We’re All Liberals Now.

Maybe I’ll call my teevee show “The 700 Martyrs Club.”


Yesterday, today, and presumably tomorrow the media will somewhere carry the same story they have been reporting for almost three years: that yet more U.S. soldiers have been senseless killed in Iraqi Civil War.

Stories like this one…

Bomb Explosions Kill Two GIs, 3 Iraqis

A bomb exploded Sunday at a crowded bus station south of Baghdad, killing at least two people and injuring four, police said. Two U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi police officer were killed in other explosions.

A bomb detonated as passengers boarded a bus in Hillah, a predominantly Shiite city about 60 miles south of Baghdad, police Capt. Muthana Khalid said. The vehicle was destroyed in the blast.

Jawad Khazim, a bus driver who witnessed the attack, said a man boarded the bus carrying a bag and disembarked moments later empty-handed. The explosion occurred minutes later, Khazim said.

Sunday was the first day normal traffic was allowed in Hillah after the strife-prone region was placed under an extraordinary daylight curfew to curb a deadly wave of sectarian violence unleashed by the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra.
A vehicle ban remained in effect in Baghdad and its suburbs, but traffic restrictions were lifted in three surrounding provinces.

Passengers fled the bus station and shops closed after the blast.

"Every day there are explosions," said Abdelallah Hassan, who runs a pastry shop at the bus station. "The main blame should be directed not at the terrorists, but at the government which stands helpless in front of them."
...

Which is desperately sad, but has become an every-day ache against which we have girded ourselves.

Because we must.

Because some of us saw this coming, years ago.

And it is at times like these that this little exchange from “Broadcast News” comes unbidden to mind:

Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.

Jane Craig: No. It's awful.

That, at bottom, is what stupid people, drunks and Fundies never grasp: That it is in no way delightful to be the one who sees the disaster hulking out of the darkness.

The analysts who were screaming into the fucktard void of the Bush White House that they needed to wake up and pay attention to al Qaeda and Bin Laden before 9/11 aren’t glad they were right.

The scientists who have been warning us of Global Warming and have been blown off for years as tree-huggy egg-heads because the facts were inconvenient to the Oil Junta that runs America aren’t pleased that the ice caps are melting.

Those who were begging for help before and after Katrina as the Bicycle Chief rode in circles and Heckofajob Brownie worried about the roll of his cuffs aren’t doing smug happy-dances about the death of New Orleans.

The list just goes on and on and on, but the song remains the same. Stupid, venal people amply warned that they were driving us all off yet another cliff.

Stupid, venal people shrieking that everyone else is a traitor and that they didn’t need no smarty-pants liberals telling ‘em how to drive.

Squealing, “Hey, we won, so shut the fuck up.”

Then wheeeeee! Off the cliff we go-go-go…

Then the Bad Thing happens.

Then…crickets and tumbleweed and an airless, freaked-out silence from the Right like unto a mime having a panic attack lying face down in the dust on the dark side of the Moon.

Followed by a spongy, squishy sound made by millions of baffled brows beetling in that damp confusion that the s-l-o-w children get when confronted -- yet again -- with overwhelming evidence of the consequences of their reckless, arrogant moronity.

Followed by a return to their default, factory setting of running in hysterical circles and wildly blaming Evil Liberals or the French or Bill Clinton or feminists or queers for the blood on their own hands and the dead on their own watch.

“We didn’t knooooow!” they wail, as we roll in wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of evidence that they damned well did know.

“No one could have predicted...,” they whine, as we chopper in ton after ton of proof that Iraq/Katrina/9-11/Global Warming/North Korea/Iran/Every-other-fucking-thing were all quite predictable, and had been foreseen, but their Dear Leader had simply chosen to ignore the inconvenient mile-high, DayGlo warning signs on his way to and from vacation.

‘Cause they won, which means 2+2 no longer equals four Mr. Fancypants liberal.

So they’ll sprint in diminishing circles until the Limbaugh Chip in their tiny heads is reseated by a licensed GOP thrall tech, and which point they’ll blink owlishly for a moment or two, and have that Very Special Republican “Memento” Moment when they forget every single thing that has actually happened in the last thirty years and go right back to being furious at Liberals…for…something.

