Saturday, April 11, 2009

When They Were Kings


In celebration of the mighty Blog Against Theocracy this weekend --




Image via the crafty Tengrain


-- this encore presentation ("Oh, is that what the kids are calling it now?" "Shut up!") of the "Ten Plagues of Dumbses II".

(Recently translated from the First and Second Books of Texodus.)

The First Plague:
And so it was the days when the Wingnut Boot was heavy on the throat of the Nation, Reality went unto Dumbses, asking that the mortal remains of Terri Schiavo be respectfully committed unto the ground.

And Dumbses called his pundits and frists; and they by Christopathic enchantments and certain secrets, defiled her mortal remains most egregiously for partisan gain.

And though Reality did consume every wingnut trickery and win that argument most decisively, Dumbses’ heart was hardened, and he did not hearken to the will of the Nation, as Reality had commanded.

The Second Plague:

And unto the Media a Memo from the Street of Downing was delivered, proving the perfidy of Dumbses in the matter of the Great War. And it was shewn to the Nation that Dumbses did turn the nation of Iraq red with blood for lies and profit.

Thus therefore saith Reality: "In this thou shalt know that I am not to be fucked with: behold I expose the lies that led to the Debacle in the Desert."

And among the the soldiers that are in the War, many shall perish for criminal want of Armor and Medical Care. And the Press shall become corrupted, and the Nation shall be afflicted with ignorance and cognitive diarrhea when they try to gain knowledge from the Media.

And Reality landed smack on fat heads Dumbses and his servants and bloggers and water-carriers: and Iraq was turned into blood.


The Third Plague:




And the Pundits and Chickenhawks who throve in the shallow, smelly end of the bullshit tide pools of Conservative mendacity began to go mad; and the information flow became corrupted and completely detached from the real world. Runaway Blondes and Sharks Attacks displaced vital debate on and analysis of the Iraq War, and the Press refused to tell the Nation what in the fuck was really going on in Dumbses’ Excellent Iraqi Adventure.

And the limbaughs, hewitts and kristols worked their enchantments in like manner, tattooing the killword "Traitor!" upon the brow of any who dared to question the infinite wisdom of Dumbses; and Dumbses’s heart was hardened, neither did he hear the Nation, and he turned himself away, and went to Crawford the clear brush and play blindfolded "Find the WMD" with his Office Wife Secretary of State, neither did he set his heart to it this time also.

And Reality said, quit lying to the people you despicable, dry-drunk idiot. Quit slandering honorable me and quit shitting on the Constitution.

But if thou wilt not, Reality shall multiply the number of enemies and terrorists who will afflict you and the next two generations.


The Fourth Plague:

And Black Prisons and Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and the bloody occupation of a foreign land for years in a war that was supposed to take a fortnight did rend the Coalition of the Willing, did drive Moderates into the arms of the Enemy, and did greatly enflame passion against a Nation that would be so fucking addle-pated as to have allowed a feebleminded frat-rat to rule over it in the first place.

While Osama bin Laden sat in safety in a different country altogether and laughed and laughed and reaped the rewards of the propaganda victories Dumbses kept handing him, year after year after year.

And the o’reillys and the coulters and the malkins did conjurate their majyks and process fact though their Orwellizers and cast enchantments to “prove” that this plague of failure showed how very, very right Dumbses had been all along, and how very, very wrong and disloyal the followers of Reality had been.

And Dumbses was reassured that he was right in all that he had done, and again hardened his heart against Reality.


The Fifth Plague:

And Reality stretched forth its hand upon the waters, and struck sky and ocean, and there came a Great Storm. So large was it that it could be seen from Space striding towards the Nation fangs and claws bared like a lion nearing the sheepcote.

And yet the Beast Katrina bore down on the Nation, Dumbses did nothing.

And as the Gulf Coast of the Nation was consumed and a great city lost, and as the brownies and chertoffs were commended for the heckuva job they were doing, even members of Dumbses own Party now began to wonder where they were being led.

And who the detached, oblivious shit-kicker was who was leading them into disaster after disaster.



The Sixth Plague:

And then didst Dumbses attempt to privatize the Nation’s Social Security.

