One of the things that led to some of my bold predictions on political sites that this could be a wave election for us, regaining ground in Congress and re-electing Barack Obama was a very simple, easy to notice phenomenon.
The Batshit Signal
When Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4th, 2008, it spelled the official end of the Republican Party as the War Party; the Party of the REAL Americans; the Protector of the Secret Flame.
Gone forever was your granddaddy's party of elite, powerful white warmongers, whose claim to fame was protecting America from Commies, Pinkos, Hippies, Yippies, Dykes and Fairies. George Dubya Bush had sold us on the very last gasp of that party with Compassionate Conservatism, and after eight years of being trickled down upon, the majority of Americans began to notice the smell.
So Barack Obama came along with that Hopi Changey thing, which he had learned from mystics of the old Southwest, after the souls of a few dying shamans had leaped into his from the tattered remains of the Civil Rights movement, just as the last embers were fading into the Chicago sunset.
The Republicans were ashamed of their name. Suddenly, they were branded by a dirty word, and they couldn't sell their voodoo to the masses, and they needed something new; something bold; something fucking crazy as hell that they could use to wash off the stink. And that something came in the form of the carcass of Ron Paul's many failed bids to do become Grand Wizard of the United States.
By shamelessly ripping off the "Don't Tread on Me" days of yesteryear, when brave Americans stood up to the swords and cannonballs of the British Monarchy, a bunch of pasty fat demagogues showed their bravery, in standing up to the notion that every American deserves a voice; the very soul of the Constitution they so nobly pretended not to be wiping their overly broad asses with.
They shone their light up into the sky, looking for a hero to save them, and in doing so, they got far more than they bargained for.
At first, it looked like the light would shine on the obvious heroine, one Sarah the Soccer Mom from some unknown Northern borough. But the light was too bright, and shone far too wide for St. Sarah to bear alone, and before long, heroes and heroines started oozing from the woodwork like pyogenic fluid from the sores and lesions that had formed all across the nation, in the wake of the horrible Patriot Wars of the Post 911 Feeding Frenzy.
Heroines like Michelle Bachmann. Her crazy eyes penetrate my soul to this very day, and sometimes I awaken in the night, covered in sweat, and filled with the bizarre desire to declare war on the Mall of America.
Heroes like Steve King, who will vigilantly protect us from disaster victims who waste federal funds on Gucci.
I saw this trend coming, and I told my Republican friends who would listen that the tea party was a madhouse too far. Their first clue should have been the initial onset, when these protestors hung tea bags from their tri-corner hats, and adopted the moniker of "teabaggers," only to be insulted when we called them that, after their teen age kids pointed out the Urban Dictionary definition.
I knew that Batshit Signal had sent out a call that could never be revoked, and opened a door to the inner souls of Congressmen who want women to have their rape babies, and courts to order a child support arrangement, so that victims could live out the next 18 years of their life enduring cruel torture, most likely due to the conviction by wingnutty borderline psycopaths that women "ask for it," due to slutty things like "having vaginas," and "not properly concealing their breasts."
Those town halls of 2009, when mobs of idiots showed us the best of the Democratic Process was witnessed all the way back in 1931, when the proud citizens of Frankenstein Village stormed the castle, to exercise their divine right to wreak havoc on anyone crazy enough to play God without their approval.
It was the Batshit Signal that stirred those angry villagers, just as it was the Batshit Signal that played on the overwrought emotions of Real Americans who were angered by the notion that there could be Universal Health Care.
Let's face it; throwing little girls in ponds isn't that far a step from forcing insurance companies to cover children with pre-existing conditions; both are equally tools of the Devil, and both result in the end of Capitalism as we know it, and the rise of the Red Masses to enslave us in the cogs of their Socialist Machine.
Such is the wisdom of those under the spell of the mighty Batshit Signal. And as long as that signal is alight in this land, Democrats will have a chance to progress their agenda, and align with the soft middle of this country. For far too long, the low-information voter has balked at the idea of Solving Problems and Balancing the Budget, hoping some other rank visionary can perform these miracles for them. So many of these decent, but poorly informed citizens had allowed themselves to feel that while the Right can be unfeeling and even a tiny bit cruel, they were ultimately pragmatic and businesslike, while the Left was filled with foolish dreamers, lesbians and singers of long, boring odes with far too many rhyming words.
Alas, for these wishful, busy people, the Batshit Signal put an end to many of their long ago formed notions, and the idea that perhaps there is a giant mass of utter lunatics clamoring for power has begun to spread its roots in their consciousness, and become the narrative for a time.
You had to see it coming, surely. Our candidates and pundits could never have spread the message themselves. They would have been scoffed at; mocked as extremists and serial exaggerators; they would have been driven back by hollow, derisive laughter and scorn as they attempted to get the truth out.
But as every fool knows, God has a purpose. And every zealot has the one glaring weakness that cannot be avoided: a voice.
Simply put, if you allow these people to talk, they will have no choice but to tell you who they really are.
And that is why you can never look to lunatics for your salvation.
And that, my friends, is exactly what those in power on the right did, when they abandoned the tactics of Compassionate Conservatism for full-blown tea party bile.
Can they ever get it back under control?
Maybe, but one must always remember, control runs counter to the very instinct that created the light in the first place.
NO ONE controls the Batshit Signal.