"Winch"?

I said "Wench"!

I winched a couple of the representative comments from downstairs and put ‘em up here.

Air’s crisper, light’s better, but oy, my back.

Monosyllables, people!

terry of the C.A. said...
...
And don't be braggin' about smarter, stronger women. What red-blooded Amerikan man wants a smart woman?!? They are just full of back-talk and vinegar, those damned, smart, uppity womenfolk.

And did you really say "Liberal Chardonnary?" You will not win a single red vote with that phrase.

Drifty, I dig what your saying, but I don't think those fellas on the other side of the aisle will. This was "addressed" to them, right?

My answer generally is that the eleventh hour as long since struck and the echoes long since faded and died away.

I don't believe for a second that if someone still backs Dubya at this late date, they can be "gotten", so I have no interest in wooing a single one of the reprehensible, died-in-the-sheep’s-clothing “red vote”.

I have no interest in debating them or swapping scripture with them or thumb wresting them for forensic points because it simply doesn’t work. This is the tribe of the “Always In Error But Never In Doubt”. This clan of Simple, Declarative Dumbfucks, have been proven bloodily, monstrously, horrifically, incontrovertibly, overwhelmingly and tragically wrong year after year after year and it hasn’t made so much as a dent in their certitude, or nary a new cortical fold or crease (or “gyrencephalization”. And lemme tell you, I cannot adequately describe the toe-curling prosegasmic thrill I get when I dig up a new word.) to form on the smooth, inert surfaces of their Beautiful Minds.

They are lost and doomed; have filled their skulls with bumper stickers and fear, welded it shut, and melted the keys down for tinfoil to line their beanies.

I can respect a man who stands by what he believes, but only a great fool and a brownshirt-in-training actually takes pride in the fact that they have hermetically sealed their minds and sneers the very idea of dialogue and introspection as disloyal or weak.

There is no cure for them but electoral and cultural extinction, and so I also don’t give a owl pellet in a dead possum’s pouch what they think of me and mine.

I'm interested in the people in the middle and the un- or "under"-decideds. The people who say, among other things, that the pussy image of the Dems is why they walked away. I think the stronger and clearer we are -- especially in the way we conduct our own, internal debates -- the more we can get 'em into the tent.

And hell, it's better to be shot as a lion than a lamb either way.

Bitterharvest says…

…I love it that you're not afraid to take a stand on issues when conservatives draw a line in the sand, D. Watch that you don't idealize those old-school conservatives too much, though. William F. Buckley is a rank propagandist and always has been.

And Mr. Filbble adds…

...Drifty, methinks you're taking a somewhat Disneyfied view of the "old school" GOP. Read Gore Vidal's old piece on Goldwater and Republicans from days of yore and you'll see that they haven't changed one iota. The GOP has always, at least since the Civil War, been the stupid wing of the Party of Property

I can only assure you that I don't have any fantasies about the glorious Conservatives of the Old, True Faith. Nor am I blind to the racist past of the Democratic Party. :-)

I do, however, believe in holding people to their own words -- especially if they've weaponized and used them to bludgeon others -- and that the most effective (if time-consuming) way of engaging on this ground is to know more about your opponent's ideology than he does. Its history and original intent. Quoting scripture to Fundies drives 'em a special kind of foaming nuts, as does quoting Goldwater to Conservatives, and while misspending my youth in all the usually, libertine ways, I also read a lot of the Bible, a lot of Ayn Rand, a lot of Marx. Actually a lot of every-damned-thing, omnivorously, leavened generously with porn, pot, Python, Floyd and Fireside Theater.

It doesn’t change their minds, but crossing swords on the field of political values is always about the audience; the non-ossified observers who might be leaning into the shadows and can be brought a little closer to the light by showing-with-plain-words what a howlingly dishonest hack the “engaging Conservative thinker” David Brooks really is.

Or how despicable and deeply Christ-hating Jerry Falwell and James Dobson really are.

Or what hypocritical and pathologically liars the Bush Administration has been, continuously, in word and deed, since Day One.

This is about those who watch and listen from the sidelines, or who are only lightly attached to the Right. Men and women trying to stand up straight, rise above their fear and make up their minds with care. And we don’t need many; a few hundred thousand in the right places can begin to tip us away from the abyss.

I also think there are legitimate arguments to be made on the side of Smaller Government and on the side of Larger Government. Privacy and security.

Hell, there are some nice things to be said about genuine Libertarianism, and the Greens make some very good points.

It’s this simultaneous upward-and-downward pressure -- this magnificent, catalyzing, energizing tension -- that is paramount. The motive power that keep us moving slowly forward, while keeping tyranny in check. And to work, this eternal, experimental churn must never be allowed to shatter its test-tube.

The co-equally important partners of Liberty’s tussling, contentious Yin and Yang are the rules of engagement. A pact I once innocently thought everyone was raised to believe -- that we must all revere the ring in which we contend. That the integrity of our big, messy pugilists arena must be valued more highly than the outcome of any particular round.

That there was a mutual agreement to honor a democratic and respectful framework within which our disputes and differences are periodically renegotiated, and the fascist/theocrat radicals that hijacked the GOP have spent the last 30 years deliberately and aggressively blasting away at these foundation stones of our democracy.

They didn’t do it for the greater good or to save a nation in peril: They did it for no other reason than their lust for power and that appetite for fascism that piggish, self-righteous elitism always breeds.

Those that lead them are simply wannabe-Caesars and betrayers of freedom's first principles, and those that stand with them are cowards, thugs and fools.

The crime I cannot abide is that the GOP has deliberately ripped this basic framework apart for the basest of motives.

The tragedy is that they nuked this most sacred of social compacts to the braying applause of millions of my fellow citizens.