Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanksgiving turkey


Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes it's just what it looks like. Sometimes, when the fat man sucks on it, all hell is smiling.
"The true story of Thanksgiving is how socialism failed."
Said Rush to a caller and President Obama is hiding that fact behind an honest account of history. No, that's not just a cigar and of course we didn't get tobacco from the Indians - what are you anyway, a Communist?

Rush Limbaugh has long since run out of relevance, run out of ways to prove that president Obama is a Kenyan, anti-colonial (would he rather have him be a pro-colonial?) Muslim Christian extremist who hates white people and is an avowed communist, atheist, trotskyite, racist antiChrist ultraLiberal Fascist. He's exhausted every epithet of every stripe -- and it seems he's now reduced to the even more pathetic state of turning the most mundane acts of traditional presidential sentiments and statements into fuel for his bonfires. Lapel pins, terrorist fist bumps; leave that to the girl scouts. Rush Limbaugh is the Big League.

What would have been, to anyone else and by anyone else, a tepid, ritual recognition of the long standing American myth that the Plymouth colony was helped in adapting to the harsh climate and unfamiliar environment of 17th century Wampanoag territory by some of the native people living there has been taught to school children for at least a century and of course it's filled with inaccuracies and covered with a sloppy whitewash, but only in the cigar sucking mind of Mr. Limbaugh does that 3rd grade pageant constitute a damnation of Mr. Obama.

In the White House thanksgiving proclamation, the president says
" A beloved American tradition, Thanksgiving Day offers us the opportunity to focus our thoughts on the grace that has been extended to our people and our country. This spirit brought together the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe -- who had been living and thriving around Plymouth, Massachusetts for thousands of years -- in an autumn harvest feast centuries ago. This Thanksgiving Day, we reflect on the compassion and contributions of Native Americans, whose skill in agriculture helped the early colonists survive, and whose rich culture continues to add to our Nation's heritage. We also pause our normal pursuits on this day and join in a spirit of fellowship and gratitude for the year's bounties and blessings."


Jesus Christ. No, really -- Jesus Christ. this could be a Sunday Sermon preached somewhere in Middle America to a pastel congregation painted by Norman Rockwell. To The Palm Beach tycoon however, it's occasion for a racist sneer about casinos and
"So, we were the invaders, we were incompetent idiots. We didn't know how to feed ourselves so they came along and showed us how and that's what Thanksgiving is all about."

Tell that to every school kid who had to make Pilgrim and Indian costumes complete with anachronistic flintlock blunderbusses and buckled shoes -- the America hating little bastards.

"He says nothing about the Constitution in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation because he's got a problem with it,"

Limbaugh continues to rant and in the absence of any supporting information for it, fails also to tell us how a document written nearly 170 years afterward would be have any relevance to the Thanksgiving holiday other than one only obvious to a malicious, neurotic saboteur grasping for any wrench he can toss into the works of truth, honesty and human decency.

But of course thanking a long ago vanished tribe, acknowledging the cultural tributaries of our nation and being grateful to whatever name one attaches to providence that our country ever came to be, is no more a qualification for venomous condemnation than saying good morning or asking what time it is. Failing to mention the Constitution of 1789 means no more than failing to mention the Emancipation Proclamation and it says nothing about Obama or the United States of America founded so many years later and mostly by other people. The only uniting element in this or any Limbaughean argument is the desperate attempt to make Obama an "America hating" alien in order to make sure we continue making the same arrogant, ignorant mistakes we pridefully ignore. If the President came out against slavery and wife beating we can be sure Rush would show us just how this was the one-way door to communism and the terrifying notion that Rush may have to earn an honest living. But Rush reveals so much with every word.
"Somebody is toying with me. Somebody is seeing if they can get one past me. Somebody is trying to take advantage of me being not as focused on the day before Thanksgiving and falling for this prank."

That's right, it's not about an alliance of convenience between the Wampanoag and a ragged group of Englishmen who had suffered serious losses in the previous winter, it's about Rush. The President isn't following tradition, isn't being aware of history, isn't telling the truth, isn't being a general good guy in that love thy neighbor and let's work together, and can't we all get along mold. He's trying to trick Rush, take advantage of Rush and interfere with Rush's millions, with the profits of his betrayal of my country, the malignant, hyperbolic, fabrications intended to sabotage everything good and decent and true.

No, it's true Rush. You're right. The long, slow and erratic movement toward freedom and responsibility and justice you're trying to retard is only something designed to get around you and your mission. There's nothing else behind it but an attempt to "get around" you and Obama's not the only one. We're all trying to trick you and in fact history is trying to trick you, the truth is trying to trick you and come to think of it, Satan himself is trying to trick you into thinking that's just a cigar.