As deftly and smoothly as a bear with DTs wearing oven mitts trying to thread a beading needle with sticky silk fresh from the spinneret of an Araneus diadematus.

And although he was beaten by Reality like a rented dromedary, he still didn’t fucking get it and his heart stayed as hard as Ted Haggard on a meth bender with a pre-paid rent boi.


The Seventh Plague:

And then there came a very grievous swarm of Leaks into the demesnes and principalities of Dumbses and of his servants, and all the Nation learned of the “Dubai Port Deal”, “Valerie Plame”, “Vote Caging”, “Energy Task Force”, “Jeff Gannon” and a host of others. They fell upon the Nation like a cloud of stinging flies, and the Nation rose up and said very clearly, “We wanted these incompetent, lying fucknozzles gone!”

And the friedmans and the broders and the rest of the pundit priesthood did sift the air and cast spell after spell, incanting “Bill Clinton’s Penis Was Woooooorse”.

And another layer of concrete was poured over Dumbses’ wretched heart.


The Intervention of the Reasonable Men:

Reality was by this time starting to notice that Dumbses stayed constantly and imperviously drunk on a cocktail of Hubris and Delusion, and that his Party's big plan was to just let him get away with it and blame Jimmy Carter or somebody whenever someone shoved a camera at them. And so Reality did summon The Baker and The Hamilton from their homes high atop Mount Whiteguy, and lo a Commission was formed so that Dumbses might be given a face-saving exit from his Iraqi Debacle and in that way the Nation might be saved.

And the Baker Hamilton Commission did produce a very mild, very moderate, very Centrist Report, and presented it as tribute to the mighty Dumbses.

And Dumbses used this Report as ass-paper,

and his heart stayed harden as neutronium.

And the Nation wept.



The Eighth Plague:

Ironically, in the case of Immigration, Dumbses actually tried to let some people go.

They were, in the main, the People of the Mexican Lands, who were sorely afflicted and heavy laden with the toil of picking the Nation’s fruit and swabbing the Nation’s bedpans while dwelling in a twilight economy. And Dumbses did stretch out his hand and try to find a middle course wherein the suffering of the People of the Mexican Lands might be balanced with the legitimate legal and security needs of the Nation.

But in this, Dumbses’ own magicians, pundits, spear-carriers and shouty-crackers rose up on Dumbses skin like boils. And they bit Dumbses upon his ankles and his throat, crying that he “Wanted Amnesty” and was perhaps even “Secretly Liberal”.

For Dumbses while had girded himself in a powerful armor of pinhead fanatics to protect him from Reality, he never understood that those reprogrammable sock-puppets would turn on him in a hard-heartbeat if he ever showed signs of not irrationally scapegoating the right groups of people.


The Ninth Plague:

And Reality brought a burning wind out of Texas called Alberto Gonzalez to set fire to what the other plagues had left in tinder-dry rubble. And day and night Dumbses loyal foot-servant stood before Congress under oath and lied and lied and lied and lied.

Badly.

He perjured himself publicly and repeatedly, and when he was not lying he was stumbling and “forgetting” frighteningly important details, until all the Nation could conclude was that Gonzalez was either deeply and criminally complicit in a cover-up of illegal activities perpetrated by the White House to subvert the Constitution and violate the civil rights of the people of the Nation...

...or that day-in-day-out he was proving to be possibly the stupidest creature on two legs, all while Dumbses kept insisting that he was, in fact, fucking brilliant, honorable, and was running the Nation's Department of Justice like an EZ-Bake Oven with a fresh light bulb.

And a great Darkness enveloped the GOP, as even the most loyal vizier and conjurer realized that the failings of the Dumbses Regime had exceeded even their considerable talent for propagandistic legerdemain.

And they keenly remembered what had happened when Dumbses had waited far, far too long to eliminate Rummy.

“Pleeeeeease,” they begged of him in private. “You must fire this baby-faced ebola virus or he’ll take the whole Party down with him. Didn't your spectacular failure to excise Rummy until he had doomed us all teach you a God Damned thing?!”

But again Dumbses’ heart was hardened and he said “Fuck you all; the Higher Father sez Gonzo’s stayin’!”


