Patriots and Assholes

Doesn’t take too much head scratching to figure out why.

John McCain spent over five years in the Hanoi Hilton getting tortured by the Vietnamese. By Inhofe’s criteria, McCain — not only a death-dealing combatant but also an officer, a high-value intelligence target, and propaganda trophy — had it coming.

No wonder McCain left the room for a little fist clenching and vein throbbing.

In honor of this occasion, by the authority granted me as a blogger, I have decided to unilaterally redraw the political map of the United States.

It’s no longer Red and Blue states.

No more GOP, independents, and Democrats.

And no more conservatives, moderates, and liberals.

Now it’s:

Patriots and Assholes.

In the Patriot category I include anybody, left or right, conservative or liberal, that wants to make America a better place.

In the Asshole category I include people who use and abuse the wealth, power, prestige, and future of this nation to further their own private agendas.

Patriots can disagree, they can insist on their own views, they can be wrong, Lord knows they can do wrong…but when they see that the country is going to hell, they do something about it.

Assholes, on the other hand, are solipsists. They promote their own interests, objectives, and beliefs and if the country gets hurt, well that’s just collateral damage.

George W. Bush is an asshole, the movement’s poster child. Inside his world, GWB is the measure of all things. If he’s doing well, everything’s OK. Corporations, state governments, budgets, nations, the international system, and our planet might all go to shit. But as long as George W. Bush can wake up another morning and crow from his dunghill one more time, all’s right with the world.

That’s why I don’t dismiss George W. Bush as a slow-witted, under-informed, easily-manipulated, and irrelevant puppet in the hands of Dick Cheney, Arial Sharon, and whoever else has the energy and intelligence to conceive and execute the catastrophic policies that are screwing up our world.

George W. Bush enjoys it too much. And he embodies the interests and worldview of too many of Americans.

Call them dingbats, dittoheads, Moral Majority, Middle Finger Americans, mouthbreathers, independents, whatever.

They are Americans whose moral and intellectual horizons go no further than the next tax cut. People who need the polarizing hate of a culture war or genuine military conflict to bring order and meaning to their lives.

People who prefer a government of disengagement and moral abdication because it mirrors the way they run their own lives: an amoral muddle coated with a shiny, false coat of “righteousness”, “strength”, and “liberty”.

People who yearn to be swaddled in the cocoon of myths the Bush administration concocted to invade Iraq and divide this country.

People for whom a useful, ennobling lie counts more than the truth.

People who look for excuses for al Ghraib, instead of for the answers that its crimes scream out for.

Assholes.

I’ve decided it’s time to stop pandering for the asshole vote with carefully calibrated appeals to narrow economic interests, fear, and racism. That’s George W. Bush’s job. He’s welcome to it.

It’s time to talk over their heads and past them — to the patriots: the people all across the political spectrum who love and care about this country.

Patriots are people who realize that George W. Bush is covering this country with filth and failure, but doesn’t have a plan for cleaning up the mess or doing anything else than covering his own ass.

There seems to be a groundswell of interest in a Kerry/McCain fusion ticket. Not because of McCain’s “values” - those oh so important litmus tests that the religious/ideological right and lefty progs bleat about.

McCain has a ferocious temper, narrow views, and I don’t think five years in hell taught him how to appreciate the views of the other fella.

But when he sees something disgusting, he gets…disgusted and does something about it.

We’re not looking for the conservative messiah or liberal nirvana. We’re just looking for four years without Bush to start cleaning up the fiscal, political, and moral mess he made — and an alternative to the moral bankruptcy of the Bush/neocon wing of the GOP.

A fusion ticket seems to offer a way out of the national political impasse we’re stuck in — where confrontation and posturing and ass-covering trumps problem-solving and sacrifice.

Maybe even invite Colin Powell to come on board, to redeem himself and his cherished reputation after the mire and futility of the Bush years.

Even if the fusion ticket doesn’t come off at the national level, maybe we can work it out at the grass roots, between liberals and conservatives who care more about the future of this country than about labels.

Don’t ask yourself, what do I want as a liberal or a conservative, Republican or Democrat?

Ask not what your country can do for you…

…you know the rest…

…Patriots.