The ‘take off point’ for tonight’s diary is, as is often the case with me, a transcript excerpt from a West Wing episode (Season one, Episode 9: The Short List). As we join the episode, President Bartlet is conversing with a retiring Supreme Court justice (named Joseph Crouch in the episode), facing the prospect of his first-ever Supreme Court nomination. Justice Crouch is trying to get Bartlet to nominate a very progressive Hispanic jurist named Mendoza.
CROUCH
You ran great guns in the campaign. It was an insurgency, boy, a sight to
see. And then you drove to the middle of the road the moment after you took the oath. Just the middle of the road. Nothing but a long line painted yellow.
BARTLET
Excuse me, sir...
CROUCH
I wanted to retire five years ago. But I waited for a Democrat. I wanted a
Democrat. Hmm! And instead I got you.
But First, A Word From Our Sponsor:
Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the Spinning Top™ to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top™ to pop up in diaries around Daily Kos.
Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist reserves the right to edit all content.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the kos-doodle...
|
Later in the episode their spicy conversation continues.
CROUCH
Take the next few days with your staff, and give Mendoza the consideration
he deserves.
BARTLET
Joseph, when the next seat opens up, I promise you...
CROUCH
When the next seat opens up, you'll be writing your memoirs.
BARTLET
In three years, I would hope to be running for reel...
CROUCH
You're gonna get beat in three years.
BARTLET
That's a little pessimistic, Joseph.
CROUCH
American voters like guts. And Republicans have got ‘em. In the three years,
one of them is gonna beat you.
(Transcript excerpts from
westwingtranscripts.)
Okay, that’s the central idea tonight, let’s call it the ‘Crouch Hypothesis.’ “American voters like guts. Republicans’ve got ‘em.”
Of course, I do not agree, but I suspect that a very high percentage of Republicans would, if not all of them, and there are probably many independents who would agree, and likely some Democrats, like Justice Crouch, here.
So, let’s try a little dialogue with our ‘gutsy’ Republicans, shall we?
C’mon, Republicans! Show some guts! Write the laws as you want them to be!
Write stand your ground laws such that they provide an absolute justification, as long as the person being shot is black or Hispanic, UNLESS the shooter her/himself is ‘racially compromised,’ in which case the law would presume the shooting was unjustified under stand your ground, if, indeed, not under all other legal theories, as well.
Write laws giving right-of-way on the highways to those who have the most expensive cars, because, after all, they pay more taxes on those vehicles and are thus clearly more deserving, right? They worked harder for those vehicles, since they paid so much for them, and society should honor that work by giving them superior rights on the roads, don’t you agree? C’mon! Write the traffic laws to reflect that!
Stand up and oppose Social Security openly and without compromise. Call the elderly who rely on Social Security the leeches and freeloaders you believe them to be. Call them that to their faces! Isn’t that what they deserve? Isn’t that what they most need to hear?
You know, the really wonderful thing about taxes is they give you the perfect vector to 'hit' all of the people in our society you despise most. Gutting taxes is the clearest path to denying funding to the poor, the elderly, the racially ‘compromised, and those who currently have or have had employment in the public sector (including our service personnel in the armed forces), in short, all of your worst political enemies. But show some guts! But, don't JUST attack tax revenues! Let them know of your contempt for them and everything they stand for. OWN your hatreds! Let them know that your attacks on public funding has a real, consistent agenda behind it! To hit them in every way imaginable, the undeserving, the unvirtuous, the unprincipled, the unworthy. To teach them the importance of being born white, heterosexual, to families of means, to families who can buy the best education and health care and homes and vehicles and foods, as they should have done to begin with, if they had been smart and virtuous, rather than choosing the path of social leeches and lepers and drains on those who worked for what they have, who have earned it, who deserve it. Own your superiority! Tell off those freeloaders to their faces! Let them see your political guts!
Tell the elderly and the retired that their day in the sun is over. Tell them that they belong to a minority and with every day that passes, with every elderly person who dies, their minority shrinks, and grows ever less politically significant. Tell them they could do us all a favor by dying quickly, for isn’t that so? By getting off the Social Security rolls, by placing less of a burden on all of us. Their tax-paying days are basically over, they're contributing little or nothing, just go ahead and move on as anyone with integrity and a sense of social fairness would. They shouldn't be allowed to vote at that age anyway. Go ahead and pass laws limiting voting rights to those 70 years of age and younger, with ever more onerous ID and compliance restrictions beginning to kick in at age 62. Not enough income to afford retirement? They should have saved and planned more wisely to begin with! Tell them. Let them know! They are a minority now, and they need to understand they're going to be treated as such. They need to start behaving like it! No need to give them any government handouts! You know they'll still vote Republican, out of long, mindless habit. Show some guts! Go ahead and say what you think!
