Was going to title this post, "Rage, rage, against the dying of the Right."
First, because I am encouraging rage, and second because I think the Right is dying.
Really.
The question is whether they'll go out slowly, spontaneously combust like Krook amidst his hoarded papers in Bleak House, and leave only a greasy film on the windows and a strange shower of viscous ash in the air or incinerate themselves and the whole oil rig like Cody Jarrett in White Heat, screaming "Top of the world, Rush! Top of the World!"
They'd probably rather think of themselves as going out like John Wayne's Davy Crockett at the end of The Alamo, holding off a thousand Mexicans singlehandedly and then falling back with a lighted torch into a roomful of gunpowder, taking half of Santa Ana's army to hell with him.
Fine with me. Just as long as they go. And they are going. How do I know? That's another post. Just believe me. We're watching the End of Days.
We just have to worry about how big a mess and how many casualites they'll leave when they go.
In the meantime, it's ok to be a bit steamed at them. Not just for the mess they're making and the mess they'll leave behind, but for being such shitheads while they're here.
They are shitheads in so many ways, but one of the big ways is the way they project their barking, foaming, rolling on the floor, last stages of rabies anger on us.
"You're full of rage!" they screech and cackle. "You hate George Bush!," they shriek and giggle. "And your hatred is madness! Madness, we say!"
We're supposed to feel bad for being pissed off? We're supposed to accept their word for it that our Bush hatred is irrational? We're supposed to take this from people who still wake up in damp sheets, sweaty and with hearts pounding, after yet another nightmare of Hillary Clinton, gloating and probably nude--- They are very weird about her, and I'm sure some of them have seen Roman Polanski's Macbeth ---as she steps back from the freshly murdered body of Vince Foster?
Of course, we're mad. And of course we don't like George Bush. What's to like? He's a sneaky, lying, cringing spoiled brat of man. A sanctimonious bully, to boot. He's a moral as well as a physical coward. He's afraid of the press, he's afraid to go out in public, on September 11 he was afraid the terrorists were going to kill him or he was afraid somebody might ask him to make a real decision or he was afraid people would find out he knew al queda was up to something and he didn't do anything to stop it, so he hid in a bunker in Nebraska, and he's afraid he's going to lose this election, so he's letting his henchpeople lie, smear, demogogue, and when it comes down to it on election night, I'm sure, steal votes for him. What's not to hate?
(Personally, I don't hate him. I hate Cheney. I hate Ashcroft. I loathe Karl Rove. And I have contempt for Condoleeza Rice. Don Rumsfeld just makes my head spin. He's like a bad acid trip. But I despise George Bush. I'd like to say it the way Bogie said it about Peter Lorre in Casablanca. W: You despise me, don't you, Lance? Me: If I gave you any thought, I probably would. But that would mean I had the luxury and the good fortune of not having to give him any thought.)
The Blogosphere's new hero, James Wolcott, gave Washington Post hand-wringer Richard Cohen a good and well-earned throttling the other day. Cohen wrote a column in which he went all schoolteacherish on the subject of Bush hatred. Anyone with a son in grade school knows that among the values being taught nowadays are tattle tale-ing, running away, and "talking things through," which is what you do while you are backing out of range of the bully's fists prior to running away to find a teacher to tattle to. This is called "conflict resolution," by which school administrators mean, "avoiding lawsuits."
Everything school administratrators say these days translates as "avoiding lawsuits," but never mind.
Cohen more or less recommended that Democrats adopt the school playground strategy of "conflict resolution" in dealing with the Bush slime machine this year, and Wolcott carried him up to the top of the jungle gym and tossed him off.
The Star Wars movies are good movies despite how stupid most of the dialogue and plot devices are. One of the stupidest things anybody says in all five films so far is Yoda's line, "Anger leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to the Dark Side."
This is such a piece of hogwash that even George Lucas himself doesn't believe it. Luke whips Darth Vader only because he gets angry. He gets angry for a good reason. Vader has just announced he's going after Leia. Luke leaps up and knocks the stuffing out of Vader. And never for a moment are we expected to worry that Luke's going over to the Dark Side.
I'm not saying we will win because we are like Luke, full of righteous anger and blessed by the Force. I'm saying that there is anger, and there is anger. Anger doesn't lead to fear, although fear often leads to anger---ask any honest Right Winger. (Good luck.) Sometimes anger leads to hatred, and sometimes, in a lot of Liberals apparently it leads to upset tummies, migraines, cases of the vapors, and little, ugly wrinkles on their foreheads, right there, above the bridge of my nose, see? Which is why they want to avoid it at all costs. But some things and some people deserve to be hated, and there are plenty of things we need to be mad about.
And hatred can be controlled, and it can stop, when the cause is vanquished. We hated the Germans in World War II. Yeah, I know, the Right cries foul whenever we compare them to Nazis. Isn't it just like us to do that, too? Being that we're like the terrorists and want them to win and wish Saddam was back in power? But I'm not about to compare them to the Nazis, despite the way they fetishize and hero-worship their Leader, how they lust for the extermination of our enemies, how they love a parade, and how all those closet case gay bashing Congressmen keep popping up in their ranks. I was just going to say, that we hated the Germans in World War II, and as soon as the war was over, we stopped hating them. And if we could forgive the Germans for the Nazis, when the time comes we'll be able to forgive the Republicans for George Bush. (Let me spell it out for you, before you scream: In that sentence, implicit in the comparison is that George Bush is nowheres near as bad as the Nazis. The balance of the sentence implies that W. is much less an offense to humanity and God and therefore much easier to forgive and forget than the Nazis. Unless you happen to be an Iraqi or the parent of a dead US soldier or Marine.) So, don't worry, you can hate them, get mad at them, rage, rage, against the dying and the lying of the Right. It's ok, and as Digby has pointed out, it's necessary.
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