To which I say, “Fricking outstanding.”

Pat Buchanan is stuck in a fantasy ’50s style of the US and can’t find the exit.

Post Apocalyptia Pat needs to snarf up some Yao-Guai meat, drop some Mentats and put away his Pulse Rifle. He badly needs the Lady Killer perk, too.

On second thought, he’s no better than a feral gouhl. Nobody’s going to level up on his ass.

Stick to looting, Pat. You’re for shit without your Enclave power armor.

First, it needs to be acknowledged that it never, truly ends. Bigotry and tribal hatreds, like mythology are learned at the parents knee, and while society can evolve and so “unlearn” the tribal meta-histories, there will always be enclaves that perpetuate the hate. One of the interesting things to watch is how the hate evolves, how parts of our culture went from hating blacks and jews to hating muslims and “mexicans”. There will always be a convenient “other” upon which to focus our helpless rage.

That said, yes, it is clear that each succeeding generation is discovering the joys of peace through diversity, and finding no actual downside to tolerance. But make no mistake – these things seldom end peacefully, and those who fear the changes, who see themselves displaced from their “rightful” spot at the top of the power structure will not relinquish that which they perceive as their birthright without violence.

Three years is a long time, and the runup to the next American presidential election will serve for many of them as something more than a referendum on power and diversity, but rather their final stand against an inevitable evolution, and a desperate fight to retain a world that has long since lost it’s purpose…

mikey

“With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavour at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerrilla war.

“They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.”

-Pat Buchanan, quote before invasion of Iraq, while most other pundits were scaring Americans with WMD bullshit, false Bin Laden links with Saddam Hussein, and ancillary utopian shit about “transforming the ME thru democracy.”

I think Buchanan, is his usual smarmy way, has hit on something. For nearly all of our history, white, Protestant, middle and upper class Americans could count on having a President who was “one of us.”

There were exceptions. When an uncultured country lawyer from the wilds of Illinois became President, he was vilified to a degree not seen until recently. Governors were preaching nullification and secession, as some are today. Then, the issue was whether Black Americans could be sold as property. Now it is whether a Black American can, or should, be President.

So, the Birthers, Tenthers, Teabaggers, etc. are echoing the cries of a century and a half ago. We can only hope that their paranoia can be curtailed before history repeats itself in secession, civil war and assassination.

Buchanan is a nativist and a fascist. The question is why do the media allow on an extremist like him. That’s a rhetorical question. They have him on because wingnuts agree with him and corporations find wingnuts a lot easier to lead around by the nose than liberals. And, of course, there is the clown value.

Lord, please don’t let me be the only one who understood that.