The Barryfest Chronicles

The other day, I figured out that supporting facts and supporting the McCain/Palin campaign are two mutually exclusive positions.  I am not even saying that you have to be one of those people who knows a lot of facts or is even particularly good at remembering facts.  But if you have even the smallest appreciation for the beauty and simplicity of a well-stated and verifiable fact, this campaign season has got to be wearing on you.

This total disregard for truth is only part of the GOP’s anti-intellectual, populist movement that has effectively turned me into a radical intellectual militant.  I feel like I am forced to assume that if anyone out there is still planning to cast a vote for John McCain, it is likely a result of his or her below-average intellect.  I have to figure that he or she is no different than the horrifically misinformed dolts that file into the crowd for a Sarah Palin speech and proceed to slur African-American members of the media covering the event and share their desire to assassinate the man on the other side of the ticket.

I imagine that he or she would get riled up at the mere mention of the words “terrorist” or “patriotism” in the same way that a dog’s ears perk up when you look towards a door or window and playfully ask “Who’s there?”  See, the same device powers both reactions: psychological conditioning filling in for a lack of either logical reasoning capability, critical thinking skills, or warehoused knowledge.

I’ll say it:  I think Sarah Palin is fucking idiot.  I am saying she is more than just inexperienced and unethical.  I think she is undereducated, disinterested in current events and lacking the intellectual curiosity I would expect not only from a potential world leader, but from everyone from my accountant to my mechanic to my dentist to my – dare I say – plumber.

Additionally, I think people who don’t think she is an idiot are idiots.  But most of all, I think John McCain is an idiot for either not realizing she is an idiot before he picked her as his VP choice or, in an unprecedentedly cynical political power move,  for picking her in spite of (or – terrifyingly – because of) the fact that she is an idiot.

Moreover, sometimes there are those magical moments when this overt stupidity intersects with the another main theme of the GOP presidential campaign: oblivious hypocrisy.  Let me share with you a remarkable email my brother sent me after the ridiculous focus on “Joe the Plumber” at the last debate:

So the campaign is targeting “Joe Plumber” who owns a plumbing business and makes $250K+ a year and is outraged at the possibility of a $900 tax increase?  But the campaign also despises “the Wall Street greed” that runs through the veins of “Joe Banker” who may also make $250K a year?

I guess they are the authority on moral judgments regarding professions as well: A millionaire plumber should be entitled to more than a millionaire banker. This is the verdict handed down by people who know nothing about plumbing or banking.

Ok, I get it, but where does this leave “Joe Sixpack”? And why is it not condescending to assume that everybody who falls in the middle class tax bracket is interested in Sixpacks?

This simple email correspondence draws attention to so many mortal flaws of the Republican platform that I could only sully it’s eloquence by trying to enumerate all the points my brother has raised.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize all the bullshit spewing forth from the McCain/Palin camp these days.  But it does take a complete fucking idiot to not recognize it.