The Ongoing Adventures of Captain Obvious - Part 2

Picking up where we left off...

...are we at war with Islamic terrorists?

Damned betcha we are, and have been for years.

It was a low-level conflict ignored and marginalized by the Bush Administration right up until September 11th, when it was Supersized into a front-page global conflict. And after behaving like an Actual President for a few weeks, George Bush and his Administration did what it always does in every crisis, manufactured or real: Had Karl Rove carefully scrutinize and rectally-probe it to determine how it could be perverted into an opportunity for crass, partisan gain.

But yes, Tom, we are at war with Islamic terrorists.

And since we are at war, we should be taking every measure to fight them intelligently, using every tool at our disposal. And, conversely, every time someone gives aid and comfort to our Enemies -- every time someone makes it easier for them to recruit new blood and harder for us fight them – that person deserves public censure, prison and, if necessary, a firing squad.

But on the face of your Flat Earth, Tom, our enemies are Small and we are Gargantuan.

Like the Titan that we are, we have to be very careful where we put our feet. We can roll over while watching a ball game and crush entire economies. One especially zippy ad campaign for Coke can obliterate a local deity.

Now some of our more thuggish and brick-stupid citizens think this is cool. They are moral and theological weaklings and pussies and like all those of their ilk, they can only overcome their mental and emotional impotence and feel the flush of what they mistake for courage by beating the shit out of other, weaker people.

We call these types “Republicans”.

Others of us very much like all of the amenities afforded to us by the luck of the birth-lottery that landed us in the United States. We love our country. We love what it is supposed to stand for, and against. We love the liberty of it. The freedom of motion and belief and the Constitutionally-burned-on-fucking-the-motherboard ideal of tolerance that makes the whole thing go.

And boy-howdy do we hate it when so-called-Christian Americans work day and night to eviscerate that ONE thing that sets us apart from fascist and theocratic states.

It is unarguably true that, time and again, we have failed and we have fallen and we have come up short when we measure ourselves against our own high-flow rhetoric.

So what? The key is to keep trying. The solution to the problems of Democracy is More Democracy.

OTOH, the eternal Enemy of Democracy is Theocracy.

Everything in which we take a measure of justifiable pride is made possible by having a Tolerant and Explicitly Secular Nation, and every time an enemy rises up to harm us, they march under the banner of God’s Mandate. Or the Divine Power of the Dear Leader, or the Chairman, or the Fuhrer...but it all comes to the same thing.

On the face of your Flat Earth, Tom, we cast by-far the longest, deepest shadow. There really isn't even a close second. And in spite whatever megakill-the-brown-people fantasies Limbaugh and Cheney and DeLay jerk off to at night, we really can’t just slaughter everyone who pisses us off.

Or, to very aptly paraphrase Victor Lazlo from “Casablanca”, “What if you murdered all of them? From every corner of your Empire, thousands would rise to take their places.”

“Even Rumsfeld can't kill that fast.”

And that fact is the simple, clear heart of the matter.

Either every Muslim is our Eternal Enemy and we have to kill them all...or the Muslim world is every bit as complicated as ours, in which case we have to fight smart. We need to empower Moderate Muslims who want to put their culture on a more tolerant, democratic footing. And we need to geld the extremists.

And since that is how we must fight if we are to win, we need to promise with our words and deliver with our deeds solid proof that we are not a nation of stupid, Fundamentalist, Nuclear-tipped fanatics. That we are not Christian Pakistan. That we are not bent on a global, Join-Or-Die rampage to loot the petroleum nations of the world of their wealth and impose a dark, Armageddonist vision of Christianity on everyone we decide leave alive.

(And the rest of the world really does pay attention, doesn’t it Tom? I mean, if your entire life existed in the shadow of a single, lethal hyperpower State, wouldn’t you pay very close attention to its every tic and spasm too?)

So I’m sure you will agree that presenting a Fanatical Fundamentalist face to the world, and openly using the word “secular” and “tolerant” as partisan pejoratives would be an insanely stupid way to fight this war...and yet that is exactly what we have done and continue to do.

And as long as Republicans run this country, and they are run by scum like Frist and Cheney, Dobson and Falwell, this will be our fate.

As long as the owners of the GOP insist publicly that we are a Christian Nation first and foremost, we will continue to drive away potential friends and give aid and comfort to our enemies.

