announced that they were winning the fight. ‘I am here this morning with a word of encouragement and exhortation!’ Cruz said. A woman in the front row shouted a passage from Romans: ‘If God is with you, who can be against you?’ ‘I receive that blessing,’ Cruz said somberly.”
I know, religious-right pandering is nothing new, and not at all suprising at that venue. But I am really shocked by this particular example. The “Word-Faith” heresy (I can use a Bible verse like a spell — that what “I am here . . . with a word” means) goes along with the Prosperity Gospel bullshit (God wants you to have a Lexus) on the far wacko fringes of extreme evangelicalism. I expect Sarah Palin to dabble in witch-hunting wacko fringe stuff; I expect a real Senator to be more like George W., who pandered to the evangelical crowd like no one’s business but kept his pandering in the anodyne mainstream of megachurch Christianity. This stuff Cruz is doing says “I am a prophet and I can command God to do my will.” That’s the message he’s using on these people, and that audience took it literally. God help us, I hope he his career is finished.