6 comments:

  1. "So, we were the invaders, we were incompetent idiots. We didn't know how to feed ourselves so they came along and showed us how and that's what Thanksgiving is all about."--Limbaugh

    Yeah. True. Poor Limbaugh. For all the wealth he holds and all the fans who listen to his dreck, he's basically nothing more than a school year bully trying to get the cool kids to let him play with them.

    The fact is that Limbaugh will be remembered as a pimple on the ass of history, an ugly one, to be sure, but that is all. And Mr. Obama? Mr. Obama will be forever remembered as a transformative leader.


    Somewhere in his insecure little cigar Limbaugh knows this, and it eats at his festering, but expanding ego, every day of his semi-significant life.

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  2. Ditto what Shaw said, especially the part about Limbaugh being remembered as a pimple on the ass of history.

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  3. have you ever asked yourselves why this socialism thing plays so well with modern middle America? It sounds so ridiculous and stupid to us that we deny its potency. Maybe this excerpt from a political questionnaire filled out by a perfectly intelligent, hard-working, hard-playing, loving American might shed some light into this peculiar belief system. It is post-Obama, being dated in July of 2009.

    I almost fanatically hate bullies and tyranny; I love individual liberty and the exercise of the individual human will. I am strongly opposed to any form of socialism, since all forms of socialism are based on force and the theoretical superiority of the group over the person. I strongly support the free market and the right of people to organize their own lives and make their own choices in their lives…

    All Government is based on force or the threat of force. The more government we have, the less liberty we enjoy. The less liberty we have, the less success we enjoy. Freedom just naturally produces success; that's what made America great. As the federal government tightens its coils around us, the nation begins
    to fail.

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  4. The more government we have, the less liberty we enjoy. The less liberty we have, the less success we enjoy. Freedom just naturally produces success

    And I'm sure that many great Americans would want you to agree with that, too. John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Cooke, Charles Crocker, Daniel Drew, James Buchanan Duke, and all the great robber barons of the 19th century felt that big government limited their freedom.

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  5. All law is always based on the threat of force, real or imagined, but I don't think that argues that we should only allow 'market forces' to do away with Murder, lest we take away our 'freedom' and what would you prefer - mobs with pitchforks and torches or a courtroom and body of laws and the power to enforce them?

    People who make that argument seem to long for some Pleistocene hunter gatherer society where that bison I just killed, is mine, all mine. Of course even then it didn't work that way. Our early forbears were, to some significant extent socialists and democrats and the kill was shared, as was the work and the responsibility of making sure big uncle Ugly didn't hog the food, lay claim to the hunting grounds and the women and cause the children and old people to starve. That only began to occur when we acquired prophets, philosophers and politicians to teach us patriotism.

    To really analyze this fallacy, would require actually writing that book I'll never write, but to point out that to maintain socialism, there must be regulation of behavior backed by credible compulsion is a simplistic, incomplete and willfully fallacious argument because to maintain a "free market" requires force and the threat of force, as does the maintenance of any kind of civilization. The invisible hand has no morals and no conscience.

    Unbridled capitalism simply privatizes that force, allows it to be grabbed and kept by the biggest, meanest baboon in the tribe and strips all the rest of the monkeys the ability to steer that force away from the domination of the increasingly many by the increasingly few. Without collective power, there is only the power of the biggest, strongest and yes, the most unscrupulous.

    Is it ironic that I hear that argument from people who simultaneously argue that freedom can only be supported by force of arms? Our current crop of self-titled Libertarians seem to use the same inverted faux Darwinian determinsim ( I'm the biggest babboon; I can take it all, therefore I deserve it all ) that previous generations have used to sanctify authoritarianism disguised as freedom.

    No, socialism does have a price, it's true, but so does any kind of government, good or bad. I'd rather hear arguments that accept the need to move up from the animal kingdom and its barbarism and cruelty and examine the relative costs, relative benefits and acknowledge the possibility and palatability of a carefully blended governmental whiskey of sorts. People are afraid to make such arguments today cause Big Uncle Ugly has come a long way since the ice age and he's better at beating the snot our of us if we make noise.

    Making such complex things into binary choices is indeed the hobgoblin of little (and devious) minds - and there sure are a lot of them.

    Of course, that's only my opinion, I could be wrong.

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  6. Poor Rush, unseated from his mountaintop throne by Glen Beck - no one but the most devoted of fans pay him much attention anymore.
    I wonder who will topple Glen?
    The worst of it is they keep on coming, on after another with their ridiculous, ignorant, inflammatory rhetoric used only to inflate their egos and their purses.
    And the faithful keep kneeling at the base of the mountain, taking it all in...
    We are doomed.

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