This picture will make sense by the end of this diary:
It's all a sign that the wingnuts are finally slipping into irrelevancy. Transparent are the sun-faded car magnets, the SUVs they cling to a symbol of everything that eight years of the Bush administration has brought to us; everything about the wingnut mentality that is wasteful, egocentric and narcissist.
For it must surely be narcissism and egomania that would provoke someone to cling to the keys of their Escalade with their cold, dead hand as it must be for someone to outrightly vote against their own best interests, the interests of their children, their neighbors and their brethren. Surely.
This has been analyzed ad nauseum here at Kos and I fundamentally believe that a person who associates himself with the powerful "daddy figure" the republicans have presented themselves as is going to be too intertwined with that identity to detach from it with any permanent success. For instance, I know too many people who hate Bush but cannot bring themselves to vote for a Muslim Marxist like Barack Hussein Obama. Catch my drift? McCain is taking over the Daddy role for these folks, and he's going to be the one who changes their diaper.
The wingnuts do not want Barack Obama to change their diaper.
The wingnut who picks three of his six children up at my stepchildren's school does not want Barack Obama to be his new daddy. I know this because when he started bragging that his eldest son, a Marine, hadn't gotten in touch with him for five months (the man swears it's because he is convinced "we" are about to invade Iran - and oh, the swagger with which he tells his hypothesis) he proclaimed quite loudly, for all the other parents to hear - that "FREEDOM ISN'T FREE!" I took this as a direct call to vote for John McCain because apparently freedom only comes when America drops bombs all over Middle-Eastern countries.
This man has credentials, folks, because a "(last name here) has fought in every single American war since the Revolution!" His family name can be traced back to the colonies, and though I'm not sure that he himself fought in any wars, because his grandaddy fought in WWI and his dad fought in WWII he has authority on the matter of national security, and the end-all, "freedom."
I tried to interject that I too come from a lineage of veterans, but I am a measely woman several years his junior, so it was best that he speak over me, with more proclamations about freedom not being free.
The gist of this is that there was a nervousness and intimidation in the tenor of his voice, also pronounced by the outright randomness in which his tirade was spurred. Normally we'd discussed barbecue and PTA meetings in the past, and politics doesn't become a part of the daily child pickup routine...but something had set this man ablaze this one afternoon. I would hope to think it is the Obama '08 sticker stuck squarely on the center of my car's rear window.
Another incident occurred over the vapid medium of MySpace. I'd posted the "I Am Voting Republican This November" YouTube video on a bulletin, half because of its sheer brilliance, but also because I wanted to see which wingnut family or friend of mine would take the bait and respond to it. I'd posted the bulletin under a heading bearing the same name as the video's title. Soon I'd received a response from a girlfriend who simply wrote, "You're such a smartass, but I love you anyway!" To which I replied, "What's so smartass about the truth? I love you too!" but that was not the height of ire I'd inspired in a few of my online associates.
I received this response from a cousin of my fiancee's:
I'm voting Democratic cause I love paying 5 dollars a gallon for fuel!!! Plus I feel I need to give more money to Government so they can share my wealth w/ others who don't have jobs. I mean Just look at all the jobs we can create if we Tax the corporations and small business.
P.S. I would love to give you more reasons to vote for Obama 08, But I have to go to a Anti American rally!!! Don't for get to vote!!!!!!!!!!!!
He'd also posted this exact text in a bulletin of his own. This young man is white, in his mid-twenties, and has a wife and two very young children. They are from eastern Washington which I am to understand is quite red politically. His mother and I converse on the phone regularly and politics does not come up, but I cannot imagine that my leanings are a mystery to her.
This, folks, I think is the best the wingnuts can come up with. I think this short passage illustrates the bottom line, what wingnuts have boiled their "argument" against Democrats and Obama down to.
Instead of becoming irate and firing off a response to this insanity as I once may have done, I simply leaned back in my seat and let out a chuckle. This is a person who is not going to vote for a Democrat no matter what, well, maybe if republicans go around literally setting everyone's house on fire. This young man does NOT want Obama to be his daddy, he does NOT want Obama sleeping with his mother, he does NOT want Obama to change his diaper.
We Obama supporting Democrats are always going to be the unwanted stepbrothers and stepsisters in the American family as far as wingnuts are concerned. Wingnuts are getting hysterical and want to pack up their G.I. Joes and run away from home. Ronald Reagan was a great daddy, Bush I started one war (good daddy) and Bush II started one war - a BIG one! - and wore a pilot suit like a great daddy war hero would. An Obama daddy would bring home things like Encyclopedias and microscopes and books on philosophy, and might even try to make us go watch some gay science crap on IMAX at the museum or something...and we Obama supporting Democrats are the nerdy or snobby stepbrothers and sisters who will move in and clutter up their rooms with our band instruments and may want to even talk about something besides freedom not being free.
There is a hysteria, a true sense of scraping the bottom of the barrel for reasons to think Obama supporting Democrats are no longer a true part of America, and even though this is saddening, at this point the tide is really turning, and the wingnut numbers are dwindling. McCain is proving every day that if he moves in and becomes daddy he's probably just going to beat us with a switch if we mix his Sanka a bit too strongly. The wingnuts are shaking their heads desperate to come out of this stupor. They are failing. They don't have any good arguments.
As the wingnuts cling to the tattered rags of the wingnut movement, I can guarantee you they know in their hearts that Bush Daddy II is not going to be making child support payments and he won't be coming every second weekend of the month to take them to the zoo. If only they could dare to hope that a man could come into their lives and show them that love doesn't have to come with hitting and yelling. Or bombing Arabs.
It's really quite pathetic, all this writhing in desperation here at the end. I wonder how long the wingnuts will be content to sit in their own stink.