Republican Autoerotic Asphyxiation
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- One glance at the birthers and the town hall screamers tells you all you need to know. You don’t even need to see it, you can hear it in their strangled cries. The Republican party is a junkie, addicted to hate.
“The base is on fire!” the Republican spokeszombies shout, spittle flaking their bloodless lips. ‘We’re back!” they spew, “bigger and better than ever!”
Hate is a rush, hate is a drug. When all your plans and dreams have gone to hell, when everything you stand for has been repudiated, when the people have abandoned you and it feels like God himself has forsaken you, hate will give you a reason to live.
The problem with hate is that, like any drug, you develop a tolerance to it. Last year a Republican mob could get into ecstasies of joy by chanting the lie “Obama is a Muslim!” That worked for a while, but then they had to up the dose. “Obama is a socialist!” was good for a nice hate buzz, but it got old in a hurry. Now mere lies don’t cut it anymore. Now it takes blood libel to feed the monkey.
“Obama is an illegal alien! Obama hates white people! Obama wants to slit granny’s throat! We hate him, Hate him, HATE HIM!”
This isn’t party politics, this is delirium tremens, and what comes next is rigor mortis.
Liberals, moderates and even rational conservatives—those few who haven’t gone on the junk—hear this stuff and are terrified.
I can’t blame them, it is scary. When you can’t have a town hall meeting without a shrieking, 140 decibel, bussed-in, paid-for mob doing everything in its malevolent power to scare the bejesus out of everyone and make democratic debate impossible, it’s easy to cut and run. The fight-or-flight reflex kicks in and even the strong are tested.
Many fail. The Blue Dogs hear the furor and turn Yellow. “Let’s take August off and hope it all goes away. These issues are just too contentious.”
But “the issues” have nothing to do with it. Do we really think those mobs give a crap about the intricacies of health care reform? Has fear made us that stupid?
The birthers, the “just say no” crowd, the “Cash for Clunkers is a failure because it worked” idiots don’t really care about any of those things. All they want to do is hurt Obama because they hate Obama.
They hate Obama because he beat them. That inescapable fact is what’s driving the right insane.
All they care about is driving down Obama’s poll numbers. But why? Seriously, my Republican brethren, are you really so delusional that you think you can beat him in 2012? Obama is going to eat Mitt Romney and crap Bobby Jindal in three years. What’s the point? Don’t you have a country to help run, or would you rather run it into the ground?
The right thought it was America. It turns out America is bigger than that. Forty years ago the left labored under the same delusion.
Crazy-ass, bug-eyed, screaming imbeciles, drunk with hate and high on anger are always with us, on both fringes. The terrible failure of conservative leadership today is their refusal to repudiate those foaming fanatics in the harshest, clearest words possible.
Conservatism is a serious intellectual project. It has a long, proud history of standing foursquare against the rule of the mob. There is only one moral response a true conservative can have, when confronted with ignorance, hatred and lies, lies, lies about the duly elected President of the United States of America: “We renounce you, root and branch.”
But they don’t because it feels too good. The hatred is “energizing the base,” it’s “firing up the party,” it’s “bringing us back.”
No, it’s not. It’s killing you. And it will keep killing you until you decide you don’t want Obama to fail more than you want America to succeed.
For just a few moments of bitter joy, the Republican party is murdering itself. Those screaming crowds, the frightened Democrats, the rising ratings of right-wing radio ranters, Obama’s slipping poll numbers! It’s such a rush! We can’t stop, it feels too good!
But it’s not good, my conservative friends, it’s death. What you are feeling is the fatal bliss of autoerotic asphyxiation.
Pingback by Maybe now is finally the time to launch the ECPNRC political party | Hypocrisy Reigns Here on 5 August 2009:
[...] to long time good friend and beer swilling buddy Snark Twain, who recently alerted me that the GOP is about to die an untidy death, my ship may be in the harbor and I can have another shot at my fourth [...]