The Tenth Plague: The Loss of The Firstborn.

And finally Reality had had it with Dumbses and the filthy little fascists who eagerly followed him into despotism and ruin like baby ducks.

And Reality said, “OK, that’s it. I’m tired of playing. I’m making your kids into Liberals. The firstborn in the land of the Wingnut shall become Dirty Hippies, from the firstborn of Dumbses’ ministers, even to the firstborn of the trailer-dwelling mouth breather who thinks we can nuke all of our problems away.

"Might even make ‘em gay too, but for now we’ll just see how this goes."

And there shall be a great cry in all GOP, such as neither hath been before, nor shall be hereafter.

And you know what?

That’s exactly what’s happening…

From The Political Wire



July 27, 2007

Republican Support Collapses Among Youth

A new Democracy Corps/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey finds young people "profoundly alienated from the Republican party and its perceived values."

Key finding: "Young people react with hostility to the Republicans on almost every measure and Republicans and younger voters disagree on almost every major issue of the day."

In the presidential race, "both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lead Rudy Giuliani -- the most acceptable of the Republican offerings among youth -- by significant margins. The President’s standing is substantially worse, to the degree that is possible, than we find in the broader electorate. Moreover, the disconnect we see between the Republicans and our nation’s youth runs so deep, that it likely will not only outlive the Bush administration, but potentially haunt the Republicans for many years to come."


So let it be written.

So let it be done.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't know what to say to this, except shit, somewhere Steve is looking down, nodding, smiling and saying to himself 'Yes, grasshopper'.

mikefromtexas

StringonaStick said...

"Teach your children well", and apparently we did!

Larue said...

What Anon said. Great work, Drifty.

Lockwood said...

Brilliant, Driftglass. As Always. Thanks for reposting this director's cut... I missed the first run. Still timely.

Distributorcap said...

somewhere yul brynner is cracking up

HelloDollyLlama said...

For thirty years now we’ve heard evangelicals hollering that their fondest wish would be for America to be governed in accordance with God’s law, and that the Bible is the literal rendering of God’s will.

What if they got their wish?


The scene: Philadelphia, 1787. The Reverend Jerry Falwell has travelled back in time, 200 years, to beg the Founding Fathers to write the Constitution in accordance with God’s will. He sends a letter to that effect to the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, accompanied by a King James Bible. Madison reads the letter and, fascinated, invites Falwell for an interview.

“Okay, Reverend Falwell, I have read your letter, and I took the liberty of refreshing my memory about Biblical law using the Bible you helpfully provided. Quite frankly, I only had to read the first few books to find all I needed to find. And I have one or two concerns.

“You want the laws of America to mandate a lot of offerings to the priests. Make the priest a gold lampstand with seven lamps, a curtained tabernacle with courtyard, an altar, a gold table, gold dishes and cups, a gold ark, silver, bronze, goat hair, the skin of a sea cow, incense, wood, oil, gems.... And a priestly costume with turban, breastplate and sash. Everybody must pay the money to the priest as ransom for his life. Daily, weekly, monthly offerings to God and the priests. Lots of slaughtering animals for offerings, to the priest. Unintentional sin, meat for the priest, then smash the pot you cooked it in. Making a careless oath, a pigeon for the priest. Unintentional defilement, a goat to the priest. New baby, a lamb for the priest. Fellowship offering, kidneys and liver for the priest....You see, we sort of take a dim view toward subsidizing the church like this. All that food, I’m not surprised you got yourself a gut there, Reverend.

“Let’s see, what other rules do you have here? Don’t eat fat. Or rabbits or pigs; shellfish, eagles, vultures, ravens, owls, hawks, storks, bats, weasels, rats, lizards. Don’t eat the meat of an animal that was killed by another animal. The only bugs you can eat are locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper. Anyone who eats the fat from an offering, or blood, must be banished....I’m not really sure we want the Constitution to get down into the menu stuff like this.

