Rebel, Rebel, You've Torn Your Dress

Brother Charles Pierce points out a thing which is so  baseline, indisputably true that should it should long ago have become part of the pre-show checklist for every public interest teevee show in the land, along with "Your hair looks fine" and "We're live when the little red light goes on" and "Don't freak out when you see how empty and soulless David Gregory's eyes are up-close. Lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he opens his pie-hole and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch 'But Both Sides!' and spite of all your bloggin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces."

Where was I?

Oh yeah!  Mr. Pierce:

It seems almost pointless to mention this but there is simply no state Democratic party in any of the 50 states that is so clearly, obviously demented. This is the Republican Party. Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru are not. In fact, I think all those bold conservative thinkers of whom the New York Times thinks so much should bring their Big Ideas down to the next Texas state Republican convention and see how far they get. John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell, and especially obvious anagram Reince Priebus, who nominally presides over Bedlam, need to be asked every day which parts of the Texas Republican platform they support and which parts they don't. They don't get to use the crazies to get elected and then hide behind fake Washington politesse when the howls from the hinterlands get too loud. We allow ourselves only two major political parties. One of them is completely out of its fcking mind. This is a national problem.

Yes, that is one point of view.

Another point of view that has currency with some profound thinkers with large, international audiences is that Democratic voters should stand aside on purpose and let the crazies ride to power and pound the fuck out of the country from some undetermined period of time.  After which the Leprechauns of Liberty will ride the Unicorns of Freedom back from Big Rock Candy Mountain and restore America to greatness.  At the moment, two most famous proponents of this theory of social reform are Ra's Al Ghul:

And Glenn Greenwald:

Yet a third point of view is offered by America's Second Greatest Conservative Public Intellectual on his Pot-'n-Popes-'n-Stuff blog where he councils Liberals to quit kvetching and celebrate, because now that support for his two issues -- pot and same-sex marriage --  have turned a corner, it's game over for wingnuts and we Leftists should be more magnanimous in victory.

How delightful it would be if, in the grand American tradition, these three white men were to gather together in the spirit of Lincoln and Douglas and put their beliefs to the test in a big, public arena in the heart of the great state of Texas!

Or, at least at Netroots Nation next week.

Because that I would pay to see.