What we talk about...

When we talk about Love.

I nicked this nifty title from one of my favorite collections of the works of Raymond Carver because I like the way the nine little words can displace so much water and bear so much freight. I like how economically it speaks to the kind of tragedy any species would be heir to if it was so oddly constructed that it could not even be sure what it was talking about when discussing something as elemental as love.

No, this isn’t a dating column, (although having read my blog lease, down in the fine print it sez quite clearly that “Each blogger must at least once offer his or her unsolicited advice on the Art of the Hook-up in such a manner as is guaranteed to piss off one and all.” So since it's the law, I just so happen to have been noodling around with such a thing. And it’s just about done.)

Instead, this is a short piece on the vital importance of Defining Terms.

Because in my experience, there really are only two ways to profitably dispute an issue.

The first is to contend – based on a set of agreed-upon rules – before a putatively neutral third party. You both make your best case, and you both abide by the decision of the judge. This is how every contest from trials by jury, to the Olympics to peanut-league baseball is supposed to be decided.

A foul ball is a foul ball , because we already all agreed what a foul looks like and what happens when one gets chipped off into the stands.

The second way is to actually stake your own dogma on the outcome. Where each party agrees to a set of reasonable conditions under which they would acknowledge that they’re wrong and are willing to re-examine their beliefs. This way is a lot harder and demands rigorous honesty, and it’s how scientists make their way in the world.

It’s also why Fundy’s hate science.

But however imperfect they may be, both methods depend on an agreed-upon set of definitions and principles. Without some common language that sets out what a “tree” is, what a “house” is and what “love” looks like, we cannot communicate, much less argue about anything.

Sidebar: Once upon a time, while I was waiting to pick up my ex after work, I heard a self-described Christian Conservative woman explain that while she could not bring herself to support abortion, she could agree to a right to contraception.

“OK,” I thought to myself, “she’s a Fundy, but she sounds somewhat less hopelessly doltish that every other Fundy I’ve ever heard. Hmmm. Tell me more, Goodwife.”

And the interview went on, and the interviewer said something to the effect that Mrs. Jesus was probably OK with condoms then, if she was cool with contraceptives.

“Oh, no,” she interrupted. “I do not approve of condoms.”

Sponge?

No.

IUD?

No.

The Pill?

No.

Jelly?

No.

Smuckers?

No.

Why?

“Well,” Mrs. Jesus explained, “all of those are just different kinds of abortion. All of them interfere with the Will of the Lord.”

So WTF do you mean by “contraception?”

“Abstinence, of course” she clarified. “Anything else is a sin.”

And there you go; Mrs. Jesus had momentarily stealthed into the “potentially reasonable” category by just redefining a single word out of its common usage and into her own, deranged meaning.

“Sure, I’m in favor of snuggly puppies…as long as ‘snuggly’ means ‘invasion’ and ‘puppies’ means ‘Syria’.”

End sidebar.

So looming in the shadows for me is always this: what sort of sub-humans must Republicans be that would allow them to feel such a 100-mile-high rage over Bill Clinton and blowjobs…and feel nothing whatsoever over the myriad high crimes, plunder, graft, lethal cronyism, endless lies and outright treason carried out three inches in front of their noses, in broad daylight, by the highest officials in the United States government.

Certainly the typical Republican voter is some kind of fucktard cocktail; two-parts retard, one-part bigot, pour over bad religion, serve with a side of Rush and keep drinking until you are actually stupid enough to believe a single word that this Administration says.

A necessary but not sufficient explanation. I mean you can scream that 2+2 = 22 all you want, but when you are forced to face incontrovertible proof that you are just Dead Fucking Wrong, what gives you the juice to just keeping running Wile E. Coyote-like further and further off the cliff?

The answer, I would argue, is that Republicans have a radically different definition of Right and Wrong than the rest of us humans.

