Utopia 2025

Hey Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, et. al.:

Please keep up your attacks on Cindy Sheehan. Savage her. Pull out all the stops. Burn her in effigy, if possible. Make Photoshopped posters with her wearing an Osama beard. (E-mail me, I’ve got a ton of other suggestions.)

Because the more you attack a mother who lost her son in the War on Iraq, the more you expose yourself as the hateful, anti-American bitches that you are. And even more importantly, as the Rude Pundit noted, the more you attack her, the more powerful she becomes as a symbol of this monstrous failed experiment.

With love and hugs,
Thomas More.

From a random Little Green Footballs commenter, about the outrage over the “We Love 9/11!” rally planned by the Department of Defense for this Sept. 11:

“Why can’t we celebrate anything good that has ever happened?”

Not. Making. This. Up.

There are some things that are just too terrible to contemplate. We don’t want to think that our fellow citizens could be capable of the things they are so clearly capable of. We don’t want to know that our neighbor could beat his wife, or that our parish priest molested a child.

But these things happen. And we need to face up to them.

Until recently, I’ve been unwilling to acknowledge the love that right-wingers have for 9/11. It’s an almost fetishistic obsession that allows them to indulge in all their worst impulses:

• foreigners are evil, especially if they don’t look like me;
• everyone is against me;
• no one understands me;
• violence solves most problems;
• all my detractors are liars and traitors;
• my country is the only power that matters; and
• I am the most powerful person in the world, and no one can tell me what to do.

They cling to the tragedy of 9/11 like Linus with his blanket. And no wonder – no question can’t be answered with “9/11 changed everything.”

As I said, I don’t like facing up to this. It’s not fun. But then the horrifying Mrs. du Toit steps in and reminds me. (She said she was going to stop writing her weblog; tragically, she went back on that promise.)

Face it: the right loves 9/11. It validates them. It warms them. It shields them.

And that’s the truth.

UPDATE: The Department of Defense (headed up by Donald “the weapons are in the area around Tikrit, and north, south, east and west somewhat” Rumsfeld) has announced plans to stage a massive rally, parade and (I’m not making this up) country music concert to “celebrate” 9/11 this year. This would be funny if it wasn’t so sick and wrong. AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!

UPDATE II: Clint Black, who will be headlining the “A! FY!” Concert on 9/11 this year (sponsored, as I’ve said, by the DoD), will no doubt be performing his song “I Raq and Roll” (again, I’m not making this up), which includes lines like:

If they won’t show us their weapons
We might have to show them ours

and

It might be a smart bomb – they find stupid people too
If you stand with the likes of Saddam
One just might find you

Toby Keith, call your office.

Some excerpts from Little Green Footballs’ “discussion” of the death of anchorman Peter Jennings:

“These guys are no more deserving of condolances than a suicide bomber. The media is the enemy. This is something to jubilate.”

“The victims of evil are insulted again and again when we fail to vilify what ought be vilified.”

“Do you pine over Goebbals? … Do you feel pity when a bug that stings you gets squished? You feel pity for Peter Jennings. Shame on you.”

“It’s been a good week so far for ending the careers of Jew-hating journalists.”

“Hell has another occupant.”

“A dead arrogant antsemitic Canadian born WASP prick with shit for brains!”

“Being an atheist I don’t believe in the place but were I a god-monger I’d wish him to rot in hell.”

BONUS: Karen of “The View From My Chair” is upset that news of Jennings’ passing interrupted the climactic moments of her “Law and Order” rerun. Words fail me.

Great stuff as usual from Tom Burka at “Opinions You Should Have.”

A commenter on my “Edumacation” post says we’ve come a long way in the 80 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial, where John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in the public schools.

I don’t think we’ve come very far at all. If anything, in the United States right now we’ve circled around to the beginning again. I believe that the likelihood of another Scopes Trial, with the same outcome, is more likely today than it has been in decades.

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine that in 1962, at the height of the space race, that President Kennedy publicly advocated teaching creationism (as it was called then, in a less PR-saturated age) in the public schools alongside evolution.

I wonder how that would have gone over with the mainstream media and the public?

One of the most common witticisms uttered by the crapweasel right wing against people who protested Bush’s war in Iraq was, “Hey commie – if you don’t like it here, why don’t you just go to Iraq!”

Here’s my take on that idea:

Hey Michelle Malkin – you want to live in a country where immigrants are imprisoned? Better find somewhere else to live.

Hey Rick Santorum – want to live somewhere where gay people’s lives are against the law? Get the hell out of my country.

Hey La Shawn Barber and Rush Limbaugh – you want to live in a country where torture is state-sponsored? Grab your passport, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass.

Hey Bill O’Reilly – want religion taught in public school science classes? Find a country more to your liking, please. Lots to choose from out there.

Hey Dean Esmay and Connie du Toit – think dissent is treason? Just leave.

Just leave. Because with these profoundly un-American ideals, you don’t belong here.

UPDATE: A special shout-out to the utterly loathsome Kim du Toit, who wants to hang and/or shoot anyone to the left of Tom Tancredo. Kim, please haul your gun-obsessed ass to the border ASAP. You’re not welcome here.

When it comes to a host of topics, from abortion to child rearing, the crapweasels believe there is one and only one “correct” viewpoint. Anything else stinks of “relativism,” one of the most popular boogeymen used by the right wing.

Is every family equally valid? Is every sexual orientation equally valid? Every religion? No, scream the crapweasels. NO!

So it’s funny that when it comes to evolution and creationism, suddenly teachers have the “responsibility to let students know about all sides of the ‘debate’.” Suddenly, relativism is their bestest friend.

Americablog says it well.

UPDATE: On Tuesday night, Bill O’Reilly said that teaching kids science in science class is “fascism.” Dean Esmay, call your office. (Hat tip: Rude Pundit)

From La Shawn Barber:

I’ve been asked by several people where I stand on the Condi-for-president meme. I wouldn’t vote for Condoleezza Rice for president of the United States. First, I don’t think women generally have the sensibilities to run the country. Before you jump all over me, it’s important that you know I don’t care what you think. You’re reading this blog, so you obviously care what I think, so there it is.

Now there’s a potent stew of misogyny and hubris. And don’t get her started on “the ungodly” or why her fundamentalist Christian beliefs are absolutely not in conflict with her enthusiastic support of state-sponsored torture.

Charming lady, really.

In one of those news stories that can’t help but wake me up briefly from my outrage overload, President Bush yesterday explicitly advocated teaching “intelligent design” in schools alongside that most evil of secular humanist inventions, evolution.

Fucker.

Wonkette has the Quote of the Day:

“Teaching [intelligent design] as ‘alternative’ to evolution is a little like teaching ‘magic’ as an alternative to physics.”

Which reminds me of one of my favorite science stories. Bertrand Russell once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady from the audience came up to Russell. “What you have told us is rubbish,” she said. “Everyone knows that the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

Russell chuckled at this and asked the woman, “Then ma’am, what is the tortoise standing on?”

“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down.”