Coming of Rage in Neverland

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/coming_of_rage_20110512/#



G. Gordon Liddy, noted Watergate thief and tournament-level egomaniac, once said that, “The press is like the peculiar uncle you keep in the attic—just one of those unfortunate things.” Of course, such a quote, rather than maligning the press, ultimately serves only to label the quote’s originator as a crackpot. Who else but a crackpot would want to shove another family member into the attic simply because he or she tends to ask a lot of questions about the world and expects a certain logic to be present in the answers?

It’s a common phenomenon, this maligning of the press from the right wing, and it’s what I love about blowhards like Liddy. Like the ancient geocentrists who believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that all other heavenly bodies revolved around it, so much of the conservative ideology assumes that its stubborn refusal to tolerate any point of view that doesn’t recognize the values of the GOP as originating from some fixed center at the very core of the moral universe is in adherence to some permanent truth and not merely proof that the GOP is too fearful and too unimaginative and too antiquated to be able to comprehend—let alone keep up with—a reality that, simply by being chemically based, is anything but immovable. That’s why the conservatives perceive any criticism of their principles to be an attack on reality itself, and therefore believe that any disagreement with them is not only mad but also depraved and deliberately pernicious. It is also how they are able to so easily integrate the concept of absolute good and evil into their worldview.

A conservative, for example, would never have the sort of conversation that I remember having with my then-girlfriend, who is now my wife, right after I dropped out of college to become an insufferable know-it-all and condescending braggart.

More at the link --

K&R