Outside the Spectrum

Never let it be said that I am a close-minded person. I’ve read both Ann Coulter’s books. Both of Sean Hannity’s books. In fact, I absorb more right-wing lies than a Chicago city landfill. FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, you name it, I read or listen to it regularly.

   I surf the “conservative” blogs, though if those are indicative of the “conservative” movement, they are in all sorts of trouble.

   But first, a short diversion. I remember being stunned when O.J. was acquitted in 1995. As in, what motley collection of inbreds could’ve acquitted that guy? Then I saw the jury. Of course. Reverse racism. The blacks of L.A. getting some kind of “revenge” on the L.A.P.D. who have been beating them like Rodney King for years.

   Then I found out about how the evidence was presented in the case. How uneducated most of the jury was. How they didn’t understand DNA evidence. Then I thought maybe they were simply ignorant.

   That’s how I thought of conservatives until recently. That’s partially how I think of them still. But there are no simple answers to the question of the strange behavior of millions of complex people.

   When I went surfing the conservative blogosphere recently I visited a number of sites. Many of them seemed to been written by the editors of the American Spectator. Some of them were worse.

   First were the mods. The Andrew Sullivans, if you will. When I first read his site I thought he was a liberal. Honestly. Of course, I’ve heard about him on TV, and he frequently doesn’t come off so well.

   Then there were the fiscal conservatives. They seemed almost as disgruntled with the spending habits of Bush and the Congress as liberals. They gripe endlessly about taxes. ENDLESSLY. They are deeply suspicious of where taxes go. Government is pretty much all pork to them. One particularly sterling example of humanity mocked the idea that his minimum-wage restaurant employees need fiscal breaks.

   Then there were the cultural conservatives. That’s actually not really what they are, but that’s how the MSM would categorize them. My buds at Little Green Footballs are a prime example. I don’t know what their political philosophy is besides U-S-A! U-S-A! They seem to simply swear fealty to the President and have an abject hatred of “libruls,” including Howard Dean, congresspeople, the goddamned librul media and the vast majority of the university professors in the country, all champaigne-swilling limousine libruls, to be sure. They seem to be entirely directed by the whims of the Republican National Committee’s direction, which may explain their utter lack of a coherent political position. They spout vitriol and counter contrary arguments and facts with…more vitriol. They are willfully ignorant. You can explain the simple truth to them, slowly and carefully, and they will cover their ears and go “lalalalalalalalalalala, I can’t hear you, lalalalalalalalala…”

   They don’t seem to care about other opinions, other countries, other people. The underlying message is “Fuck everyone but me.” I don’t want to pay taxes cause it’s my money. I’ll take care of myself and the government and everyone else can take care of themselves. And if I knowingly pay wage slaves an unlivable wage, well fuck them.

   The assembled opinion of the vast majority of world leaders against us? They’re a bunch of crooks and despots anyway. The whole UN is crooked. Remember that oil for food scandal? Crooked. Eighty percent of Iraqis want us to leave? The statistic must be bullshit, because it’s not what I want to believe. A hundred thousand Iraqi civilians dead? The statistic must be bullshit, because it’s not what I want to believe. Racism in the wake of the Katrina Hurricane? Nah. U.S. Military torturing suspected terrorists? Good.

   They don’t argue using reason. I’ve wandered into some of these sites armed to the teeth with information and expecting a vicious logical war only to step off a cliff into a realm where logic has no place, like wandering into Bhutan with millions of Euros and finding out that their economy is based on barter. I look around, awestruck, at the vast space where reason, discourse, goodwill, and science are supposed to be. Instead, there is only a chill darkness, with the occasional burning star of xenophobic hatred. Echoes that should be full-formed thoughts pass through this space, murmuring of how we should all be reverent towards our proud men and women in the armed forces, or how speaking against our dear leader in a time of war is treason.

   I quickly escape the algid depths of neo-fundy thought. If there were justice in this country the FCC would napalm those sites and arrest all contributors to be sent to re-education camps surrounded by razor wire and armed guards with dogs. There they would be waterboarded all day with an “interrogator” saying “What’s your opinion of torture now? What’s your opinion of torture now? What’s your opinion of torture now?”
Then they would be kept up all night with blaring music and forced to stand all day as we doused them with ice water and cranked the thermostat in the room down to 45 degrees Fahrenheit. And after a few months of this they would all be dead because that’s what happens to people when you treat them like this.

   These people are criminals. They are simply sociopaths. They have no concept of other people even existing at all. They are fueled by blind hatred. They are not safe or productive members of society, they are predators who take from others and endeavor endlessly to get more than they give. They are a dangerous bone-cancer that is gobbling up healthy cells in the body politic and threatening to kill the host. They are a mutant, motley collection of gun-fetishists, unrepentant segregationists, and Terry Schiavo-brain-dead, morally inbred thugs “knee-walking drunk on NeoCon corn liquor, willing to beat the teeth out of old women and children for the greater glory of the House of Bush.”

   My own words seem to be failing me today, so I must resort to some vintage Driftglass.