"Conservatives"

It's that time again folks! Yet another installment of explaining why "conservatism" isn't anything like a genuine political philosophy as it is the putrid mental excretions of the lower end of the bell curve. In other words, it's a jumble of incoherent ideas, agglomerated from the intellectual struggles of tragically stupid people. Sometimes these ideas are invented by "conservatives" themselves, to rationalize their confused rage at a world that passes them by. Other times their rage is directed at targets provided by their cynical political leadership, who know damned well that "divide and conquer" is an efficient way of maintaining their control over their stupid chump followers.

Even so-called "smart" conservatives are actually quite limited. Former Nixon speech writer/comedian Ben Stein is a good example. He gives off this professorial air and he might be good at trivia (I assume he genuinely knew all of those answers on his game show), but he's saddened many of his half-hearted admirers for his participation in his brain-dead movie "Expelled."

Next, there's this fellow (or lady) who first showed up trashing me for unjustly, or undeservedly trashing mark steyn and to whom I extended all sorts of qualified praise but then he or she typed this dreck, about how the US was justified in going after Sadr as a way to punish Iran for its "titanic heights of meddling" in Iraq, as if the USA isn't meddling there! He or she then finished off their screed praising the bloody, ham-fisted US policy in Iraq with this paean to the bush II regime's alleged promotion of democracy in Iraq:

I'd earnestly like Iraq to become the Middle East's first non-Israeli democracy. If it can happen there in spite of ethnic antagonism and civil war, it can happen in all of the other illiberal rights-violating excuses-for-states in the region.

Which is, of course, the most laughably deluded bunch of crapola that one could hope to produce. And at this point, it doesn't even deserve a refutation it's so self-evidently insane.

I guess the origins of my need to type this post today comes from my finally checking out some information on the US-American "conservative" who shot up that Unitarian church out of hatred of its "liberal" values. I wasn't really all that excited by this story. Sure, it's a tragedy. Every single day is filled with horrible tragedies though. Yeah, the guy was spending money he couldn't afford reading the dreck put out by fascist buffoons like Bill O'Lie-ly, Shameless Hannity and Michael Stupid Savage, and yeah, that was no doubt a big contributor to his homicidal rampage. But for a nation of 300 million people, saturated with that right-wing murderous, bullying propaganda, one guy killing two people every ten years or so isn't really going to alarm the rest of the country. I guess what I'm saying is that the left blog-o-sphere is getting all excited about this guy and being able to point to O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage and all the rest of their ilk and shout: "This guy is YOURS!!" and the response is going to be underwhelming. Yeah, he's "theirs" and theirs only one of them and he was probably a little crazy to begin with, just like those legendary impressionable youngsters who let their "Dungeons & Dragons" obsessions get the better of them. "What are ya gonna do?"

Don't get me wrong. I agree that the right-wing has fostered a climate of murderous, bullying, intolerant hatred. I just don't see that this crazed, lone gunman atrocity is going to be the canary in the coal mine that progressives see it as.

What got me motivated to post was finding out that the gunman was an unemployed ex-trucker who was running low on food-stamps. That made me think, holy-shit! This guy is a poster-boy for Stupid Right-Wing Chump if ever there was one! The guy has been fucked over by a corporate system maintained by BOTH the Democrats and the Republicans [It's kinda neat to have the awareness to know that the whole game is rigged! It keeps one from perpetually pinballing from one corrupt corporate party to the other in the futile hope of realizing genuine "change."] and who does he take his anger out on? Progressive Unitarians for their feminist-promoting, anti-racism and anti-homophobia ways! Some of the sweetest people on earth, who are to be credited for their ability to resist a lifelong exposure to the garbage of US corporate propaganda, and, furthermore, people who have nothing to do with his economic predicament.

Jim D. Adkisson, you are a stupid chump. I sure hope you got those fucking books from those millionaire con-men at a discount, or handed out for free by some wingnut welfare foundation . Because buddy, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage ad nauseam are laughing at you all the way to the fucking bank. Like "driftglass" says at the link above, their motto is: ""Keep 'em stupid. Keep 'em scared. Feed 'em lies." and brother, you are one stupid, scared, lied to motherfucker. Yeah, your wife left you and you don't have a job because women stand up for their rights and the Unitarians welcome gays as human beings the same as everyone else. Actually, I rather suspect that your wife left you because you too successfully incorporated the intolerant, macho he-man bullshit that pathetic viagra-swilling losers who travel to impoverished countries that have a huge sex-trade operation and cowardly draft-dodging hypocrites told you was awesome. And I suspect that your economic prospects are more the result of what passes for the "free market" you've been brainwashed to worship and adore than they're the result of homosexuals being treated like human beings somewhere.

You see, O'Reilly, Hannity and all those guys have a pretty sweet deal. They get to cheer-lead for the home team, and it doesn't matter how many times they screw up, because the home team always wins. The home team owns the referees and the stadium and everything else. And the owners don't want the Jim D. Adkissons of the world to succeed. The Jim D. Adkissons of the world are supposed to shut-up, work (if there's nobody who'll do it cheaper) and buy tickets to the games and subsidize the sky-boxes for the patrician class (probably on credit since they refuse to work at slave-labour wages. And the Jim D. Adkissons of the world aren't supposed to be able to think critically about their situation. No sirree. If they did that, there'd be a whole mess of trouble for the home team. That's where moronic shills like your heroes O'Reilly and company come in. They're not the owners. But they've got some talent for shouting and bullying. They genuinely believe in the con-job, in the scam. And why shouldn't they? It's working for them. They got in at the beginning of a big pyramid scam, so why shouldn't they celebrate the way the scam is working? (I notice that I've moved from talking about a corrupt sports team to a pyramid scheme. Ah well, ...)

The point is, that those right-wing demagogue stoops know that they benefit from the capitalist "white, male, Christian power structure" and that the way to preserve it is to keep the non-white, female, non-Christians in their place. The people to do that are the Jim D. Adkissons of the world. Guys who have basically been worked-over by the system and who really have nothing to claim but their alleged superiority over minorities and women and who take it as a personal affront when a woman or a person of colour gets elevated above them in the social pecking order. Then you can blame feminism, affirmative action, or whatever recent phenomena that emerged to counteract the blatant favouritism of the white, male power structure as having given these presumptuous lesser beings an "unfair" advantage. You call any attempts to redress the injustices of sexism, racism, imperialism, capitalism as "un-American" or "un-Canadian," you tell your knuckle-dragging devotees that democracy is radical extremism and you encourage these frustrated bullies to attack these movements for justice and decency and thereby dispel any threats to the status-quo.

At the same time that I was reading about that chump Adkisson, I came across this. It's supposed to be some sort of "conservative" battle-cry, but to me it represents the very sort of vague, incoherent, oppressive gobbledy-gook that I've been talking about.

I AM CONSERVATIVE! There, I said it! I feel better. It's something I don't say often enough, to people I know. Even in Alberta, Conservatives are quiet. I have been in meetings where some Liberal has been spouting off about how wrong the provincial conservative government is on some issue, and I say nothing. Maybe that's why I blog, I can be the one spouting off, and you can listen or not, it's up to you the reader.

I'm not going to deny this woman her personal experience, but for me, it's always been the right-wingers who feel that you're obliged to hear their outbursts about how great right-wing politicians are, or how much they hate unions, feminists, socialists, etc. Usually always with a "Am I right?? Am I right or what??" But let's continue:

This is where the Liberals have an advantage, they proudly declare they are Liberals and therefore we should listen to them especially about Canadian values. We have been brainwashed for years with the Liberal agenda, we have been made to believe that Canada is a liberal country. That's just not true. Canada is a conservative country.

