I just returned from a conference on ANTI-RATIONALISM IN PRE-APOCALYPTIC AMERICA IN RELATION TO BIRTHERISM, CREATIONISM AND CLIMATE-DENIAL, at which I presented a paper inspired by the revelation that Rush Limbaugh likes to listen to Wagner's THE RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES when he takes a shit.
The word is that he has a problem with elimination from eating too many bagels. Poppy-seed bagels. He's retentive. And he loves bagels and he likes to show up positive on the drug tests required by his employers. It's his sense of humor.
He has a great sound system in the bathroom with a subwoofer and something called REAL-FEEL built into the toilet. The toilet and the seat shake or vibrate or something to enhance the experience of the music.
I'd like to think that the toilet has a name and Rush yells it out like Yosemite Sam in the cartoons: WHOA, (toilet name)! I could try to come up with a funny and appropriate name and put Bugs Bunny in the picture and have a great little plot.
But I'm trying to observe some standards here, not just make stuff up. The paper has footnotes and is quite academic. I want to be taken seriously. And Rush on the toilet is serious business.
In that spirit I'm not being totally honest. About the music. There are other songs on Rush's playlist. FREEBIRD is another favorite, but the image of Rush riding the commode like some huge hero with Wagner blaring is just too good. And, in keeping with the academic tone, it illustrates an important point: the Republicans are Romantics.
Romantics, not romantic, be sure you get that straight. Anyhow the point of all this is to come to a better understanding of Republican psychology, how and why they are the way they are.
This is not my area of expertise. I'm a gardener. That's why I wrote something up and submitted it and presented it at the conference, to get some feedback. To keep from messing it up. I think the Republicans have slipped into some primal, pre-Christian mode of existence, some kind of paganism.
Even though they make a lot of noise about Christianity. And Americanism. And anything else to give themselves a claim to the high moral ground, which is to say that they are in the white hats, by their accounts, which means that I am in a black hat.
And I resent it. They see themselves as players in a drama involving high stakes and extreme characters. They need enemies, in relation to whom they are heroes, the good guys. This puts them squarely in the Romantic camp.
And makes me and all my Democratic friends into bad guys, according to Rush and his crowd. I mean, how would you feel? Sorry, I'm getting personal. Got to stay on scholarly ground, stick with the facts and the research.
As I understand it the heroic archetype was dealt with in the Christian scheme. That jersey was retired. It says "Jesus" on it and is hanging in the rafters, like Michael Jordan's in the Dean Dome. That prerogative has been removed, the role of hero.
Because the hero is a savior and that quota's been filled. Christians can be heroic but not really heroes. You can't have people like Tom DeLay, for example, running around thinking they're Jesus because they feel persecuted or are in need of some ego inflation.
Christians are supposed to have humility, to be nonjudgmental, to be nice, inclusive, witnesses for Christ. Their lives should embody all that. To love the poor, feed the hungry, take care of the fellow man. You see any evidence of that? There's certainly not much of it higher-up in the food chain.
In the Republican hierarchy, that is. And they're into hierarchy. So their leaders, like Rush, are representative of their ideals, their aspirations, their notions of how things should be. And they're functionally important, not just figureheads.
Because they're in a war, so everything is different. Rights are suspended, resources requisitioned, combat pay all around. And Rush and the other leaders are like generals and admirals and such. The hierarchy of the military, and the discipline of the military.
Dissent is treason. You will be shot, or somehow disabled. And the discipline doesn't preclude a lot of improvisation. That's normal in wartime. The point is to get the job done. To win.
So that end justifies the meanies. I mean means. It's an extension of "justification by faith," which has been superseded, in America, by a new doctrine, justification by cash.
Wars are expensive, even culture wars. The Republicans should sell bonds to fund this enterprise but I guess it's not necessary. They just keep burning through our hard-earned tax dollars and running enormous deficits.
Which has the collateral benefit of saddling any Democratic president, who wins through some miscarriage of electoral justice, with at least eight years of shoveling Republican shit out of the barn. Clever strategy.
Underpinned by cash flows from anywhere and everywhere, and justified on religious and constitutional grounds through justification by cash. All this doctrine does is cut out the middle man, so to speak, since true faith inevitably results in the accumulation of cash reserves, and cash reserves are so much easier to apprehend.
Faith is kind of easy to fake, that is. It's much harder to fake being rich. Good God, what was that noise? Now sirens. An ambulance. The REAL-FEEL has malfunctioned and the toilet disintegrated under Rush's ass.
He hit the floor pretty hard. There he goes on the stretcher, face down, his wife holding his trembling hand. His ass is all messed up. Pieces of porcelain are stuck in here and there. The music can still be heard as Rush rides out with large, white shards of toilet sticking out of his butt.
No comments:
Post a Comment