Kicking Out Their Crutches - Part II

There is a tiny chamber of my heart that I reserve to feel some scrap of sympathy for the Moderate Republican army that is now painted into such a tight, little corner of Camp Quagmire. Were it not for the fact that it was my country they were marching into the abyss and my Constitution they were cutting into naked, blindfolded, genuine A.C. Delco car-battery-genitaled Gitmo Paper Dolls...I could almost pity the dumbasses in a detached kind of way.

Like watching the Dutch Tulip Economy implode from the safe distance of a history book, we now see the upper limits of how high and far into the future George Bush can throw a baldfaced lie before it hits the ground.

Turns out, it’s less than one year, and his arm is getting orders of magnitude weaker every day.

His Presidency has failed. Not the limited ignominy of being a one-term flop like his father, but is shaping up to be an Epic Failure. One for the ages. One that is already making Republicans look back on the Nixon Era as a Golden Age.

(I mean, can you imagine Nixon, at the height of Vietnam, white-shirted and black-tied, dress-socks and shiny shoes, pants cuffs turned up a trifle, scotch in one hand...bicycling all the way to hell and gone at Camp David and tossing out Little League first pitches...week after week after week?)

What leader – ever, in the history of the world – has decided to stake out five weeks in the middle of a disaster of a war that he started to laze around the fishin’ hole with Condi and Spanky and the rest of the Our Neocon Gang for a longer vacay that the average American can manage cumulatively over three years. And then decide to stay on paid cocktail hour...obstinately.

Loafing off in the middle of a war as a matter of....principle.

Jesus. No wonder the College Republicans gobble his dick like watermelon shooters. What could be more purely GOP that BBQ-ing ‘round the pool in the Most Exclusive, Secret-Service-Protected, Gated-Community in Christendom while the world goes up in flames?

But for those of us who aren’t besotted, inbred monarchists, at some point aren’t we obligated – as Maureen Dowd points out – to begin to notice that the President isn’t just utterly wrong anymore, but has actually lost his fucking mind? That the propeller on his Yale Beanie is spinning counter-clockwise even though he’s in the Northern Hemisphere? That he no longer even exchanges Christmas cards with reality?

And skimming along in the bottom quartile of the electorate – no longer invited even by proxy to the Party at the End of the Republic -- we find the Moderate Republicans, now begin to painfully embrace every truth were calling treason a few, short months ago. Almost pissing themselves in terror that they backed the wrong horse with the rent money, and the nag they bet it all on is not only not coming in Win, Place or Show...but has gone rabid-mad and is hunkered down on the clubhouse turn, smoking crack and kicking its jockey’s organs out onto the track one at a time.

The stands are empty and the race long run and lost, but still they persist – these scared-shitless Mods – believing that if they just keep clapping, the outcome will chance. These are the fuckers who flocked to the grandstands like the civilians at the beginning of the Civil War – with picnic baskets and Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes – to watch their President and his two-bit Ideology take the fight to the Bad Guys.

They were promised a video-friendly war like unto Iraq Part I. They were promised the copious hole-smoking of the evil men who attacked us four short year ago. Like the addled dopes they are, they were promised a whole lot of things that just are not and were never gonna be so.

They have tried for two years now to paint everyone as an arch traitor who has tried to point out to them that they have haven’t followed a Scipio Africanus into Carthage and history, but a cabal of mole-rats and Fiddle Gamers into a blind alley and disaster.

They have been told – for YEARS – how thoroughly and contemptibly they have been lied to. Flares were fired. Big Screaming Alarms were set off. But being the Tail Gunner Joe’s on the ol’ IQ Bell Curve, Moderate Republicans simply refused to believe what was happening as President Charles Ponzi and Vice Prez Billie Sol Estes practically cock-whipped them into bloody pulps.

Now the ones I know have grown plaintive and peevish. All the brave talk about bestriding the globe and stubbing out cigarettes on terrorist cells around the world is gone. So is any talk about WMDs, Iraq/9-11 links, imminent, etc. The Mods I know are in stubborn retreat on all fronts. Now all the talk is either desperately rationalizing why driving the country off the cliff wasn’t really their fault, or why the crash isn’t really as bad as the critics say, or just shiny conversational baubles designed to deflect their own words as they come roaring back from their own mouths last year to haunt them.