Comment by Nicole Jordan on 6 August 2009:
Repugs: “Don’t you have a country to help run, or would you rather run it into the ground?” Get out of the bunkers. The war is over, you lost; join in the Reconstruction, or go away.
Comment by proletarian on 31 August 2009:
Comrade Snark, I apologize for taking so long to read your post, unforturnatley I had many prior engagements. My question is a simple one, that is if you’re still monitoring this particular blog. What exactly is your point? Are you excoriating or crucifying those who go to town hall meeting in fear of the current proposed healthcare bill? Or are you attempting to vilify Republicans in general?
I shall hold my opinion until I’m certain, because the latter, if indeed it is, I find hard to believe. It would be quite beneath you.
I have yet to go to a town hall, but I have written and called my congressman. I’m also on the goon’s hit list. I wrote to the White House and the only response I received was one from David Axlerod, unsolicited I might add, in which he sent me “anti-propaganda, propaganda” videos. Lord help me!
Edify me my friend, please, don’t let me down. I have garnered so much respect for your posts over the last year; your humor, poignant views and droll commentary. I must say, maybe I’m just enfeebled, but I can’t decipher a clear-cut inference from your couched prose. It’s rather convoluted, byzantine, not quite suited for the thinking of philistines like myself.
I await your response.
Comment by joker on 31 August 2009:
Proletarian: There’s nothing here to figure out. The answer lies in a simple old saying: “When in doubt…punt.”
The colorful words here are analagous to the “President” he’s defending. Impressive on the surface and entirely empty below. It is the standard response from liberal Democrats. If you look back at my comments and posts, you’ll see I list facts. I broke the whole night on Chappaquiddick down in detail, proving my points about what a disgraceful coward the late Senator Kennedy was. Then when you look at the comments of my opposition, all you’ll see is the same tired rhetoric from the Left: You’re a hater. That’s all they ever have to say, because if they had to rely on any sort of facts that can be proven to back up their arguments that they’d be no better off than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
Comment by Snark Twain on 2 September 2009:
Proletarian, thank you for your kind words, but perhaps I’m the one who owes an apology here. If my point wasn’t clear enough it was my fault. If you didn’t get it, shame on me. I’m the writer and you’re the customer and the customer is always right.
But with that mea culpa out of the way, allow me to try–briefly–again.
By no means was I trying to vilify Republicans in general. I am entirely sincere in my regret that the Grand Old Party is committing suicide by embracing the craziest yahoos in their midst. Of course you’re not among them, and you have every right to oppose health care reform and any other policy with which you disagree.
But you do it rationally, honestly, your arguments are on point, meant to persuade, your tone of voice civil. You speak as an opponent, not an enemy.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for the loudest voices on the right, in the town halls or right here on the blogs. There irrationality, obsession and unfocused outrage call the tune, and far too many Republicans dance right along.
Take a certain unnamed poster, familiar to both of us. I wrote this post August fifth, with not a word of mention of a still-living Senator Kennedy. Yet he blowhards the same “Chappaquiddick” rant here as he does on everything lately as if it were the slightest bit relevant to what I wrote.
It’s not. But he doesn’t care about that, any more than he cares about infecting an entire party with his fatal disease. He claims to be stating facts but his posts read like a list of symptoms.
Of course, he has a perfect right to display his pathologies in public. Many crazed leftists do the same to me on liberal blogs. Fair is fair. But I denounce the lefty conspiracy nuts with vigor; I did so in my very next post here on August 13th. I wanted to make it crystal clear those fringe crazies don’t speak for me. Even if we did vote for the same guy in November.
If responsible Republicans (like you, Prole? I don’t remember ever hearing you state that affiliation.) don’t distance themselves from the birthers, birchers, screamers and sickos who have become the loudest voices of the party, they will never, ever get to fifty percent again. Ever. And the Grand Old Party and the serious conservative project will die.
And I’m one liberal who thinks we need them.
Hope that helps and keep reading, my old friend