by brian boru
Conservatives, not content to arrogate unto themselves the sacrifices of our troops, fancy also molesting the Declaration of Independence whenever laying it bare accrues to their benefit. Usually, after they've had their way with the Constitution. While the conservative speaks lovingly of each - and often confuses them - he comprehends neither.
The founding documents are used by 21st Century Know Nothings as cover for beliefs that have naught to do with the words etched on their parchment. Hallowed documents are become a whore's wallpaper, covering the rotting walls of a debauched dogma.
It was the ascension of Sarah Palin and the disinterring of her following, that exposed a nation to the whore and her foul chamber. No amount of decoration would hide the fetid nastiness and wretched squalor of her room. But there, on the wall, her slobbering johns see the words, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Those same words had decorated Republican debate halls in the primary season when the odious business done there was as vulgar as the whore's bedroom. The Palin types – Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachman, Rick Santorum et al - dominated the proceedings. We're familiar by now with hearty cheering at record executions in Texas, ribald chants of 'let him die' at the mention of an uninsured American and the lustful booing of a gay soldier who had the temerity to inquire about what his rights would be in a military commanded by a fundamentalist head of state – god forbid.
The American civilized class, what remains of it, was outraged at the behavior of the conservative candidates and their mobs.
Mainstream media have largely glossed over the vile deportment of teabag crowds whose atavistic blood lust would shame even the rabble relegated to the upper tier of the Roman Colosseum. Republican audiences are alternately described, by a hebetudinous media, as engaged or boisterous. Indeed. As engaged and boisterous as Caesar's lions rending the viscera of hapless Christians.
What coverage there is of the conservative mob is outsourced to opinion columnists or pundits so news editors may safely wash their hands of the matter. One wouldn't want one of these editors to stick their false equivalency necks out to proclaim teabag behavior what it is. Appalling.
For progressives, there is as much embarrassment as vindication at the whole pitiful mess. Here it is America. Here is this mob we have been warning about since Sarah Palin's first Brown Shirt rally in 2008. Here, sadly, embarrassingly, is what much of America has become.
It's damn hard to face. It seemed a little better when the racists, nihilists and knuckle-draggers were not so bold. We thought they'd been marginalized after a few small historical benchmarks like the Civil War, the Scopes Monkey Trial, the New Deal and the Great Society.
But they're back - the knuckle draggers. All it took was a Kenyan, Muslim, Marxist president. Count the base energized!
The right-wing has unabashedly exposed themselves for who they are. What's more, their behavior exposes the beliefs under-girding a rotten ideology. It is, at its core, an un American belief system.
The modern day conservative is not interested in his own life, liberty or pursuit of happiness so much as he is in defining for his neighbor how he must live to achieve those ends. Who to have sex with. How to have sex. Who to marry. When to be pregnant. How to be pregnant. What religion to believe. What history to read. What wars to fight.
Should the conservative's neighbor not adhere quite precisely to those definitions, he should be ready for the imperforate condemnation that will follow. The conservative conception of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is more aptly understood as denial, isolation and hatefulness.
After the gay or the liberated woman, the two most evil forces in the world appear to be a representative form of government and a union - both of whom presume to interfere with the benevolent function of the free market. A celestial market that manifests itself in the form of such pious ventures as Drexel Burnham Lambert, Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Massey Energy, British Petroleum and News Corp to name but a few.
Citizens should not fear the hegemonic influence of these institutions, after all, they are run by the grand old men of the Grand Old Party – the best and the brightest. Michael Milken, Ken Lay, Tony Hayward, Rupert Murdoch et al. These philanthropic job creators would never do anything to harm the greater good.
Pious men running benevolent institutions in the celestial free market. What could possibly go wrong?
Because the policies of the modern day conservative are hidden under the perfectly quaffed head of an automatonic contortionist does not mean that they are any less dangerous. Mitt Romney is the vessel for a defiantly odious ideology. A vote for him is a vote for the hatefulness that will define what constitutes an 'appropriate' life and the liberties granted that life as surely as it is a vote for plutocracy.
Conservative government is the government that imposes its will on your person and discharges the will of its master - the market - in defiance of the people.
Un American, indeed.
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humanistcafe