[Just to add a little humanity to this blog, this morning I drafted what was for me a difficult essay on labor unions. The piece was difficult largely because the topic is not my forté. But once the blog was completed, I lost it to the ether which is cyberspace. I lost it because as I was writing, I was also in an email exchange with a leftist acquaintance who is incensed, apparently, that I am a conservative. Hence, during the exchange, I made the wrong key strokes and, well, you know what happens. So, I thought that I'd share a clip from his last email to me, received within the hour. It raises some serious questions for me, not about my politics, or even politics in general. It raises personal questions, which I'll discuss some other time.]
Let us posit that conservatives are just no fun. Let us consider for mere philosophical pleasure that the least fun people are NASCAR fans, and that Catholics and evangelicals, conservative columnists and talk show hosts, and country music fans, comprise the dullest of all possible groups. In fact, let's go all the way and insist that conservatives are the people of death and demise.
This morning, I received this statement from a leftist friend of mine via email:
"I'll stick with my previous post that the Republicans offer up ... a much more dangerous style of thinking, one that rebukes science, truth, and criticism of any sort. Hell, just down the road we've got a huge effort underway to build a creationist museum. A creationist museum. Can you imagine.[sic] Those dopes and the others that push Intelligent Design probably didn't vote for Kerry. ...And finally I'll say this: the Right does a wonderful job of sucking the life out of, well, life. It's a movement consisting largely of droids, people who have little appreciation or understanding of the worth of pop culture and youth culture. That's right, I said, the worth of pop culture. It struck me as downright insane that the Right would object to a movie like Million Dollar Baby because of the ending, or [sic] being so sensitive to the Iraq debacle (how's the "puny" insurgency faring these days?) that some even voiced concern that Star Wars wasn't anti-America. Huh? Where does this bullshit come from? The Right has a long, proud history of being on the wrong side of history and in a lot of cases, morality, too. History will not be kind to it. You'll see."
Phew, I am glad that we posited beforehand that conservatives are deadly, or else perhaps the above quotation would shock us in its brutality. There is, in fact, something almost sinister about it, a latent threat that history, perhaps consisting of some sort of Khmer Rouge-like goon squad, will prove conservatives so very, very faulty. But the tenor of my friend's quote is in perfect keeping with the ersatz leader of the Democratic National Party, whose pugnacity and disdain are without restraint.
I am bemused, even befuddled, by my friend's position. Conservatives are mere dopes, by and large, or so goes the old saw, so one wonders how they can be so powerful in their fecklessness and irrelevance. Are not the dumb and insipid on the margins? How, pray tell, can they be such black holes, drawing so much toward themselves, sucking the life out of living, crushing the light in the pressure of non-being?
I have forgotten that it was the left, the radical and even centrist left, who raised their collective voices, ranging from burning outrage to mild concern, about Mel Gibson's pop culture film, "The Passion of the Christ," a cinematic achievement that makes "Million Dollar Baby" look like so much adhesive tape with pictures pasted on it. Yes, the left was concerned about the brutality in an R-rated movie depicting the historic and real death of perhaps the most important figure in history, and it was concerned about alleged anti-Semitism; while a few on the right voiced merely mild concern that a film might show euthanasia as a viable and compassionate choice. New York Times essayist Frank Rich was consumed with fits of apoplexy, for weeks, about Gibson and his work. But nary a word from the right was heard about Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby." Nary a word.
But conservatives are the life suckers.
God forbid that some conservatives see a hidden agenda in "Star Wars"; some even see one in "Harry Potter." Of course, "Star Wars" producer George Lucas, an avowed and strident critic of conservatives everywhere, could not possibly have inserted any sort of political message in his movie. But Gibson must have an agenda, through and through, as must Kiefer Sutherland, whose thrilling "24" on Fox received resounding rebukes from the left for allegedly profiling and stereotyping Muslims. Sutherland eventually put a disclaimer on the screen at the beginning of his show that the program, after all, was make-believe.
Yes, yes, yes, there is a giant life-sucking sound coming from the right. (I actually think it's what you hear when the Red Sox play on the road.)
Of course, it's my leftist friends who like to point out at parties that my enjoyment of a particular wine means that some poor sack somewhere is homeless because of my apparent prosperity. It's my leftist friends who like to point out from their frequent-flyer journeys that America consumes too much oil; that conservatives have no policy for renewable energy; that NASCAR uses too much gas. And it's my same well-traveled friends on the left who like to tell me, after dumping several thousands of gallons of burned fuel over the ocean during a trans-Atlantic flight to Europe, that America's dependence on foreign oil has led to poisoned atmospheres, and War in Iraq; and that America's foreign policy is designed solely to keep the rich in power (presumably so they can fly over the Atlantic).
Of course, it's my leftist friends who insist that the best way for a woman to deal with a particular problem is to kill it, preferrably in her womb, but not absolutely necessarily in her womb; and that it is her God-given right to be as inhospitable to an unborn baby as she deems appropriate. It is my leftist friends who tell me that dressing in drag means a man is a woman, if he demands that it be so; and that the exchange of body fluids in the anuses of two gay men is equal, in beauty and import, to a man and a woman trying to create life in the sacrament of marriage.
Of course, it is my leftist friends who care so much for youth that they support the legalization of drugs, the distribution of condoms to minors, access to abortion clinics, and even the lowering of consent, all largely without parental notification (except the consent law, which will no doubt require some seriously public judicial fiat to modify). And, apparently, it's my conservative friends who don't give a damn about kids in the countless youth groups they lead across America - from the Boy Scouts to even simple church ministries (where, just below the senior pastor, resides a full-time youth minister). Damn those life-sucking conservatives!
Of course, it is my leftist friends who love the great works of art of pop culture, adoring their iconic heroes; you know, the great masters of pop art, like Madonna, Elton John, U2, Andy Warhol, Brad Pitt, Eminem, Sting, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver and Oliver Stone. For it is these greats we can applaud, with glee, for getting their names etched on the monuments in museums that matter.
Of course, it is my conservative friends who wallow in the mire of Bach and Handel, of Dostoevsky, T.S.Eliot, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien, Grahame Greene, G.K. Chesterton, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Dorothy Sayers, and so many other life-sucking Christians that I find it hard to breathe even now. Yes, Michelangelo was so damned parasitic, as were David the Psalmist, St. Peter the teacher and healer, and the stained-glass window makers and flying buttress designers of Chartres and Canterbury. Liberals give us Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," while Christianity merely gives us preachers, like Martin Luther King. (Lost on nearly everyone is that Charles Darwin claimed to be a Christian.)
Liberals give so much life to life indeed.
But conservatives suck the life out of living, rolling about in tired NASCAR ovals, grooving in Wrangler jeans to Tim McGraw, wasting water washing Ford F-150s, tilling huge fields and planting crops, raising cattle for food and milk, hauling goods to markets, hooking up electric lines to hospitals, keeping highway lanes and ocean ports free of harm, fighting fires and wars, sailing around Mt. Desert Island with William F. Buckley Jr., remembering birthdays and adopting children, singing hymns while on guard duty; raising puppies and riding horses; playing golf and skiing down hills; writing screenplays and poems, and posting essays on the web.
There is indeed a giant sucking sound. It's called inhaling, and it's called life. And we conservatives indeed are going to suck the life right out of living, right to the marrow, in one great celebration of Being.
For shame those bratty cynics who think we're fools.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
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