Conservatives "Of the Corn"

As the Republican Party went off the deep end in recent weeks with talk of "forced euthanasia," "new 'Final Solutions'" and "death panels," and screams during presidential speeches, I couldn't help but think back to Sam and Eric from "Lord of the Flies." Having fallen asleep during their watch, they don't see that what they later believe to be "the monster" hunting them is nothing more than a benign, but dead, parachute borne soldier, shot down in battle over the island whilst they slept. Subsequently, all the boys' childhood impulses, driven by fear, go unchecked and things, as we say in the 'hood, get a little "buckwild." There is brief hope for sanity and reason when Simon has an epiphany, sees that the dead soldier is just a dead soldier, and comes back to share his ruminations with the other boys. We all know what happened to Simon.

Joe Scarborough and Christopher Buckley (son of William) have both played Simon, but to no avail. There has been a mutiny brewing against adult supervision in this once proud party and all the remaining grown ups have been exiled to the attic, now that Papa Buckley has left the building.

As a liberal critical thinker, I subscribe to the maxim that only two things come from being compelled to evaluate your beliefs; you either change them, or they are strengthened. You learn to address the idea, not the person making it. I was as a young collegian a voracious reader of "Commentary" magazine and habitual viewer of "The McGlaughlin Group." I've since found myself in consistent agreement with Conservative Christina Hoff Sommers on gender issues, and can overlook Pat Buchanan's thinly veiled bigotry to grant my assent to his aversion to foreign military adventurism. But current conservative hegemony makes me want to tear my face off with an industrial strength sander when I listen to them.

Let us review the bidding. Just two years ago year, Harpy-In-Chief Michelle Malkin successfully had a Dunkin Donuts ad pulled because she charged "Rachael Ray (Rachael f******g RAY?) with promoting "jihadist chic" by wearing a keffiyeh scarf in the ad. She is now given panel on the mainstream news shows like Today, where she accused Barack Obama of staging the question on The Arrest Heard Round The World to engage his "racial opportunism." Glenn Beck gives hope each day to bipolar schizophrenics with dreams of upward mobility. Multiple elected officials have called out Godfather Limbaugh, only to confess their sins and kiss the ring publicly just days after (ostensibly to avoid Simon's fate). Journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling are sprung from Pyongyang gulags for a song and an autograph, and the mindless contrarians at Fox nakedly suggest that maybe we should have left them to rot. Sonia Sotomayor, who once ruled in favor of a white bigot's 1^st amendment rights, is called "Laundry Lady" by Godfather, and essentially A Threat To White People Everywhere by Republican Senators. Paging David Frum, Ben Stein, and PJ O'Rourke. You are needed at the Courtesy Phone of Sanity.

By contrast, the scourge of the Right, Keith Olbermann put a liberal at the top of his "Worst Person" list for hanging McCain and Palin in effigy, and called comic Wanda Sykes wish for Limbaugh's kidneys to fail "A bridge too far." Further, The incipient controversy over McCain's birthplace and the presidency was briskly Whack-A-Moled by left's hegemony. It appears the adults still run one part of the island.

The punditry was only the vanguard of this collective psychosis, and those elected to lead are following. A Missouri legislator in charge of the school free meal program has suggested they be scaled back because "hunger can be a motivator," and they could always get free meals by "working at McDonalds." The Arizona legislature is in the lunacy loop, with Rep. Sylvia Allen calling for unfettered Uranium mining because the Earth has lasted "6,000 years" without environmental laws. There's constant secession Michelle Bachman. . well, I don't have enough space. Just Google her. Oh, and did I forget Birth-Gate? Where have you gone, Warren Rudman and Alan Simpson

Some may dismiss this as the death squall of the American Radical Right, a last ditch attempt to arouse the lowest common denominator before evaporating into irrelevance. Well, the lowest common denominators in a sewer line are grease and common waste. If enough of it collects in a selected area, you have a pipe explosion---a catastrophe. This tone is dangerous exactly because of WHO it appeals to. Armed folks who feel under siege care little about long-term electoral viability. Just remember, those who remember domestic terror (lynchings, bombings, cross burnings) as ad-hoc state policy still walk the earth, both victims and participants. Most of the latter had kids, and not all were repentant.

The annals of literature and cinema are replete with examples of what happens when the children take over.

As I watch the rampant religious zealotry of Children of the Corn, the overt puerile malice of Village of the Damned, and the unchecked id of "The Twilight Zone-The Good Life" play out it's clear that the GOP is brewing a gumbo that borrows from many sources. Should the grown-ups not intervene, this is going to be one LONG case of dyspepsia.