Friday, June 29, 2012

Really Bad Ideas

Did you ever - when you were a kid or, more likely, when you were a teenager or a young adult - get an idea that you knew was reeeeeeally stupid?
I don't mean your casual idiocy, the sort of thing that you drive by every so often when you're mentally joyriding and look over before moving on. I mean your truly, deeply, invasively moronic dumbfuckery. Genuinely weapons-grade stupid? The kind of complete-lack-of-electrical-brain-function thing that gets people maimed, or killed, that topples governments, that ends up with things exploding, or burning down, with people in full body casts or tipped into a shallow pit along with a Folger's tin full of gasoline and a lit cigarette?

Remember how - since you're here reading this, obviously - you gave this dumbass thought some consideration, weighing the potential enjoyment of whatever goofy thing you would have tried to do against the nearly dead solid certainty that doing it would unerringly, inevitably, as-directly-as-a-pup-to-its-dinner-consequently end up with you in some sort of mental, physical, emotional, and moral shithole?

And how you then either a) chose not to even try it or b) modified the actual act so as to reduce the odds of becoming a Darwin Award nominee, or c) actually tried it but managed through some incredible combination of pure dumb luck, timing, the intervention of a kindly God, and possibly fast reflexes survived?
Assuming you took options a) through c) you are still more intelligent and better adapted to human existence than the Republican Party of the United States and the vast majority of its minions, apparatchiks, hangers-on, bootlickers, and enablers who consider themselves things like "libertarian" or "independent" but still reliably vote Republican when the drapes to the election booth close.

Because, really...what the hell has the GOP produced, intellectually or physically, since 1865 that has been worth a half-dram of warm spit?

The last time any Republican president made any sort of sense was back in Eisenhower's time. And the breed that the Party of God has been producing since Nixon's time makes the droolingly inbred spawn of Mitteleuropean minor nobility look like the result of crossbreeding of Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.

Honestly. Try and think about the last time a Republican - elected official or candidate - proposed or supported an idea that was genuinely beneficial to the average U.S. working man or woman. Go ahead. I'll wait.



Hard to come up with even one, innit?

And yet, like the sort of gopher-brain-quality stupid we started talking about, the sheer volume and appalling stench of the Himalayan mountain-chain of ignorant crap the GOP has either formulated or recommended is childishly easy to bring to mind. It's like most of the crap that comes out of Michelle Bachman's brain is as sensible as playing tackle football in your undies.
I mean, really...it makes you wonder.

And I'm not talking about the REALLY whack stuff, the Glenn-Beck, Pawlenty-Google-Test sort of idea or pretty much anything Rand Paul or his kid say. That's just the endpoint, the feces-scrawl of the ones in the canvas sportjackets with the wraparound sleeves that are kept safely locked away most of the time. The sort of Terri Schaivo-God-guns-and-gays shinola the GOP uses like the Amazing Kreskin uses a shiny object to keep the rubes morons Teabaggers nodding in unison.
That stuff is just the by-the-by sort of bullstuff that any good con man uses to keep the mark from noticing that the "weather seal" he's paying hundreds of dollars for the crew to put down on his driveway is really nothing but used motor oil that will run into his gutter the next time it rains.

That stuff is just there to keep the truly ignorant - the "Reagan Democrats", the feeble-minded scions of bible-bangers and white-flight suburbanites - from seeing the Big Con that's busting their unions, raping their health insurance, cramming down their wages while shipping their blue-collar jobs to Singafuckingpore.
That's just a bagatelle.

Nope. I'm talking about the "legitimate", mainstream planks of the generic Republican platform.

Foreign policy based on ignorant fear, propaganda, estimates of intent rather than capabilities, hubris, wishful thinking, and somebody's grade-school memories of British imperial justifications.
The economic theory of the Robber Baron era of crony capitalism spiced with delicious Randian sauce, in which unfettered "job creators" create...ummm...stuff...without actual proles to...ummm...physically "create" it. Dagny Taggart's superrailroad has no engineers, brakemen, yard managers, switchmen, mechanics, middle managers, shop foremen, surveyors, track inspectors, or janitors. Howard Roark's buildings go from his plan set to steel and concrete without drafters, CAD guys, carpenters, masons, general contractors, plumbers, pipefitters, boilermakers, concrete truck drivers, and the gal who pulls up outside the job site at noon in the taco truck.

Immigration?

Free trade?

Science?

Medicinal insurance and health care?

Education?

Infrastructure?

Taxation?

Corporate "personhood"?

Seriously. When was the last time you heard a Republican open his cakehole on one of these subjects and thought; "Gee...that'll REALLY help me out!"? The whole business is like the old story about banks; when was the last time a large commercial bank did something that "helped" you, that made your day simpler, easier, that helped make your life better?

Credit default swaps? Zero interest loans? Suuuuuuure.