At which point they take what’s left of the country and hand it right back to the same boobs and hucksters and sociopaths that wrecking it in the first place, and tell everybody to Shut The Hell Up, ‘cause nobody wants to hear from no God Damned negative, critical know-it-all’s yappin' about who did what to who and who drove whose country into oblivion.

It is the same pathetic, shirker's anthem sung by every irresponsible drunk I have ever known.

Alla that’s behind us now, so Shaddap! And besides it was probably all of that angry, negativity that was what really made the car fly off the mountain anyway!

And off we zoom. The Sweet Baby Jesus Dashboard Buddy covering his eyes with his tiny, stigmata-ed hands and moaning for dear life as Dubya mashes down on the accelerator and makes a perfect bee-line for the next precipice, while the Rat People snarl that ain’t no God Damned Liberal gonna show us how to drive.

And then we’re off to the Wacky Races.

Again.

And while there is no point in this drunktard’s mental Moebius loop at which the Republican rank-and-filer's mind ever become susceptible to reason, for a bitterly amusing moment, consider the plight of the average dumbass GOPer and what he has coming at him down the pipe he himself has laid, inch by inch.

He has been told that his Party’s plans in Iraq were well intentioned, but poorly executed. That given enough time, money, dead American and daisy cutters, we could sorta bomb the Iraqis back to the Enlightenment, and from there yummy-yummy democracy would flourish.

Now you and I know this was and is so much bilge water – that this Administration started gearing up to lie us into Iraq literally while the 9/11 fires were still burning – but remember that in the long ago and far away land of 2004,

…the American public has been presented reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the heads of the Iraq Survey Group David Kay and Charles Duelfer (chosen by the president), concluding that before the war Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction, nor even a significant program for developing them.

That is about as cut, dried, stacked and packed as facts ever get. Unambiguous to the point of being cartoonish, and yet when confronted with such blunt, clear truths, how do members of the Cult of Bush always react?

(from the same report

Nonetheless, 72% of Bush supporters continued to hold to the view that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%).

And

The pattern on al Qaeda is similar. Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters think the Bush administration is currently saying Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda (56%) or even that it was directly involved in 9/11 (19%). Furthermore, 55% of Bush supporters say it is their impression the Bush administration is currently saying the US has found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda (not saying clear evidence found: 37%).

You can go right on down the list, checking off the same kind of childishly delusional belief by the same group of people on issue after issue, but it would only tell us what we already know: The GOP Rat People are stoopid.

Waaaay stoopid.

Aggressively and chickenshittedly stoopid.

And now, from their POV, look at how they see the enemy they face in Iraq.

An enemy that refuses to listen to you or “be reasonable” even to the point of sabotaging their own interests.

An enemy that will take a bite out of you whichever way you step. If you try to compromise, you’ll lose face and get beat on as “weak”. If you try to leave, you’ll be blamed for everything and called cowards. If you try to escalate, you’ll feed into every stereotype the enemy has of you. If you try to extend a hand, you’ll pull back a stump.

An enemy who repays your “kindness” – however poorly executed – with venom.

An enemy who believes some kinda alien, terrifying religion that sounds to you like one, big rationalization of fascism and bigotry all wrapped up in God’s Own Blank Check.

An enemy who seems completely deranged and hell-bent on just destroying everything according to some bizarre ideology that you cannot comprehend.

An enemy whose land and condition you have spent oceans of blood and treasure to improve, only to be told that they hate you, that you are the source of Every Evil, and if they had their way they’d annihilate you all.

An enemy that elects dangerous, crazy religious extremists on the electoral dime you provided them, and then tell their “benefactors” to go fuck themselves, ‘cause they won.

Well my Republican friends, welcome to the wonderful world of being called destroyers for acting on your "principles" ("Principles", mind you, that normal humans find ridiculous and degenerate, but which you hew to so fiercely.)

Of seeing mindless raging God-stoked mobs pissing away all the lovely Democracy that you’ve spent so much and worked to hard to create.

Of practically begging them to stop for a moment and consider all that they’re throwing away, and being called weak and cowardly for your trouble.

Of being shrieked at that your existence and everything you believe is a massive insult to God.

Of seeing politically-wired religious leaders whose agenda is overtly theocratic standing behind the mobs, pulling the strings and laughing and laughing and laughing.

In other words, welcome to what it’s like to be a Democrat in America.

Welcome to Liberalville, bitches!

Population: You.