They don’t want to surrender, but in their own way I hear in them suing for peace.

Looking for terms.

I can hear it in their words, but more interestingly, see it incandescently illumination in their body language. Because the body tells.

My acquaintances can rip-and-read all the delusional, GOP-in-the-bunker-during-the-Fall happytalk they want...but the body knows and the body tells. It’s why you can beat some people at poker all night long. It’s why a woman who is self-conscious about the volume of her bee-hind might touch her skirt and smooth out a pleat and generally touch her tuchas during a conversation with a man she might find attractive. Why a painfully shy man might retire behind a beard-stroking, mirrored shades and a haze of cigarette smoke.

Their hearts is no longer with their President and his failed War. Unlike the mother on Fox News today who tragically lost a son in Iraq and just kept almost ritually incanting “9/11”, and “the people that attacked us” and “when the towers fell”, the Moderates haven’t welded themselves into the Denial Locker.

And the more the Koolaidians in their Party babble bizarrely on and on about the “truth” of things that have long been show patently to be lies, the more freely the Mods sweat right through their khakis and scramble to try to rationalize their way out of complicity in the mushrooming disaster that the Bush Administration is becoming.

Our job: kick out their crutches.

If they want to admit that their President is a Buffoon, that his chief henchman is a Traitor and that every inch of road to Iraq and Ruin has been paved with lies and looting from the start...fine. That the tent-poles that hold up the entire GOP are the Segregationists and the Christopaths...fine. But in onesies and twosies – whenever and wherever they pop up their heads and try to weasel out of their own rhetorical deadfalls – our job is to deny them succor and forgiveness until they own up to what they have done and explain their plan for getting us out of the cesspit into which they have driven us.

So what are the Moderates on my mailing list talking about these days?

Well the pall hanging over everything is Iraq. To the Moderates, Iraq is Mom getting caught fucking sheep. Although it is the firestorm that is igniting the very air we breathe -- the through-line that links virtually every major story -- among the Mods it has become The War that Dare Not Speak It’s Name.

Which is why we must talk about it.

But what else are the kids over at the Moderate table stitch-and-bitch jawing on about?

CALL: Guns.
Always with the fucking guns. I have to vote for the GOP no matter how fucknut in-sane they may be, ‘cause Liberals want to raise my taxes and take away my guns. Who will protect you mother?! Don’tcha love your mother?

RESPONSE: Like I fucking care.
Keep ‘em. Marry ‘em. Like I care about a deer hunter with a rifle, or a duck hunter with a shotgun. I care that the gangbanger down the street has better body armor and better ordnance than a combat soldier in Iraq.

You wanna play with guns? And not just jerk off on the gun range, but actually put into practice the principle behind the “Well-regulated militia” part of your favorite amendment?

Go to Iraq. Go to Iraq and get behind your President and his Excellent Adventure. They’ll give you all the guns you want and plenty to shoot at. The fight you have been lusting for your whole life isn’t at Camp Mommy’s Basement, it’s in Tikrit.

Put up or shut up, gunboy.


CALL: Impeachment didn’t count.
This one set me back on my heels because of the sheer audacity of it. My Moderate acquaintances are of the opinion that, since Clinton wasn’t actually removed from power, that it “didn’t count”.

And that we Liberals should all just get over it.

RESPONSE: BWAHAHAH!
The impeachment of Bill Clinton is something of a hobby-horse with me. Since the day the Republican coupe d'etat came up short, I have always believed that it was the greatest gift the GOP could ever have given the Democrats. They piled up such sky-skimming mountains of fierce rhetoric about Truth and Lies and Justice and why the attempt to depose Clinton wasn’t partisan; it was nothing more than the impartial wheels of Constitutional Justice grinding out the fate of the President with an even-hand.

This is where body-language really counted. Mods seem as genuinely freaked by the fact that Dems haven’t forgotten about the Seven Year War against Bill Clinton, as they are by the fact that every single thing their President PROMISED them as a condition for mindless backing Operation Endless Clusterfuck has turned out to be a lie. And for exactly the same reason:

To stick to the rhetoric of Impeachment, Moderates now have to explain their own, deafening lack of interest in the lies and treasons of the Bush White House.

