Anti-Colonial Viper

In case you haven't seen it yet -- and if you have, your neighbors probably already know it from the sound of you hitting yourself repeatedly in the head with a phone book -- conservative "intellectual" Dinesh D'Souza penned a hilarious bit of crackpottery for the most recent issue of Forbes magazine. In a cover story called "How Obama Thinks," D'Souza manages to trot out every tired and disgraceful conspiracy theory ever proffered about Obama while still pretending to reach the kind of revelatory conclusion tailor-made to be debated ad nauseam by Fox News Roundtables over the next few weeks.

D'Souza's supposed goal is to try to get to the bottom of that strange and mythical creature known as Barack Obama, an endlessly frustrating specter which seems to stymie any and all attempts to understand it. For those not paying attention, this has been a right-wing obsession since about ten minutes after Obama won the election in 2008: the attempt to make sense of how someone like Barack Obama could suddenly and inexplicably be the president of "our America." Well, thank God D'Souza's on the case, because only someone with his keen insight could reach the conclusion he has; the elusive answer to why Obama continues to make all these decisions "our America" is so angrily opposed to while being so oblivious to his own unpopularity; why he just doesn't get us.

It's because he's a "Kenyan anti-colonialist."

Yes, all of 14 words into the piece's lede, D'Souza and his editor at Forbes suggest that the answer to Barack Obama's obstinacy to the ideals of mom, apple pie and NASCAR can be found in his "roots." What follows is, by any standard, an incomprehensible mess of an article. I've never thought Dinesh D'Souza to be a genius, but he generally makes some attempt to get his facts straight -- or at the very least keep his arguments consistent. Not this time. He wants us to believe that there's some sort of genetic predisposition in the president to being un-American, handed down by his Kenyan father -- who left Barack Obama when he was two-years-old, by the way, and whom he saw only once thereafter. If you believe D'Souza, Obama is like Tarzan, fighting the imperialist interlopers riding on the back of an elephant -- not accepting that the U.S. has every right to do with the globe as it sees fit because of a cultural bias that's ingrained in his DNA.

Does any of this sound familiar?

I've always said that the irrational animosity and outrage directed at Barack Obama goes much, much deeper than simply the color of his skin. Sure, there are racist assholes within the Tea Party movement, but that doesn't explain the overwhelming sense of dread that a small but vocal portion of this country just can't seem to shake knowing Obama is in the White House. It's true that Obama has made some unpopular decisions, but most are unforgivable only to a very select portion of the electorate -- and that's the portion that D'Souza is attempting to speak for, the people whose wounds he hopes to salve and whose inconsolable vitriol he seeks to justify by putting the blame for their fury squarely on Obama's shoulders. Try this on for size instead: Maybe there's nothing especially wrong with Barack Obama and there's everything wrong with the way the Tea Party dingbats choose to see him. For them, Obama represents the final crushing blow to the dream that was their America. Hence the constant, shrill cries of "we want our country back."

All D'Souza's doing is recycling the most outlandish of the right's Manchurian President ghost stories and slapping a shiny new coat of pseudo-intellectual paint on it. He's completely full of shit in advancing yet another theory that casts Obama as not "one of us" -- an especially offensive implication given that D'Souza himself was born in India and lived there for the first 17 years of his life -- and doing it via a generally respectable magazine like Forbes, which he's now turned into nothing more than a soapbox from which to spout his exhausting right-wing superiority fantasies.

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker -- who's proven time and time again that she's mercifully free of the stunted argumentative tactics of an ideologue -- may have summed up D'Souza's piece best when she said that it could represent the official jump-the-shark moment when it comes to even the rational right's derangement over Obama. She rightly claims that, at this point, all that's left is for somebody to call Obama a pod person who's preparing America for a coming extraterrestrial invasion.

And you know what?

There are plenty of people out there who'd believe that.

Long Hard Road Out of Heaven

As you know, it's incredibly rare that I crib someone else's published piece wholesale and reprint it here. It has to be something I wish I'd written myself, something that makes a point I think needs to be heard far and wide, or both. Kathleen Parker -- the conservative columnist who may have provided the Cronkite-saying-Vietnam-can't-be-won moment during the election when she admitted that Sarah Palin was unqualified to be vice president -- is once again taking a ballsy stand against the conventional wisdom of her party for the sake of saving her party. Her assertion, and one that rings 100% true, is that "God" is killing the GOP.

"Giving Up on God" by Kathleen Parker (The Washington Post/11.19.08)

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I'm bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.

But they need those votes!

So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.

Short break as writer ties blindfold and smokes her last cigarette.

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Here's the deal, 'pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.

Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs.

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting.

With the exception of Miss Alaska, of course.

Even Sarah Palin has blamed Bush policies for the GOP loss. She's not entirely wrong, but she's also part of the problem. Her recent conjecture about whether to run for president in 2012 (does anyone really doubt she will?) speaks for itself:

"I'm like, okay, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is.... And if there is an open door in (20)12 or four years later, and if it's something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

Let's do pray that God shows Alaska's governor the door.

Meanwhile, it isn't necessary to evict the Creator from the public square, surrender Judeo-Christian values or diminish the value of faith in America. Belief in something greater than oneself has much to recommend it, including most of the world's architectural treasures, our universities and even our founding documents.

But, like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian. The change Barack Obama promised has already occurred, which is why he won.

Among Jewish voters, 78 percent went for Obama. Sixty-six percent of under-30 voters did likewise. Forty-five percent of voters ages 18-29 are Democrats compared to just 26 percent Republican; in 2000, party affiliation was split almost evenly.

The young will get older, of course. Most eventually will marry, and some will become their parents. But nonwhites won't get whiter. And the nonreligious won't get religion through external conversion. It doesn't work that way.

Given those facts, the future of the GOP looks dim and dimmer if it stays the present course. Either the Republican Party needs a new base -- or the nation may need a new party.

Related:

DXM: He Blinded Me Without Science/8.12.08

DXM: The Sectarian Candidate/12.6.07

DXM: WWJD? WTF?/11.29.07

DXM: Faith No More/6.8.07

Thrill Baby, Thrill!

A friend of mine used to regularly warn of the dangers of "men made dumb by pussy."

Although this notion may seem crass as hell at first glance, there's truth in it, unfortunately.

Just ask John McCain.

The Washington Post: "Something About Sarah" by Kathleen Parker/10.23.08

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

Last week, a lot of hay was made over an op-ed in the National Review written by Kathleen Parker -- a staunchly conservative voice -- in which she admitted that she was convinced Sarah Palin isn't qualified to be vice president and suggested that she graciously remove herself from the ticket.

Well, you can imagine the kind of reaction this has drawn from a lot of the invariably even-tempered folks on the right.

If you read nothing else today -- read this:

The Washington Post: "The Omen in My Mail" by Kathleen Parker/10.1.08

While I'd never suggest that the heaping of outrage in the direction of those who cross party lines is exclusive to any one political faction, threats of physical violence, cries of "traitor" not simply to party but to country, and the use of subtly underhanded language intended to imply that a certain political adversary isn't "one of us" -- along with the hypocrisy inherent in claiming to put "Country First" while tormenting someone who did just that -- this is almost strictly the domain of the modern Republican.

And while I can certainly be accused of doing my part to lower the discourse on occasion, I won't deny that Kathleen Parker's willingness to step outside the razor-wire-fenced lines separating her party from its sworn enemy is a damn humbling lesson in the importance of truly speaking your mind in the face of opposition.

The sad thing is, it shouldn't be. What she did shouldn't be such a big deal -- not if all of us are truly serious about putting not simply party, or even country, but truth first.