Utopia 2025

A question I’ve continuously wrestled with is this: at a time when the conservatives control virtually everything in our society, why are they so angry?

All you have to do is watch Bill O’Reilly’s show. Or listen to Rush. Or read Coulter, Malkin, FreeRepublic, or Dean’s World. They rarely evidence an emotion that isn’t some variation of red-hot anger or contempt. At liberals, anti-war activists, environmentalists, feminists, gays, Muslims, college professors, AIDS workers, journalists, Europeans, or any politician left of Zell Miller. It’s often anger at the powerless, like Cindy Sheehan. Why should someone so insignificant cause right-wingers to descend into frothing rage?

It’s just endless. They have just about everything they could have ever wanted, but still they nearly burst a blood vessel on a daily basis. Why?

Personally, I think this is because they realize, deep down, that their world isn’t built on solid ground. They know, but don’t want to admit, that the rug could be pulled out from under them at a moment’s notice. They’re insecure, really, just like the junior high school bully who makes fun of the fat kid. They’ll do anything to make sure they don’t become the kid everyone else picks on. And people follow the bully because they have those same sorts of fears. Adolescent first strike policy.

But how long can this go on? How long before they choke on their own bile? A long time, from the look of things. Too long.

“It’s true – Al Gore lost his home state in the 2000 election. But George W. Bush lost his home country.”

-Al Franken, Air America Radio

What are the limits of Presidential power in a time of war? Give me specifics.

I’ve long encouraged my good friend X Philius to write a weblog of his own. And in some good news for all of us, he’s taken my advice. Stop on over to Mbululu when you get a chance – I predict great things.

I’ve long said that the most rabidly right-wing program on Fox News is the morning show, “Fox & Friends.” This week they proved my point in spades, when hosts E.D. Hill and Brian Kilmeade both advanced what is apparently Fox’s latest meme: creating an “Office of Censorship” (I’m not making this up) so journalists would be stopped from printing stuff the administration doesn’t want them to print.

Why do they hate our freedom?

Although this is in equal measure saddening and maddening, it doesn’t surprise me one bit. When the country gets enthusiastically behind an endless, amorphous war against an enemy whose only definition comes from the administration that started the war, this is what you get. And believe me, it’s going to get *way* worse before it gets better. Strap in, people.

Over at Rosemary Esmay’s site is a fascinating “debate” about how, apparently, John Kerry, Cindy Sheehan, Max Cleland, the “Jersey Girls” and a host of other liberal standard-bearers (!) were “given a pass” and made untouchable by their (veteran/victim) status. Of course, that argument is ludicrous. But in a world where George W. Bush is a cowboy and Bill O’Reilly is a populist, nothing’s impossible.

This side of the looking glass is a scary place. Send me back, please.

Word of the day: supercilious

Was Rush Limbaugh so supercilious that he didn’t think that as a man on probation for doctor-shopping Oxycontin, his bags wouldn’t be searched by customs on his return from sex tourism hotspot the Dominican Republic?

Answer: Yes.

On his radio show Tuesday, Limbaugh said, “I had a great time in the Dominican Republic. Wish I could tell you about it.”

Ick. No. Please.

From Glenn Greenwald again:

For anyone who is accusing the Times of “treason,” or claiming that they harmed national security, what is the answer to this question:

What, specifically, would a terrorist have been willing to do on June 22 [the day before the banking story was published] that he would not do on June 23 as a result of the Times’ article?

The same question has been repeatedly asked, but never answered, with regard to the “treasonous” Times disclosure of the warrantless eavesdropping program:

What, specifically, would a terrorist have been willing to do on December 15 [the day before the NSA story was published] that he would not do on December 16 as a result of the Times article?

Prior to the “treasonous” Times articles, The Terrorists already knew that we were eavesdropping on their international calls and monitoring their banking transactions — because that information was previously, and repeatedly, put into the public domain, often by the Bush administration and President Bush himself. What the Times revealed is the lack of oversight and checks on these intelligence-gathering activities, not the existence of the activities themselves, which were already well known.

Oh, and a message to Brit Hume (from me, not Glenn): Go fuck yourself.

My good friend Jason recently convinced me to take another look at Terry Gilliam’s dystopian movie “Brazil.” I saw it once in college, and it left me feeling so depressed and hopeless that I vowed never to see it again. But it’s important to face up to your demons, so I gave it another try.

This isn’t a movie review site, so I’ll just say that it was just as depressing and hopeless as I’d remembered, but it may have been blunted a bit this time by just how insane things are now in the real world. Terrorism is only one of Gilliam’s targets in the movie, but whatever he trains his lens on gets a devastating blow.

Jill: Doesn’t it bother you the sort of things you do at Information Retrieval?
Sam: What? I suppose you’d rather have terrorists?
Jill: How many terrorists have you met, Sam? Actual terrorists?
Sam (dumbfounded): Actual terrorists?
Jill: Yeah.
Sam: Well, it’s only my first day.

As prescient as the “you’d rather have terrorists” line is — it could be coming out of a host of mouths: Coulter, Hannity, Malkin et al. — the biggest OMG moment for me came when the Dick-Cheney-like Helpmann is being interviewed on TV at the beginning of the film:

Helpmann: We’re fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I’d say they’re nearly out of the game.
Interviewer: How do you account for the fact that the bombing campaign has been going on for thirteen years?
Helpmann: Beginners’ luck.

Freaky.

“I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.”

-Kent Brockman, “Deep Space Homer,” The Simpsons