To dump the rhetoric of Impeachment, Moderates would have to concede that Liberals were right (yet again!); that Impeachment was nothing but a coup staged by the Radical Republican Party for nothing more than grubby, partisan gain.

It sure seems a whole lot like those who want to wave the American Swastika as a source of “pride”, and then rewrite history to efface the terrorism conducted under that banner. Then dictate to those who were fucked over by those terrorists that they have no business being offended by the flying of the lynching flag.

That Jim Crow didn’t count. That everyone else should just get over it so that they can warm themselves at the hearth of their liars history and traitors cause.

Sorry pal. Ain’t gonna happen. Your President is a liar, and over matters of life and death and war and peace. And you’re a hypocrite if you’re not going after him with at least the same fervor you devoted to hunting down Clinton for blowjobs.

And every time you say different, expect us to beat your teeth down your throat with your own damning words.


CALL: That Damned Electoral College.
This also caught me up short because it shows just how far up their asses the Mods are willing to plant their heads. This is purely a Shiny Object Distraction; my friend was much more animated -- talking all jut-jawed pissed-off -- about the EC that about, oh, say, Iraq. I half expected him to start in on the threat to national security posed by the Dangling Participle, which, IMHO, you can’t have too many of.

But since you brought my Mother into it...

RESPONSE: Didn’t you just got through telling me why the Second Amendment is constitutionally sacrosanct? An inviolate mathom from the 18th Century? So why is it the manifest will of the Founding Fathers untouchable when you want to jerk off with your Uzi...but the electoral college is a quaint powdered-wig custom of a bygone era that needs to be retired.

Me? The E/C is a silly relic, but it does have the beneficent side-effect of forcing a candidate to campaign in places other than to Potempkin Social Security crowds full of coached and cheering seat-fillers. It forces them to go where they do not want to go, and I think that’s a very good thing. Beyond that, I don’t give a shit, except that I’d be willing to wager that a popular vote is easier to steal.


CALL: It’s not who I voted for...it’s what I voted against.
Ahhh. The protest vote defense. I wasn’t voting for the treasonous moral dwarves in the White House, I was voting against...something.

I’d’ve rather voted for McCain. I wuuuuv McCain. McCain would’ve save us.

RESPONSE: Well, basically, bullshit.Ok, first, that was 2000, and even if you were naive enough to vote for Bush out of some residual Clinton Hatred, you were also crave enough to vote for the man who ass-candled John McCain in as low and disgusting a bit of knee-cappery as these tired eyes had seen in a long, long while. Bush the AWOL coward dimwit fucked over McCain the war-hero. Period. You not only let him keep the ill-gotten gains from his thuggery, but you actually rewarded his for it in the general election.

But in 2004, McCain wasn’t running, was he? And by 2004 all the monstrous pathologies that Bush has always had festering away behind pancake makeup and a phalanx of handlers was on full display. If you supported the GOP in 2004, what were you voting against that was so important that you had to reinstall sociopaths in the White House?

As has been true of Moderates all along, they are more than happy to mooch off of others and sell out their country for a little slice of pie: they just like to do it while cowering in the shadows. Now the lights are on now. Blazing. There’s no hiding anymore. Put up or shut up.


CALL: The pedunda will swing back. And “Our Guys” will come back to power, or the Dems, or someone other than the Dominionists.

I see, so you’re relying on...physics to take care of this, rather than taking any personal responsibility for the mess you have made. Somehow, some way, by the magic of electoral thermodynamics or somesuch thing...the country will return to a state of equilibrium.

RESPONSE: Flail all you’d like. The more you struggle, the tighter the knot gets.
This is nothing more than the puling of a spoiled brat, sunk up to his chinny-chin-chin in his own broken promises and bad debt, who wants to skip out on paying his tab...while at the same time retaining his right to beat his chest and bellow that the poor, the weak and the dispossessed are really just “lazy” and “irresponsible” in full-throated righteous indignation. Whining that that no matter how much he shits things up, someone broom-pusher will come along and clean up after him, so we shouldn’t worry.

