Common Nonsense I
Common Nonsense I
With a nod to Thomas Paine and Aunt Agatha, whose idea this is, a new occasional series. Let Aggie explain: “Have you considered a feature that runs occasionally, of snotty, arrogant, condescending lefty comments? Like the stuff coming to me from the DNC, like what can be heard on NPR anytime, day or night, like the breathtaking arrogance of Bill Keller at the NYTimes? Could be fun.” Oh, it shall be, Aggie. And who better to inaugurate the fun than that stuffed white suit, that Mark Twain wannabe, Garrison (Don’t Call Me Gary) Keillor?
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.
It’s better when bigots are as talented as Keillor. Hairy-backed swamp developers and aggressive dorks: that’s a nice way to refer to fifty-one percent of the electorate. But you go on thinking (and writing) that way, Bemidji Boy. As long as you can dismiss disaffected Democrats (like Aggie and I) and others who just can’t but into Democratic delusions, you’ll keep losing elections. I don’t know which is better for the country: a hopeless Democratic Party which empowers the Republicans by virtue of its own irrelevance, or a Democratic Party which is mature enough to express its differences with President Bush and the Republican majority in a manner that still puts national security first. Right now, an endorsement from the New York Times is toxic to the mind of the country at large. I doubt the Democrats are aware, or could understand why.