Mildred: Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
Johnny: Whadda you got?
– The Wild One, 1953 –

Eschew Obfuscation –
By Michael Douglass –

I used to be young and idealistic. Now I have no idea what to make of it.

It’s not even policy or ideology anymore. It’s dogma fueled brinkmanship.

Or, it’s a board game, but not chess. Whatever it was, it has devolved into Chutes and Ladders. Tic Tac Toe.

Let’s talk a little about the contemporary Republican party.

They are now absurd. They get all air raid shrill on the very issues that are their demise. It confuses me. Social issues because they cannot get any traction politically? Then political because there’s no traction socially?

Thrashing with no embarrassment in sight.

So now we have about 30 state legislatures presided over by Republican governors swinging ham fisted haymakers at the voting rights of minorities, women and anyone likely to vote democrat. There’s only one reason to do this. The GOP is no longer capable of winning a fair election because they are courting extinction. I’ve been saying it for years. What you’re seeing is a last grasp.

There is no animal more dangerous than a wounded one. There is no political party more formidable than one staring at its own departure. And they’re starting to figure out it’s by their own device.

Everyday in this country we vigorously debate climate change and evolution simultaneously. Abortion and the death penalty. We actually debate whether or not our tap water being flammable is a bad thing.

Really.

What I’m fascinated by these days is the brokeback reaction by the GOP to all progress. As in no fucking way to anything. I’m not surprised, definitely disgusted but still fascinated.

Take marriage equality. Yet another right wing bastion of dogmatic christian conservatism falters because of just how fucking bubble ignorant they have become. Public opinion on this issue continues to burgeon opposite of their favor and their response is to foist unconstitutional legislation prohibiting it and every other attempt at decency.

And they keep losing.

Then there’s the ONE thing they always win.

Gun control.

Let’s talk a little about gun nuts.

We’re not talking about the normal, less than paranoid ones that just want to be able to own firearms. To potentially protect themselves and loved ones against evildoers. People who enjoy the visceral kick of an honest to god could kill a man, handheld appliance. I’m a liberal who likes guns. I grew up with them.

Who I mean is all that have visions of firing on our own army in the streets dancing in their heads. Them that can’t but help themselves to civil war drama. Jack asses thinking they would have a fat chance if it came to that today. I mean the ones devoting their daydreaming hours to a race war. This shit is really ringing my bell these days. NRA Fire is on scene and everybody is wobbling clueless and afraid.

All the jiptards are imploding.

We can’t even talk about it.

We can’t or won’t even talk about mental health or serotonin drug history. Whether people awaiting trial or those of us on a terrorist watch list should be eligible. We are paralyzed on this issue because of a douchenozzle lobbyist named Wayne LaPierre.

Far longer than the last six years they’ve been marching in lockstep under threat of some democrat king taking their pea shooters. Now it’s Obama. And yet it hasn’t happened. The American right is having a turbo charged, steroid fueled identity crisis. Because the apocalypse has not occurred as forecast.

So this is what you get. This is why you’re seeing what you’re seeing. This is how Cliven Bundy is allowed any real estate in the cable news cycle; because the tea party wing of the GOP needs a hero and there just aren’t any.

Look around.

You tell me.

All you need to know about this faction now swinging the heaviest lumber in the United States Congress is this guy is the best they could come up with. Every armed “well regulated militia” member in the desert that day last week was an idiot.

These are the very people who have been foisting the “takers vs, makers” bullshit on us for the years. Cliven Bundy is the kind of guy they want us all to hate. They champion a wealthy rancher for essentially not paying his taxes and using public property for personal profit because he doesn’t recognize the authority of the federal government. He is, by their own definition, a “taker.” A deadbeat sucking of the government teat. Can you say shameless hypocrite? Can you say disingenuous asshole wrapping himself in the flag of a government whos authority he chooses not to recognize?

Is it ironic that his strings are being pulled by the people who would love nothing more than for the federalies to fill him full of holes? Does he understand the Koch brothers were involved in propagating his charade?

Despite a complete lack thereof, they found a reason to muster. To gather. To rattle muskets and sabers.

And then there’s the company misery like this attracts. Richard Mack. You can’t make these assholes up.

“We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front,” says tea party Taliban leader Richard Mack. “If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.”

How does anyone, regardless of ideological bent, suffer such an amoral fucktard?

There are those in the false equivalency vortex who would argue that these jackwagons in the Nevada desert are no different than the Occupy movement because of their allegedly shared anti-government platform.

What these imbeciles just don’t get is the Occupy movement stakes its claim on the notion that big business and big government enjoy an appalling abundance of comity, collusion and cooperation as opposed to some form of antagonism on behalf of ordinary citizens. There’s that and the fact that they show up unarmed because they’re quite aware that bristling with the latest high powered weaponry may likely result in someone getting their head blown off, a media blackout and then a full blown cover up.

See, they’re just smarter.

The feds back off. Wisely. Better no blood spilled.

The God, guns and liberty coalition declares victory. They compare themselves to badgers defeating bears. Grizzlies. Badgers. Sheezus. What the fuck?

This is what they take away from all this?

They didn’t win anything. There was no victory by virtue of firepower as many now boast. Cliven Bundy is a loser who will ultimately lose. The feds backed off because they understood very well they would have to shoot United States citizens and in addition to handing the wing nuts all the martyrs they were actually asking for, they didn’t want to do that. They understand there are other venues, other stages for this mock tragedy and they will be waiting in each and every one of those theaters.

It’s not like I’m rooting for the feds here, but this whole thing is breathtakingly stupid.

Cliven Bundy will gaze upon his own ass in his own hands and hopefully without a whiff of gun powder.
You dumbfucks got lucky. You’re not dead because the federal government decided you shouldn’t be. What amazes me, what astonishes me, is that you don’t get that. One of the salient reasons you’re irrelevant is because of your fantasies involving overthrowing or even defending yourselves against the federal government with the weaponry you currently have access to.

And then you pick this dickhead to be your poster boy.

Liberty they screech. Liberty. Is liberty not paying your fair share? Is liberty using our land for your product and pocketing the profit?

I’m driving slowly by a freeway conflagration so hot it makes my forehead burn through tinted windows up and the air conditioning blasting. I don’t see Jesus anywhere.

I wonder at this. I puzzle over it. What I conclude is that they’ve gotten dumb. They used to be organized. Unified. Consistently on message. They have lost their way. Because they hate each other as much as the rest of us. They eat their own. They are dissolving. It’s actuarial. Inevitable.

The implosion will be televised.

That there is what I call a harbinger.

No matter what party you belong to, trust me when I tell you this means trouble for just about all of us. The whole focus now is on being primaried as opposed to anything that means shit because of dramatic and shameless gerrymandering in every county south of north. Citizens United. Abrupt, unprecedented and glaring concentration of wealth. Way too many roundheads fear someone with an even rounder head than their own constituents.

See, the GOP is the example, the paradigm for what is wrong with the whole system. They just beat us to it by being stupider, but we’re all stupid. What we need to do is heed their example. They’ve given us a gift. We need to look that gift very hard in the mouth.

Drinks for my friends.