“We weren’t planning on saying quite so much about sex in the Constitution. For starters, you’ve got all the men slicing up their penises, and I got to tell you, that’s a deal breaker right there. No sex with any relative; no sex with a woman and her daughter both; or your neighbor’s wife. Death penalty for sleeping with another man’s wife, or gay sex, or sex with an animal. Gee, your book has that David and Jonathan stuff that sounds an awful lot like gay sex – your love surpasses the love of women, and so forth?

“A wife can’t attack the groin of her husband’s enemy – you folks have a lot of problems with that, where you come from? And a man with injured genitals can’t go to church – does that have anything to do with the first rule? Sounds like there was a great story behind this stuff. Some kind of humdinger of a Saturday night massacre.

“In your letter you said you want to ban abortion, but your own book, in the Book of Numbers, prescribes abortion. It’s right there in black and white. If a woman has allegedly slept with another man, give her these bitter waters; her belly will swell and thighs waste away. But if she is innocent, she can bear a child. In other words, abortion. It’s right there in Numbers. Are you for abortion or against it?

“You have a lot to say about women here, and none of it’s good. No woman can take a vow or oath without her father’s or husband’s permission. No woman with property can marry outside her tribe. Women can’t wear men’s clothes. In monetary terms, a woman is worth three-fifths of a man – hey, we were going to use that rule for slaves! You can escape punishment for raping a virgin by paying a fine. You can sell your daughter into slavery. If you capture a girl in battle, shave her head and let her mourn her dead for a month; then she’s all yours, to do what you want. If a new groom accuses his wife of not being a virgin, and she can’t prove him wrong, she gets death by stoning....See, if I put this stuff in the Constitution, my wife Dolly would have me sleeping in the barn all summer.

“Let’s see now. You can’t plant more than one kind of seed in a field, or plow with an ox and an ass together, or wear clothing of different fibers together....Now you’ve lost the mill owners up north.

“You have lots of slavery in here, which is good – half our country owns slaves. God’s will, right?

“Hmm. You’ve got two whole chapters of rules on how the priest must treat skin rashes. And two more on cleaning mildew. And another on men with unclean bodily discharges. You see, we’d need a really good writer like Jefferson to make that literary leap from ‘securing the blessings of liberty’ to ‘discharges of pus’. So let’s skip all that too.

“No tattoos. Don’t cut the hair on the side of your head or beard – see, the Pennsylvanians won’t go for that. Everybody must wear tassels on the corners of their clothes. And this is for the men...?

“Put blood on your door on Passover, and make bread without yeast. Don’t eat bloody meat. Don’t build a tower that reaches the sky. Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife – big big problems with that one. Don’t charge interest on a loan – see, right there you lost Hamilton and the banks. When you’re camping, bury your crap with your sword – see, I’m sure that’s good advice for Franklin’s farmer almanac, but perhaps not in the Constitution.

“Let’s see, here. You seem to be using the death penalty an awful lot, for all sorts of things. Violating the Sabbath rules, disobeying your father, drunkenness, prophesying falsely, sex with animals, reaching out for the tree of knowledge, taking one more look back at your hometown as God is destroying it with fire and death. You can kill a burglar, but not after sunrise. You got a lot of dead people here, Reverend.

“And you seem to have a lot of stoning here. Stoning to death for a stubborn child, stoning for blasphemy, stoning if your wife suggests you serve other gods. Do you have any idea how long and how painful an execution by stoning is? Stone after stone after stone after stone?

“If a bull tramples someone twice, it’s death by stoning for the bull and the owner both. Have you ever tried to throw a bunch of rocks at a bull? Particularly a bull who has a habit of stomping the crap out of people? I mean, are you from farm country?

“See, Reverend...I’m sorry, but this stuff is just a little too fire and brimstone for our needs. Because WE ALL CAME TO AMERICA TO GET AWAY FROM BLOOD-CRAZED LOONS LIKE YOU.

“Thanks for stopping by!”


And here’s the punch line: the scenario isn’t completely crazy. William Jennings Bryan was almost elected president three times. President, as in President of the United States. And like Falwell, Bryan was a Bible-thumping maniac; later in life Bryan led the jihad in Tennessee to crush a schoolteacher for daring to teach evolution in a high school. This messianic ayatollah fuckwit could have been running the country just as the world was ramping up for World War I. Anybody up for a holy war?