Why conservatives will keep winning ...and winning...and winning
A quirky screed by Bonnie BucquerouxA veritable cottage industry has sprung up around analyzing this country’s lurch toward right-wing Republican conservatism. For more than a dozen years, we have been inundated with books and articles offering insights into this unnerving phenomenon.
I first encountered the genre in 1992, when Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall and his wife Mary published Chain Reaction. The book showed how those crafty Republicans used race and taxes as wedge issues to splinter the Democratic Party, thereby allowing Ronald Reagan and then George Bush I to peel away enough “Joe Sixpack” votes to win.
There was a brief slowdown during the Clinton era, but the latest two presidential elections have led to a flurry of earnest new scribblings. The expanded analysis illuminates how fundamentalist Christians have joined Messrs. Sixpack in numbers large enough to transform the Republicans from the minority to the majority party. There is now an established tradition of thoughtful, well-reasoned pieces filled with supporting statistics.
This article is not one of them.
My thesis is much simpler and clearer (and no distracting footnotes):
The Republican Right wins elections by pandering to: (1) Boneheads and (2) Assholes. Doing so not only emboldens both groups but expands their relative numbers among the Disenfranchised Voters who constitute the majority of voters in the United States.
Permit me to illustrate:
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(OK, OK, so I made the numbers up and my math’s not too hot. Remember
that I’m the product of public schools.)
Before we explore U.S. voting history further, however, let’s take a moment to define our terms. Who are these Boneheads and Assholes who are becoming an ever-larger percentage of the Disenfranchised Voters in the United States?
Typologies: Boneheads and Assholes
Since I don’t have a particularly good handle on what a typology actually is (remember that public school thing), I’ll just describe the typical Boneheads and Assholes we see all around us these days.
The Bonehead
Perhaps the simplest way to identify a Bonehead is by comparing them to the Merely Clueless. The Merely Clueless are basically sweet, decent and kind people who don’t realize that they don’t know anything. A Bonehead, on the other hand, sincerely believes that he or she already knows everything worth knowing.
- Research Protocol - Here’s a simple test to tell the difference between a true Bonehead and the Merely Clueless. Challenge someone who is Merely Clueless – God created the Earth in seven days, it’s the yellow crystals that cure cancer, SUVs are safer, George Bush is telling the truth about Iraq – and they will at least listen politely to new information. Keep challenging a true Bonehead, however, and they become red in the face and start screaming. A word of warning: males of the species can erupt in violence. Repeated attempts to make them to support their positions with anything resembling a fact can lead to injury. To summarize, the Merely Clueless may be educable, while a true Bonehead is not even trainable.
- Habitat – Obvious places to look for Boneheads include: fundamentalist churches, NASCAR races, pro-life demonstrations, Home Schooler Conventions, Promise Keepers and the Heritage Foundation. Boneheads thrive in places devoid of nuance, irony, ambiguity, metaphor, respect for people with different views and fresh ideas. Portray the world in terms of black and white/good and evil, with them at the center of the good guys, and you will undoubtedly find Boneheads aplenty.
The Asshole
Simple Assholes are easy to identify – just drive the highway at rush hour. But there are two important and discrete subcategories of Assholes – the Cultural Assholes and the Corporate Assholes.
Cultural Assholes typically specialize in specific as opposed to generalized hate. Think of the historical example of the late Sheriff Bull Connor of Mississippi. Some of you will remember him as the man who loosed the dogs and the water cannons on the civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1965.
Modern-day examples of Cultural Assholes include:
- Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry (on abortion provider Dr.
Warren Hern):
“I hope someday he is tried for crimes against humanity, and I hope he is executed.”
- Rep. Rick Santorum (on homosexuality):
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything." In the same interview, he added: “In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."
- Rev. Pat Robertson (on feminism in a 1992 fund-raising letter):
“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”
For a great example of a Corporate Asshole, it’s hard to do better than Fox News anchor Brit Hume on the day of the terrorist bombings in London:
“I mean, my first thought when I heard -- just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, ‘Hmmm, time to buy.’"
Or how about Ken Lay and his fellow corporate assholes at Enron caught on tape talking about how Kenny Boy “fucked California” by manufacturing an energy crisis:
“Grandma Millie, um, wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her ass for fucking $250 a megawatt hour."
