Flashpan Friday: Sparks On Anything 2

Someone might easily find fault with my last two entries, but nobody can accuse me of not trying to keep things interesting. I don't mind looking a little unbalanced, especially in a world that is largely off-kilter.
_______________

Last year, the liberal blogger and politico Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, popularly known as "Kos" and founder of "The Daily Kos", opined (and I paraphrase), "Republicans don't know how to govern and Democrats don't know how to win." Somewhere on this blog I pointed out how strange this statement was, for if Democrats know how to govern, then surely they would know how to win, which is, in truth, part of governance; since they don't know how to win, one is compelled to conclude that they cannot govern. And, conversely, if Republicans know how to win, which takes no small act of governance, then Republicans can indeed govern.

But forsooth, the great Kos received his wish in November of 2006. The Democrats won.

And now they govern like a high-school student council. It is like watching children playing a grown-ups' game. The only thing they seem particularly good at is turning everything into a convenient scandal: "It's hearing time in Washington!" Talk about a quagmire.

That the great posturing party is now in control leaves the attentive wondering whether the Democratic leadership is capable of anything other than shrieking. Well, shrieking and resolving. And more resolving, over and over.

____________

What, do YOU think, is the bottom line to all this pandering, and all these many hearings held in Washington to such fanfare? We have threats of subpoenas in a case where there can be no crime; we have hearings about the imminent end of the world if we belch forth any more carbon-dioxide. We have much bluster about the great liar in the White House; we hear much invective hurled at President Bush's competence and his gross dependence on Der Führer Rove. We hear a priori assertions that the war is lost, or that it is a war with "no cause" (I do not expect you to be able to figure that one out).

But what is the reason for all this foolishness, all these empty words, empty war resolutions, and empty warnings? What is the ultimate end of all this? In short, I believe it is the end of thought, democracy and freedom. The leaders of the Democratic Party want you to believe that the final word has been spoken, and that it is irrefutable, unquestionable, undeniable. One party knows all, thinks all, declares all. The debate is over. Bush lied and people died; the "consensus" is indubitable, and to deny it is to deny the Holocaust; the White House is secretive, cunning, and malicious through and through; the dismissal of US attorneys is proof of treason; the CIA's most beloved spy was viciously outed by a cabal of neo-con tyrants who enjoy torturing innocents "in super-duper secret torture dens at Guantanamo Bay" in a "culture of corruption," the very culture that hates injured soldiers in Building 18. These dogmas are self-evident.

But the big reason is this: Such rhetoric and puffing out of the chest, such wailing and gaveling, is all meant to make people dependent, not on themselves in Emersonian self-reliance or in the deep individualism of Protestantism, not on God or the Spirit of God, but on a group of men and women who have a donkey as their mascot. It is about the end of intellectual and spiritual freedom; it is the end of non-comformity as Americans once knew it. You must depend. You cannot choose, you cannot question. Doubt has been erased, faith is made certain. There is no more clouded glass through which we look; Al Gore and the deliverers have spoken, and all mysteries are made clear. Now, just submit! (Islam!)

Might might not make right, but hearings surely do.

Shhh! Our idols are in session. We await our orders on what to think.

___________

I can't help but refer readers to Ann Coulter's latest column. She may be coarse, she may act far too unlady-like for the fastidious fusspots among us who believe that women should behave a certain prescribed, decorous way. But I find her funny; she's a blonde-haired, long-legged, too-skinny Don Rickles with a formidable pen. She may be wrong on all counts (she isn't), she may be hyperbolic and mean, but she is not a trifle to be dismissed. In her inimitable manner (at least by me), Coulter writes

If this is how global warming devotees defend their scientific theory, it may be a few tweaks short of a scientific theory. Scientific facts are not subject to liberal bullying — which, by the way, is precisely why liberals hate science.

Not bad, Ann. You definitely gave me a good laugh with ¶8.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.