Welcome to the Party, Pal

I haven't forgiven them for the vile things they said about John Kerry and I likely never will, and just because you finally wake up and smell the coffee doesn't mean you're entitled to a spot at the breakfast counter, but this is quite a turnaround.

Why I Parted Ways With The Right

Opinion | Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 6:49:45 pm PST

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

What I'm especially fond of is the idea that this is anything NEW. The idea that conservatism has changed. The idea that now, this, images of Obama in a turban or with a bone through his nose, dumb folks in patriotic windbreakers, this is a bridge too far. I like that a whole lot. Honest to blog, the GOP appeals to racists and sexists and authoritarian nutjobs all of a sudden? No shit, knock me over with a feather from a very tiny hummingbird. Jesus H. Samba Dancing Christ on a Custard Cream, you're kidding me. I would never have thought that the party that prated about "states' rights" and was just fine with cities tearing themselves to pieces so long as it could make a buck off peddling "law and order" was full of fuckwads. Who would have goddamn thought?

Now granted, the conservative crazy's no longer cloaked in respectable intellectualism, not these days, so it's getting a little harder to take. You can no longer go the parties and pretend you're not a racist sexist authoritarian lowlife because there's a really bitchin' raw bar. You have to stand in the street with the teabaggers and their ill-spelled signs and their Capri Suns these days and eat fucking corn dogs, you want a conservative good time on the cusp of a new decade. It's hard, isn't it, now that William F. Buckley and his be-cravat-ed ilk aren't around anymore to give you a reason to feel okay about being a totally amoral scumbag monster?

But come on. They have been like this for years. Where do you think Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann and Mike Huckabee CAME FROM, for God's sakes? Do you think they just woke up one day and decided, "You know what? Today I'll be racist and crazy and it'll be AWESOME?" You nurtured them for years with Saint Ronnie and Ralph Reed and yes, even good old batshit Uncle Pat, who hasn't gotten any nuttier the past couple of years, just louder about it. You have to just sack up and admit that these are the feral critters you had chained up in the basement all along, that you fed on raw meat and Red Bulls, and now they've slipped their shackles and are demanding the right to walk among you. It sucks, that you can't just close the hatch and tell your very civilized dinner guests the screams they think they're hearing are just the noises of your washing machine on the fritz.

And you were fine with it so long as you could still kid yourself. You and lots and lots of others.

A.

Comments

[serge]

Mme A, not to worry...life didn't turn upside down. This person will be dead by morning.

[herodotus]

I used to beat children until I realized all the other child beaters were ASSHOLES!

[Stormcrow]

Haven't you heard of Charles Johnson's "Oh shit!" moment yet?

This has been all over the Internet.

The last six months, since it became painfully apparent to even the thickest of us that Barack Obama fully intended to treat the folks who put him in office like they were last week's garbage, and we were going to be at war in the Middle East until sometime in the late spring of 2147, there haven't been many pleasant moments in the left blogosphere.

But watching the reichwing punditocracy collectively frothing and raving and pissing itself over Charles Johnson's descent into eeeeevil has certainly provided a large number of the ones we've had.

Maybe he just woke up. Things like that happen. The sensation isn't always pleasant, when what you're waking up from is a whole life of being almost literally buried in lies. Yeah, I speak from personal experience.

"Black epiphany" is about the closest I can come to describing it.

[mikefromtexas]

Now you know how I feel about John Cole at Balloon Juice. EVERY single day I read the posts there and wonder how such an intelligent person could have ever fallen for all the right wing bullshit. My dad was a hardcore winger so I heard every manner of shit going back forty years. Of course he worked a UNION job for 35 years that he wouldn't quit on a bet. Even when I was a teenager I could always shut him up with 'So dad, when you gonna quit that evil union job that's destroying America?'. End of conversation. Every single time.

[montag]

Little Green Snotballs has always been, uh, entertaining....

[virgotex]

Yes, let's talk about SAINT REAGAN today, since it's World AIDS day:

5/31/87: Reagan spoke of AIDS in public for first time. At that time, there were 20,849 DEAD. 36,058 DIAGNOSED cases in US, AIDS had spread to 113 countries http://bit.ly/4utvV9

[FeralLiberal]

Maybe he woke up in that van you described in a great past post, that was taken over by the crazies.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I don't see why these protestations by Johnson should be taken at face value, any more than fulsome whines of regret delivered from the dock during sentencing for war crimes.

Yeah, suddenly it's a really bad time to be caught wearing that SS-Obertruppführer uniform, but that doesn't mean it won't come back out of the closet when the weather changes again.

If Johnson is going to turn his coat, he'll have to go back behind enemy lines and attack his former Kameraden, burning bridges along the way. My bet is that he's too much of a pussy, with a weathervane ideology to match.

But we'll see.

A, you're treating Johnson with grandmotherly kindness.

[Athenae]

I knew the bloom had come off the insanity for him, but I thought it was an inter-wingnut mudfight, not some grand ideological awakening. GAH.

A.

[Aaaargh]

What's truly scary is that eventually these maniacs will find their way back into power again. The tragic thing about Obama was that he had an opportunity that he utterly pissed away, of saying, NO this is wrong, this is evil, and the people who did this need to be tried in The Hague for their crimes. Now he has bloodied his own hands and made it even more respectable.

Blood will literally run in the streets once they retake power. And they will. The Democrats are too inept to do anything even with a huge mandate. Well, except pander to their corporate masters.

[pansypoo]

call me when the rest of the rite grows a brain.

[Stormcrow]

"Blood will literally run in the streets once they retake power. And they will."

Yes, that's right. They will.

And the people leading them will be completely batshit insane.

Thank you, Barack Obama. It looks like I'll live long enough to see the cities burn after all. I was sort of hoping that wouldn't happen until I was safely and comfortably dead.