Um, Freud? A little help over here.

Via A Tiny Revolution, a look at the Rockwellian childhood of Jerry Falwell, from his autobiography:

There were times that Dad’s pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed “Crip” Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip’s co-workers got tired of the old man’s bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip’s old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad’s little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it “the toughest squirrel meat” he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.

Interesting how that prank merely borders on cruelty. What would be downright cruel in this sick sad world?

This is what whup-ass looks like in HTML.

A lot of people wanted to buy into the bullshit that the GOP was beating us like a trailer park wife. Well that's horseshit. Our problems is that our coaches suck. They not only don't know how to win, they act like they don't want to win. Yeah, yeah, Clinton won, but this is a different team playing a different fucking game. The public likes clear choices. You may hate George Bush, but you know where he stands, and that's why John McCain will NEVER be president. He's too many things to too many fucking people. And Hillary is marching down that same fucking road.

A lot of you blame John Kerry for losing. Well, that's also horseshit. Even Tucker fucking Carlson thought Kerry had in the bag. We fucked up by discounting the church offensive of Rove. That's where those votes came from. It wasn't any fucking Swift Boat either. They fucked up, according to Zogby, and people didn't believe them. But that was one fine magic trick, taking out Rather and neutralizing the draft dodging issue against a bona fide war hero. They played a better ground game. Did Kerry fuck up? Sure, but it wasn't about any vote fraud shit. That battle was lost when Ken Blackwell decided to play for the home team. Once he decided to Tom his way to popularity, that was a done deal, Diebold or no, wacky Bev Harris or no. Part of the problem is that Kerry was saddled with the same losers everyone else had to deal with. Coaches who can't fucking coach and try to win using the old playbook. They KNOW that playbook and hand our asses to us when we use it. They didn't want to win bad enough. They thought there were rules. Our old friend Hunter Thompson knew that politics had one set of rules, do anything to win which you can get away with. The fact that Kerry got close is a miracle, given the team he had.

But the real blame belongs in Congress. Anyone want to tell me how that wacko Tom Coburn is a Senator? It's like Theodore fucking Bilbo rose from the dead and took back his seat. He should have been carted off to await the rapture in a mental hospital.

The DLC should be called the dumbass losing coaches. Al From couldn't coach his way out of a fucking paper bag. His day is done.

It's obcenity-laced ambrosia and just what I needed to hear. This is the only language left to us, the language of rage. Reason doesn't work, nor does compassion. From 1820 to 1860 abolitionists saw their carefully crafted anti-slavery rhetoric shatter in the face of Southern intransience. You know why slavery ended in this country? It was because Sherman cut a bloody swathe so fucking wide through the South that they no choice. It's no longer about crafting the better argument. It's about dividing and conquering. There are many types of warfare, and we've suffered a massive defeat mostly because we've never behaved as though this is war.

Fighting to Care

Fighting to Care

I'm following Kate's instructions and reposting this story so it does NOT fall down the memory hole. And you haven't read this scary NYT piece on media manipulation, read it and weep. Weep for the millions of Americans who will never ever break away from complacency and indifference, and weep for the billions around the world who will be made to suffer from it.

I'm not immune to either complacency or indifference. Being in school makes is very easy to turn inward and shut out the rest of the world. In some ways it's been a blessing. After the election, the task of putting together seminar papers saved me from the deepest of funks. In some ways choosing the path of academia is the selfish thing to do. For me it was respite from the constant barrage of misinformation and outright lies. Away from it all I am free to follow an idea to its conclusion regardless of how meaningless it may be to the world at large.

But the world at large will not be ignored. So I must try harder not to be bitter and indifferent especially when friends are in pain.