Those Were the Days

Just for the record, I have not watched one minute of the television coverage of the Republican National Convention, nor do I intend to do so. I am one of those close-minded, judgmental people who already know everything and don’t need any new information. Well, perhaps I am being too hard on myself; perhaps it is more like having once tasted a turd, you know it tastes like shit and the next time somebody offers you one, you don’t need to chomp down on it to be certain that you will not find it palatable. Anyway, I have read many of the reports from the biased socialist, communist liberal media and can safely say that there is nothing new under the sun in the world of Conservative America.

 

Also for the record, I have this recurring fantasy of anally raping Ann Coulter while I slowly strangle her with an electrical cord and then I dispose of her nude body in a drainage ditch with several inches of stagnant water beside a state highway in Alabama. I know this says a lot about me, principally my dedication to public service, but I’m not trying to pretend to be some sort of hero; I just can’t stand the hateful and vindictive shit that comes out of some people’s mouths. I am also not sure why Ann Romney is not at home with her sister-wives raising up a passel of young’uns instead of regaling the assembled faithful with her utopian vision of an America where all wealthy white people can live in harmony and freedom, but what do I really know, after all? For example, I don’t know what the hell George Washington intended when he wrote the Magna Carta, but that was a long time ago. Back then, a slave was three-fifths of a person and gasoline was a penny a gallon. People went to church because it was the only place to find a decent hook-up. Land was cheap and anybody who was willing to murder a few Indians could make a life for themselves. Nobody stopped you from beating your wife or smoking dope and the average life expectancy was two and a half years. Everybody had to build their own cold fusion reactors and we were a better nation for it.

 

It seems to me that the most consistent theme in Conservative rhetoric is the loss of something pure in American society. There is an almost obsessive desire to return to some unspecified but nostalgically perfect time or condition when America used to be a better place. A time when the individual controlled their own fate and we were all unified in our belief in God and country. The problem is, of course, that such a time never existed. For every great virtue of the past there are two horrible and intolerable conditions that have to be ignored. The irony here is that my Republican brethren are bigger idealists than I am. They actually believe in the perfection of humanity instead of the interminable struggle to hold back the darkness. Their idea of perfection may be a little on the Third Reich side, but it is not unusual for people to long for a society where there is no conflict, everyone agrees on important things and unpleasant displays of poverty or perversion are hidden away from decent folk.

 

So here’s my analysis. Mythology is parable and allegory, not history or law. The American mythology of our sainted Founding Fathers, the vision and charity of Captains of Industry and the simple, self-gratifying toil of the masses is all delusional shit. It is only valuable in the opportunity it provides us to aspire to be better people and a better nation. As the parade of lost souls at the Republican Convention continues to invoke God and wave the flag and talk about values, they are nothing more than Oprah’s Book-of-the-Month Club discussing some wonderful, inspiring novel they all just read. They are filled with a sense of longing for a world that never existed; sadly Bilbo Baggins and Harry Potter are just idealistic visions of resourcefulness and moral purity. Transforming those visions into reality is not a job for people looking behind them, nor is it a task for the intellectually limited or the culturally inflexible. Bibles and bombs and abortion bans will not fix what ails America, nor will a diminished sense of social responsibility or descent into the hallucinatory hell of unfettered capitalism. If the truth be told, I choose to avoid watching the Republican Convention not because I fear I will, in a paroxysm of rage, hurl something at my expensive flat-screen TV, but because I am a grown man and I fear the senseless sadness of it will make me cry.