Rich Kids With Glass Jaws
My liberal red state senior citizen relatives are under attack from their wingnut neighbors and have taken refuge with Kevin Drum and Michael Moore, but they are noticing something that I have noticed too, both in my comments and those I find elsewhere -- never has the right been so angry, vitriolic and reactionary in defense of their president. They are grasping at every piece of detritus floating off the rapidly sinking SS Bush and holding on for dear life as they attempt to rationalize and justify the actions of their fearless leader over the past few days.
And really, what can you expect. They are backed into a corner and must either lash out in defense of the indefensible or admit they were wrong. Now you start with a group of people who felt empowered by a doctrine of intolerance, selfishness and blind aggression to begin with, who by and large were not gifted with tremendously well-developed powers of analytical thought let alone any ability to scrape themselves off the bottom rung of Maslow's pyramid, and you put them in a situation where they are faced with the inescapable truth that the man they put into office is suddenly quite obviously guilty of incompetence and indifference that resulted in the senseless murder of thousands of innocent, poor Americans. Do you really think they are going to instantly turn around and shout "my bad"?
You're talking about a group of people who pride themselves on their moral superiority, on the rectitude of their pursuit of social purity from potheads, loose women, gays and hip-hop. Who think they stand alone in their protection of truth, justice and the American Way. Who swallowed the entire load of Bushian bullshit without spilling so much as a drop. Now they are screaming like the deranged lunatics of Bedlam that the left can only point fingers, while they themselves preen and strut and call attenntion to the magnamity of their own generosity and boast of how much money they are giving to their victims, with a sly nod to the fact that the poor of Louisiana are somehow morally bankrupt (= black) and truthfully deserving of their fate.
I am reminded of the corpse in CS Lewis's The Great Divorce who sits up in her coffin and smears lipstick onto her gums.
Go ahead. Give some more. All the money in the world will not wash the blood off your hands, you ignorant fuckwits. Bill Clinton did not do this. Al Gore did not do this. John Kerry did not do this. George Bush did this. And you gave him the power to do it. One man, one vote, remember? Well we can all see now what you have wrought with yours.
After 9/11, George Bush was given a virtual blank check to prepare for disaster. He spent the money, all right -- on billions in contracts he doled out to his corporate pals for hastily purchased equipment that later had to be scrapped when they found out it was useless. Of course nobody in his junta could be bothered to lift a telephone and try to get the poor out of New Orleans before the storm struck. Nobody could make a buck off of it.
I fully anticipate more flailing ire from right-wing trolls as the days go by and stories like Aaron Brossard's hit the airwaves:
The guy who runs this building I'm in, Emergency Management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody'’s coming to get you." Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody'’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody'’s coming to get you on Friday and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody'’s coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us.There is really nothing the right can say in the face of that, other than engage in nit-picking that is tantamount to pointing out spelling errors. One by one they will either fall to reality or sink into an inescapable morass of willful denial and delusion. Bloated with guilt and bellowing in self-righteous indignation, condemned to wander in some lower bardo of hell.
Meanwhile over on the left, I am ready to do something I don't normally do -- cheer someone for making threats of physical violence. In this case, Mary Landrieu, who says one more word out of George Bush and she'll have to punch him.
I'll hold him, you hit him, baby. You're on.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 9/04/2005 03:13:00 PM
<< Home