Compulsory Reads

It’s not true that the Conservatives I know don’t give a damn so much as they are terrified that they were wrong.

Deeply, primally terrified. Their whole psychological infrastructure is cobbled together out of half-baked conservative bumper-sticker ideology, gun lust, socially illiterate hatred of “welfare cheats” and other largely fictional or apocryphal lazy people (read: niggers and other swarthy folk) who want to leech off of them while they work harder and harder for less and less. Despite a lot of bluster about Freedom and Individuality they are, at heart, happiest when they are conforming to the wishes of the Strong Man; when they know exactly their place in the hierarchy.

Security and Enforced Orderliness is their idea Heaven and Doubt is their Hell, which is why they swarm like mayflies towards simple-minded sloganeering instead of actual, y’know, thinking…and why many of them fall madly in love with Fundamentalism. It’s this anti-Faustian bargain where they get the perfect peace of mind that comes from absolute, swaggering certainty that they are completely right about every single thing. And thrown in at no extra charge, they get Paradise after they die, with the promise that they’ll get to see my sorry ass screaming in agony in a lake of fire on Basic Cable for all eternity.

But in exchange for all of this wonderfulness, they have to hand over their souls to truly evil men.

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I've been a fan of Driftglass' unique voice, humor and wicked prose since reading his comments at Gilliard's blog. In the interest of full disclosure and self-aggrandizement, I will note that the driftglass excerpt was posted in response to Steve Gilliard's defeatist blather about the effort behind publicizing the Downing Street Minutes being a wasted one -- a point which I took issue with here, here and here.


Don't miss this creepy post in which idyllopus breaks down the visuals found on the "Watch Ride Report" poster published by MARC, the metro rail between Baltimore and DC. As someone who's long been fascinated by the propaganda posters, [insert shiver here].