I see these arguments every day. Since the elections, the Right has gotten shrill.

I swear some of our resident trolls are gonna sue you for copyright infringement. You've ripped off all their arguments without attribution.

If it's 100% completely accurate?

Art imitating life?

...Tom Tomorrow.

You nailed it.

Go Galt!!!

But it's called grief, or rather a very dysfunctional reaction to a grief-inducing situation. Bushco gave them everything they ever wanted (well, except for outlawing abortion and locking up, deporting, or forcing change on all GLBT people), and instead of creating the amazing, patriotic, "rising tide lifts all boats" pax Americana nirvana that they absolutely knew it had to create (even though experts told them a million times that what they wanted would bring disaster in every direction), it did, indeed, bring total disaster.

But to enter into the grief of the reality that everything they've so earnestly believed in has been exactly as misguided, stupid and pig headed as they always feared, in their heart of hearts, it might really be, they would have to do some very un-manly things. Entering into grief so deep would require sadness and tears, but everyone knows, "big boys don't cry," so rather than go where they would need to go to deal with what's happened, learn from it and go on with their lives, they're doing the only parts of grief they allow themselves:

They're doing ANGER, at anyone and everyone or no one in particular, but the desperate cry beneath it is "This CAN'T be happening!"

They're doing DENIAL: there was no BUSH, there was only Carter, and Clinton, and, Gore and Kerry, and, and, and! WE didn't have anything to do with what happened! NOTHING happened. EVERYTHING'S JUST FINE!

They're doing BARGAINING: We need to DO something, but since we can't move past our angry denial, we can only do things TO OTHER PEOPLE. We need to obstruct the government so much that change is impossible. We need to screw up the government so much that the country falls apart and everyone comes crawling back to us! Or... we need to do all the same things we WERE doing only do them even MORE and BETTER!

They're like lovers who have tried to promise you very expensive gifts and trips and houses and cars and the provision of a life of luxury to attract and keep you for themselves, only to have you discover that no amount of luxury or promises of luxury makes up for the fact that the person you're with is a pig who, like a con man, has spent all your money, taken out credit cards in your name and stolen everything valuable you had hidden away!

Now that you've finally kicked them out of YOUR apartment, they're busy blaming you (the American people) to anyone who will listen (Fox news), calling you every name in the book (irresponsible losers), and trying to make sure you never have a successful relationship with anyone else (Obama).

Because of their dysfunctional personalities (from bad parenting), most of them are unable to move through this grief in healthy ways, but can ONLY do these pathetically dysfunctional things they're doing (like allowing Rubaugh to try to bully the entire country in an effort to get even with us for kicking them out).

Still, some of them will eventually enter into and move through their grief in reasonably healthy ways, learn from their mistakes, and come to better, more informed, more logical conclusions than they had before.

The rest will become angry, bitter old people, the rest of whose lives will be filled with woulda, coulda, shoulda, and "We were right all along!" Even if the country completely recovers from the mess they've made, they will always claim it's no where near as amazing and wonderful as it COULD have been if they had still been in charge.

...gkrevvv too.

I've had extensive arguments minimally about point #9. A *lot*. It's never done "right".

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.

--Robertson Davies

All fanaticism is a strategy to prevent doubt from becoming conscious.

--H. A. Williams

I don't know about anyone else, but these two quotations appear to me to fit the GOP and its antics since last summer/fall like a glove.

where's Kudlow and Laffer? Those two nightly put this modest satire to shame

Rush Limbaugh a FORMER drug addict? Hardly! How much more obvious can it be than his tell-tale, drug-induced, bloated carcass? You don't get such swollen, puffed up features unless you're pumping your body with some kind of chemicals. That's not carb-fat, that's drug-fat. And jumping up and down (probably because there's no feeling in his grotesquely inflated limbs) is a pretty obvious exhibition of just how out of control his problem has become.

I would put money on the fact that Rush Limbaugh will die much like Elvis Presley whose drugged-out features match Limabugh's identically.

Like Al Franken whose senate aspirations have the Right frothing at the mouth, Tom Tomorrow's cartoons are anthema to the Dittoheads and Fox News junkies. The truth always hurts.

Elvis was a genius and a cultural touchstone.

Rush is an asshole.

Other than the fat druggie thing, nothing in common. At all.

...as always.

But I do have one tiny cavil:

As most people in the recovery community would attest, "former addict" is an oxymoron, much like "jumbo shrimp," or "Justice Clarence Thomas;" there is no such thing as a "former addict." Once an addict, always an addict. Maybe "active," maybe not, maybe "in recovery"... but still, and forever, an addict.

And this is not just therapy-speak psychobabble or jargon. The brain is literally altered by addiction to opiates / opioids, and there is no going back. (12-Steppers have a cute analogy: nothing can turn a pickle back into a cuke.)

Introducing the relationship analogy reminds me of an article I read by Gene Lyons maybe 8 years ago or so, very early in the Bush years. He basically said Democrats are like the woman in a bad relationship, saying honey lets sit down and talk about this; whereas the Republicans are like the loutish, violent, abusive man that basically yells and throws shit around as a reaction to literally every single conflict. Might work a little in the short term but that gets really old really fast. That alalogy, plus your excellent post, just about sums it up for me.

Good thing we, or she, has finally kicked his sorry ass out. Degenerate loser. Asshole.