Folks are finally taking notice of how the media has reduced the political debate to something akin to a cafeteria-style food fight. Each side only lobs the meatballs of mutiny when the opposition party is on cafeteria duty. Both patriotards and libertards (roughly 80% of the pop) are ready and willing to storm the Bastille, but for all the wrong reasons. MSNBC tried to start a revolution to oppose Bush, and rightly so, and they got roughly forty-percent of the U.S. armed to the teeth with tiny condiment packets of petulance. Then they tried to stop the food fight amidst the coronation of King Obama. Try as the libertard media might, those tater tot-toting Teabaggers came all the same (God bless them). In fact, they are marching on Washington right now. They are not exactly sure why they are marching, but the next ‘Fox Transmission’ should further terrorize them enough to dodge the tartar sauce of tyranny and counter with the two-fisted fish sticks of freedom!
Since Obama took office, the most anti-American, anti-government rhetoric has transitioned to the right. You see, patriotards only love America when they’re fucking it up. God forbid someone else should get a crack at it. But as long as the Teabaggers allow their movement and message to be hijacked by the Hannity’s of the world, they are destined to be drenched by the pre-frozen rib-a-cues of repression. Here’s a recent excerpt from Republican blogger, Andrew Sullivan, who landed a wad of hot mozzarella smack in the face of Teabaggers everywhere:
“Here’s a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.”
Of course, the last part is wrong. Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the American people. Many believe this dark road the patriotards and the Teabaggers have taken will ultimately back-fire on them like a cafeteria taco in an H1N1 victim. But Sullivan is assuming that people are going to wise up, while the Flynn Effect and our educational institutions tank outright. Sorry folks, but stupidity is likely to get more, not less, traction in the food fights to come. This is why yelling something like Death Panels right before a vote will always have a chilling impact on legislation. And, NO, Mr. Crank, Palin was not basing this statement on fact. Patriotards like to yell shit and then try to connect the dots later, kind of like Iraq. If there really are death panels in the UK, Palin didn’t know shit about them. Besides, they already exist here and now. Life and death decisions are made every day here in the U.S., only with private insurance companies the decisions are based on cash and for Obama’s public option the decisions would be based on, er…cash.
Countering Glenn Beck’s recent defamatory rant against Cass Sunstein, David Frum wallops the neococoon with the sloppy joes of justice. This is a noble attempt to move the conservative dialogue toward some semblance of reality:
“The ultimate happy ending of the story should not however close the page on this appalling episode of broadcast recklessness and political cowardice. We conservatives are submitting our movement to some of the most unscrupulous people in American life. This submission disgraces conservatism, discredits Republicans, and damages the country. It’s beyond time for conservatives who know better to join us at NewMajority in emancipating ourselves from leadership by the most stupid, the most cynical, and the most truthless.”
The patriotards are clearly the most responsible for breaking the country (only they haven’t figured this out). Sorry, but the book The Collapse of America will have one chapter on Frank and Dodd, one chapter on Obama, and the other twenty-some-odd chapters will be entitled “W”. Sure the libertards might have ruined us. They are quite capable of doing so. But, sadly, they never got the chance.
And make no mistake, the last showdown at the salad bar is coming. The patriotards (forty-percent of the pop) are lining up on one side, under the guise of pro-life, pro-religion, pro-fundamentalism, and pro-free markets. Meanwhile, the libertards (roughly forty-percent) stand for pro-choice, compassionate legislature, the green movement, eco-feminism, gay rights, and other socially liberal issues. God, I hope the sneeze bar holds.
What both sides fail to understand is that neither faction owns the truth. Both perspectives have valid points but both perspectives are mired in their own inherent ideology and stupidity, not to mention vanilla pudding. And unfortunately both sides tend to champion the lowest common denominator. Lately, there’s nothing more glaring than the Patriotard Menace. They believe distortion after distortion until the truth ends up looking like Mr. Fabulous caught in a turbine.
Healthcare debate update: I will now be paying $173 more per month for my family’s health insurance under this failing paradigm. This happy news arrived after my last healthcare post. I fear a public option too, but I don’t fear it nearly as much as those most in danger of personal economic collapse: those fightin’ forty-percent, the Italian dressing drizzled patriotards.
Michael Moore, Sarah Palin, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Rush “the salad bar” Limbaugh are all dangerously stupid individuals. But our first amendment rights should prevail here. They have the right to talk, but the size of their viewing audiences, particularly on the right, herald a rather gloomy forecast for our collective future. Stupidity resonates much further than it should. Fear remains a key force in driving policy, and our media invariably never focuses on the real problems. OMIGOD, Limbaugh reached the chicken salad!
I hate to quote Pat Buchanan, because he’s been such a loon lately, but…
“We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others’ throats.”
And now for something completely different. It’s time to implement a coup detater-tot on the libertards. A republican blogger, Jon Henke, appeared on the Rachel Maddow show last week. They both agreed on a lot of his Republican criticism. She glowed when he said, “the Republican Party has abandoned its intellectual roots.” Say it aint so, Jon. Henke admitted that much needs to change on his side of the aisle, but asked Rachel if she would start covering the mess on the left, aka, things like Acorn and the Spendulus package, which has more zeros after it than the S.S. Lexington.
At the very least, Rachel, try covering the libertard fringe with a hint of something once known as objectivity. She was the most likely person on MSNBC to take this challenge, but she failed, miserably. On a major cable news network, Maddow admitted she was not even willing to look at the other side of the debate. It’s dead to her, like the week old ‘ham surprise’ hanging from the ceiling. If I were Henke I would have called her out in those closing moments of the interview and battered her face with the perogies of partisanship.
I like Rachel Maddow, but Fox and The Crank are right on this point (happens once a year like clockwork). If NBC is not going to be critical of Obama, EVER, under any circumstances, because the owners of NBC stand to make money on Cap and Trade, then they have officially sunk to the level of Fox News. (Hint: this is not a good thing.)
To sum up, Mark Bowden from The Atlantic pointed out in his blog that no one is seeking the truth anymore:
“No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it [media entertainment news] for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all “news” is unapologetically propaganda.”
Hint: if Jon Stewart polls as the most trusted journalist, it’s time to resort to the Daily Discord. Really subscribe NOW. And support our advertisers, er…as soon as we get some.
Much like the Frums, Sullivans, Wills, Bowdens, and Buckleys of the world, I too have flung my own controversial coleslaw to these ends. In fact, I was one of the first to spit Jello from the cheeks of change. Most rants in recent years involved the dismantling of conservatism outright. I always wanted to fix it. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for his book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back. His view will stand the test of time, and the Cranks of the world, who never identified the problem, can wallow in the burnt baked beans of human bondage. So liberal media peeps, hit the showers. As for the Wills, Buckleys, Sullivans, and the Frums of the world unite—shape of non-patriotardic. And, for god’s sake, scrape that Thousand Island dressing off your nose.
P.S. You’re right about my last post, Crank. At the time, I thought huffing all those cleaning products before my weekly blog was a good idea. But, to win yet another round, I only reread my post three times before I understood it. So there…