You don't think racial minorities should be ‘entitled’ to vote, either? Fine! SAY so! Tell them they're not worthy of the right to vote! No more pussyfooting around! Show us those vaunted Republican guts! Make them accountable for BEING minorities! It reflects negatively on them, right? On the 'choice' they made to be a member of a no-good minority, why shouldn't they face the full consequences of that, after all?! Forget ID challenges and simple impediments to voting, take their vote away altogether! Isn’t that what you really want? Won’t that make ours a better world?
The only legitimate role you admit to for government is for national defense and federal prisons. Why don't you SAY that? So people will see once and for all how stupid they are to look to government as a crutch, or expect government to do things it should’t ... so they'll know better (once they get out of prison for past sins against your sensibilities). Why don’t you pass laws limiting the role of government to those two functions? What could possibly be simpler? What could show your guts more clearly than that? What’s stopping you?
No one has a gutsier view of the direction America should take than you. Yet, you aren’t saying in any overt way what that direction is or should be, in clear language everyone can understand. The public and the media aren’t asking, and you aren’t telling. Why not? Show some guts! Tell! You aren’t ashamed of your positions, are you, like they are some kind of psychological perversion, an inner equivalent to homosexuality you are afraid for the world to see? Don’t wait for others to ask, tell! Describe in clear terms your dreams for America, not just your fears! Speak glowingly of that deeply white, wealthy, heterosexual society you crave, where only those who are willing to pay for it can obtain an education, or health care, or even voting rights. Where only those who have saved very wisely can have the retirement they deserve. Where only the truly deserving have the real opportunities in this land of the free.
Let everyone see that your respect is confined to those who vote and represent their own self-interest, only. Let your contempt rain down on those who vote against their self-interest, even if those are idiots who would cast that vote for you and yours. It’s still contempt-worthy, yes? C’mon! Show those guts! Tell them that! You know you feel it! Let them know! What are you afraid of?!
On to tonight's comments! Most graciously compiled and formatted by our very own, Chrislove!
TOP COMMENTS
June 20, 2012
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU
when you find that proficient comment.
From Noddy:
In Brainwrap's diary GOP Rep compares Lisa Brown muzzling to "Giving a kid a timeout", illinifan17 makes a little observation.
From Tamar:
In Mets102's diary Hi, Joe the Plumber! I'm a Jew. Now will you please shut up?, ShoshannaD offers a succinct description of the disgusting ad by "Joe the Plumber" which blamed the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide on gun control.
From Angie in WA State:
I don't often nominate comments by the diary author, but in azrefugee's case with this comment, it was well deserved.
The heart of Marriage Equality is surely this...
Not only can you not help who you love, we shouldn't have to try. The answer is more love, not less.
The diary, To The Straight Allies of Equality, is an utterly, absolutely MUST READ diary for the whole Community.
From The Nephew:
I want to nominate this comment by mdmslle from Lasgalen Lothir's diary It's a Queer Thing. You Wouldn't Understand. I shared this challenge with a couple of my straight friends today. I think this is as close as most straight people will get to understanding what those of us in the LGBT community face every day.
From blueoregon:
I'd like to nominate Radiowalla's comment in Brainwrap's diary GOP Rep compares Lisa Brown muzzling to "Giving a kid a timeout" because it points out the truth of the matter.
From BeninSC:
In keeping with the theme of tonight's diary, Saint Jimmy wrote about their use of fear as a political tool, reinforced and emphasized differently in a reply by Gorette!
In LCaseRussell's fine diary on Fear and Loathing in the GOP!
CFAmick has an interesting comment on what was 'going on' in Bush's mind in that classroom on 9/11!
And here is yojimbo's take on the same situation!
I liked this comment by Ginny in CO because its intention, purely and simply, was to help a diarist asking for advice.
|
TOP PHOTOS
June 19, 2012
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
|