Still Running The Show

As blk and I drove home from the fantastic film "Inception," our conversation turned to politics as it usually does. BLK has been trying to get me off of the Cult meme and shift into defining the current form of the GOP as being more tribal. His points are very well taken. They do behave in quite a tribe like fashion and I may shift some of my views on this slightly. Perhaps a tribal cult?

One of the points we poured over in amusement was how The Tribe (let's just try it out for this post and see how it works:)) really has only one goal: to win the argument. They do this by desperately trying to prove anyone left of them wrong. We see this in comments all the time in regards to yours truly. There's not really much critical thinking on my posts--just the driving force of proving me wrong. That's all that really matters. Reality certainly doesn't matter.

The same thing holds true for the issue of racism. The Tribe will never admit their obvious racism and take any chance they get to accuse the left of racism. Sonja Sotomayor is racist, for example, and Rush Limbaugh is most certainly not. They take great delight in sifting and searching for any racist remark made by non white people. If they find even a kernel of one, whoops of delight are seen exploding all over the blogsphere, the radio and Fox News. "See? They're racist!! So that means we're not!!!"

Take a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod. Right wing blogger Andrew Brietbart wanted desperately to prove that the NAACP is racist--he wanted to win the argument--so he put up an edited video of Sherrod reflecting on her own struggles with bias. It turns out that the much longer version of the video paints a much different picture. In no way did she harm any white farmers in Georgia.

This whole incident proves a few things. To being with, it proves blk's point about how the Tribe is really only interested in winning. They aren't interested in confronting these issues in a serious way. They simply want to point and accuse others of what is, in reality, their problem. It also shows how people like Brietbart and Fox News get to be complete dicks and get away with it. BLK and I discussed this as well. People like Rush and Glenn Beck can say whatever they want and be assholes. Even elected GOP leaders can be dicks. In their assholeishness, they have created a seemingly fool proof position in which all outcomes are desirable. If they are ass hats with no response from the left, then the left is weak. If there is a response, then it's "Look at the rabid and insane Lib!" See, people expect the GOP to be rabid and insane so it's OK when they do it.

Best of all, though, is we have yet another answer to Last in Line's question. How can you still bitch about conservatives when they aren't in power?

Because nutless monkeys like Ben Jealous listen to them.