The right wing conservatives were soundly defeated at the polls in November 2008, the American people handing over the Executive Branch and both Houses of Congress to the Democrats to see if they can’t screw up a good thing like America a little less aggressively than Bush The Younger and his insane henchmen. It was a simple message, telling them in essence: Shut the hell up and go away! Given the magnitude of the mess in which they are leaving America after 8 disastrous years, you’d think they’d take heed and go somewhere to take stock of the situation, maybe resolve to base their ideology on reality or something close to it. You know, a little soul-searching, some examining where they went wrong and a little discussion on how they can do better in the future, that sort of thing.
But who are we kidding here? Come on! These are the people who when they won big and enjoyed power were sore winners! They couldn’t demonize their opponents enough, even in victory. They waged extensive campaigns attacking the personal character and the patriotism of anybody who disagreed with them, the very definition of scoundrels. Did anybody expect these lunatics to be gracious losers? To accept the olive branch offered by President-elect Obama? To see the wisdom of working together as one nation to tackle some of the biggest crises our nation has faced in many decades? Hah! Their insane world-view is far more important to these clowns than the welfare of their own nation, the exact thing they accuse those who disagree with them.
There are already Impeach Obama websites out there, and he won’t even be president for more than 2 months yet. Already a hound-the-administration campaign like that of the 1990’s directed against President Clinton is being waged and there is no Obama Administration in existence yet! Can you impeach a president-elect? While nobody expects anybody in America to hold their tongues when they disagree with a president, well, let the man be president first and do something before you denounce any policies or smear any characters. But that would make sense, wouldn’t it? And we are taking about people who want the story of Adam and Eve taught in science classes here, aren’t we?
So, America being America, free speech reigns, even gibberish, and smart people wouldn’t have it any other way. When the right wing was in power they cried crocodile tears about the wrong people enjoying free speech, namely anybody but themselves. And they used that free speech to do all they could to drive wedges between Americans rather than trying to unite the nation. So what you wind up with in 2008 is a lot of people who consider their fellow citizens their blood enemies, not out of any overt acts committed, but over disagreements on how to best solve our common problems. And so the e-mail hate campaigns begin and tiny little hate committees form, issuing press releases and manifestos having nothing to do with truth and everything to do with the politics of hatred and divisiveness. What fun!
Unfortunately for them, the American people are less and less fooled by these dense clods and know exactly what are their motives. All they need to do is look around them and see the results of the Neo-Cons’ 8 years in the seat of power and their legacy of fear mongering, character assassination, lies, corruption, war and thievery: a wrecked economy, a drowned city, 2 wars against small nations with no end in sight, tortured prisoners, unemployment and foreclosures soaring, and on and on. Neo-Con Artists is more like it, and the whole world knows it at this point. But don’t expect these transparent oafs to disguise who they are during their renewed campaign. The thing is, they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong! They think that the majority of the people still want them around. Go figure. Admitting mistakes has never been their long suit.
They truly believe their resounding defeat at the polls and America finally seeing them for what they are has to be some sort of mistake, or a massive fraud perpetrated by the winners of the elections, just like the ones they themselves pulled off in 2000 an 2004. Why else would that occur to them? Well, the margin of defeat was beyond close, and the message was clear to all but delusional fools. Namely, the Neo-Cons and their Christian Fascist allies, the kind of people who used to be called Jesus Freaks and carefully avoided in earlier, more sensible times. They make no more sense now than they did then, their political ideology just as misinformed, contradictory, shallow, mean-spirited and garbled as their so-called theology. Now that they are not running anything but their mouths, America gets to be entertained by them instead of having the crap scared out of us.
So let them wage their spiteful little campaigns and bite the hands of peace extended to them. Their kind is dying so they run in packs, making up all sorts of crazy bullshit about normal, regular people. The whole world knows they have no shame, no dignity and no restraint. And this can be pretty funny sometimes, when you see just how dumb they can get, but you’d think these people would use their time to maybe learn something, anything from their mistakes, but that doesn’t look like it’s in the cards. Which is just fine with people who enjoyed the nastiness of the presidential campaign and some of the off-the-wall accusations and theories put forward. In a perverse way, it sure was a lot of fun, and will be even more amusing now knowing that none of this canned crap will become official policy.
So, barring a reflective return of the Republican Party to the sober-minded party of business and practical, intelligent men, the rest of us can only hope they come up with some real doozies to lead them, real rootin’-tootin’ whack jobs on the order of Ross Perot or Rudy “The Savior of 9/11” Giuliani. A promising sign is Sarah Palin salivating to escape the frozen north and get back on the national stage, making loud presidential noises for 2012 or 2016, maybe even appointing herself to Ted Stevens’ Senate seat if he can survive the recount but not the ethics committee’s wrath. Democrats can only pray for such a gift, and the nation’s comedians will rejoice.
There’s always Mike “Creationism” Huckabee, or Mitt Romney, trying to be who his father was, minus the old man’s brains and integrity, or their own Barack Obama, 37-year old rising star Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana and the son of immigrants from the Indian state of Punjab. His real first name is Piyush but he adopted the nickname Bobby after a character named Bobby Brady (!) in “The Brady Bunch” TV show. You can’t make that one up! He’s another Creationism nut too, a convert from Hindu to Roman Catholic who has also preached to Pentecostal and Baptist congregations, so maybe another conversion is in the offing, to a more properly Fascist Christian denomination that Neo-Cons can relate to easily. He might be pretty entertaining, especially when the crazies start to sell the Republicans as the party of minorities, the Punjabi-American-Roman Catholic-Antiscience-Creationist minority, that is, a minority of one crazy guy. Yeah, that guy! Take that, rainbow Coalition!
It ought to be an interesting sabotage campaign, one that is just getting started. When Barack Obama actually does something as President we’ll hear anguished cries and wails about the end of life as we know it and the crumbling of the Republic and rumors of cannibalism at the White house. Bill O’Really will shift into mouth-foaming overdrive, babbling some incoherent nonsense about “real Americans” and turning a hilarious shade of red. Those few right wing big name politicians not caught up in deviant sexual scandals or bribery investigations will appear on cable news shows calling for America to come to its senses and return the Congress to the Neo-Cons to thwart President Obama’s secret socialist/jihadi/Marxist/Nazi agenda. Americans real and otherwise will laugh heartily and encourage their whacky antics, fascinated with the show. Our inboxes will be loaded with crazy funny e-mails from all kinds of committees and political action organizations with names like The John Wayne Eternal War Society, the Ronald Reagan Brigade or Virgins for Jesus.
Obama proved that the internet is the new battleground for political discourse and that that lesson won’t be lost on the Neo-Con artists, except maybe the serious, lucid content part of the deal. While his presidential record so far is perfect since he’s not president yet, he’s bound to make a mistake or two once he’s sworn in and actually on the job. Everything he does both good and bad will result in a cry for his impeachment, a recount of his landslide vote count and maybe even a demand to allow “real Americans” to declare that he is not “their” president. Pandora’s box is open for business, and the gutter’s the limit. For fans of this sort of thing, the fun is just beginning.