As long as the leaders of this country openly make war on the very idea of a Free Press and state that judges should bend a knee to the whims of Tom DeLay and his Christian Sharia and kick the shit out of gays in the name of Jesus every time they need a few votes...as long as this is the case, the Republican Party acts as nothing less that a traitorous Fifth Column for our terrorist enemies.

You wrote: "Whenever they are exposed, they react the next day," Mr. Carmon said. "No one wants to be exposed in the West as a preacher of hate."

But what about in the West, Tom? Why is it that not a single Christopath with a megaphone in our country fears being exposed as a, “preacher of hate.”

Shit, why are they actually proud of it? And why does every, single Republican of note cower like beaten, temple eunuchs every time douchbags like Ken Mehlman or Mary Matlin or Pat Robertson shows the nakedly hateful face of the GOP on nation television?

This is indeed a war, and in a war words matter, so where in the fuck are your words, Tom?

Why aren’t you following your own prescription -- the one you so freely use to hector those brown people far, far away -- and question the Extremists here? The ones that play straight into the hands of the terrorists who are trying to kill us?

You know, the ones that own the Republican Party and run the country?

The ones that use their own Christian Al Jazeera Networks to make war on tolerance and secularity.

The ones that sanctify every hateful drop of sulphuric-bile that drools out of the slobbering pie-holes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

The ones who paved the rhetorical road for terrorists like Eric Rudolph and Tim McVeigh.

The ones that used the Bible to fuck the corpse of Terry Schiavo for partisan gain.

The ones that all-but-explicitly-advocate the murder of judges that don’t take their marching orders from James Dobson and Tom DeLay.

The ones that are trying to ram the Ten Commandments up everyone’s ass while they decry sodomy as a sin.

The ones that are opening their own Segregation Academies all over the South?

The ones that run a Christopathic Hate School like Bob Jones University...and the ones that stump for votes there every four years?

Where’s are all the Cleansing Sunshine Boys and Girls in the American Media who will hold a continuous and merciless light on the Theocrats in our midst? Who will boldly use their column inches, bandwidth and teevee appearances to act as a purifying antiseptic to the rot that festers at the heart to the GOP.

Because Tom, on the face of your Flat Earth, everyone in the world can see them for what they are. They see them as the True Face of America. See them running and ruining our nation. See them as the Christian conquerors, Holy Petro-Crusaders, that every one of them proudly proclaim that they are.

They are the ones that allow our country to be painted as a bunch of hypocritical, imperialists thugs trying to expand their perverse version of Christendom to cover the Earth. And if you actually believe a single word you are saying, then going after them is your job Tom.

Your job is to hammer the shit out of James Dobson when he opens his pie hole to jerk Bill Frist's leash.

Your job to beat your Wingnut Apologist reach-around buddy, David Brooks, when he refuses to demand accountability from his Republicans Masters.

Your job, Tom, because you make your journalistic your home on some very high ground indeed. And we are at war. And since you believe in this war, and believe in us winning this war, it is Your Job, Captain, to use your High Ground to expose and shame those that make winning that war harder.

Or, to use your own words – alerted very slightly:

“Every quarter, the New York Times should identify the Top 10 hatemongers, excuse makers and truth tellers in the Republican Party. It wouldn't be a cure-all. But it would be a message to the extremists: you are free to say what you want, but we are free to listen, to let the whole world know what you are saying and to protect every free society from hate spreaders like you. Words matter.”

Words do indeed matter, Tom.

Your words do indeed matter, so when I see you using your words to protect our free society from hate spreaders and their apologists like Pat Robertson, Ken Mehlman, Tom DeLay, David Brooks, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, Brit Hume, Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly, Dick Cheney, Bill Frist, George Walker Bush and the rest of that long, long, looooong list...I’ll start taking your snuffly outrage seriously.

But then again, what would all of those Mr. McGoo CEO Apostles who snap up and tout your “Flatness Makes The World Go ‘Round” manual say if, in addition to questioning the conduct – by name – of our enemies in faraway lands – you were to swing your guns around and start firing some simple, basic questions – by name -- about the conduct of this Administration? An Administration that I kinda think might be “Friends with Privileges” with the Captains of Industry that buy up your books by the job-lot?

Sure it might hurt the book sales a bit, but surely if this is a Real War and you are Really Serious, trifles like that shouldn’t matter.

Right, Tom?