- Research protocol - The easiest way to identify an Asshole is to see whether their statements make even a mildly intelligent and minimally literate person cringe.
- Habitat – Cultural Assholes can, of course, can be found waiting for the Rapture, while Corporate Assholes populate boardrooms. You should also check out the Cato Institute for Corporate Assholes and any Ann Coulter book signing for excellent examples of both.
We could also talk about how Assholes remind us of the Nazis, but you know how they squeal when we do. (Just don’t call them girly-men.) A safer way to discuss the problem is to remind people that Assholes are the ones who get teary-eyed and wax eloquent about freedom (think guns) -- unless you want to buy a rubber, smoke a joint, own products that don’t explode or pollute, die with dignity or love someone with similar sex organs.
The Bonehead/Asshole Hybrid/Chimera
Of concern is that it’s getting harder to tell Boneheads and Assholes apart. In-breeding? Consider these quotes from our Boneheaded Asshole President George Bush:
- Bush the Bonehead:
“I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating.”
- Bush the Cultural Asshole:
“I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe -- I believe what I believe is right.”
- Bush the Corporate Asshole (in rare moments of honesty):
“The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway.”
or
“ We had some CEOs that weren't honest with their shareholders and their employees. And we passed tough laws that said, we're not going to tolerate dishonesty in the boardrooms of America. You're now beginning to see on your TV screens what we're talking about. People are being held to account. And that hurt our economy.”
The Disenfranchised Voter
This category basically includes everyone.
To paraphrase Noam Chomsky (which really means I am too lazy to look up the actual quote), the main function of government is to keep power and wealth in the hands of the people who already have them. But how do you do that in a democratic society with that pesky one person/one vote thing?
It is generally understood, though unstated, that democratic governments have to be careful about how they handle their Boneheads and Assholes, especially if there are too many of them. Fail to keep them in line and you end up like Iran, Algeria or Texas.
In 1991, Algeria held its first-ever free and fair election (good news) and the Islamic Salvation Front won (bad news). But unlike modern-day Texas (and the 2000 race between Bush and Gore), the Algerian military immediately staged a coup so that the Boneheads and Assholes could not take over. We, on the other hand, let George Bush take the oath of office.
The trick, of course, is to persuade people that they control the government, while creating a system that effectively disenfranchises them. You might want to take a closer look at the definition of republic. You might also want to bone up on that “checks and balances” thing, about why we need three branches of government and all those judges with lifelong appointments.
The Left should really start to see what judicial activism means when Chief Justice Antonin Scalia is joined by two new Corporate Asshole justices. Don’t be surprised if they do something truly Boneheaded, like let local communities grab your home so that they can give you land to greedy developers. (Huh? Kelo vs what? They can do that now? Are you kidding me?)
Controlling the disenfranchised is so much easier with our two-party system, especially now that both parties are really just the Left and Right cultural wings of the all-encompassing Corporate Party. Think of it as two-card monte. You want chocolate or vanilla? You say strawberry? Well, screw you, just give me your money.
It’s enough to make you long for the good old days of the robber barons. At least they were colorful. Government today is a wholly owned subsidiary of faceless corporations, controlled by nameless lobbyists who dispense campaign contributions in exchange for the right to write our laws. According to the New York Times, there were 175 registered lobbyists on K Street in Washington, DC, in 1971. According to a Washington Post article published this year, there are now 34,750 lobbyists swarming over Congress – double the number in 2000. Forget any talk about red, white and blue; the United States today is all about the green.
A history of two-party collusion
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There were a few promising flirtations with left-wing populism along the way.
After the economic collapse of 1893, novelist Jack London led the march of “Coxey’s Army” of the unemployed to Washington, D.C., demanding change. A year later, Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings (“The Great Commoner”) Bryan ran on a platform of a graduated income tax, regulation of child labor and women’s suffrage. A Bible-thumping Bonehead on evolution, Bryan was a real rabble-rouser on economic injustice. Yet despite Bryan’s famous “cross of gold” speech, in which he explained how Eastern money interests used the gold standard to cheat workers, Bryan lost twice to McKinley, about whom the history books say almost nothing.