Now for the epistemologically pure at heart, let’s stipulate that “Right and Wrong” and “True and False” are not the same things, but with regard to the GOP value system I’d argue that one can – and often does – proxy for another (separate and apart from the fact that Republicans have an absolute fetish for wildly unrelated or tortured-to-the-point-of-weeping factoids. They line ‘em up and leap toadishy between them as if lumps of contextless datum “proves” anything.) And like the utterly deranged Christopath with the reasonable tone of voice, to understand the argument they are making – and why their heads aren’t positively exploding at the complete hypocrisy and moral perversity of their positions – you have to consider what they count as “Right” and “True” in the Republican Universe.

And to understand that, this is not a party of rugged individualists. Of Mavericks. Of Iconoclasts.

Despite all of their gun-slingin’ blather and Reagan Cowboy Idolatry, to judge by the only measure that counts -- their votes, their hearts, thier hates, their rhetoric and their day-to-day actions -- Republicans behave in every measurable way (and this is true of every Republican I know ) in a way that is eerily and precisely the opposite of every one of their foundational myths and principles.

You have to realize that most Republicans are slaves.

Happy slaves.

Or at least slaves who are kept so terrified at the propect of thinking for themselves that they have learned to credibly mimic happiness at being servile. Who can tell?

It’s kinda like a Fucktard Turing Test: the result are the same whether they’re really thralls, or just faking it really well. And in the end, the are nothing but a pack of order-taker. Dogma bureaucrats (Shall we call them “Dogmarats?”) who do not know how to function outside of a rigid hierarchy.

They like Order. They like Discipline. They like shiny, martial displays. They are the pecksniffing Leviticans –- rules-crazed Literalists, either ideologically, or Biblically, or both -- who also yearns for a harsh and exacting God to crush anyone who is unlike them…and who will reward them on the basis of how perfectly they obey the commands of the Dear Leader.

So to people that value prostration and loyalty to the Dear Leader above all else, what is the measure of “Right and Wrong” and “True and False”?

And doesn’t that question, when phrased clearly, almost answer itself?

To such as these, who measure the “rightness” of their position by how deeply they kneel, The Truth must always be whatever the Dear leader says it is. And the “Right” is bottomless fealty to the Dear Leader no matter what he says. No matter how much he lies.

Without their Master telling them what the think, the Republican is lost and rudderless, and there is no fate more terrifying to them than to be cast adrift and confused with no whip-hand to kiss and no boot to lick.

It’s not that they hate facts or science or reality per se, it is that they are chattel, and the measure of a good dog is not whether it can do differential calculus, it’s how blindly faithful it is. If the Dear Leader says “facts” are good on Monday, and that the “facts” – like yellow cake in Niger – support the Dear Leader, then All Hail the Factual.

But when the “facts” turn out to be lies on Tuesday and Dear Leader’s story turns out to have been bullshit…well then facts are Bad and people who toss them around are Traitors. And never once in their minds to they even notice the glaring contradiction, because never once did they ever care in the slightest about the facts themselves.

To them, being “Right” has nothing to do with facts at all: to them “Right” is perfect, empty-headed abasement, and will merrily turn like a pack of Rottweiliers on a mean drunk on anyone – even friends -- who rock the boat in the slightest.

Which in why, at the end of the day, I sincerely believe Republicans hate this country and are anxious to destroy it.

Because America is a dream founded on dissent.

On asking hard questions to the men and women who govern us. Of not shutting the fuck up. Of demanding that our civil servants be accountable to you and me. In a Democracy, the citizen is supreme. The government elect disposable and grabbing the government by the lapels and adamantly insisting that they cough up the truth – whatever their party affiliation – is the God given, natural-born right of every, single American.

People who loathe dissent do not deserve to call themselves Americans.

People who smear dissenters do not deserve to call themselves Americans.

People who value a slave’s loyalty over a citizen’s demand for the truth are an embarrassment to real Americans.

People who would burn the Nation down over lies about semen stain’s on one President’s lover’s dress…and yet shrug off and ignore an ocean of innocent blood on another President’s hands have no business calling themselves Americans.

Because anyone who calls willing blindness and the protecting of traitors a virtue, and clarity and honesty a sin, is no American.

They’re a Republican.