February 20, 2005
Regrets For My Lost, Pasty Brotherhood
Whenever you see roundups from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), keep in mind that I could have easily been a participant had my conditioning held up... growing up in a heavilyRepublican, nearly all-white Houston suburb, certainly exposed to enough Jesus and Reagan-worship to sustain me for a lifetime... thankfully, I was deprogrammed in 1988 by a group of wandering Weather Underground refugees in a VW bus (down by the river). However, with a quick trip to Supercuts and three minutes with a razor, I would still be indistinguishable from 90% of the SPF-50 troglodytes you see here.
Currently, the best dispatches are coming from Radley Balko, a libertarian, at The Agitator. He is detailing the efforts of a true limited-government conservative to come to grips with the assorted crazies that are attending the conference, from juvenile homophobes, to unreconstructed drug warriors, to asshole perverts from the Wall Street Journal who indiscriminately comandeer others' computers, to paleolithic harpies who are making some very odd claims about my alma mater.
It certainly doesn't have the ideological purity and Dark Ages outlook on life that a Texas GOP convention does (for some reason, I self-link to that post more than any other). But all of the psychopathic retreads still manage to show up, which could lead to an endless series of hand-wringing posts about why The Right doesn't distance itself from its crazies if I believed in playing that game.
It is good to know that, despite the token diversity of opinion at the convention, most everyone can suck it up and agree on two simple propositions: (1) reality does not, for all practical purposes, exist [e.g. "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq"] and (2) defying all odds, this intellectually incurious sock puppet represents the apex of Presidential leadership.
Feel free to point to your own favorite round-ups / crazy quote aggregators in the comments...
I always wondered why Mexicans sneaking across the border were always dressed in orange and white.
Posted by: drew at February 20, 2005 05:37 PM