Robert (Battling Bob) LaFollette, the populist governor of and then senator from Wisconsin, believed in taxing corporations to pay for education. Thirty years after Bryan, LaFollette left the Republican Party and ran for president on the pro-union Progressive Party ticket. He lost – and quite soundly, as do all third-party candidates (that strawberry thing).
Perhaps the only time the disenfranchised really threatened to demand a real piece of the American pie was during the Great Depression. Robber baron Jay Gould triggered Black Friday when he tried to corner the gold market. The resulting Stock Market crash was so devastating that even some of the rich began to worry that they couldn’t get much richer when people didn’t have enough money to buy any of the things they made.
Something had to be done. Patrician Franklin Delano Roosevelt was no fire-breathing populist, but he did raise taxes on the rich and use that new tax revenue to begin constructing a rudimentary safety net for the poor.
Almost forgotten now, however, is Huey (The Kingfish) Long. Like most Southern politicians, Long refused to stick his neck out on civil rights, but he did push for some of the most progressive legislation ever proposed in this country. Long was elected governor of Louisiana in 1929 and immediately launched massive public works projects funded by upping taxes on the rich. He also instituted free tuition and free books for adult education. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1932, Long’s “Share Our Wealth Society” promoted a guaranteed annual income and old-age pension, as well as a homestead allowance, all of which were to be paid for by taxing away anyone’s income above a certain threshold.
Long was reviled by the Right as a demagogue, as were Bryan and LaFollette, of course. (Boneheads and Assholes are inherently suspicious of anyone smart who talks well, as the election of our current president proves.) The Kingfish was gunned down in 1935 in Baton Rouge under mysterious circumstances, much to the relief of FDR, who called him one of the “most dangerous men in America.”
FDR was still viewed as a secular saint in the low-income neighborhood where I grew up during the Forties and Fifties, but you don’t hear much about him today, do you? The Republicans want everyone to forget Roosevelt, while the Democrats are too timid to bring him up. (And no one ever mentions The Kingfish.)
The last gasp of the Progressive Party came when Henry Wallace lost to Democrat Harry Truman, the great humanitarian liberal who remains the only person in the history of the world to unleash atom bombs against other humans. Pandering to conservative Cold War fears quickly shut down any more of that Commie talk about workers rights, and soon both parties colluded in avoiding both populism and ideological purity. Yes, Republicans were vaguely Right and Dems were kinda sorta Left, but both parties included contrarians to “broaden their base,” another way of saying that nothing much would change no matter who got elected.
Embracing both the Left and Right within the same party had the additional benefit of allowing both Republican and Democrats to perpetuate the myth that the electorate made its choice on the basis of high-minded issues like federalism versus states rights or welfare state versus limited government. Even illiterates knew this was actually code used to send messages about race to the Assholes.
Therefore no one is surprised to find Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms comfortably nestled among the Republicans. But it was the intentional blurring of ideological lines
that explains why George Wallace and Lester Maddox were Democrats. (Zell Miller isn’t just whistling Dixie when he whines that “his” party doesn’t appreciate racist good-old-boys like him as much as they used to.)
On the other side of the equation of this parallel universe, the Republicans had quasi-liberals like Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and even African American Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. Most amazing perhaps was Republican State Senator Lorraine Beebe of Michigan who talked openly about her “therapeutic abortion.” Can you imagine a Republican woman today who would fight to give poor women the right to choose?
How Dick Nixon really screwed us
That tacit agreement to avoid energizing the Disenfranchised by offering them any hope that the two parties actually stood for something first began to unravel when Dick Nixon saw the potential in pandering to the populist Right. As author Joe McGinniss explained in the Selling of the President, uncharismatic as he was, Nixon and his marketers were brilliant at branding him as the “new Nixon.” Nixon’s sold his “secret plan” to end the Viet Nam War (secret even to Nixon himself) to the flag-waving Bonehead hawks in the same way Mr. Whipple sold Charmin toilet paper.
But it was Nixon’s appeal for a return to “law and order” that was pure Madison Avenue genius. Assholes across the country immediately grasped that Nixon was talking to them, no matter whether the image in their head was the uppity n-word, a dope smoking hippie or an anti-war protestor.
