Rules? In a Knife Fight?Cross posted at
First Draft.
OK, likening Tom Tancretin and Newt to night riders is a little mean...but not at all without justification, particularly when one, you've got evidence, and two, the Republican Party has decided that rhetorical fire bombs and buzzword politics are just fine by them.
Well, sometimes you fight fire with fire.
Tom and Newt both decided that regression to the early 20th century, if not the 19th, was right up their alley this past week as the former
embraced a pillar of segregation -- literacy tests as a voting requirement -- while the latter insisted that the
only effective way to deal with terrorism was the lynch mob, even as the media were distracted from this thanks to his
'facts are stupid things' moment re: Richard Reid's citizenship.
So why not liken them to night riders?
Wingers call Obama a socialist...as if "socialist" has any meaning in a global economy (other than "kill the n*****"), they've derided the health care bill for being
1000 pages long (.pdf)...um, have you ever looked at your own health care policy? Mine's a hundred pages long, and I'm single, with no dependents, and am in an HMO...
Allowing the Christmas Day bombing suspect the rights of an accused criminal is somehow soft on terror because "it's a war"? How more cynical, sinister and Orwellian can you get? Wingers demand "war" without the slightest understanding of what "war" actually means, and certainly without calling for all that a genuine war requires...you know, conscription, rationing, price controls, etc., oh, and war taxes to pay for an extraordinarily expensive departure from civilized norms.
Wingers want war to be the ultimate can of whup ass/salve to relieve their inner impotence.
Their "vision" for the broader society, if not the globe, isn't that far removed from your average prison yard.
Traditionally, the media would function as a voice of reason and call these asshole out on both their abject stupidity and moral degeneracy...and if more in the media were like
Athenae, maybe they would...but, for the most part, at least the elite media seem to have traded status for dinner party invitations even as they "report," with a straight face, things like
Karl Rove's ugly crack about "liberals wanting to offer therapy to terrorists" (
something the Bush administration allegedly DID) while publishing
effluvia about the same liberals allegedly being "condescending" towards conservatives.
So, sometimes the proper and even correct reaction to not only the media, but to idiots like Tancretin and Gingrich is, "
Fuck you, you fucking fucks. You fucking racist creep fucks."
Aside from having evidence to prove what yes, is a very harsh allegation, it puts these creeps on the defensive, which is a good thing. In politics, when you're defending, when you're explaining, you're losing.
And both Tom and Newt have a lot of explaining to do.
