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Saturday, January 06, 2007

Cackles from the Balcony: San Francisco Uber Alles Edition

Eric and I have often joked that at the ice-cold bloodstained poo-stinking "heart" of Movement Republicanism there really isn't anything much to be found but a kind of dangerously scared self-hating woman-hating jew-hating gay-baiting crazy Klansman.

But, you know, the thing is, once upon a time, we didn't really believe this was entirely true, or at any rate widely or irredeemably true. Meanwhile, as the years of the illegal war, the years of the looting of governance, the years of lies and lawlessness have dragged on and on and on our laughter has grown more and more nervous on this score.

So, now we hear that the paragon-conservative Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was some kind of paranoid hard-core drug addict, intimidating black voters and making sure Jews wouldn't make their way into his neighborhood.

I mean, honestly, are there any self-identified conservatives who aren't batshit crazy bigots and bullies? Anyone? Anyone? Dad?

And what the hell is up with the skeeery San Francisco Values hysteria? Brownshirt O'Reilly thinks Coit Tower has blowing up coming to it, Hannity sees a San Francisco wave looming to engulf him? San Francisco values? Are they talking about yuppies buying up the Mission and taking their kids to school in SUVs? I thought these jackholes liked that sort of crap. If the right wing hates San Francisco so much, why is it such a vacation destination for them? Clueless hordes from the flyover states fly over here at such a rate that San Francisco has created a whole archipelago of fake San Francisco attractions to corral them off to -- Fisherman's Wharf, Sausalito, and so on, essentially acres of Brass Fantastics and T-Shirt Huts and occasional mimes to give them that cozy crappy Mall of America feeling they crave but with the peaceful picturesque hills of the Bay as a backdrop -- all to offer them the costly chance of being "elsewhere" without getting too much in our way or challenging them too much with, you know, "difference."

Anybody who reads this blog with any kind of regularity knows that I'm chock full of policy recommendations and cocksure philosophical pronouncements to redress the distress of our debased historical moment...

But, honestly, I sometimes can't help but wonder if we couldn't solve a huge proportion of our difficulties more simply by simply seeing to it that all of America's whiny white guys just went through some kind of twenty-first century initiation ritual.

Let's say, they all have to french kiss another guy, and then maybe even get a woody, and then realize that it really is fine, they can still be straight. Let's say, they all have to work for a competent fairminded boss who is a woman, and then realize that they are not diminished by that state of affairs. Let's say, they all have to go and have a beer with somebody who is smarter than they are but less privileged, and then realize that there is nothing so threatening, really, about finding your way into the wider world as it is and, actually, quite a lot of pleasure in the discovery that there is work to do that everybody is welcome to and needed for.

This sounds like it would require an awful lot of sacrifice on the part of queers (kissing awkward gawky straight guys, ew!), women (putting up with resentful clueless straight guys, ugh!), and the working class (teaching the facts of life to unmannered self-important ignoramuses, oy!), but are we not already called upon to suffer mightily in our daily intercourse with these doofuses?

Come to think of it, maybe this is just a way of saying that everybody in America should have to leave home and go to college.

I told Eric that my working theory is that there is something really encouraging in the discovery that Limbaugh and Rehnquist and the bully boy-king and so many other movement conservatives seem to be struggling with addictions. Maybe this suggests that there is some recalcitrant core of empathy and humanity even there in these villains, like a hardening pink wad of chewed gum, something in them that is more responsive and flexible and feeling than their words and deeds will warrant, something that must then be corseted and anaesthetized with drugs and zealotry else it will open even these hardened painted-shut windows to the good works and affiliations of the wider world they so noisily and bloodily and obliviously rampage around in.

Then we really laughed.

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