Aversion, affirmed

Salon's Daou Report should load with an audio of "Clowns To The Left of Me, Jokers To The Right" (Stealer's Wheel, 1974).

Somewhere between my optic nerves and brain, the The Daou Report's "Right" side simply vanishes, thereby saving me the trouble of actively avoiding summaries of "Blogs For Bush" and similar "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out and cut my goddamn taxes" manifestations of Fascist dogma.

After reading this My Left Wing post, the Left column of the Daou Report is starting to vanish into a similar neurological black hole. Or I could just be having a stroke.

Conservatism is Dead, and it's Not Coming Back

To be completely truthful, conservatism properly understood has actually been near total demise ever since the election of Ronald Reagan. Nearly every ideological facet of what used to be known as American conservatism has been abandoned largely abandoned by both political parties--or is slowly being taken over in its most benign and idealistic form by the Democratic party as a secondary plank.

[snip]

Conservatism, then, is dead. It isn't coming back. In its place we are left with three fundamental choices that will determine the future of Liberalism and the future of the free world:

1) A Progressive Liberal vision of partnership, long-term thinking and respect for the common good that disregards race, religion, language and even national boundaries;

2) A Corporate Liberal vision of unfettered economic neoliberalism that exploits people with a view toward quarterly profits and respect for shareholders only that also disregards race, religion, language and even national boundaries;

3) A devil-may-care pessimistic vision of big-government control with no vision that simply expects Jehovah to resolve everything.

I now understand the concept of negative atomic weight. By the time I finished reading it, two bong hits were required just to take the edge off the inanity. The whole post was eerily reminiscent of Saturday Night Live: Take a five-second joke and beat it into a five-minute sketch. Hilarity does not ensue. And it's time you'll never get back.

There is a good deal of wit, intelligence and even a little insight scattered around the blogosphere. Unfortunately, finding it isn't getting any easier.