Fruitcakes and Air-raids--or: I think I've Got It

Now, I recognize my own limitations as a political commentator because I am one of your actually dyed in the wool, left, left, knee-jerk, taking Vitamin K for my heart, ACLU-card-carrying, L-word, Liberals. I am the DFH your liberal bloggers have been talking about. I hug trees, I like wee beasties, I am gay-friendly and am an actually professing atheist. I am unafraid of discussing socialism and will use terms like "permenent revolution" amongst company that does not scare easily, and of course, I registered Democratic at the tender age of 18--as my only hope, back in my day, of ever seeing the end of Reagan-Bushism, which in my view was only an extension of McCarthy-Nixonism--in other words, an ever-present cult of mediocritical personalties exemplifying the stuff I did not want my country to persist in. As an Amnesty International/(and once I was exposed to it in my otherwise conservative Catholic College)--slightly Liberation-Theological type (Back in my youth, I still gravitated towards the potential of religions to positively organize--and I remain sysmpathetic, even having rejected religion) I began to recognize the actual struggle our Founding Fathers were talking about--in re: civil liberties.

I've been stereotypically liberal forever. But it wasn't until confronting the working class (even such as me) sons and daughters of the would-be-upwardly mobile and decidely Christian (unlike my then de minimus spiritual-self) that I realized I had to be a concrete, recognizing, testifying liberal, just to have a reconizeable identity from which to argue with them. I represented the single moms and the immigrants--populations I was not part of, but took the side of, having awoken to who they were--the judged. Like my possible self, the New Age hippy Liberal Bisexual or whatever else I was--was judged to be. I had to understand what conservatives saw liberals as. And they saw us as Fruitcakes. Moonbats. Faggots and Godless Communards. Seriously--these were things I heard when I took up the liberal mantle--that's what hardened me.

So with that, I get the argument they use today in reference to our candidate: "weak" on Terror. It's old, really, and I've seen it a lot. It's from the Cold War, really. Squishy-soft on Communism. Conservatives who got the wrong script, like Tom Delay, who is way out of the loop, being an incompetent, might even use the direct Cold War Phrasing: Marxist. All the right-wing complaints you'll see of Obama will be rehashes of Cold War motifs--"nattering nabob of negativism"="elitist". Karl Rove's "country club" fiction is a negativistic nabob. But wait a bit: who is saying we're facing WWIII?

Uh, the Republicans? John McCain, even. Bill Kristol, and other mediocraties they call right-wing thinkers, have decided the war on terror is our answer to the Cold War, which never did go hot. And so I draw on my one, true picture of them, the one sketch in my memory bank, so I can actually dig where they are coming from:

Frank Burns. Yes, Maj. Frank Burns, of the 4077th M*A*S*H*. That is the entity I think of when I think of Republicans. Larry Linville is so underappreciated (my props to him--he rules for making this character his own) for giving us this guy, this total weenie, who represents what I see, as a committed Republican archetype. The morally-relativistic pissant-coward. The smug douche. The guy running across the camp screaming "Air-raid! Air-Raid!" The fool. See these little larval-righties as they duck'n'cover, complacent entities who love the sweat and fear of huddling under desks, and secretly wonder when the fine event of Apocalypse might occur--

Maybe that's too harsh: but this is my steroetypical fanstasy; contra-fruitcake.

Take a look at the Boumediene response, or the FISA fight now: and you will see the same response you would have gotten from the McCarthyite Cold-Warriors: Accept this, or we're all gonna DIIIIEEEEE!!! They love the air-raid siren. "Surely more people will die," says Tony "Scales", and so on. "We'll lose a city," says Guiliani, and they trot out other cranial microphenoms. "AAAAARrrrghhhhh! We're all gonna diiiiiieeee!"

But the funny thing is, they tout the "We're all gonna die" line without any rationalization for how and why. And they can't even always articulate how their machinations will prevent death. They will all maintain however, that they are acute students of political science, and they understand very well what is going on.

But those who love the Constitution, talk about principals, and think death is not too high a price to pay for liberty? We are Fruitcakes...or nutcakes, if it's Gingrich talking. If we want to think that an educated, prepared populace of patriots are better than average-prepared for a stirring defense of our borders, and we will prevail--and we are not either supposed to be afraid, but only fear the idea of "fear itself..." we must be fruitcake. If we still think the Constitution pertains, we must be nuts, moonbats, loonies. But you want to know a weird thing I suppose about that?

You know the Soviets? They called their dissenters "crazy," too. Locked'em up. If they want to discredit you, you could be doing something right....

I am proud to be a little "fruitcake", if they are content to be moral cowards. I am content to be a patriot--if they are content to set aside the Constitution. I'm on the brave and patriotic side. They are cowardly and whiff of treason.

Seems about right, to me.


Just saying.

I don't always pop off like this. :)

it seems to me that you have many conversations going at once in your head (don't think I would know anything about that!) as evidenced by your liberal use of the parentheses (wouldn't have a clue about that one either!). As a fellow ADDer, I suffer from parenthetical disease as well. I bet your college professors banged their heads on the table over your essays, too. Mine decided I was hopeless. Sadly, I have to conclude they were right, but damn it, I loves my parentheses!

I know you're weary, and I know your plans don't include me, but we've got tonight, who needs tomorrow? We've got tonight babe, why won't you stay?

for the morning folks.

great rant, the Frank Burns comparison is perfect.

I am confident that the "weak on terra" meme isn't going to float this year.

thanks comrade :patriot: