Friday, April 17, 2009

Conservative "Intelligentsia" At It's Finest

The Kansas Tea-bagging organizer receiving "welfare" whining about a "socialist welfare state" sealed it for me.

WTF???

How STUPID can Republi-Con-Idiots be??? Does ignorance and conservatism walk hand in hand? Is the "Idiot Nation" a prophetic piece?

We've all had the chance to hear them rant about US Democrats being "communists", "socialists", and even "Nazis" in the same breath, which really illustrates how far the "state of stupid" has gone in the NeoCon movement in North America. Now, I may just being an "elitist intellectual" here, but someone just HAS to say something like: "stop the insanity", and "enough 'stupid' already! That "awe shucks persona is NOT cute. Really. It's not!"

How anyone with a GRADE SCHOOL education can possibly believe that Nazis and communists are somehow "related", that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans, that nations can operate without taxes, that evolution didn't happen, is just beyond the comprehension of any - even slightly - educated person...

Watching the conservative "tea-baggers" in little Republican get-togethers all over the US was entertainment at it's finest. To think, some of these people actually have jobs, and might be functioning members of a modern society (I fear some may be teaching kids out there). It was great watching people on welfare cry about "socialism". Not that they'd know what socialism is... just that they'd heard it on some Fox TV show - between NASCAR racing and the Monster Truck derby...

Some quotes from "tea-baggers" couldn't be more telling:

""I love what teabagging is doing for conservatives," said television host Sean Hannity. "It tells you everything you need to know about us: that we're not just going to lie there and take it, but instead we're going to be aggressive and not stop until we get what we want.""

""I feel great, but I'm ready to relax," said Mary A. Johnson after the Des Moines rally. "That's why my girlfriends and I are going to finish our day of teabagging with a group facial.""

"These immigrants come here to take our land, our food, and our livelihoods," said Robert Knobs, a Pittsburgh native who moved to Phoenix to take a job as a Wal-Mart manager. "They are destroying small-town America as we know it."

"The idea of two men doing what Randy and I do in our most private moments...well, it gets me pretty hot and bothered," said Mary A. Johnson, Mr. Johnson's wife of 38 years. "Marriage is about family values, like raising children or baking pies or watching our favorite shows like Wife Swap, which Randy and I just love."

Mr. Johnson added, "The left is trying to get us to swallow this homosexual agenda, and I for one am going to spit it back in their faces."

This one's just "precious": ""I was just online one night, searching about teabagging," said Harry Peters of Seattle, Washington, "and after a few visits to other sites, I happened to click on a link about a teabagging party right here in Seattle." The teabagging party Peters attended took place outside of a men's restroom near the Space Needle. A dozen men gathered around the entrance, with pairs of men occasionally ducking into the restroom to "get hot water" for their teabags. "It's disgusting what the government is ramming down our throats," said Mr. Peters as he waited for his turn. "We have to get off handouts and stop begging the government to fulfill our every need. People need to be more independent." Mr. Peters, who attended Washington State University on the G.I. Bill after serving in the U.S. Army, is a contract manager at the Boeing Company."

DailyKOS says it best (check the link for a more detailed read):

"Nobody is trying to stop you from holding your "tea parties." Please stop saying you're oppressed when you're clearly not oppressed. You want to have a tea party? Go ahead! Get to it! Take to the streets, pleasantly aromatic baggies in hand!

We've had a president who decided that he could revoke the citizenship of Americans based on his own say-so -- and no conservatives were worried about their loss of rights. We've had a government assert that it could spy on any communications, without warrant or cause -- and no conservatives took to the streets, alarmed at the threat to their Constitutional protections. We found out we went to war over a weapons program that didn't exist -- oops. We found out that we subjected innocent, though brown, people to imprisonment without recourse, and others to torture so cruel that it rendered them mentally incompetent. We buried the nation in a mountain of debt -- well, them's the breaks. We forked over billions of dollars in giveaways to oil companies that were already making larger profits than any other companies in the history of the world -- hell, gotta keep John Galt in caviar. None of it raised a peep from any of you, you were all fine with it. The government could do no wrong -- except not going far enough.

But if returning to the tax policies that existed before Bush is the thing that's got a bee in your bonnet, claiming the end of the republic is at hand -- go for it. If you've suddenly decided that preventing government efforts to stave off a second Great Depression is the thing you're going to hang your collective hats on, or that saving one of the prime manufacturing sectors still left in the country is a bridge too far, by all means protest. Who's stopping you? Who's intimidating you?"

This "trend" in conservatism is closely mimicked by the "monkey-see, monkey-do" Canadian Conservatives. You hear their 'ignorant-ness' up here whining about their "right to bear arms" (be a citizen of Canada much lately?). About how taxes are bad (notwithstanding the fact that Canada was developed and BUILT on taxes).

You would assume that these people don't like roads, hospitals, police, schools, etc. Here's a great idea. Let's divide up the country for the Reformers. Let's make it like a Fox-TV reality show: We can give the "tax/government-haters" a barren chunk of land in Northern Canada. They can all move there and figure out how they can "pay-per-use" and build their own roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, airports, etc. I bet not a single Connie would take us up on this generous offer of free land in the Canadian North. We won't charge them for it, because the few dollars of taxes they paid should just about cover the cost of the land and all the resources underneath (probably not quite on the resources part, but... what the hey).

You can imagine the "suburban commando" NeoCon back out of his driveway onto a mud trail. Driving the 1/2 block to the trading post (because they prefer SUVs to walking), to sell pelts for a little cement to start paving the 20 feet of road in front of his house... He goes home to his candle-lit house (no utilities yet - not enough money in the bank to buy the solar panels - forget a grid - that takes tax money). He grabs a copy of "Guns and Ammo" and heads to the outhouse (Yup, taxes pay for sewers too). He returns to his "cottage" thinking he has to empty the latrine one of these days... the smell is starting to attract vermin... Heading into his house he realizes his truck is missing. Better call the volunteer "posse" (yup, taxes pay for police too). There'll be no going trapping tomorrow...

We probably ALL would love to see a little "homeland" carved out of parts of rural Alberta and Sask., maybe linked to parts of rural Montana and Idaho... Love to see these "gun-lovin'" zealots go it alone, and watch the "Animal Farm" society that develops from the chaos. Oh, but there wouldn't be any taxes. Crime, yes. War, yes. Disease, yes. But no, no, no taxes. Taxes are a sin...

The worst part of all this is how they have more gullible "average folk" all up in arms about taxes. The very people who benefit MOST from taxes seem to be the same beer-swilling, ATV-riding, gun-totin' folks who scream about "socialism" the most... It's all part of the NeoCon strategem, of course. How can you take a movement of the rich (which is what conservatism - small "c" IS), and make it populist? Well, you make it appeal to the Tim Horton's beer-swilling crowd. How to do that? You resort to "hot-button" politics. You flood your corporate-owned media with anti-tax messages, without really providing a reason (besides the "me" before everyone else argument). Nothing like telling people you can put money back in their pockets to get them onside.

One fatal little flaw with the "axe the tax" panderers: they tend not to think about building a nation - only their own rec-room. Thing is... if our nation is to have any real growth and change, TAXES are the most efficient way to promote this. A Northern nation like ours' has huge expanses which need public monies to cross. Joe Farmer from Saskatchewan isn't about to build the highway out to his farm from Balgonie. Try as they might, the people of Regina would never have the tax money to build and maintain an airport by themselves. Large projects such as this took millions, and billions, of dollars.

Money tends to centralize in the areas of greater population, but using the taxes of all. In this manner, the small town of Indian Head Sask. has a hospital, but the hamlet of Odessa (nearby) doesn't. Certainly TAXES from Odessa went into the Indian Head hospital - as did taxes from around the province and across the country.

Perhaps the deficit in learning here has more to do with a lack of civics courses. It seems that a LOT of average Canadians don't understand how their own country works. They might be able to name "Bagram AFB" in Afghanistan, or who the "Republican Guards" were (all said crap gathered from American "pop culture" media), but they can't name our head of state, figure out how Parliament is supposed to work, or realize what taxes are useful for.

It's a shame, really, that fully-grown adults - who preportedly attended grade school - jump on the anti-tax bandwagon with such reckless abandon. It is this type of mentality which led to the recent economic collapse, and the "boom and bust" cycles common to "gung-ho", "no-holds-barred" free enterprise unchecked.

... and most hard-right Canadian NeoCons are no different from their "tea-bagging" US cousins...

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VICTORY FUND

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing insights. Well done.

Anonymous said...

Idiocy has been progressively getting worse and the number of idiots has grown exponentially since the early 80's in the US. It spilled over into Canada in the late 80's and rapidly grew during the 90s and it has culminated in Bush and Harper.