Outside our post office yesterday afternoon. A man and woman in their sixties have set up a booth to draw people to sign a petition to impeach President Obama.
Woman Wanting to Impeach Obama: Want to help us get rid of Obama?
Me: You bet! Sign me up! Worst President ever! How do we do it?
Woman: Impeach him?
Me: For what reason?
Woman: He’s destroying the country.
Me: No, I mean, what’s the charge? What high crimes and misdemeanors can we impeach him for?
Woman: We have a whole list on our website.
Me: I have a better idea.
Woman: What’s that?
Me: Why don’t we wait until November of 2012, then we can sneak up on him, and vote him out of office!
At this point the woman realizes I’m not as much on her side as she first thought. She gives me a disgusted look and turns away.
Me: Or don’t you think you’ll be able to convince enough people to vote against him?
Man Wanting to Impeach Obama: You’re pathetic.
Me: If you’re going to get him impeached, shouldn’t you enlist the support of our Congressman? Oh wait. He’s a liberal Democrat, isn’t he?
Man: Pathetic.
Me: Maybe you should be working to get him defeated this fall.
Man: Do you know how pathetic you are?
Me: Probably not worth your time. He’s going to be re-elected in a landslide, again. Darn this living in a Democratic district in a Democratic state. You’re outvoted every which way. Guess you’ll just have to put up with having a black guy in the White House for a while.
Woman (seriously offended): We don’t care that he’s black!
Me: Oh come on.
Woman: I can’t believe you said that. We wanted to impeach Bush too.
Me: Really? I’ve lived here since 2003. Bush was President until 2009. I don’t recall seeing you out here in any of those six years.
Woman: Obviously you don’t have this in your personal library.
The woman takes a paperback book out a stack on the table. It has a picture of a snarly Dick Cheney on the cover. Its title is Children of Satan.
It’s by Lyndon LaRouche.
Me: Lyndon LaRouche? You’re LaRouchies?
I look more closely at their poster. LaRouche’s name is right at the top along with the URL for his website.
Me: I’m sorry. I thought you were Tea Party types. If I’d known you were just crazy I’d have left you alone.
Man: You are so pathetic!
Me: Have a nice day.
Man: Pathetic.
_______________
Not that the LaRouchites own crazy or keep it to themselves. Jason Lefkowitz posted this last July on Republicans adopting LaRouchian lunacies, seemingly all on their own.
Seems like a good time to re-read Rick Perlstein’s short history of Right Wing craziness.
That's wonderful. Thanks for sharing. :)
Posted by: Tim S. | Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 03:21 PM
Did you video this? I'd pay to watch:)
Posted by: DaveH | Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 04:25 PM
Lyndon LaRouche is always good for a laugh! Is he out of prison already?
Posted by: KLG | Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 10:50 AM
And yet, it's the Larouchians who helped launch the Teabaggers.
Posted by: actor212 | Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 12:33 PM
*laughing*
Posted by: Rana | Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 07:41 PM
Bravo! That's just plain wonderful, as someone mentioned above I'd love to see a video of that.
Posted by: scribbler50 | Monday, July 12, 2010 at 10:06 PM
Excellent.
Cue Jake Blues: "Hudson Valley LaRouchies. I hate those guys."
Lance,
That was a gallant venture into a world of derp right there. The wit is the best part. And the lizard-brain trigger response all about weakness ("pathetic!") is a good sample for those essays you did on the mental furniture of the right.
Here in the Willamette Valley we actually had a brief admixture of LaRouchies and Birchers pushing to impeach outside our post office. Until they discovered doctrinal niggles in their breeds of crazy and fractured, that is. They (LaRouchies) are a wierdly hardy breed and an excellent example of domestic fascism: quasi-communist roots; appeals to "independent thought" and the small gods of the individual wed to discreet torture, fractured cults of personality, wierd sex, and brainwashing; some of the best repellent conspiracy theories this side of the Elders of Zion; chest-thumping respect from proper European fascists (the Schiller Institute, Russian wierdos of several flavors); and some of the most full-throated xenophobic yeoman white-privilege rage this side of John Nelson Darby, the Know-Nothings, or Jim Crow. No wonder they and the modern Repubs, especially the loony populist idealist wing, feel sympathetic vibrations.
You done a good thing.
Posted by: El Jefe | Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 10:03 PM
Nearly wrote "fractured cults of wierd sex" in there somewhere. That would really be like the GOP ....
Posted by: El Jefe | Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 10:03 PM
"Seems like a good time to re-read Rick Perlstein’s short history of Right Wing craziness."
Great time to read his LONG histories, too!... ;-)
Posted by: Perlstein | Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 02:02 PM
Mr Perlstein,
You wouldn't happen to be referring to two of the best political histories I've ever read, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
, would you?
Posted by: Lance | Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 02:27 PM
Never heard of 'em.
Posted by: Perlstein | Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 08:33 PM
You didn't wait for them to explain how the Queen of England is the criminal mastermind of the entire planet?
Posted by: Cliff Hendroval | Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 09:13 AM