2001-07-10 - 11:24 a.m.

Moving "right" along...

And now she says:

"When I said 'leave me the hell alone', I didn't necessarily mean Slack, as he seems to think."

Honey, it helps if you tell me these things.

"Nice to see it was taken that way, I don't think.

I was trying to err on the side of caution.

"I wish I knew of some way to keep going without hurting you this way."

I'll recover. I think I already have done. Just do keep going and I'll get over it. It's if you stop going that I'll really hurt.

Now that that's out of the way, here's the post I was going to write in an effort to talk about something else. An etymology (or something) of what I see as the four main evils controlling today's Republican Party. (Hence "Moving right along...")

1) The First Church of Social Darwinism. Began infiltrating the "Party of Lincoln" about five minutes after Honest Abe bit the dust. Turned the party of free enterprise into "the party of defining free enterprise as the only freedom that matters." Their Mantrium is "There is no God but Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer is his profit [sic]." They believe, or want us to believe, that the only way anyone ever gets rich is through honesty, hard work and other positive character traits, while the only reason anyone ever stays (or becomes) poor is through dishonesty, laziness and other character flaws. Thus, anyone you see driving a Porsche deserves it, and the rich deserve the best politicians their money can buy (the claim that campaign finance reform is somehow against the First Amendment), while anyone you see sleeping on the street deserves that and doesn't merit your sympathy: "Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?" These people spawned...

2) the Paperclip isolationists. The ones who want America to equate "socialism" with "military dictatorship" and, to that end, smuggled Lenin into Russia to hijack Kerensky's genuinely socialist revolution for the communists. Their German counterparts supported the political ambitions of a certain failed housepainter who shall remain nameless, thinking they could manipulate him. When the results of these two actions (Stalin and the said housepainter) came into conflict, these were the people who persuaded the majority of Americans that it was none of our business, that getting involved in another European war would serve no purpose. They also said, and still say, that if we did decide to get involved, we shouldn't have supported Uncle Joe (that known Communist), but Cousin Adolf (who was against the Communists). They got their revenge after the War, though, when the OSS imported Reinhard Gehlen (the paperhanger's chief of anti-Soviet intel) to continue his work for "our" side against "the real enemy." The result was the National Security State in which we currently live: "one nation, under surveillance, with cameras and wire taps for all," as Robert Anton Wilson puts it. A generation later, they found new allies...

3) the Galvanized Dixiecrats. Named by my good friend Rikuti, these people deserted the Democratic Party in droves after Lyndon Johnson betrayed them with his support for the (in their opinion) "radical Marxist notion" that all men (not just white male Protestants) are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. They have deep ties to...

4) the Pharisees for Jesus. Also known (to me anyway) as the FunDementos. I've written about them before in this space, but I haven't mentioned their political ties. I could have listed them earlier, but William Jennings Bryan doesn't really count in my opinion. Like the rank and file of today's fundamentalism, or like Kat and Wind for that matter, he really believed. The leadership of modern fundamentalist Christianity name-checks Jesus, but Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and most especially their good friend Sun Myung Moon, see the face of the one they worship every time they look in a mirror. (Always assuming they have reflections at all, of course.) They will not be happy until it's passed into law that as many as will not worship "the image of the Lord" shall be put to death, and that no man may buy or sell unless he bears "the Mark of the Lord" in his right hand or his forehead. The only good thing I can say about that is that it might wake up the American sheeple to What or Whom these people have really been supporting all this time when they were doing "the Lord's work."

(pant, pant, pant) Okay, I'm better now.

-30-

�

last time, on The Slack Shack - our next inciting exstallment