Which Came First?...

The sewer or the sewer rats?

Yeah, I suppose I'm just as guilty with some of my own rhetorical descriptions...but then again, it's not like the internets hold their collective breath waiting for my latest posts and exercises in (an old version of) Photoshop...

Over the last couple of days I've been recalling at least a couple of times when Billmon (alas, I read him, Horatio) cited the Hunter Thompson line about the US being a nation of used car salesmen "with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." That was written just after the then-biggest electoral landslide in history: Richard Nixon's trouncing of George McGovern in 1972.

Supreme/extreme arrogance isn't exactly a modern phenomenon in the political arena. But over the last generation or so it seems that a little extra flavor--or stench, if you prefer--has been added to the mix. I can remember my freshman political science professor back some time ago offering his own observation (re: the Reagan "revolution"): instead of showing at least token degrees of pity for the poor, it became fashionable to despise them.

The flip side of this behavior is the almost aristocratic behavior of people who are, in the purest sense of the term, "public SERVANTS." Embodied by people like, well, Big Time and Shrub...having not done a thing with their lives, aside from feeding at the public trough, they nonetheless heap scorn on any who expect government to actively SERVE the people, while insisting upon being treated as virtually modern day royalty.

You could say it's the ultimate manifestation of a "fuck you, fuck anyone who looks like you...and fuck anyone even in the general vicinity, on general principles" administration.

And that same pattern of behavior is prevalent amongst their minions.

I think this could, at least in part, explain the sort of appalling behavior some football "fans" exhibited last week (I guess you could say they weren't as bad as English soccer hooligans, but that's setting a pretty low bar, to put it mildly). Moving on, this same trend seems to be reflected in other forms of entertainment, i.e., the sort of ritual humiliation that seems to be a staple of reality tv shows.

Worse still, this pattern of behavior is also becoming part and parcel of something quite a bit more serious: the latest (h/t Rising Hegemon) being less participant and more observer, but this is yet ANOTHER "bad apple" incident...and when you add them all up, it's more than (mixing metaphors here) just a drop in the bucket. (btw--here's another...barely a blip on the radar screen).

Oh, and even MORE amazing: as soon as these professional shit bombers get so much as a taste of their own medicine, well...and if/when this administration is ever seriously investigated, they'll be the first to loudly demand the very constitutional protections they've been so furiously subverting for the last six years. Truly a national psyche of "fuck you."

And, the icing on the cake: many of these people publicly profess to believe in some form of Christianity.

Sort of like Bill Frist telling you how much he loves kittens...