Monday, July 24, 2006
You Know You Wrong Part 3
Another way you know you’re wrong (or you should) is if you think that the revelations now hitting Fox News about how we got into the war in Iraq, the insurgency and civil war going on there now, the reaction of the rest of the world, was not known before it all started. You might want to go back and take a look at some of the stories the damned “liberal elite” were publishing back in 2003 about how we really should let the inspections conclude or we’d suffer a horrible setback in world respect, how we really ought to devise some sort of strategy for what to do after we won the obviously one-sided and easy war, and how we’d be facing a massive insurgency and civil war, complete with newly hatched al-Qaeda cells, in Iraq after the invasion.
Yes, the damned liberal press did point out all of that, but since the nation was in the grip of some knee-jerk conservatism (the jerk part is the most prominent, in my mind) nobody of any importance was listening. Also, if you think that GW Bush turning out not to really be an old-line, hard-core conservative of the good-old tradition is a recently revealed truth, you’re even more wrong. Anyone with half a memory of American History could tell you that the Republican Party may pose itself as fiscally conservative, although history rarely bears out their claim, but they have never, ever, not once since their founding in 1856, been in favor of small government, or less government interference in our lives. They were instrumental in, lets see now, the Civil War, the amendments outlawing slavery and forcing the states to recognize civil rights, and even, horror of horrors, in the Civil Rights Act, you know, the one proposed by that Southern turncoat Johnson II. After LBJ did that, a lot of Dixiecrats decided to turn to the Republicans after that party started chanting the rhetoric of States’ Rights and other such tripe. Unfortunately for you, if you’re the sort who would have been a Dixiecrat, you have no representation at all in this country beyond a few sub-humans lurking at the boundaries of society, occasionally blowing up a Federal building in a misguided attempt to restore White Power. I know that this is a horrible thing to contemplate, but if you’re one of those people, you are as obsolete as bronze shields in a pitched battle. Your ideas have, to put it mildly, been repudiated so badly that even the stink is hard to notice any more. Give it up. Join your fellow humans, or do yourself a favor and go crawl off to die in a corner. Really.
My point here, folks, is that getting into name-calling knee-jerk politics is pretty damned dangerous. There just might be a reason that people who make a living using their heads see things in the world that are a bit harder to see if all you do is watch Fox News and Survivor. Maybe those guys actually do know what they’re talking about once in a while, even if you don’t like the sound of it. Okay? Or, maybe you just ain’t prayin’ hard enough, Clem . . .
Yes, the damned liberal press did point out all of that, but since the nation was in the grip of some knee-jerk conservatism (the jerk part is the most prominent, in my mind) nobody of any importance was listening. Also, if you think that GW Bush turning out not to really be an old-line, hard-core conservative of the good-old tradition is a recently revealed truth, you’re even more wrong. Anyone with half a memory of American History could tell you that the Republican Party may pose itself as fiscally conservative, although history rarely bears out their claim, but they have never, ever, not once since their founding in 1856, been in favor of small government, or less government interference in our lives. They were instrumental in, lets see now, the Civil War, the amendments outlawing slavery and forcing the states to recognize civil rights, and even, horror of horrors, in the Civil Rights Act, you know, the one proposed by that Southern turncoat Johnson II. After LBJ did that, a lot of Dixiecrats decided to turn to the Republicans after that party started chanting the rhetoric of States’ Rights and other such tripe. Unfortunately for you, if you’re the sort who would have been a Dixiecrat, you have no representation at all in this country beyond a few sub-humans lurking at the boundaries of society, occasionally blowing up a Federal building in a misguided attempt to restore White Power. I know that this is a horrible thing to contemplate, but if you’re one of those people, you are as obsolete as bronze shields in a pitched battle. Your ideas have, to put it mildly, been repudiated so badly that even the stink is hard to notice any more. Give it up. Join your fellow humans, or do yourself a favor and go crawl off to die in a corner. Really.
My point here, folks, is that getting into name-calling knee-jerk politics is pretty damned dangerous. There just might be a reason that people who make a living using their heads see things in the world that are a bit harder to see if all you do is watch Fox News and Survivor. Maybe those guys actually do know what they’re talking about once in a while, even if you don’t like the sound of it. Okay? Or, maybe you just ain’t prayin’ hard enough, Clem . . .
Labels: Politics
