On Morons and Elections, Part I....

I had pretty much decided some time ago to no longer devote time to this blog. I have so many other things to worry about, after all. I need time to work; I have a sick girlfriend who requires a great deal of care; I wasn't making much money with the damned thing, and so it became a pointless exercise in shouting in the wilderness that returned nothing for the energy devoted to it.

I was resigned to turning out the lights and locking the doors, leaving this little patch of cyberspace in much the same state as a Pharaoh's tomb, which is to say, something left undisturbed for centuries until some douchebag with too much curiosity and time on his hands might accidentally find it to plunder it's dank, musty mysteries as he saw fit.

But there's another election coming, and with elections, you can always count upon three things happening:

1. The morons come out of the woodwork.

2. The morons need to be put in their place.

3. I am, by nature, unable to resist putting morons in their place.

The real tragedy of the American Political System is that people who couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight are allowed to vote. Worse, they are encouraged to do so.

I'm going to talk about the morons on both sides of the aisle this week, but it is perhaps appropriate -- and imperative -- that the doofuses of the Right be metaphorically boxed about the ears first. Mostly this is because I can churn a "liberals are retarded, poop-flinging monkeys" screed out without really expending much thought or effort, and I've always been one to take the hardest task first, and also because the consequences of NOT taking the Right to task immediately are much more dire. After all, if the Leftards should win the presidential election of 2016 we will simply get a continuation of the status quo ante with the only point of contention being how much higher the price tag will be.

So, let's get this party started....

I would like to begin with an observation.

Every four years, particularly after a republican loss in an election they should have won sleepwalking, we are thrust into a sort of Ground Hog Day-type scenario by the Right-leaning media (you know who you are, Sean Hannity)  that goes something like this:

"We would have won if ONLY we had run a Real Conservative. The RINO's undermined us, and betrayed our conservative principles. We will now whine incessantly like menstrual teen aged girls for the next four years about how we're lied to, taken advantage of, taken for granted, never listened to, and persecuted. Until the next election cycle, in which we will demonstrate an inability to learn any lessons from failure and double down on Stupid, demanding a candidate that is even more rabidly conservative than the guy who lost previously, and subjecting the people we don't like to an intense and weaponized scrutiny that largely revolves around Medieval attitudes towards social issues that we have already lost the argument for/against. Much like Muslims, when we fail, we will insist upon a greater stratification of ideology and a more severe practice of same; basically, we lost because we -- excuse me, the Loser -- was not sufficiently pious and sanctimonious enough...like us. because I'd totally vote for an asshole exactly like me any day of the week."

When applied to Islam this sort of doubling down on stupid is called "radical fundamentalism".

When applied to GOP politics, especially those of the Far Right, is it is known as "standing up for principles".

That in neither case does this more fervent pursuit of ideological purity result in the sort of victory both seek over their enemies -- real or perceived -- sails completely over the heads of those who call for it. They are unable to see the self-defeating logic of their position. The Muslim fails because the stricter interpretation of his religious tenets and their extension into ever more areas of human endeavor simply results in greater failure, for it denies the ability to maneuver, to adapt, to think outside of the box, to be creative, and it has much the same effects upon republican politics, stifling the dynamic mindset and energy needed to win elections.

The reason why we repeat this little drama every four years is easy to identify. It doesn't have much to do with political ideology as much as it does with a certain type of mentality which is typically possessed by a particular brand of obnoxious cretin.

Before I identify this Philistine for you, let me first dissect the recurring complaint I noted above, so as to illustrate the point.

When you hear the words "REAL Conservative" vomited up by the people who make their living explaining the obvious to you what you must understand is that you are hearing a descriptive adjective that has no real meaning beyond a narrow-minded affiliation of like-minded individuals. The people who use this term have no idea what a "real conservative" is in the same way that a self-described liberal has no inkling of what liberalism is. It is simply a label, and worse, a dishonest one, that is deliberately misused so as to obscure the truth.

