Friday, September 06, 2013

This is Syri-ous.

As i write this, i am listening to Michael Savage bellow and sneer at the hypocrisy of THE LIBRULS.  Every liberal, every person who ever voted for Obama, is and has always been a lifelong opponent of war in any form; a hippie, a peacenik, a flower child... and now they are utter hypocrites for thinking it's okay for the US to intervene in Syria.  How unlike those hardy conservatives, whose beliefs are set in stone and never change!

In certain cases, i'm sure he's correct.  There are plenty of people out there who support Obama now, but would have opposed Bush doing the same.  Hypocrites exist.  It sucks but it's true.

(Wait, what about the old slight that Democrats like Kerry and Hillary voted to go into Iraq, and thus are equally culpable for that failure?  Does that mean they're just as patriotic as Republicans, or just as stupid?  I've lost track...)

Of course, Savage would never hold the mirror up to his own audience and berate them for now saying the EXACT same things that anti-war liberals did in 2003.  I mean, it's amazing, it's like they're digging up old Code Pink speeches, hitting CTRL-F, and replacing "Iraq" with "Syria." 

  • America doesn't have the moral authority to intervene in other countries' struggles.
  •  We should save that money and spend it here at home.
  • The Middle East is a complex web of allies and enemies, and any action we take will have massive unintended consequences. 
  • The idea of a single quick strike is naive; we will end up in a quagmire with boots on the ground.
  • Tyrants are bad, but the chaos left after their ouster is usually worse.

....it's the same.  They say the exact same things that we were saying ten years ago.  I wish they'd at least acknowledge that.  I wish they'd say, look, it was after 9-11.  It was after 9-11 and there was a Christian President, and god help me, i ain't that smart.  George Bush said that blowing up the middle East would magically spread democracy, and i believed him because i thought Jesus would wave his magic wand and make it so.  Heck, if Bush had told me that we should start raping cats and eating dogshit to keep the turrists from winning, i'd have done that, too.  It was after 9-11.  We were confused.

All snark aside, i think this is a positive development.  It proves that, yes, conservatives can change.  The Conservative ideology is not set in stone.  For fifty years, the puppetmasters of the Republican Party have effectively brainwashed their working-class grunts into accepting a bundled package of beliefs and stances that don't necessarily have to go together. 

Christian?  Then you want taxes cut for the rich.

Like guns?  Then you hate unions.

Don't like abortion?  Then you think the EPA should be dissolved.

Bundles.  If you've ever dealt with a cable company, then you know that in order to get the one thing you actually want, you have to buy a lot of crap that you don't.  That's how we end up with dirt-poor rednecks driving their sputtering pick-ups to a shift at the sausage factory and nodding in agreement when Rush Limbaugh tells them that the capital gains tax must be lowered, and the payroll tax raised. 

You know what i'd like to see?  You know what might be a positive sea change in the following decades?  If the conservative base changed its tune on labor issues.  It can happen, it probably will happen.  Look, if Obama stood up and gave a sonorous speech about how every worker in America deserves certain things, they'd jeer and scream about socialism...

...but if a good old boy gave the same speech?  If they heard those ideas repeated by others?  Then they'd be on board.  Hell yeah, hoss, this is fucking AMERICA.  I'm a fucking MAN and i have a fucking RIGHT to be able to support my family if i work hard.  I fucking DESERVE at least $12.50/hour minimum wage, ten sick days and one week of vacation per year, and a minimum level of preventative medical care.  This is fucking America!  You gonna listen to all these librul elitists who think you should work two jobs and live in a shack like a fucking Mexican and go bankrupt over a single health crisis because them billionaires want to pay less taxes?  Fuck that!  That ain't America!!!
Tell me that's impossible.

If they can go from being fiercely pro-war and interventionist to being anti-war and isolationist in one decade, then anything can happen. 

If Michael Savage is still filling the airwaves with his hilarious filth in ten years, he'll probably be screaming that he was always in favor of Obama... er, i mean Boehnercare, and god damn you if you say otherwise.

Wait, didn't this start off being about Syria?

Syria.

I don't think we should intervene in Syria.  Supposedly, the last time intervention worked was in Kosovo, and i'm too young to really remember that.  When that shit was going down in the '90s, i was busy watching cartoons, listening to Metallica, and discovering masturbation.  Kosovo, ain't nobody got time for that.

If it does happen, i hope the people doing it know what they're doing.  

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6 comments:

Kagekatsu said...

Thankfully, it appears that Congress for once has decided not to go marching lock-step into the Abyss. They may not even vote on the Syria resolution to begin with.

The whole thing with Syria is insane, Assad is a tyrant and a bandit, but he poses no threat to the United States while Al-Qaeda and other Islamists have pretty much taken over the rebels. Yet we're going to offer close air support to the latter?

And how ironic, that we're doing this under trumped up charges of WMD usage, which might I add, the White House still refuses to release that "Undeniable evidence" to the public.

I guess its true what they say, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Unknown said...

It is pretty surreal when Teabaggers and Alan Grayson are on the same page.

Bush's blunders were so massive and costly, it's shocked us to the core. We no longer think that the US can do anything to fight evil, because it would cost us 6,000 lives and a trillion dollars.

We're like an old brawler who gets his ass kicked so hard in a bar fight, that he now jumps and stammers when a frat boy slaps him on the shoulder. Hey, easy son, i don't want no trouble, not me, sir.

Kagekatsu said...

It looks things are starting to cool down, no one aside from the hawks in Congress is willing to vote on the war and Russia stepped in to allow Assad the chance to disarm.

Of course, watch Obama try to spin this into some sort of victory for him when in reality, he just made himself look like a hot-headed fool who was about to go to war based on shifty intel.

Unknown said...

Maybe, maybe not. We shall see.

Kagekatsu said...

Notice of course, he has not left military options off the table in that little speech.

Kagekatsu said...

The U.S. has agreed to Russia's proposal to oversee the dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons.

On the one hand, this likely means war with Syria has been averted, at least for now. On the other hand, I'm left wondering if Obama accepted this deal in order to save face since no one was going to support his venture.

Analysts were already saying the strikes wouldn't have done much damage to Assad anyway, yet I find it amusing that MSNBC tries to make it look like it was Obama's (empty) threat of force that made this agreement possible when it appears more likely that Putin made him look like an amateur in regards to realpolitick.