Fascinoma

The Lobbyist and I were far away from Washington when the Tea Baggers invaded and I think that was a very wise move -- protective of my mental health and perhaps even my liberty. Hard to imagine a more despicable bunch of people: 87,000 white whiners who don't know much about anything, except they sure know they're victims -- and that everybody except the most racist of twits is responsible for whatever highly abstract victimhood has been visited upon them during their long cossetted lives in the American white middle-class.

One of my co-workers, a very nice, mild-mannered lady, yesterday commented upon all this to the effect that 'both sides should tone down their rhetoric.' I respectfully disagreed. I was tempted to say something like, 'Yes, if only both the Jews and the fucking Brownshirts had been more moderate back then, how much unpleasantness might have been avoided.' But I didn't, and I attribute this diplomatic fact to my pleasant escape over the weekend.

Not to dwell on the Beckerwoods too long, but their whole project "Restoring Honor" to America is something they can only believe in because they're incapable of undertsanding it. (Is this a sine qua non of most faith?) Honor is predicated in truth. To be honorable, you must first and foremost tell the truth; also you need to act so as to make your promises accurate predictions of your behavior; and you need to act in a manner that will not require you to lie later. All of these needs further require that, as much as possible, you determine and are mindful of what is true. But the Tea Baggers, like Republicans in general, have absolutely no interest in the truth, except as a trivial prop for their phony poses of knowing. Witness Michelle Bachmann who inflates the rally size by a factor of twenty. Like all members of her "Capitalist" cult, she speaks Advertese. There is no term for honor or truth in Advertese, just as there is no word for weather in Hawaiian.

Glen Beck is as fit to restore honor as Tiger Woods is to restore chastity.