Just remember, boys and girls: this is not the first time in history that self-absorption, paranoia, and self-righteousness have exemplified conservatives. It is nice to hear all of the bubbly talk about the Party being done for. But it is not realistic to expect it to fade into the annals of history.
Tom Ridge Shows Why the Republican Party Is Intellectually Bankrupt | PEEK | AlterNet
It is not unusual to see and hear this kind of false logic, patriotic blindness from conservatives in America. Remember, these folk believe that they are going to be swept up from this earthly plane to live forever at the "right hand of God" on "Judgment Day" while at the same time condemning the Islamic belief that they will be greeted in heaven by rivers of flowing honey and 72 virgins.
But it is ABSOLUTELY fun to think about a day when they ARE all swept up and away by something! Then the rest of us might actually be able to live in peace and prosperity.
Amen.
Tom Ridge Shows Why the Republican Party Is Intellectually Bankrupt | PEEK | AlterNet
We now have a wealth of other material clearly showing that Ridge's implied meaning is simply and utterly false. However, if you simply take his literal meaning, it's arguably defensible--but utterly damning. Sure the decision may have been based on "keep[ing] America safe"--a decision made by a bunch of pee-in-their-pants chickenhawks with guilty consciences for having allowed the most spectacular terrorist attack in world history to happen on their watch.
Such men were so mentally and morally compromised that actual evidence simply did not play any role in what "keep[ing] America safe" meant to them. They "trusted their gut", not after looking at all the facts, but instead of looking at them. That men of stupendously bad judgment--so bad, in fact, that it can't really be called judgment at all--might be trying to "keep America safe" does not even begin to be a legitimate defense of their perfidy in deceiving the public.
But for Ridge, that's exactly what it does. Bush and Cheney were America's leaders. This alone is enough to exempt them from any sort of critical scrutiny.
Maddow's framework typifies the essence of liberalism and Enlightenment reason: we base our actions on reality, we reason from reality, and when we find out we have been mistaken, we go back and learn why were mistaken, so that we do not make the same mistakes again.
Ridge, on the other hand, typifies the conservative mind. He does not learn. He cannot learn. Because he cannot question mistakes made by leaders. He can question mistakes made by underlings, but since the big decisions are not made by underlings, he can never question the big decisions. And thus he is incapable of learning the big lessons.
No wonder conservatism is utterly doomed to failure, after failure, after failure, after failure. What else could such a belief system possibly produce?
It is not unusual to see and hear this kind of false logic, patriotic blindness from conservatives in America. Remember, these folk believe that they are going to be swept up from this earthly plane to live forever at the "right hand of God" on "Judgment Day" while at the same time condemning the Islamic belief that they will be greeted in heaven by rivers of flowing honey and 72 virgins.
But it is ABSOLUTELY fun to think about a day when they ARE all swept up and away by something! Then the rest of us might actually be able to live in peace and prosperity.
Amen.
