Those right-wing goofballs over at The National Review! Have you seen their latest cover? It's...testosterriffic!
Now, mind you, a few alert art critics online have pointed out that this picture bears a striking resemblance to a genre of art that was quite in demand in the early 20th century:
(And by "in demand," I mean of course, "by Stalin.") The rippling muscles! The steely gaze directed at the future! The flagstaff, erect and fecund, penetrating the vulval folds of the nation's flag, ready to quicken that nation with its masculine seed (never to be uprooted, even in the case of rape or incest), while its wielders spread fertilizing bullshit over the waiting fields!
I'm a straight man, and, honestly, even I got a little flushed looking at that thing.
But, once I'd calmed down, it occurred to me that perhaps those wacky NR commies had revealed perhaps a little bit more than they'd intended. Perhaps they'd tipped their hand to the greatest program of espionage and subversion that the world has ever seen. Because, thanks to this cover and its manly manliness, I realized: the Republican Party, and the American right wing in general, is run by unreconstructed Stalinists.
Consider: Stalin attempted to destroy the Soviet middle class by killing millions of Kulaks (prosperous, if not rich, landowners) in concentration camps. The Republicans managed to accomplish the same thing by lowering taxes on the rich and raising them on the middle class...no camps required! Which is good, because, except for a brief but embarrassing period during World War II where we asked Japanese Americans politely at gunpoint to go live in camps (and of course Gitmo), we Americans tend to view camps as places to make lanyards, not to imprison or kill people. (One must note, however, that the two activities are not in fact mutually exclusive, as the lanyard strangulation deaths at Camp Ho-Ka-Kam in the early '70s demonstrate; to this day I regard my subsequent banning from Camp Ho- Ka -Kam as sheer injustice and abuse of power.) By leaving us alive, our right-wing overlords have provided themselves with an ample pool of indentured servants and also preserved their ability to have sex with our spouses on our wedding nights. Big win for them, unless we marry unattractive people.
Want more proof? (Why wouldn't you? Unless you're...one of them.) Consider all the neo-cons who started life as "red-diaper babies:" Norman Podheretz, Irving Kristol, Billy Crystal. (His performance at the Oscars was no accident; we are through the looking glass here, people.) They have been working deeply undercover, guiding, or more accurately misguiding our nation from within as the Bush Administration spent us into wracking debt while destroying our credibility in the world, as Russia--ah, it always comes back to Mother Russia, doesn't it?--quietly went from post-Soviet basket case to present-day economic powerhouse. We even went to war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet army came to grief; could that be a coincidence? I think not, at least as far as you know. These people had learned the lessons that Stalin taught, most notably the Big Lie: destroy our Constitution by proclaiming freedom while spying on US citizens and torturing supposed enemies; gain power by expanding government while claiming to shrink it; amuse yourself by blowing your nose in the hand-soap tank while loudly denying it.
Actually, that was me. Sorry. I'm a little congested.
I must say that I fear for my safety, now that I have revealed the deepest secret of the most clandestine and far-reaching plot to undermine the United States government ever conceived. Should I disappear, I beseech you, my eight to ten readers: raise an outcry. Demand to search the gulags in Alaska run by Commissar Sarah Palin (you bet she can see Russia from her porch...in her hopes and dreams), where a few inmates a week are "released" to her hunting preserve and never seen again. Check the intake rolls at those mental institutions where "Liberal" is a committable disorder. Send the Red Cross to ask about me at those Bain slave-labor camps where left-wing "interns" staple endless acquisition-target profitability reports for their corporate masters.
Or don't. I'm probably just drunk and watching the last season of of Weeds on Tivo. A middle-class soccer mom reduced to selling drugs: man, that is some farfetched stuff, huh?