ship of tools

[geekchick]

Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening
Johann Hari spends a week on a cruise with readers of the National Review.

I am getting used to these moments - when gentle holiday geniality bleeds into… what? I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

Now to be fair, I have some conservative friends and I've never heard any of them call for the execution of us "traitorous anti-war liberals". Of course, I try not to spend much time with people in whom the Batshit Crazy is strong and that may have something to do with it.

I do want to know how Johann apparently kept a straight face during this exchange:

They rush through the Rush-list of liberals who hate America, who want her to fail, and I ask them - why are liberals like this? What's their motivation? They stutter to a halt and there is a long, puzzled silence. " It's a good question," one of them, Martha, says finally. I have asked them to peer into the minds of cartoons and they are suddenly, reluctantly confronted with the hollowness of their creation. "There have always been intellectuals who want to tell people how to live," Martha adds, to an almost visible sense of relief.

Comments

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

They were the same here in the seventies, and quite openly so to members of the left (whom, I imagine, they fantisized were pulling a scam on the Public, too).

I've also know social science students to join right wing parties and report back (not something I'd do).

[carpee-diem.livejournal.com]

Blah.. I always get a little uncomfortable when rightleaning parties discuss desires to 'gas' liberals and trouble makers.. So what.. we gather up all of the educators, intellectuals, philosophers and opposing politicians? Hmm.. why does that sound familiar?

ugh.

[bungo.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the Three Stooges / Lone Gunmen from the X-Files. Except that they were funny.

[sneezesloudly.livejournal.com]

It kinda sounds like the usual tribalism. The art the conservatives seem to have is finding something to make light of or take offense to and then carry it as far as the possibly can. It gets them all feeling like they're one team. It's much like what sexist males do when there aren't any females around, a hyperbolic feedback loop.

There is this crazy notion going around that what someone says about terrorists has any impact whatsoever on the terrorists ability to hurt us. It's really ironic that the same people putting this notion forward are the ones who didn't bother to stop the terrorists the first time, nor manage to catch them.

Of course keeping everyone talking about executing liberals keeps them from noticing that the neo-cons have screwed everyone though their irrational decisions and incompetence.