One of the main reasons I've stayed relatively quite about politics lately -- aside from the fact that I've been incredibly busy -- has a lot to do with a pervading feeling of powerlessness. I realize this may sound like a cop out, but there are times when I've wondered whether I should just give up discussing politics altogether, choosing to keep my head down and live my life rather than letting the chaotic, perpetual drone of left-vs-right turn a good portion of my day into the figurative beating of my head against a computer keyboard. But really, let's be honest: It has less to do with not wanting to add to the noise than it does with that unshakable belief that there's nothing I can say that'll change a goddamned thing -- not in a political climate that allows one party to get away with operating completely divorced from empirical reality.
Seriously, how do you even begin to call out a movement which has made itself nearly bulletproof by virtue of its unwillingness to subscribe to facts -- facts that anybody not currently tied to a bed at Bellevue accepts as a jumping off point for his or her opinions? It's no secret that conservatism as a political ideal is a shadow of its former, somewhat respectable self, having long ago been hijacked from within by its most lunatic fringe. All that remains now is that fringe and those who cater to it, and to extend the metaphor, you just can't argue with a crazy person -- nor with the person who will do or say anything to inexplicably appeal to that person. The American political right, at this point in our history, is so thoroughly shameless and hypocritical -- and so detached from the world that everyone else on the planet inhabits -- that attempting to refute its nonsense with logic and reason is a fool's errand. And while I've been a hell of a lot of questionable things throughout my lifetime, I hope a fool was never one of them.
So I've just kept my mouth shut around here, choosing instead to outsource the outrage to people apparently far more able -- and infinitely more tolerant -- than I am.
But at some point you have to get off your ass and get back into the fight, I suppose. And for me, that time is now. Yeah, I've still got quite a bit on my plate at the moment, particularly when it comes to work. But this site matters to me and I can't deny that it's been neglected of late. So I'm gonna try my damndest to get things back on track around here -- and that means talking not just politics but hopefully anything else that comes to mind, all while attempting to balance my business and personal life.
With that in mind, though, I wanted to give you an example of what I'm talking about when it comes to both the insanity on the right and the entirely calculated and opportunistic pandering to that insanity that's become a staple of conservatism's standard bearers. Listen to this little diatribe from Bill Maher because he's right on the money: the Republicans purport to love America but they really seem to hate Americans, at least a vast swath of them anyway.
Seriously, how do you argue with this kind of horseshit thinking from a smug, morally bankrupt little asshole like Gingrich?
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