At this point, one doesn't know whether to disagree or not. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" haven't been defined yet. There's obviously a vague sense of what she's talking about, but since "conservatism" is such a debased concept, it's impossible to say. Nevertheless, going out on a limb, I'm going to have to say that she's probably wrong.

The true heart of Canada, is not the swingers clubs, the drug sites, greenhouse gas spewing environmentalists, the easy on crime liberals, we have been lead to believe. It's the loudmouthed Liberals/lefties telling us that, with the expert help of the media.

OMFG!! What a stream of insanity! Yeah, I was talking to Stephane Dion the other night, ... we were snorting coke out of the ass crack of some other guy's wife down at the swingers club. It was hard to hear each other, what with all of our spewing of greenhouse gases after our vegan enviornmentalist meeting earlier that afternoon. Right before we robbed a bank.

Right there, I knew I wasn't going to like what I'd read in the rest of her post. Vague "family values" rhetoric, coupled with retrograde notions about political-economy. "Canada is about fucking one person for the rest of your life, in the missionary position." Excuse me lady, but fuck right off. And while you're doing that, ponder the fact that your whole conservative "law and order" shtick is built on bullshit. You see, contrary to your simplistic authoritarianism, your "conservative" economic policies create the conditions for crime, and your prison systems only create hardened criminals. If anyone is "soft on crime" it's the fucking "conservatives." Because they're imbeciles.

Anyhow, what [according to our fearless "conservative"] is the true heart of Canada?

The true heart of Canada is our families and our land.

Stop and ponder just how inane that is. "Our families." What the fuck is that supposed to mean? All of our families? Like the work-a-holic father who's porking his secretary while his wife responds with alcoholism and his kids sell drugs at high-school? No, obviously she's got some vague Norman Rockwell kinda image in her head, of the working, white, heterosexual father, the stay-at-home, white, "pure" mother, the football captain son and the chaste, cheerleader daughter. Oh yeah, and Christian, don't forget Christian. Now there's an outside chance that this person would also be accepting of families from any other ethnic group or faith, so long as they were patriarchal and socially conservative. Still, it's a highly exclusionary standard.

But "our land"?? What the hell are we supposed to say about this? What is it about our "land" that makes Canada "conservative"? I can't even begin to speculate. It's a meaningless statement. Which is significant. Think about it. At the heart of defining what her country is, what it means, she farts out "our land" -- a completely meaningless concept -- and therefore reveals the emptiness at the core of what she believes she herself should be.

Environmentalists can praise Suzuki all they want, but they do nothing to actually help preserve the land, they don't plant trees in the summer, they are too busy protesting in some far off land I will never be rich enough to see. They are not there when a hurricane hits, they are too busy protesting in Washington. They do nothing, they serve only themselves and their own agendas. It's the Christian organizations helping in Africa, while environmentalists yell about stopping DDT, which could stop malaria cold, but can't be permitted because a bird egg might get harmed? They offer nets, anyone here been bit by a mosquito at anytime other then bedtime?

Boy! Can we get anymore self-righteous and deceitful? "Liberals" do nothing to preserve "the land"? Any links to back that claim up? No? I didn't think so. So fuck you. A-n-d your incoherent babbling about tree planting.

We're all "too busy protesting in some far off land [she'll] never be rich enough to see"? What absolute drivel. Are Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City all in some far off land? What?

We're not there when the hurricane hits??? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Last time I checked, the right-wingers were condemning the poor of New Orleans for NOT LEAVING when the hurricane was coming!! [Forgetting of course that they had no means of escape.] What hurricane is she talking about anyway? Does she drive around looking for hurricanes so that she can volunteer her services? No? Then what the fuck is she talking about? And why are Canadian liberals busy protesting in Washington when hurricanes hit? I've never been to Washington. Waitaminnit, ... is the USA the far off land she'll never be able to afford to visit? If so, then how can she be there when the hurricanes hit? There aren't many hurricanes in Canada.

