Andrew Sullivan explains here in "Big Lie Fail" that even he
"...was a little gob-smacked when Mitch McConnell simply said that the financial regulation bill was another bank bailout. But I found it fascinating as a glimpse into the RNC-FNC mojo. The idea is simply to lie about legislation and hope that FNC and the system designed for epistemic closure on the right would carry the day. Even if it is untrue - death panels, etc - it can become true for one half of the political system that has abandoned any relationship to the reality of hard choices, as opposed to the fantasy of some kind of 1950s nirvana."
When I listen to these newly-minted Conservative ex-pats as they hold the hymnals of their recently-renounced cults up to the light and remark in Very Loud Amazement and Horror at how the whole shitty wingnut Ponzi scheme is held together by nothing but the paranoia, rage, racism and imbecility of the Base, coupled with the absolutely sociopathic willingness to Lie All The Time About Everything by Movement leaders...
...I must admit that I am reminded precisely of the unpleasantly loud braying noises that brand new Windows 95 users used to make as they discovered the joys of using a thingie called a Mouse to "click" on Pictures of stuff to make other stuff happen.
And how incredibly fucking annoying that unpleasantly loud braying sounded to their Dirty Hippie Apple-using friends and neighbors who,
A) Had already been using a vastly superior and vastly more elegantly integrated version of the same technology for years and years...
B) Had already wasted endless, fruitless hours of their lives at show-and-tell-and-shout trying to convince their dull-witted DOS-addicted fellow citizens of the supremacy of the graphical user interface.
And thus we watch one Conservative ex-pat after another bolt some frantically cobbled together, third-rate ripoff of the Liberal Interface onto their shitty Conservative operating system
and calling the dim, flickering truths that unholy marriage produces (and that Liberals have been observing and warning about for a generation) a fucking Revelation.
Hey, Sully? Lying to bigots and imbeciles to get their votes wasn't a bug in Conservatism; it was a fucking feature.
Also too, Palin isn't some trailer park Athena sprung fully formed and feel-good-gibberish-spewing from the head of Bill Kristol; she's Reagan XP.
You want Civil Rights?
Open-mindedness?
Vigorous debate?
Diversity?
Privacy?
Science?
Genuine Christian values?
Compassionate domestic policy?
Sane foreign policy?
Thoughtful environmental policy?
Fiscal responsibility?
Liberals have an app for that.
And we always have.
12 comments:
Well said, and I like the Windows 95 analogy.
Hate to call you out Drifty, but you're too smart to be parroting Apple propaganda wholesale.
It's true that Stateside Apple was the main contender to the DOS-based PC - but in Europe, cheaper machines like the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga also had fully-functional GUIs back in the mid-80s. The latter even had pre-emptive multitasking - something that didn't happen in Windowsland until 1995, and Jobsville until 1999.
So while Apple was the first to market with a GUI-based machine, their version remained best-of-breed for less than a year.
Sorry for the nerd-rant, just saying. In all other aspects you are, as always, spot on.
Surely Palin is Reagan Vista, not Reagan XP. I mean, XP works.
Well now, as long as we're one-upping our geek history (sadly, more to do with our ages than overall coolness/knowledge/etc):
I remember being fascinated by the Xerox Star system ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star ) at the NCC show in 1980. Though primarily for word processing, it had the mouse, GUI, folders, the whole nine yards - 5 years before Lisa/Mac, and 10-15 years before Microsoft. Jobs also acknowledged (later years) that he was "inspired" by the Star system from when he summer interned and saw its lab versions in the mid-70s at PARC.
I do remember Commodore at that same NCC. No Amiga yet (another PC that was ahead of its time), but Tramiel had a dozen babes in low-cut tank tops running peoples' badges and handing out tchotchkes to the (predominantly) male attendees, who were four deep around the booth.
Some things never change.
Liberals generally shit all over about half of your list.
Civil rights? (are you serious?)
Fiscal Responsibility? (really?! You're either joking or insane)
Whatever the OS is for republicans somebody needs to hit ctr-alt-del.
It isn't working
H Vic - Cool beans! :) Tramiel had moved to Atari by the time the Amiga came around, allegedly because the board refused to appoint his son to an executive position. It's a crying shame that Commodore bought something 10 years ahead of its time and neglected its development until it was way too late.
Tramiel tried to use the same schtick at Atari that he used at Commodore, but with the pace of things being what they were then the product he had his engineers cobble together just wasn't up to snuff.
I miss the days when computers were designed by well-meaning nutcases...
Once again, the poo smell...
When will this marvelous coinage of yours become general usage? It's past time.
The Amiga was an awesome machine. I remember my roommate bringing one home from work. My buddy and I stood around it like the apes in 2001 with Also sprach Zarathustra rumbling in the background. And we'd practically grown up with Apples.
Okay guys.
I taught the usage of the Zerox Star at Westinghouse in the early 80's (where I led the effort to network engineers and programmers) and bought a Commodore when it first came out for my scientist father who refused to use it! Also had a TI-99-4A. My bf had an Apple 2c. Ah. Those were the days.
Talk about talking about the past.
Love you guys, and you most of all, Dg.
Trolls beware. GET YOUR OWN BLOG.
You are not wanted here.
S
Suzan - sometimes a little nostalgic detour can be informative, surely?
I too was amused by the Wintel users marveling at what their machines could now do despite the fact that mine had been doing it for ten years, but it's important to remember history as it was as precisely as possible - in politics as well as technology. To boil the 80s and 90s technology story down to purely Apple versus Microsoft would be like saying that no nation states besides the USA and USSR fought Germany in the Second World War.
"she's Reagan XP"
that is so not fair..
to XP. X-P
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