The ATM is the last thing I can think of, and it still pisses me off that we PAY for something that allowed the damn bank to lay off a human teller and save all of the expenses thereof in return for something that gets hoovered out every morning.

Don't get me wrong; the U.S. Democrats are a bunch of clapped-out gutless pussies running terrified from the New Deal, the single most powerful moment in the history of the U.S. working class. They're as useless as a tampon in a typhoon and I'd be hard pressed to walk across the street to spit down their throats if they were on fire.

But the Republicans?

Their batshit, bugnuts, whackadoodle, teabag-hat, pining-for-feudalist-19th-Century idiocy has managed to take what for most of the middle of the Twentieth Century had been a comfortable place for a decent majority of Americans - the white, straight ones, anyway - and go a hell of a long way into returning it to the openly corrupt oligarchy it was in 1888.
And so long as at least a third of my fellow citizens are willing to give them a pass on their arrant nonsense there is no hope of returning any kind of sense to the discussion. It's like trying to have a logical argument with the friggin' Branch Davidians. In fact, it's impossible to HAVE a logical argument with someone who thinks that requiring someone to buy private health care insurance is the political equivalent of the Gulag Archipelago.

This country has become a huge live edition of Jackass with nuclear weapons.
And I honestly have no idea what to do about that.

Except this; if you're reading this, try and remember it the next time you step into that voting booth. Who do you want making decisions for you, the sort person who, while he or she might be a squishy soft, emo-coddled liberal, is at least trying to keep your grandma from living off cat food and sleeping in an old cardboard box, or the sort of person whose ideas for running your and grandma's lives are pretty close to yours that night you stopped off at Lucky's Elbow Room, drank fourteen vodka-and-Red-Bull shooters, and came up with the idea for "Naked Slip-n-slide" into the 7-Eleven parking lot across the street?
Just think about it.

All I'm sayin'.

8 comments:

Labrys said...

But hey, Bob Dole says the Mittens LOOKS like a President! So it must be ok, right?

Thanks for the rant....I find it almost impossible to write coherently about this shit anymore, because yeah....about as good as a cats ass tatt on one's naval.

Leon said...

You know, if I could be 18 again I know now how to make myself a millionaire. Setup a business removing truly embarrassing tattoos. Based on the number of Twilight tats seen via the interwebs, I'd be rolling in the dough for the next couple of decades.

As for stupidity, look no further than the number of idjits planning on fleeing the US for Canada due to Obamacare: http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-moving-to-canada-because-of-obamacare

Canada. With our socialized medicine. Idiots.

FDChief said...

I've got the same problem, Labrys - it's hard to write about this because of the massive crater of stupid that it involves. I end up sputtering and red-faced with fury, wishing that about a third of my fellow Americans had a single neck so I could choke the shit out of it.

But every so often I have to write one of these to blow off steam.

Leon: The sad truth is that if you're stupid enough to get one of these awful tats you're too stupid to make enough money to pay a decent price to get it abraded...

Ael said...

Much of what you call stupid is really within behavioral norms of those people's societies. These norms are strongly influenced by propaganda (of various sorts, advertising really does work).

Your rants provide a valuable antidote, giving people a chance to stop and think. Good work!

Alas, I wish more people read for pleasure.

Lisa said...

"The sort of Terri Schaivo-God-guns-and-gays shinola the GOP uses like the Amazing Kreskin uses a shiny object to keep the rubes morons Teabaggers nodding in unison" --

Just a beautiful encapsulation, speaking from the land of Terri Schaivo. The land of lovers of the brain-dead, who think allowing someone to die a natural death is akin to a "death Panel", those who belt out their hymnal tunes about "nearer my God to thee" but as scared as all get out to actual face their day of reckoning.

Maybe the jig's up and they know there is nothing better awaiting them, and they've no idea how to improve this world which frightens them so.

(It would be so brilliant if you could get one of the bevy of Republican sites out there to post your heretical blog as a "target". Claim it came to you during a bout of brain fever. At least it would get them thinking.)

Lisa said...

"but are scared as all get out to actually face their day of reckoning."

...must edit b/f transmitting ... .

FDChief said...

Ael: True. The Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, and the People's Temple were, too. And they were about as useful as these fucktards. Damn waste of perfectly good Soylent Green, but otherwise a sort of vacuuming the shallow end of the gene pool.

Lisa: I get no pleasure out of shouting at these ignorant bastards. Their arrant folly is going to help impoverish and degrade all our lives except those lucky enough to be born to the purple or at least purple enough to afford their own doctors, policemen and trash pickup. It's just pure frustration.

Lisa said...

It is arrogant, ignorant folly -- people choose a position, then find or twist some data to support it. You're either with us, or agin us.

I live amongst it ... if you can sense this tragic stupidity from Portland, then I know it has reached far.