The rest of that section is similarly full of groundless accusations and incoherent yammerings. Let's continue:

Feminists cry: "It's my body, my choice!" as they kill those little ones that would support them in their old age. They might have killed the only person in this world who would have loved them, without conditions. Yet, they want our children in day cares with unionized workers, not with their Mom or Dad. They do not want their own children, but they want ours.

The writer is obviously being willfully ignorant of the fact that many women have always wanted this choice, and that if they did not have it, they would risk anything to take it themselves. Sugary fairy-tales about unconditional love notwithstanding. Beyond that, I've got two kids. One from a confident, no-nonsense, pro-choice feminist. Come down to the Skydragon Centre in Hamilton, Ontario and you'll meet all sorts of family-friendly leftists or "liberals" as right-wing yahoos tend to put it. Furthermore, progressives demand unionized, subsidized daycare not because we support union-driven make-work programs. But because daycare workers ought to earn a decent wage and because difficulties in obtaining affordable, quality childcare are the prime culprit behind the high levels of unemployment among single mothers, and, therefore, child poverty. And you can take a survey if you want to, but I'm pretty sure that all the guys who leave their "baby mommas" and all those women themselves aren't necessarily "liberals."

The end result of all of this "conservative" rhetoric is to increase women's suffering, child poverty, and social injustice. Isn't that just like everything else?

Judges let sexual predators off with time served, or juveniles who kill someone get house arrest, this is the liberal way. Punish the victim, coddle the criminal. Is it any wonder that criminals voted for the Liberals in the last election?

It's already been established that "conservative" policies create the conditions that increase crime. They therefore have no credibility from which to argue for an increasingly expensive, brutalizing US-style penal system.

Then we have terrorists, "Bring Khadr Home" they yell, he's a Canadian, he was only 15, the nasty Americans are not letting him sleep! Bullfrog. He's a terrorist.

I've already dealt with this insanity here.

I Am Conservative. I am not heartless like the Liberals want you to think. I donate more time and money to charity than any Liberal I know, I do it because I care.

I Am Conservative because to the roots of my soul, I believe in family, in community and in helping others.

Now, here' the thing: I'm sure this person is a real sweetheart one-on-one. But as has been established with only this cursory look at her facts and arguments, she doesn't have a clue what she's talking about, and her simplistic, yet still incoherent, ideas end up only increasing the suffering and misery she's so concerned about ending.

I'm sure that many people of all political persuasions feel that way as well. My question is, why aren't you a Conservative then?

I'll say it as plainly as I can: It's because we don't have our heads up our asses.

Trog69 gave a hearty endorsement of Mentarch's "Eight Principles of Incompetence," and I said that while I was initially at odds with his whole ascribing to incompetence thing to whit: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence " due to the systemic and malicious nature of the bush II regime's crimes and the bloodthirsty nature of their right-wing attack dogs, it's also the case that I don't believe in good and evil, and that I believe humanity is stupid. It stands to reason then, that all this bloody, ham-fisted monstrousness is the unavoidable result of the stupidity of the "conservative" political movement. Observe the Eight Principles:

Zeroth Principle: Incompetence is driven by intellectual sloth.
First Principle: Incompetence surrounds itself with incompetence.
Second Principle: Incompetence is ethics-impaired.
Third Principle: Incompetence abhors transparency and accountability.
Fourth Principle: Incompetence does or says anything to defend itself.
Fifth Principle: Incompetence always supports incompetence.
Sixth Principle: Violence is the last refuge of incompetence.
Seventh Principle: Incompetence is nothing but consistent with itself.

Notice how violence is their last refuge. They're stupid, so they need to cheat, but they're bad cheaters so they try to cover it up. Their cover-ups are incompetent so they first attempt bluster, then violence. It's pretty much the career stories of the entire bush II regime. This stupidity then, has terrifying consequences. So, they're not just deplorably ignorant and insane. They're whole movement is unavoidably bound for bloody crimes against humanity.