Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Now Is Not the Time for Gun Control. It's the Time to Ban Late-Term Abortion!
What a fucked-up convergence of insanity. Students who wear t-shirts that say "Bong Hits for Jesus" can get suspended because as all reasonable people can infer, the right of free speech does not protect juvenile comedy that refers to the use of harmless controlled substances. But the Second Amendment must remain absolutely inviolate, even after the worst mass murder by a single gunman in U.S. history. And the Second Amendment must be defended from across the political spectrum, by no less a personage than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has urged for cooler heads to prevail on this utterly black-and-white issue. Thanks, you goddamn Mormon.
Guns are for assholes. They can be found clipped to the belts of people who think it's fun to intimidate and inflict death.
To argue otherwise is absurd. Go on Daily Kos, and you will see, among all the comments posted by self-proclaimed progressives, a real streak of pro-gun machismo. It is as if the trifecta of losing Democratic cultural issues (gays, guns and God) they have chosen a Clintonian strategy of triangulation by supporting all three, as long as the last one is watered-down into a huggy, nonsectarian contentlessness. It maintains equilibrium, and makes the Democratic party more palatable to Western state libertarians and the interior Northeast. Very principled. I hope more people get shot so we can pick up NY-24 and ID-01 in November 2008.
And of course, in keeping with the conservative "culture of life" (which apparently means anything childishly authoritarian, up to and including mass death) it's now been deemed crucial for the government to step in and contravene the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Let's not worry about signing statements or unauthorized surveillance of US citizens. The completely disproportionate attention paid to this one rare procedure by the cultural right is so fucking stupid. But now that they've gotten the one piece of red meat on abortion they're going to squeeze out of this hypercon Court, I hope they enjoy it. Because if the 5-4 majority goes any further in dismantling the right to privacy, it might just bury the Republican Party forever. They lose on the issues anyway, and it's only their financial advantage that keeps them in power. Now they don't even have that anymore. Honestly, I think this is the crest of their excesses in this domain.
Guns are for assholes. They can be found clipped to the belts of people who think it's fun to intimidate and inflict death.
To argue otherwise is absurd. Go on Daily Kos, and you will see, among all the comments posted by self-proclaimed progressives, a real streak of pro-gun machismo. It is as if the trifecta of losing Democratic cultural issues (gays, guns and God) they have chosen a Clintonian strategy of triangulation by supporting all three, as long as the last one is watered-down into a huggy, nonsectarian contentlessness. It maintains equilibrium, and makes the Democratic party more palatable to Western state libertarians and the interior Northeast. Very principled. I hope more people get shot so we can pick up NY-24 and ID-01 in November 2008.
And of course, in keeping with the conservative "culture of life" (which apparently means anything childishly authoritarian, up to and including mass death) it's now been deemed crucial for the government to step in and contravene the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Let's not worry about signing statements or unauthorized surveillance of US citizens. The completely disproportionate attention paid to this one rare procedure by the cultural right is so fucking stupid. But now that they've gotten the one piece of red meat on abortion they're going to squeeze out of this hypercon Court, I hope they enjoy it. Because if the 5-4 majority goes any further in dismantling the right to privacy, it might just bury the Republican Party forever. They lose on the issues anyway, and it's only their financial advantage that keeps them in power. Now they don't even have that anymore. Honestly, I think this is the crest of their excesses in this domain.
