Yesterday’s “Argument Over Beers” piece sure stirred things up. I was rather proud of the precision and clarity in the piece as it was well written in both a structural and an expressive sense. But I didn’t quite get it right when I tried to elaborate on the notion that the world would be a much better place if the philosophical, temperamental and romantic individualism that is the bedrock platform of conservativism (a.k.a. “take care of yourself and leave me alone to do whatever the hell I want” selfishness) could be somehow eradicated.
To make my point in my usual impudent, button-pushing, excite-the-opposition fashion I lightheartedly used terms like “exterminate” and “green re-education camps.” I knew this would anger people, which of course it did. But it also brought on a response from hordes of literal-minded righties accusing me of being literal-minded myself.
So let’s try it again with a lighter touch and a bit more metaphor. If I could eliminate righties from the face of the earth easily, painlessly and un-traumatically, without being inhumane or upsetting anyone’s apple cart or having to deal with the unfortunate echoes of the policies of Pol Pot, Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler, I would. If I could, say, clap my hands three times and be done with them all, or — here’s a more positivist, life-embracing approach — magically transform them into whatever the polar opposites of Rep. Michelle Bachman or Rush Limbaugh or Rep. John Boehner or Phil Gramm or Joe Cassano might be, I would do so without a moment’s hesitation.
Because such an act would unquestionably pave the way toward a better, kinder, more humanistic, less corporatized and more European-styled world with all kinds of global cool-down policies and universal health care for all and everyone eating healthy foods and driving Priuses. Okay, we all like burgers and sips of Jack Daniels and McDonalds fries but corporatized junk food would be largely eliminated.
As I’ve said time and again I genuinely like guys like Clint Eastwood and John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone and all the other right-wing icons in action movies (except for Chuck Norris), and I deeply admire the character of various conservative guys I’ve personally known and had business dealings with (Eastwood and Matt Drudge included). But there’s just no more room for pugnacious conservative naysayers in today’s world — they’re just saying “no” in order to say no and getting in the way. Mass personality transplant operations would be impossible so I don’t know what to suggest.
