Monday, June 30, 2008

Republicans And Love Of Country

Basically, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Obama is making a patriotism speech where basically he says that he won't let anyone impugn his patriotism.

Which McCain has, if not in so many words. Has the man never heard of the Intertubes?? He says outrageous shit and then simply denies he said it. This may be the first year in which YouTube is used more to debunk a lying politician than to check out Leeroy Jenkins.

OK. Plug your ears and lock up the kids. I'll wait...


WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH REPUBLICANS?!?!?!?

Seriously.

Did you somehow become fucking convinced that only YOU love your Country(TM)? News flash assholes, not only do you NOT have a monopoly on loving America, I'm still not convinced that upwards of 90% of you ACTUALLY love America. Sean Hannity dry humping the country (and one sort of envisions that happening to Florida...like a little rat dog humping a leg) notwithstanding, what Republicans ACTUALLY do is TALK about loving America.

I'm going to give you a little hint. Republicans (in the main) don't love America, they love themselves. The reason they spend so much time talking about loving America is that they figure that America is the country most likely to allow them to love themselves with the least amount of interruption or inconvenience. If another country, say Albania, made them a better offer...they'd be on a plane in a second, all those country and western songs notwithstanding.

How can I say this? Simple. If, when discussing taxes, your first words about taxes are something on the order of, "It's MY money, how dare they tell me what to do with it," you love yourself.

If you are terribly concerned with a terrorist attack on American soil...putting YOU at risk...without regard to whether an attack is an existential threat to the country? You love yourself.

Are you concerned with what "Teh Gay" is doing to our moral fabric (LINK WARNING: Shower before and after clicking on the link)...mainly because it makes you feel icky (or even worse, vaguely titillated)? You love yourself.

Basically, what we have is a group of people who are like an abusive boyfriend. As long as America puts out, in whatever kinky way these Republicans want it to, they'll let America occasionally go out to the mall or see friends. If the bitch crosses them though? She'll be sorry.

So spare me your patriotic chest thumping. Go play with a tub of butter or something and leave those of us who actually care about her take her to the ER and have the broken bones looked at.

3 comments:

bassplr19 said...

This bothers me a little more than excessive patriotism...http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080701/ap_on_el_pr/obama_faith

Itinerant Pedant said...

I don't have a problem with faith based intiatives per se.

If you get federal money you shouldn't get to cherry pick who you serve though. I'm thinking about only giving a homeless guy shelter if he attends a church service...as a precondition of the aid. You want to make three hots and a cot available and a service available and the two have nothing to do with each other? That's OK.

My problem with faith-based intiatives is in the implementation. Is it just a giveaway to a mega-church or is it funding for a valid social service? Under Bush, I envision more the former. Without any direct evidence, to be sure...though given the rampant cronyism in FEMA, in HHS, in the EPA and DOJ I'd say I have plenty of circumstantial evidence.

Under Obama, I have some optimism that they (faith based programs)would be funded as adjuncts to the social safety net, NOT as a replacement.

Let's leave first principles aside for a moment though. The more Machiavellian part of me says that this is pretty clearly one of the prongs of a 50 state strategy. Did we think that the Democrats were going to beat Republicans only by appealing to secular progressives? Hey, we're more prevalent than we were, but we ain't CLOSE to over half the country. At worst, this makes McCain run to the right in more bible belty states. The more he kowtows to the religious right, the greater the chance one of those times gets play in the media and St. John The Maverick dies.

He gets lumped in with the Republican brand image, and he's in BIG trouble.

If we want to help the country, we have to win first. And winning includes making McCain defend territory he ought to be able to count on rather than screwing around on terrain we need. Even if I had a huge issue with faith based initiatives per se, I still wouldn't care, because I care more about keeping religion out science textbooks. If they want a place in the soup kitchen instead, I'll count that as a win I will absolutely take.

Anonymous said...

What's wrong with republicans? Hmmm...I going to go with the idea that they all have a particularly virulent form of cognitive dissonance (oh--look it up).