A REAL Conservative would, in the ideological sense, be a champion of what was once known as Classical Liberalism, that is, the system of political belief that invests sovereignty in the individual, and who holds that the preservation of the natural rights of the individual is to be the final arbiter in all things. Additionally, those fond of the REAL Conservative label fail to notice -- probably because they're assholes -- that what they advocate for, in most cases, is no different that what they routinely accuse their counterparts of advocating for, which is a monolithic mindset, rigorously enforced, where the nails that stand up must be hammered down by any means necessary, so that self-professed  REAL Conservative is all for denying or running roughshod over the sovereign rights of the individual so long as the end result is something they happen to agree with.

They have met the enemy and decided to be just like them; The Ends Justify The Means.

Now, for the part about RINO's, this is simply a denunciation of those who disagree or who are not sufficiently deferential to the crying asswipe who feels "taken advantage of". It has nothing to do with politics; it's a form of tantrum thrown by people who simply did not get their way, in much the same way as the cheerleader who didn't get a date to the prom with the star quarterback will take to gossip and name-calling to castigate the cheerleader who did as a "whore" within their extended social group.

And one more thing, the words "Conservative" and "RINO" are used to differentiate and identify people: this one is one of us, that other one isn't. Neither is a term of political description so much as they are gang colors, and there's an in-crowd and an out-crowd, and we need to make it absolutely clear who belongs to which; you're either with us, or you're against us, and if you're against us, well, then we will behave like the jilted cheerleader and write nasty things about you on Facebook, or the Ladies Room Wall, and talk about you to the other girls behind your back when we call in to Rush.

So now you know, generally, who the cretin is; he's a semi-political version of the Mean Girls. However, it goes deeper than this, for the Mean Girls typically have one other distasteful association to go with all their pent-up, water-retention-enhanced fury.

They tend to be religious bigots, too. And this bigotry manifests itself in a series of impossible-to-pass litmus tests -- on Abortion, Gay Marriage, Illegal Immigration, "What If?" games revolving around Supreme Court nominations, where to split the baby for politcial purposes means falling into the "gotcha!" trap -- that cannot be passed except by one of their own. Should an outsider actually begin to come close to passing any of these tests, they find something else to disqualify them from membership. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain or Mitt Romney, for example.

They set people up to fail, and then when the party inevitably fails, these people act is if they are the victims. What balls!

And so here we are, finally, the identification of the most pernicious threat to the political right, summed up for your convenience:

A religious zealot who typically has no ideas of his own that weren't spoon-fed to him by a pastor or a talk show host, or misinterpreted and lifted undigested straight out of Scripture, who is fixated upon a series of issues that he has already lost the (cultural) war on. He demands a rigidity of thinking which makes anyone who espouses it an unattractive candidate in a general election, and then blames the resulting defeat on others. When a candidate does come along who might be able to split the difference between what the zealot advocates for and what the electorate will stand for, that candidate is destroyed out-of-hand on the basis of ideological (really religious and racial) purity, for the very threat of compromise and pragmatism frightens the shit out of this sort of person, for they live in a zero-sum world where half a loaf is the same as no bread.

And they might even be forgiven this bulletproof-stupid idea when one considers that they believe in the divinity of a man who mystically materialized bread out of thin air to feed the masses. Jesus, incidentally, could not pass their ideological muster -- too liberal; he obviously believed in welfare and affirmative action -- and yet they'll cling to the authority bestowed by his divinity as an excuse for their bullshit. Go figure.

As a (Classically Liberal) republican, I'm getting pretty sick and tired of seeing my party hijacked by the American version of the Taliban who has the temerity to insist upon candidates who appeal only to them, who then turns around and blames me for the resulting loss. I'm triply sick and tired of having to listen to the whining of people who cut off their own noses to spite their faces who arrived at that peculiar predicament because they obviously are incapable of THINKING. The proof of this assertion is that every four years we get the "if only we ran a REAL conservative...." bullshit.