Sorry. Wrong again. And news flash: Ayn Rand just leapt from her unquiet grave to vomit in your faces over your genuinely staggering degree of intellectual dishonesty, laziness and moral cowardice. If you voted for this mess -- and one helluva mess it is, you must agree – you are responsible for it. The raging loons that run you party didn’t zoom down from the Duh-lympian Heights yesterday and seize you Party in the dead of night. No, no, no. You gave them your Party. You invite them into your Party. You tossed the Hell’s Angels the keys to the liquor cabinet, gun case and baby’s room of your Party and said, “Do whatever the fuck you want...jus’ gimmie my fucking tax cut.”

This is an apotheosis towards which the Dominionists have been working for two generations, and for 30 years you all have been getting weaker and wispier, and the Party of God members have been getting bolder and meatier.

Sorry guys; you go to war with the Falwell you’ve got, not the Falwell you’d like to have, and by doing so, you chose electoral power over principle and country.


CALL: “After Bush...who?” Again, to generally allay my fears, they raise this rhetorical question. That their bench is exhausted. After all, you think we’d elect Jeb?

RESPONSE: Are you kidding?
You elected a dry-drunk halfwit who was clearly unqualified to be President. Then he lied us into a war that is proving to be every bit the disaster you were warned it would be.

Then you re-elected him.

Please. Who the fuck are you trying to kid? If the GOP ran Secret Squirrel...or a sack of old lug nuts against Jesus Christ, you pinheads would be out in your “Old Lug-nut/Frist For a Better Tomorrow ’08” Tee Shirts” by the million, screaming yourself into serial embolisms.

Followed by a series of “Swift Crucifixion Veterans for What Is Truth?” ads, explaining how Jebus wasn’t really crucified, and might not even have been in Jerusalem during the exact time he said he was.

And those scourge marks, and his perforated side? Mere scratches...and probably self-inflicted.

I happen to agree that Bush has a special, irreproduceable hold on the GOP that will vanish from their arsenal in ’08, but please don’t expect anyone to believe that millions of your fellow Republican aren’t idiotic enough to vote for good ‘ol Lugnuts without batting an eye

CALL: Fuck everyone else.
This is really, really what Moderates are about. Cut through all of the bumper stickers and Rush-scripted bile...Moderates simply do not give a shit about anyone but themselves. Moderates care about their families, their buddies, their back yards and their bank accounts...and not one fucking thing more than that.

They look at Iraq and see a mess, but if their kid isn’t in the middle of it, they don’t care how many die. Or for what stupid reasons. They volunteered, so fuck ‘em. And since they view the world with near-perfect solipsism, they are unhampered by any sense of shared duty or empathy and stewardship.

Fuck the environment and the “tree huggers”. Fuck the poor and the weak, “lazy welfare cheats”. Fuck the past and the future. Fuck the air and the water. Fuck anyone and everyone that they are not related to by blood, and who don’t live within sight of them.

Promise to keep their SUV’s tanked up on the cheap, their guns sacrosanct and their taxes low and they will sit quietly by while thousands die. Or millions. Or billions. As long as their deaths do not inconvenience the Moderate Man, fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all.

And all of the “arguments” they kick up are intended simply to draw attention away from the fact that, in a very profound way, they are failed men. Morally bankrupt, but since they cannot admit that out loud, they stick to a Party and an Ideology that will let them celebrate their flat spiritual affect as if it were actually a virtue.


RESPONSE: Finally, an honest motive.
Riding on the same bus as Christopths and Segregatonists doesn’t faze a Moderate, but since they are not creatures of principle, the minute supporting the Republican Party starts to inconvenience them, they’ll bolt.

As the Administration policy continues to sink deeper into dark waters, the pressure from Reality on the hull continues to build and cracks continue to form. They are headed in the wrong direction at full-throttle, and the Mods are starting to get scared: one big breach and they could be crushed.

If the Moderates want to stand up and fight to turn their ship around, fine; I think we should applaud that. But as long as they keep trying to pour that new, sour wine into those old, lying skins, our job is simple and clear.

Kick out their crutches, anywhere and everywhere.