Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Resolved: The Scary Brown People who Hate America and want to kill us all and smash our economy can only be defeated by tax cuts for rich people.

And demagogy.

Followed by more tax cuts for rich people.

This morning -- through every channel and virtually every conversation -- well-heeled white people replicated this fractal over and over again, either by actively pushing this fascist twaddle as the Pure Quill, or by passively accepting it as the natural frame within which all conversations must now take place.

Stuck forever in this moment like well-paid flies in Wingnut amber

the Mouse Circus was little more than the same, sad, ethics-free knocking shop with the same, tired hookers hanging out of the same windows, offering the same diseased wares. However, if I were giving a prize for the sock-puppet who applied the most sheer hypocrisy-torque to Reality in one place at one time, I’d have to give it to Chris Wallace “Fox News Sunday”

In his special, pre-show video, Chris Wallace -- jacketless, seated on the edge of his desk, just talkin’...y’know...him-to-you -- expressed outrage that some hateful “dope” with a handful of lunatic followers can commandeer the attention of the world's media.

Then -- without missing a fucking beat -- Next up -- Exclusively on Fox! -- Fascist Omnivore and fellow Fox Employee Newt Gingrich!

Fox Employee Newt: All tax cuts for anybody destroy jobs.

Fox Employee Wallace: But…

Fox Employee Newt: But what, you little shitmonger?

Fox Employee Wallace: But the non-partisan CBO said that the Bush tax cuts for rich people suck.

Fox Employee Newt: Well of course. The bureaucrats at the CBO who don’t know anything about creating jobs gave you their bureaucratic answer.

Fox Employee Newt: Obama has radically increased the size of gummint. Put record number of people on food stamps. Pelosi, Reid, and Obama have personally destroyed the economy as part of their overall Marxist plans to.

Fox Employee Newt: Peaceable, New York culture-center-building Muslims are just like Nazis and exactly the same as some shitwhistle “pastor” in Florida who wants to burn the Koran. Because I say so.

Fox Employee Wallace: Your Party leaders have said they plan to smash the gummint to bits if they take over.

Fox Employee Newt: So?

Fox Employee Wallace: So?

Fox Employee Newt: So, OK, it may have been unwise to say that out loud.

Fox Employee Wallace: BTW, don’t miss Newt and his zombie, sexbot 3rd wife in their Fox-sponsored drea-u-mentary “Let’s Scare America to Death”…now available on the Fox website!

Elsewhere…

…like the Great 9/11 Pumpkin, Rudy Giuliani

rose from his crypt once again to remind people that Islam is bad and that Democrats are terrorist dupes, which George Will praised the sagacity of Herbert Hoover, and Arianna Huffington made little, ineffectual noises and fluttered her hands.

On the other hand, the 100-million-dollars worth of banking industry, brokerage industry, oil industry and pharmaceutical industry commercials that paid everyone’s salaries were bright and lively.

In case you were wondering what Americans were arguing about a generation ago, here are 10-years-worth of High School debate topic starting 35 years ago:

(1984–1985) Resolved: That the federal government should provide employment for all employable United States citizens living in poverty.

(1983–1984) Resolved: That the United States should establish uniform rules governing the procedure of all criminal courts in the nation.

(1982–1983) Resolved: That the United States should significantly curtail its arms sales to other countries.

(1981–1982) Resolved: That the federal government should establish minimum educational standards for elementary and secondary schools in the United States.

(1980–1981) Resolved: That the federal government should initiate and enforce safety guarantees on consumer goods.

(1979–1980) Resolved: That the United States should significantly change its foreign trade policies.

(1978–1979) Resolved: That the federal government should establish a comprehensive program to significantly increase the energy independence of the United States.

(1977–1978) Resolved: That the federal government should establish a comprehensive program to regulate the health care system in the United States.

(1976–1977) Resolved: That a comprehensive program of penal reform should be adopted throughout the United States.

(1975–1976) Resolved: That the development and allocation of scarce world resources should be controlled by an international organization.

Health care, energy independence, jobs, crime...all being diligently researched and enthusiastically debated within the framework of the proper role of government...

...by children in ill-fitting suits, clip-on ties, and second-best dresses, lugging sample cases stuffed with index cards, flow charts and ambition from one Battle Royale to the next...

...where they were required to treat each other with respect, and endure being judged over and over again on the basis of the persuasive power of their logic and the soundness of their facts...

...week after week, on snow-covered, Saturday mornings in near-empty high schools all across the land.

I was one of those kids, I and learned a lot from getting up at oh-dark-thirty in strange towns and spending the day sprinting from glorious victory to ignoble defeat and back again in one cold classroom after another.

But these days I often find myself wondering what the kid-I-was would have chosen to do with his Saturdays if he had had any inkling about just how deep into sneering, public, corporate-sponsored disrepute things like logic, facts and fair play would one day be driven.