The Return of Fake Outrage

What the hell is wrong with America? We've got plenty of real issues for the 2012 campaign, plenty of nasty crap that directly affects people's lives, but all you see on the news is an escalation of outrage over nonsense.

Take last week for example - Hillary Rosen, one of CNN's professional pinheads, says a millionaire lady has never worked a day in her life. Cue a Fox News shit-storm of how Democrats don't think mothers work and how Obama is waging a war on moms. I'm not linking to any examples because they're all stupid - all of 'em! - and you've probably seen it already.

Or how about this week - Ted Nugent continues his impotent gun nut posturing by not-so-subtly hinting he'll go John WIlkes Booth if Obama is re-elected. He says it on video - like the moron he is - at some NRA circle jerk with a big fat loser in a Ron Paul shirt behind him. Funny thing is, threatening the President of the United States is actually a fellony so now the washed-up STD incubator is getting visits from the Secret Service. Good schadenfrued but as issues go it's just as non-existent as Rosen.

And in between? Well, the GOP blocked a much needed tax hike on the bankster scam artists who crashed the economy and some soldier leaked a bunch of photos of his buddies posing with Afghan body parts. That upset the Pentagon, who've generated another phony debate about how publishing the photos will just make the Afghans angry at us.

Because obviously they were okay with being blown up in the first place. It's seeing pictures of what they directly experience every day that'll hamper the whole "hearts and minds" thing...

Jesus, is this really what we talk about? Either the nattering of asshole nobodies or some sophomoric attempt at Orwellian perception mamagement? Has America really become that retarded!?

...You know, it has. Fuck the election, not like it matters who steers this ship of fools if everyone else is blowing holes in the hull.

Andrew Sullivan - Professional Turncoat

I don't usually do this, but I'm linking to another Blogger page because Andrew Sullivan really does suck that much.

I remember him as a cheerleader for Iraq back in 2003 who had the sort of convenient "change of heart" so common to pundits. Only he didn't wait until 2006 or 2007 when Iraq was so obviously screwed - no, he defected in 2004 because his BFF Bush threw in with the homphobes fretting over gay marriage. And Sullivan is gay, providing an excellent example of how conservatives don't even think about issues that don't directly involve their own skin.

And I can't call him an American conservative because he's a proudly self-identifying Brit. With an Irish surname. So being a traitorous rat is kinda his thing.

A Little Perspective

Last week saw Obamacare finally getting its day in court. Or days as it were. Because the Justices needed a whole bunch of oral testimony to determine if this document was Constitutional - something which according to Badger Wrasslin' Scalia they certainly couldn't figure out just by reading the damn thing.

Now, anyone with any sense knows this is gonna be resolved along partisan lines. This is the Supreme Court that thought lifting the DC handgun ban was a good idea so they're quite clearly deaf to the daily realities faced by Americans. They suck, that's a given.

But what demands commentary is the mass of crazy that's been pushing for this day ever since Obama offered a fix for this country's wretched healthcare system back in 2009. Since that day, everyone who self-identifies as conservative - or the many half-assed euphemisms that mean exactly the same thing - have been screaming that this is the worstest and most terrible thing to ever happen to America. Not one thing in our two and a half century history even comes close.

Pictured: Not as bad as Obamacare.

The arguments have ranged from your standard Invisible Hand Worship to dire warnings of both Communism and Fascism despite their mutual exclusivity. A whole new political movement was birthed onto the national stage because of these hysterics and legitimized so much that they get serious analysis.

When the fact of the matter is these people are all just stupid assholes.

You should know where this is going...

Let's go back in time for a moment. To that distant and half-remembered epoch of late 2001, the country still collectively losing its shit and George W. Bush presenting a two-fold solution in bombing the rubble in Afghanistan and that massive piece of legislation known as the USA PATRIOT Act.

Now there were certainly concerns from a few tame academics and politicians not worried about re-election that the very broad surveillance powers granted by this Act could very well turn the United States into a police state. But the popular response?

Fraternity pranks?

Nothing! Zip. Nada. A collective shrug of "That's just how things are now." We're talking a bill that paved the way for undercover police spying on Veterans For Peace and it didn't drum up a single tricorn hat.

And why? Say it with me now - because these people are stupid assholes.

They twiddled their thumbs for eight years through a vast expansion of the security state, officially-sanctioned torture of other human beings, and so much more malfeasance that future historians will likely group the Bush administration in with Pinochet and Pol Pot - and these freedom loving Americans didn't do a goddamn thing!

It took a black guy offering to cover their medical bills to get 'em off the couch and engage politically. And engage they did - in as moronic a fashion as humanly possible. Their rhetoric in the past three years has demonstrated not just a total ignorance of the very political and economic systems they reference but also a staggering cognitive dissonance. Executive overreach is a necessity when a Republican is in the White House. But when it's a Democrat - even if he's doing it the exact same way a Republican would - then they're all about freedom and liberty.

"I feel so liberated!"

For years, Americans that walk upright have been trying to figure this out. Is it some brilliant con by the GOP and Fox News? Do they lie that well? They certainly lie that frequently but it only works because these people - conservatives, Tea Partiers, libertarians of every stripe - are a bunch of tribal swine.

They don't care about any of that freedom crap. Hell, going by their constant fretting over taxes, they don't care about America at all. What they do care about is that sense of identity they get from being "Real Americans," railing against the Soviets and other bogeymen that don't exist. They don't oppose the Obamacare insurance mandate because it's invasive or unconstitutional but because The Other Guy did it. Their entire understanding of reality is a myopic, in-group/out-group dualism where anything they or their side does is inherently good while anything by those not like them - mainly brown people and women - is as wrong as wrong can be.

A moral use of tax money - smearing feces on other human beings.

Frankly, these fools don't deserve any freedom in the first place.