Two Blind Men. One Elephant.

No Waiting.

In the midst of blocking out my devastating and future-award-winning 17-part deconstruction of the works of Andrew Sullivan (tentatively entitled “Because Reigning in Hell Pays Waaaay Better than Serving in Heaven, That's Why.”) -- I noticed this quote from him today:

“…Why does the world owe us a soft landing after the insanity of the last decade? Haven't the excesses of the past shown that it is only through such market discipline that we will ever avoid the easy path of borrowing out of greed? Yes, innocents will suffer terribly, and many of the guilty will escape. But that is life: we can and should try to help the poorest, but avoiding our collective responsibility for this insanity seems a very bad signal to send to ourselves.

The truth is: we had this coming. We deserve it. And we deserve leaders who are able to tell us that.”

And as I read it, two terribly unworthy thoughts simultaneously occurred to me.

First, it is absolutely 10-on-the-irony-scale-of-10 priceless that when the most famous gay Conservative in Christendom talks about the implosion of the Great Conservative Ponzi Scheme, in both the tone of his remarks (Big, Biblical Language) and in their substance (collective-punishment-for-collective-guilt), the person Sullivan most epistemologically resembles is

Jerry Falwell talking about 9/11:

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve" ... America's "secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord's [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture . . . the result is not good."

Jerry Falwell talking about AIDS:

“AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals, it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.

And Jerry Falwell talking about Teh Gay:

"Homosexuality is Satan's diabolical attack upon the family that will not only have a corrupting influence upon our next generation, but it will also bring down the wrath of God upon America."

And, second, WTF do you mean “we”?

And then I thought no more about it until, while scampering though my reading, I tripped over this, from Lil’ Tommy Friedman, from the same day and on the same topic:

“…That’s how we got here — a near total breakdown of responsibility at every link in our financial chain, and now we either bail out the people who brought us here or risk a total systemic crash. These are the wages of our sins. I used to say our kids will pay dearly for this. But actually, it’s our problem.”

Thus is the wisdom the Moustache of Understanding has handed down from Mount Centrism; that the con man and the nice old lady he fleeced are somehow equally guilty, and certain New York Time writers who have made vast fortunes spinning happy tales of a Flat Earth running nekkid and free and unfettered by “regulations” and “worker protection” are no more at fault than the cab driver who believed his drivel and invested accordingly.

And then I thought how funny it is that Conservatives and their Centrism Uber Alles enablers are only able to shape their mouths to form the words "We" and "Our" after their foreign, domestic and economic policies blow up in their faces.

Before it all went horribly wrong, I believe the technical term for the people who were desperately waving the warning flags was "dirty America-hating Liberal".

But after it all goes bad, suddenly the “we’re all in this together” talk comes popping out of their pie-holes like it were spring-loaded.

Well, I for one am not in any way inclined to work together.

To be clear, in the great and ancient tradition of Fifth Beatitude of Christ – “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” – I am powerfully disposed towards mercy and compassion to those who have acted mercifully and counseled compassion during good times and bad.

On the other hand, I am steeply inclined in the direction of meting out the swiftest, most merciless, Old Testament-caliber judgments possible on people who, when they were riding high, mocked or shrugged off as too-fucking-bad the plight of those who had fallen on hard times as the unfortunate-but-inevitable fate of the weak or the stupid or the otherwise unfit-to-survive in their bracing, brutal Randite Capitalist Utopia.

Steeply inclined towards using the stabby ends of very, very sharp sticks to hold people to their own rules and their own words.

Towards addressing the whole "many of the guilty will escape" problem by dropping a few hundred pikes off on Wall Street, at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal headquarters and at other suchlike locations with a note saying:

"We have made up a list of the journalists, politicians, lobbyists and money men most responsible for the financial meltdown. You will not be told who is or is not on the list, but your bailout checks will not start arriving until we see every one of their heads on public display.

So figure it out.

signed,

The American Taxpayer"

Of course, this will not happen because my President-Elect is not so inclined.

Because he is a better person than me.