The Conservative Dichotomy: The World Hates Us, I Mean Loves Us..Wait..Shit!

Woe is the poor Republican party; besmirched, mocked, disdained, stranded on an island of righteousness in a sea of depravity and moral relativism. Waves of prurient, God-taunting degradation crashing upon their be-haloed heads with only the fibrous moral density of their bones to keep them from going under. A vibrant flower in a cesspool of.... well, you get the idea. Oh yes, make nary a mistake it's a bitch being a hard-nosed, kick-ass, stand-up-for-what's-wholesome conservative in today's world. And no one knows this better than that poor bastard George W. Bush, always catching flak from, among others, the lascivious, hateful, liberal media (who, when not drinking herbal tea, counting their silver pence and sodomizing young men, are at all out war with the White House). Everyone shits on poor George, but luckily for America, when God (using the Supreme Court presumably as his hand) appoints us a President, he picks a sturdy "One." And better yet, he goes out and gets himself an old sinner, someone who can comprehend the true debasement of the American left. Who better than a spoiled rich kid who snorted lines of coke off of the taut nipple of a Houston hooker to properly oversee the jailing of millions of disenfranchised blacks for doing their drugs without the benefit of Presidential patriarchism? Who better than a privileged National Guard absentee to send troops to their death under the overstretched banner of a religious mandate? Somehow though, to the Right's amazement, these glorious qualities are lost on the great masses of valueless liberals, who conspire to tear old W. and his fellow heartland heroes down by any means possible.

But how does all of this heroic little guy bullshit square with the oft-repeated notion that the crazy Left is drastically out of touch with real America? How does the well-publicized notion of the "liberal media" square with Fox's subtly immodest slogan of America's News Channel? How can Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity be the biggest stars in political talk radio and still be drowned out by that great liberal echo chamber? Do the Washington Times, New York Post and Wall Street Journal think of themselves as fringe papers? Do Bill O'Rielly and Joe Scarborough really qualify as alternative, even indie, programming? It seems the Right can't make up their collective mind (if it may be called such a thing) whether they are the voice of the people en masse or the place for the special few faithful to find refuge from the rest of us. They are perpetually torn between playing the consummate underdog overachievers, little political Rocky Balboas as it were, and feigning utter shock at the elitist disconnectedness of the Democrats, or worse - actual liberals. How can such cognitive dissonance continue? By living a delusion. By cultural gerrymandering. By imagining that those living in the bulky red states are the real Americans and every heathen living in New York or Los Angeles (don't even get me started on San Francisco) have sadly forgotten what this country is all about. They live in a dream world where bible-belt cowboys are somehow more representative of America than any "Hollywood liberal" could ever be, despite the fact that most Americans don't actually wear cowboys hats, have never rustled cattle, and don't give a flying fuck how many payload tons the latest Ford truck can carry. In this sense, it appears that our cultural imagery is as misrepresentative as our democracy, disproportionately diminishing the relevance of the vast throngs of immorals living in our various Babylonian metropolitans. I can only hope that one day we will all rise up and make these neanderthals as marginalized as they have long clamored to be. Let us make underdogs of them yet.

None Dare Call it Treason

Ronald Reagon died earlier this week and today I awake to censure for not respecting his death enough. The media is pouncing on anyone with the gall to suggest that Reagon was not a full-fledged saint, under the guise of respect for the dead. They are peddling the notion that all of our countrymen, whether you liked Reagon or not, should be thankful for his service (as if our distaste was based on some personal vendetta). But its absurdly pretentious to say its not about whether you liked Reagan or not. Of course it is. For example, I can tell that most of the media does. It takes no more than a 4th grade education to notice the fundamental difference between the weeklong eulogizing of Reagan and the quick sweeping-over of the death of Nixon. Not because one served their country less than the other, but because Reagan has become a mythological figure in the eyes of the conservative movement in this country -the man who took the government from all those whiney, spineless liberals and handed it back to the free-market - and Nixon, well, was Nixon.

Unfortunately, I don't beleive we owe anything to Reagan, he served at our displeasure, not vice versa. A Nicaraquan immigrant whose parents were murdered by contra forces that Reagan shuffled money to, a father who saw his son taken by AIDS while Reagan dutifully ignored the epidemic or any other citizen of the U.S. who felt the negative impact of greater disparities in wealth and drastic cutbacks of basic social programs during his years do not owe a goddamn thing to Reagan except his or her well-earned indignation. The Presidency of the United States is a serious fucking job, one that affects in some way virtually every living being on the planet. That makes it a spectacular burden and responsibility. Many people, myself included, believe that Reagan not only negelected that responsibility, he bent it over and raped it in the ass. If Reagan wanted universal praise for his public service following his death, he should have sought to use that service to the benefit of a much larger group of people than he did.

The vast majority of the criticism I see and hear regarding the presidency of Reagan is in response to glorified versions (if not outright lies) of his Presidency. Those have to be answered with reality, whether Nancy likes to hear it or not. As we speak, Republicans are attempting to rename as many airports as possible in Reagan's name, put him on the dime and/or 100 bill, and add his graven image to Mt. Rushmore. Lack of criticism, for fear of being disrespectful, is the only lubrication these assholes need. Now is the time when conservatives will attempt to memorialize Reagan's legacy for all posterity, our silence will do no more than allow history to be rewritten to serve their purposes and undermine ours. Contrary to what many think, history can be a second in the making and people still die every day as a result of Reagan's myopic policies. We don't have the fucking time to wait decades to debate their merits.

I excoriated Reaganism when Reagan was President, after he left office and all this week. Unfortunately, the 12 years of his and Bush I's Presidency (and every day since then) fell far short of enough time to resolve those compliants.

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." George Bernard Shaw