What could the Dems do? Say that only a Bonehead would believe that Nixon had a real plan to end the war? Say that only an Asshole would want to live in the police state implicit in his call for law and order?
The Catch-22 for the Left, of course, is that Boneheads and Assholes do not like to be called Boneheads and Assholes. They actually view those terms as derogatory (perhaps because they are so accurate?). So given that (1) there are more Boneheads and Assholes than anything else in our culture and (2) the Dems themselves have had always had lots of Boneheads and Assholes within their own ranks, voicing such sentiments openly was a clear loser.
That legacy of Lefty populism meant that the Democrats had locked up the votes of most union members, many of whom were second-generation immigrants living in the Midwest, my Dad among them. An unabashed racist who made Archie Bunker look like a moderate, my father looked at the long, hot summer riots in Watts, Newark and Detroit in much the same way as this generation views 9/11. For him, the issue wasn’t racial justice, it was Black Panthers = terrorists.
And George McGovern to the contrary, many Democrats weren’t all that happy with college kids either. Remember Joe Hardhat wailing on college kids at those protest rallies? Even Dems whose children had become dopesters figured, hey, let’s elect Dick, with his War on Drugs, and maybe he’ll kick some sense into the little bastards for us.
While Nixon’s election and then re-election proved Republicans could win by appealing to the dark side of Democratic cross-over voters, even Nixon didn’t have the stones to unleash full-bore right-wing populism. Not only did he go to China (for which he would have branded any Democrat who tried to do so as a treasonous Commie), he also (albeit reluctantly) established the EPA and urged passage of a law to guarantee poor families a guaranteed minimum income. No wonder they called him Tricky.
My Dad still couldn’t bring himself to vote for Nixon, but George Wallace offered him an easy out. From Henry Wallace supporter to George Wallace in just 20 years.
If you ever had any residual about the real number of Boneheads and Assholes in this country, remember that Nixon’s 43% and Wallace’s 13% together show that 56% of all Americans even back then qualified as one or the other (or both).
Reagan raises shamelessness to a new level
Wallace’s third party candidacy served as the bridge that allowed many Asshole Democrats to make that final leap to the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan by 1980. When Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter, it was easy to lure in the Bonehead vote with a little flag-waving about our hostages in Iran. But Reagan hit a new low in courting the Asshole vote when he went beyond coded talk about states rights to wax eloquent about that “welfare queen” in Chicago public housing who collected government checks using more than 100 different aliases.
The story wasn’t true, of course (just as that stuff about Weapons of Mass Destruction and hints that the 9/11 bombers were Iraqis are lies). But the Reagan team instinctively understood that Boneheads and Assholes either (1) don’t know (Boneheads) or (2) don’t care (Assholes), which set the stage for the success of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News today.
What Reagan’s outrageous comments actually did was to begin the process of normalizing expressions of hate and ignorance. Imagine what network anchors back then must have said when they first heard that “welfare queen” stuff! Here was a supposedly responsible Republican presidential nominee saying things out loud that most good old boys wouldn’t dare mumble without first looking over their shoulders to see whether they were any black folk around.
What were the nattering nabobs of negativity to do? Bury the notes and any audio or video tape? Or run what he said without comment and let Reagan hang himself?
I remember watching a friend’s jaw literally drop when she heard Reagan utter “welfare queen.” But what my friends and I did not see were all those Asshole heads nodding approval nationwide. And that, my children, is how yesterday’s outrages become today’s mainstream point of view.
The Associated Press recently did a piece on abortion laws where they paired NOW’s president Kim Gandy with former Operation Rescue president Randall Terry as equals. Last I knew, Gandy hadn’t called for the death of any male chauvinist pigs. (Ooops, can’t call men nasty names like that anymore. I guess for most of us, we had better just call them “boss.”)
But the right does have a softer (or at least a soft-focus) side. In the campaign against Walter Mondale in 1984, it didn’t matter that Reagan exhibited obvious signs of the incipient Alzheimer’s that would eventually kill him. Just keep flattering the Boneheads and Assholes with those sentimental “Morning in America” ads crafted by Michael Deaver. B&As will follow you anywhere if you bathe them in enough saccharine golden goo about how they are better than anyone else in the country -- well, hell, in the world for that matter.
