Your Department of Redundancy Dept.

Two more days and it'll be over.  Well, almost.  Or maybe not; some pundit suggested the other day that the presidential race might be close enough to force a recount, which could delay closure for some time.  Contrary to some white right-wing fantasies about the outcome of an Obama defeat, I think there's real danger of white right-wing riots in the event of an Obama victory.  As usual, they're projecting, and the Right has been working itself into a gigantic snit ever since Obama won in 2008, and blah blah blah ... this is not exactly rocket science, is it?

While I do hold the Republicans I know responsible for their hysteria -- I was forthrightly mean to the guy I knew vaguely in high school who posted the above photo to Facebook, especially since it wasn't the first time he's posted such garbage* -- I also hold Democrats responsible for matching the Republicans' frothing.  If they were as rational as they like to think they are, the Intertoobz wouldn't be full of cute-Obama pictures, Ryan-as-Eddie-Munster caricatures, Romney binders-full-of jokes, and worse.  Gary Younge has a not-crazy piece at the Guardian in which he argues that a Romney victory would merely reward the Republicans for bad behavior.  I agree, but an Obama victory would merely reward the Democrats for their bad behavior.  (As I've argued before, an Obama defeat will not convince the Democrats that they should have been more liberal; it will convince them that they should have been more like the Republicans.  But an Obama victory will also convince them that being more like the Republicans was wise politically.)

My law professor friend and I exchanged a few more barbs last night.  She introduced some more wacked-out defense of Obama by saying that she's not partisan.  I said she was, she repeated that she wasn't.  But if she weren't partisan, she'd make the same excuses for Romney and for Republicans generally that she makes for Obama: If you demand a candidate who's perfect you might as well not vote.  Mitt has to say those things to please his base, he couldn't get elected if he said what he really believes.  He'll be different after he's elected; then we'll see the real hope-and-dreamy Mitt he's had to hide all along, just like Ann says.  That a highly-educated person like her can spout such idiotic blather -- and she's far from the only who does it: these are Democratic Party talking points -- is a sign of how much highly-educated partisans have abandoned rationality in favor of lockstep groupthink.  Though "think" isn't really the right second syllable there, is it?

This article is more of the same.  If you don't vote, then you can't bitch.  Not that it matters, because I do vote, but: Excuse me, but I think I can bitch.  There is no provision to that effect in the First Amendment, but besides, it doesn't matter.  If you don't vote for Obama (whether by voting for one of the children of Satan who dare to run against him, or by abstaining), you aren't allowed to criticize him.  If you do vote for Obama, you aren't allowed to criticize him.  Nobody is allowed to criticize him; you can admit being disappointed by him as long as you atone for it by supporting him even more fanatically.  (I don't care what Dembots don't allow, gonna criticize Obama anyhow ... )  But people who take positions like this have, like antigay bigots, declared themselves outside the realm of rational discussion; there's nothing much left to do but mock them.

*The first time I noticed him posting such garbage, it was a photo of Obama taking his shoes off before entering a mosque on a campaign appearance.  "He prays with the Muslims!" was the caption.  I posted a link to a video clip I'd just seen of Texas Governor Rick Perry dancing awkwardly around his desk with some ultra-orthodox Rabbis, and commented, "He dances with the Jews!"  That got no response, of course.  Maybe I should have posted a picture of George W. Bush holding hands with a Saudi king ... but there's been enough homophobic pants-shitting about that by Democrats already.