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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Mixed Nuts

While my focus has been on Futurological nutters today, right wing nutters have, of course, been teabagging in the tens across the country. I can't quite understand why anybody is astonished by the embarrassingly low turnouts or by exhibitions of wingnutty crazy on display -- anybody actually reading the polling knows that overabundant majorities still support the President and the work he is doing and those who are seen to be working to help him achieve his objectives. Essentially, what has happened is a re-staging of the election which a few months ago reduced the Republican Party to a regional middle-aged white Confederate rump party, plus a small fringe of libertopians and racist hate groups. Given that for over a generation an out of touch minority has been able to sell itself -- with the invaluable assistance of broadcast-corporate media -- as both the Real America when it's not and a Moral(izing) Majority when it's not, I can't say that I find it that unreasonable really that this long-coddled long-deluded minority has not yet quite come to terms with the actual reality of their circumstances. It's all so sudden. But one has to wonder about the media executives who decided to throw the dice in support of this doomed enterprise, just as one has to wonder about the higher-ups in the Republican Party who have apparently decided to treat a talk-show host as their de-facto leader (a talk show host who can whomp up an incomparably profitable audience through controversy, but who couldn't even be elected Dog Catcher in most of the areas he dominates in ratings). It's all very strange. I must say that I have enjoyed most of all those few Villagers who have tried to put a brave face on this fiasco, and in the name of fair and balanced reportage are suggesting that Democrats need to stand up and take notice of this "nascent movement," and take its demands into account in their governance. Given that one finds turnouts in individual cities for gay Pride events that dwarf the national turnout for this Republican tea-bagging protest of Bush's 2008 tax-rates, I fully expect these same Villagers to demand that the United States government legalize gay marriage, end don't ask don't tell, decriminalize rentboys, and replace Grant's face on the fifty dollar bill with that of Harry Hay immediately.

5 comments:

jimf said...

> [T]he Republican Party. . . have apparently decided to treat
> a talk-show host as their de-facto leader. . .

OMG, I just realized -- Ann Coulter is. . . a Cylon!

(Really, doesn't she look a lot like Number Six? Maybe
she should switch from slinky black dresses to slinky red
dresses.)

http://www.ugo.com/movies/top-50-hottest-sci-fi-girls/images/entries/number-six.jpg
http://tizona.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/ann_coulter02.jpg

Dale Carrico said...

Even as a big homogay fag I'm here to tell you that Six is incomparably hotter than Coultergeist. The erotic fun and games between Head Six and Baltar are always suffused with a level of critical awareness and satire and perviness that is teh hott for me whatever the morphology. Coulter's dead eyes do nothing for me. Hell, even the adam's apple does nothing for me, and I dig a guy with a good adam's apple as much as the next girl.

arturus said...

Centaur wednesday fodder for you: http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7185

JM Inc. said...

I'm sorry, did I miss something? People are surprised at the low turn out? Well, ok, I'm not surprised, but I can see why some people would be. The national media have been, for a very long time, vastly under representing the left in the United States. Compare the coverage of this "nascent movement" that must be taken "seriously" with the coverage, several years ago, of the protests against the Iraq war.

What I find much more interesting is the rising tenor of the right-wing lunacy at present. Is it just me or are they somehow getting more insane? They talk constantly, and openly, about things like secession and revolution and civil war, "better buy your guns and ammo, and stock up on food"; are they for real? Are they really this ignorant of the very recent history of their nation, that they fail to understand the context of the current situation and believe themselves to stand upon an unprecedented historical precipice? It's like they've suddenly come out of the closet and admitted to being the cartoonish ignoramuses we so often (jokingly or not) thought that they are. Actually, I seem to recall reading an article published by the Institute for America's Future (this was before the election) pointing out that there was an uptick in virulent wingnuttery after Clinton, including gun hording, militia-ing, and general belligerent obstinacy, which ultimately sort of culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing, and predicting similar displays of mass idiocy should Obama carry the election. Not that I'm suggesting there should be any sort of culmination this time, but I'm just confident there's some interesting mechanism at work behind these mechanically predictable lunatic responses to sanity.

Anonymous said...

there was an uptick in virulent wingnuttery after Clinton, including gun hording, militia-ing, and general belligerent obstinacy, which ultimately sort of culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing, and predicting similar displays of mass idiocy should Obama carry the election.

So not only does Obama have to worry about a foreign terrorist attack undermining his presidency but he also has to worry that some Timothy-McVeigh-wannabe domestic terrorist who watches too much 24 might get the idea of blowing up the IRS building...

God Bless America!