Conundrums:
F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
From which we may take that Republicans have nimble, subtle minds. (Okay, okay--that “and still function” clause is a problem.)
I’m serious. Just look at the things the wingnuts are capable of believing at the same time:
General
• You may base your facts on the conclusions you reach, but facts cannot force you to reach conclusions you do not support.
• Your success in business was due to your being a huge predatory ruthless dick, but that doesn’t give people leave to be mean to you.
• OWS is a bunch of loser outsider longhaired socialist DFHs who should get a haircut a bath and a real job, but in order to appeal to a lot of people your campaign theme music comes from DFHs Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, David Byrne, K’naan, or Bruce Springsteen.
Follow me over the bobwire for more.
Money
• Huge gains must be kept private, but huge losses must be socialized.
• Cash from George Soros corrupts, but money from the Koch Brothers does not.
• Grants from the National Science Foundation lead to fraudulent research but grants from tobacco companies, oil companies, and pharma do not.
• Actual trillions expended for defense can safely be left off budget and ignored, but the very rumor of sixteen dollar muffins requires congressional hearings.
• Government expenditure for defense creates necessary jobs that are the lifeblood of their communities, but government expenditures for social services bleed communities of their productive capacity.
• Debt others cannot pay is a sign of irresponsibility, but debt you cannot pay is the result of unavoidable circumstances.
Religion
• States properly sanction license plates bearing “pro-life” messages, but ones bearing “pro-choice” messages would represent unwarranted government intrusion.
• Failing to say Merry Christmas is an outrage, but burning Korans is nothing anyone should get excited over.
• God’s motives are inscrutable when a child gets cancer, but entirely evident when a hurricane destroys a city.
• All human life is sacred before a certain age, but not afterward.
• Religious belief regarding reproduction trumps civil law, but religious belief on murder, theft, adultery, false witness, or covetousness must bow to it.
• Homosexuality as a biblical abomination should be illegal, but the biblical abominations of injustice, sex with menstrual women, oppression of the poor, and so on, are just people being people.
Foreign affairs
• Attack and destruction of the World Trade Center means eternal war with all who share the perpetrators’ religion, but for an invaded and destroyed country to consider acts of vengeance is overreacting.
• Relatives of American dead should never forget and never forgive, but relatives of Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, or Iranian dead should move on.
• Afghanis lack the grace or intelligence to learn from occupying Americans how to live, but possess the bravery and cleverness to thwart occupying Russians telling them how to live.
Government
• Education must be strictly regulated, but finance must not.
• Ours is a society without defined classes, but the lower ones are at war with the upper.
• Private companies should be allowed to drain employee pensions so their executives can retire handsomely, but the post office should be dismantled for not pre-funding employee pensions out 75 years.
• The time you spend in line at the post office indicates an inefficient organization that must be abolished, but the time you spend on the phone with the bank is just a problem to be worked out.
• Transparency and strict accountability are necessary for government to work properly, but transparency and accountability render corporations incapable of working.
• Money is constitutionally equal to speech, but the volume of the money is not equal to the volume of the speech.
• Government funding of birth control is an imposition on faith on people who must fund that to which they cannot extend moral sanction, but government funding of war, theft, and execution is not.
• Barack Obama should be denied the presidency because someone doubted he was qualified, but HPV vaccine should be denied use because someone somewhere believed it caused birth defects.
• Humans’ contribution to global warming must be rejected because it requires acceptance of evidence that cannot be directly observed, but religion must be accepted for the same reason.
• Trickle down economics must be embraced even though it hasn’t ever worked, but Keynesian stimulus must be rejected even though it always has.
• Being off by a factor of 10 about the cost of war is just an understandable error in an uncertain world, but being off about the unemployment rate by two percentage points is unforgivable criminal incompetence.
• Working in Washington DC is the lowest, slimiest form of employment there is, but I want a job there so badly I will cheat, lie, and steal to get it.