Meanwhile, Reagan’s suicidal opponent Walter Mondale, apparently raised to think that truth matters, went straight for the castor oil – no matter who wins, the next president would be forced to raise taxes to pay for the record Reagan deficits.
Mondale should have known that, given the choice between self-aggrandizing lies and harsh reality, both Boneheads and Assholes will always opt for mutual masturbation about how great we are.
Mondale just couldn’t understand how any responsible leader could leave the country so economically vulnerable. As if responsible mattered to the Reagan crowd. In fact, whether it was dumb luck or a masterful scheme, those massive deficits ultimately helped the Right recruit even more Boneheads and Assholes.
Here’s how it works. First the president proposes budgets that drive the government ever further into the red, all the while arguing that the real problem is Congress’ refusal to cut frivolous spending (code for liberal programs like Social Security that offers faint hope you and I can avoid living on dog kibble when and if we get to retire someday).
The president can then leave his successor with the unenviable choice of cutting services or raising taxes. There’s a 50-50 chance the next guy will be a Democrat anyhow, so what the hell.
And much as it surprises thoughtful commentators, the bottom line for Boneheads and Assholes is that most actually do favor cuts in government services. Assholes see themselves as self-made men who don’t need any goddamn government “handouts” (an attitude that helps to explain why there’s been such a big gender gap in recent elections).
Moreover Boneheads, Assholes and even the Merely Clueless seem to love the Republicans’ clarion call for never-ending tax cuts. First, many of us are indeed greedy Assholes (think Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street with his “Greed Is Good”). Second, Boneheads in particular, math-impaired as they are, never completely understand why a 10% tax cut turns out to be so much better a deal for billionaires than for them.
Third, it is also true that taxpayers don’t really get much for their money in this country. No universal health care, no government-supported child care, no urban policy, just corporate welfare and endless war (on drugs, on terrorism, on this year’s Third World country). So what the hell, cut my taxes again. No skin off my nose and at least I might see a few extra bucks in my paycheck.
Bush I and Clinton - the exceptions that prove the rule
George Bush I succeeded Reagan by eating pork rinds and promising not to raise taxes. He also benefited from those ugly race-baiting Willie Horton ads beamed directly at the Assholes. (And from that image of Michael Dukakis looking like a dweeb in that tank.)
But even as you want to hate George the First, if only for his evil spawn, don’t you wonder whether he is, at heart, Merely Clueless? Even after all those years at the CIA, Bush looks embarrassed when asked to pretend that he’s a gun-loving Creationist who wants the guys who shoot abortion doctors to view him as one of their own. An imperator of the Empire, yes, but not quite a perfect Asshole.
Which is why Bill Clinton’s campaign could so easily portray Bush I as “out of touch” with real people.
Bubba, of course, had no qualms about courting both the Boneheads and the Assholes. He was smarter than the Boneheads, of course, better educated, and he probably never believed half of what the Assholes do. But, being white trash himself, Clinton knew firsthand the sting of being looked down on. He was the fat kid in elementary school whose corduroy pants whistled when he walked. He grew up nursing that aggrieved sense of victimization that leads to “I’ll show them.”
He and fellow sociopath Dick Morris were quick learners who employed “triangulation” whenever possible, especially on the issue of race. End welfare as we know it. Affirmative action – mend it, don’t end it. Diss Sister Souljah on Jesse Jackson’s home turf. My, how subtle.
Clinton got a twofer with Ricky Ray Rector, an African American on Death Row in Arkansas. (The death penalty is an important part of the Right’s “pro-life” agenda we hear so much about). Even though he was out on the presidential campaign trail, Governor Clinton made sure to call the warden to ensure that the mentally impaired Rector was executed without delay. Ricky’s the guy whose grasp of reality was such that he put aside the peach pie that came with his last meal saying he wanted to save it “for later.”
It should also come as no surprise that Clinton co-founded the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), created to help the Democrats compete more effectively with Republicans in kissing corporate ass in exchange for campaign donations. Ah, but remember, ladies, we must elect Democrats like Clinton because they are so good on women’s issues. Just don’t ask Paula, Juanita, Gennifer or Kathleen. And gays have Clinton to thank for the infamous military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – otherwise known as just stay closeted, celibate and ashamed.
