Thursday, February 16, 2006

So what’s Arabic for “Republican”?

a liberal dose of Driftglass:
Because The Enemy, as any lover of Democracy knows, is religious bigotry and God-Sponsored intolerance everywhere. Zealotry, in all of its flavors and skin tones, is the implacable, eternal Enemy With a Thousand Faces. And to that extent, we really are in the middle of a Culture War -- a War against Freedom -- with some of the most virulently anti-Liberty shock troops operating right here at home, deep in the doughy bosom of the GOP.

And anyone that thinks America isn’t every bit as steeped in the bloodletting and terror of such extremists doesn’t know a damn thing about history, or how to adjust their cognitive focal range to take in something more than what’s happened since breakfast.

For a century, Bible-thumping fanatics ranged as free and unfettered through Red State America as Hannibal and his war elephants through Gaul.

They were called Segregationists.

They had their own cartoons**…



[snip]

The difference is that our lynchers clevered up and spent the last 30 years taking over a major American political party. I mean, why burn a few buildings when you can run the courts? Why bother with scrawled placards when you own your own television network? Why threaten politicians when you can just buy them by the score?

Why kill retail and local and only be scary when you can slaughter wholesale and global and be absolutely terrifying?

The Klan grew up, and become James Dobson and Jerry Falwell. Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter. Tom DeLay and Jesse Helms.

All of one Despicable Party

All of one Despicable Purpose.

All of one Despicable Faith.

If thirty years from now, the same militant rioters are still around and still full of Divine Bile, but have grown fat, prosperous and “respectable”, and run whole governments in the name of their twisted, Deathgod vision of the Almighty, we’ll probably have to think up a new name for them.

So what’s Arabic or Javanese or Persian for “Republican”?

(I hope Drifty doesn't mind the liberal repeated quoting (and/or the hero-worship)

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