When REAL conservatives (as described by the zealots) run, two things happen, just as assuredly as 99 precedes 100:

1) they implode because they are unable to keep the batshit crazy hidden, and so manage to soil every other republican through guilt-by-association (see: Todd Akin, for example),

2) they hand elections to the democrats, because their influence has either produced a candidate that cannot win advancing a conservative agenda, or because they have so skewed the nomination process with their stupid brand of Search-and-Destroy politics that the only guy left standing at the end is a mass of ideologically-unbalanced contradictions, who they won't come out and vote for because he's either "too liberal" or the wrong religion (see: Mitt Romney).

The Zealots fail to take responsibility for their own culpability in losing elections, and then they take too much credit for being principled people for having helped it happen. They won't even take their own side in a fight, I guess. Which is fine, maybe, considering that their stand upon "principle" has, in the last two dozen years, brought us 16 years of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, made a celebrity and subject of sympathy out of Hillary Clinton, weaponized and militarized every anti-social identity group that was formerly anonymous and well-hidden -- and silent -- which are now vocal, politically-connected, and media-savvy.

One other consequence of the undue influence exerted over party politics by these knuckle-dragging mouthbreathers, is that they have produced -- unintentionally, of course, but perfectly predictable -- the GOP leadership that they'd now like to have hung from the nearest, convenient tree.

That is to say, that when you're John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, and you've gotten shit from both sides, but the fusillade is always deeper, stinkier, and packs considerably more punch from your own, you pretty much begin to not give a shit. You go about your business, doing what you need to do in order to survive, knowing that it will never be popular and you're going to suffer the slings and arrows, in any case. Best to get along by going along and become a good little managerialist like the democrats, because it is only through managerialism that you can manage to put together a powerbase that allows you to squeak out future election wins without the aid of, or need to cater to,  those who openly opine that they would rather see you dead,  and who call you RINO all goddamned day long because it's still not legal to stone an abortionist in the public square, like they did in Deuteronomy,

You keep your job because you manage to bring home the bacon for your clients; the downside is that there's a constant cacophony from frustrated retards buzzing in your ears 24/7.

If it were up to me, this breed of political pest -- the one unable to keep his religion out of the voting booth, incapable of understanding the self-defeating nature of the demands he makes upon the party and it's personalities, the sort that believes it is government's job to establish a Theocracy By Statute, since it failed to do so by Constitution, who now suddenly feels under assault by all the formerly-hidden anti-social types who he went out of his way to fucking persecute for three decades,  and who now seeks sanctuary from the golems he's created , the one who wants an all-out war on those who disagree with him waged with the full force of the government behind him in the manner in which they often accuse liberals of engaging in -- would not only be stripped of the franchise, he'd be horsewhipped in public...and then we'd get to pour salt and lemon juice in the wounds.

Everyone, I'm thinking, knows at least one person like this.

The solution to this intractable problem, for me, anyway, is to simply tell this special breed of dumbass where to get off. The unfortunate part of applying that simple solution, however, is that it probably relegates the GOP to the political wilderness for a while. However, I don't think this is as great a tragedy as it appears to be at first glance. For if there were to be a parting of ways, inevitably the Zealots would fail because the "run with a real conservative" meme would be proven, once and for all, to be a logical fallacy and apolitical impracticality (and without "RINO's" to scapegoat the idea would have to stand or fall, mostly fall, upon it's own merits), and the "Welfare for Everyone" brand of modern Leftism would simply come to a screeching halt as the future inability to actually make good on it's promises would come into contact with the hard, cold, immovable object of REALITY.

That is to say, the Socialists will have finally run out of other people's money with which to buy votes.

But it's not my self-appointed task to help The Other Side clean up it's mess. it's my self-appointed job to help mine clean up it's own, and the first step is shoving the broomstick up the collective ass of these self-appointed REAL Conservatives.