Bush II -- all gloves are off
Just when we thought they couldn’t do anything that would make us gasp anymore, along came Bush the Younger. Hanging chads. Pull out of the Kyoto Treaty. Forget global warming. The Defense of Marriage Act. No new stem cell lines. Say yes to the Patriot Act, bankruptcy and tort “reform” and faith-based initiatives. But just say no to medical marijuana. No Child Left Untested. But Jesus Christ is his personal savior. And, of course, weapons of mass destruction and the War in Iraq. Is there any end to this list?
If not an outright Asshole himself, Bush is at best a Bonehead who surrounds himself with Assholes like Cheney, Rumseld and Wolfowitz.
Who will save us from ourselves?
So here we are. The sheer number of Boneheads and Assholes keeps rising and many of our country’s Taliban see victory within their grasp. So you ask, please, oh, please, how do we stop them?
The first question, of course, is who is “we”? The Democrats? I hope you’re joking.
I wouldn’t be too quick to pin my hopes on their current front-runner, Hillary Clinton, who gives new meaning to the phrase “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Last I knew she was busy memorizing prayers and practicing how to show appropriate anguish when talking about those poor women who have suffered the tragedy of abortion. At least when she’s not too busy voting for the Iraq War and shaking down corporations for campaign cash.
I hope you’re also kidding about Howard Dean, who makes John Kerry look electable.
It’s not that we haven’t had our chances - Bryan, LaFollette, (Henry) Wallace, McGovern, Nader – and said, “No thanks.” In the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Do you see any signs of an overwhelming Draft Chomsky movement? With today’s corporate media, he can’t even get on Hardball, let alone Meet the Press. At 76, he’s getting up there, so where’s your list of 10 alternative candidates with any realistic chance? Yeah, I thought so.
Face it, this is who we are as a people. A nation of cheap hustlers who will do what it takes to win, damn the consequences.
For those of you who do not believe in the great man (never great woman) theory, let’s consider the possibilities of turning away the rising conservative tide. Rule out a charismatic leader and you are left with few viable options:
- Marketing the Message – This solution proposes that the key is to turn those wordy and nuanced progressive arguments into salable slogans that will lure enough Boneheads and Assholes over to our side so that we win. This from a group that doesn’t even have the courage to call itself liberal anymore. Without tackling how you get a bunch of Lefties to agree on anything, especially anything simple and clear, there’s that basic lipstick on a pig problem. What slogan do you think would persuade a Bonehead or an Asshole to go for gay marriage? OK, how about separation of church and state? Hmmm. Seems more likely to me that the Boneheads and Assholes simply don’t like who we are and what we stand for, no matter how snappy the slogan.
- Use Economic Arguments – OK, the cultural issues are losers with this crowd. So show them how the Right is picking their pocket with all those tax cuts for the rich and further shredding the thin and tattered safety net that many of them or their family members may need someday. Sounds logical, but my gut tells me that they either won’t believe you or don’t care. Keep in mind that the Christians in that other empire called Rome ignored their enlightened self interest and chose being eaten by lions rather than deny their faith.
- Just Wait, the Sixties Are Coming Back – Atheist that I am, unless there’s a draft, even I would put my money on the second coming of Christ happening first.
- Fewer Boneheads and Assholes - With millions of today’s kids now being educated in crumbling public schools, at home or in Christian schools that teach Intelligent Design, what are the odds that we will have fewer Boneheads and Assholes in the future? And it’s their side, not ours, that hates abortion.
I ran for Congress in 2000 on the Green Party ticket to plead that we deal with global warming before it’s too late. What if it’s only a matter of years before we reach the point of no return and a runaway greenhouse effect turns our planet into Venus?
Now, like George Bush, I say instead, “Bring it on.” To
paraphrase George Carlin (so I don’t get fired for plagiarism like
Mike Barnicle), global warming doesn’t mean the end of the Earth;
it just means the end of us. The Earth will go on long after it shakes
us off like a bad case of fleas.
Chant with me now the (again paraphrased) words of Kurt Vonnegut. When
asked about the future, he wisely predicted, “Things will get
worse and worse and worse and they will never get better again.”
Words to live by. Game over.
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