Wednesday, January 19, 2011

F*ck Civility: Conservatives Are to Blame

As the phony debate about violent rhetoric rumbles on, I can't help wondering how most commentators miss the point: It's not the in-your-face angry stuff that gets wackjobs riled up, it's the insidious bigotry of "conservatives" that empowers them. Always has.

It doesn't take a shout, it only takes a whisper to set one group against another (or, in the case of America's "conservatives", against almost every other group under the sun). So if you're a "conservative" leader in the mould of Palin or Beck -- they whose careers thrive on stoking hatred -- you wouldn't need to yell "kill liberals" to get some nutjob shooting Gabrielle Giffords. True, you really, really hate liberals and want everyone else to... but you don't need to get all Mussolini about it. You just need to oh-so politely and 'reasonably' remind your audience that liberals are "not us" by citing endless spurious examples of their injurious anti-American ways. Then once your poison seed grows, the effects are the same. Your message may be subtler than a pogrom-rousing rant, more nuanced than a Tea Party placard, but your audience mob still reach the same conclusion: liberals don't deserve the same basic humanity that we demand for ourselves because they are bad and we are good. And once "conservative" resentment of all that liberal 'bad' reaches critical mass, it's not a big leap for folks to start shooting at them.

Remember back in the Holocaust, how "reasonable" human beings made Hitler's evil ambitions reality? They shot Jews, pushed them into gas chambers and then went home to hug their kids and chow down on schnitzel... all because the Nazis persuaded ordinary Germans that they were "us" and the Jews were "not us".

In America, "conservatives" obsess over accentuating the differences between people and picking fault. Us liberal hippies may prefer to focus on our shared humanity, but conservatism draws its succor through division. Conservatism is dangerous sh*t. Today's examples:

A 15-year-old kid is shot dead by US border agents for throwing rocks at them across the Rio Grande. You might think it a tragedy. But then you're not a "conservative". It's OK, the Mexicans are "not us" seems to be the conservative gist.... they're too busy saying the kid had it coming and castigating the bereaved parents for suing our government. Jeez, "conservatives" are misanthropic sh*ts.

Then there's "conservative" Alabama Republican Governor Robert Bentley who said the other day, shortly after taking the oath of office:

"Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister."

Classic "conservative" divionism, the poison seeds of future mayhem... And who do you think he means by those who have "not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior"? No prizes for assuming liberals, Muslims, gays, and any other "not us" group.

At this point, you might think I'm a big ol' hypocrite for demonizing conservatives (for them demonizing everybody else). But f*ck that. F*ck civility. F*ck the bogus notion of shared blame. F*ck the cum-by-yah bullsh*t. F*ck the GOP's new-found public moderation born out of fear of the anger they unleashed themselves... In short, f*ck "conservatives" because they are to blame. Period.


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1 comment:

  1. I totally disagree with the last part. We have to begin embracing intellectualism.
    We keep fighting amongst ourselves and the man keeps his foot on our throats and tells us it's the guy sucking shit next to you that's doing it.
    fuck all this nasty bullshit that only incites hatred and anger. IT is what keeps us in chains.

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