One never forgot everything they could get from adults by throwing the occasional strategically placed obstructionist tantrum. The other maybe got a bit ‘too mature’ and definitely too polite, and can’t figure out how to win any fights, even if people’s lives depended on them. Which they do.
Thinking For Yourself Is Highly Frowned Upon. Junior high is nothing if not a giant trend machine. Heck, entire multi-billion dollar fashion, music and gadget industries depend on this fact. Woe be upon anyone who makes the mistake of showing up in some kind of unhip frock or listening to the wrong music selection! The humiliation! The ostracization! Hey, does any of this sound familiar? Have you ever noticed how few regressives allow themselves to think the unthinkable, perhaps muttering out loud, "Gee, it does seem perhaps as though the president might have been just a tad dishonest about the Iraq war"? Have you noticed what happens to them on the rare occasion that this occurs? But now that we’re adults, now that we’re no longer in junior high, shouldn’t we stop acting like a bunch of Stepford Wives, doing what we’re told to do, believing what we’re supposed to believe just because Rush told us "He’s a bad man!", or our preacher said, "He’s a good man!"? Or, "She’s a feminazi and she’ll bring socialized medicine to America!"? Don’t grown-ups think for themselves? Isn’t that one of the key ways in which they’re different from junior high kids?
Girls Are Really, Really Scary. Any honest and probing assessment of right-wing politics today leads inexorably back to the unavoidable observation that regressives are obsessed with sexuality and everything even remotely related to it, right down to blastocysts and stem-cells. What’s up with that? What’s up with that is a deeply-held constellation of fears and insecurities that men have concerning women, and a resulting desire to control them – and especially their sexuality – in order to compensate for those feelings. Frankly, that alone explains a lot about conservative politics in America these days. You can stop right there and get maybe eighty percent of the picture. And if it reminds you of the same mentality that would wrap women in burkas, or make them the property of men, or burn them alive if their husbands die before they do, or subject them to a 200-lash whipping for the crime of being gang-raped, well then, so it does, and so it should. I’m not sure where these attitudes come from. Maybe Maureen Dowd or some anthropologist somewhere can explain them according to some Darwinian logic. What I do know, however, is that healthy males are supposed to out-grow such feelings, along with tantrums and bad taste in music, as they mature. And what I know for sure is that all these right-wings monsters who are continually trying to control everyone else’s sexuality while secretly wrestling rather unsuccessfully with their own twisted tendencies are the last people who should ever be given a license to legislate.
It’s All About Me! And, really, after all – isn’t it? At least if you’re a conservative, it is. Didn’t you get the memo? I mean, what’s the whole point of even having a planet if it can’t be there to serve your every whim and cater to your every need? Why even bother having other people around if they can’t be your personal human resources department to exploit? Get it? Now you’re ready to sign-up for the GOP! Women, minorities and definitely everyone who lives outside America belong to the servant class, and their job is to make sure you get your out-sized portion of the pie. Yes, even if that means exploitive labor practices so that you can get grossly expensive fashion brands at a price that guarantees massive profits for the manufacturer. Yes, even if that means killing a million Iraqis (who probably deserve it, anyhow, since they were stupid enough to pitch their tents on top of our oil). Yeah, even if it means blocking any serious efforts to mitigate the global warming crisis, while we five percent of the world’s population continue to manufacture twenty-five percent of the entire planet’s heat-inducing pollutants. Hell, why not go one further and even deny that global warming exists. Science? Screw that. We’re partying! Get it, now? Heck, these days good regressives have gotten so selfish they’re even screwing their own children by leaving them massive debt borrowed to finance our party and our tax cuts. The kids are being forced to pick up the bill, now at nine trillion dollars and rising. Are you having fun yet? Well, I don’t really care, because it’s all about me, not you! And you’re definitely some sort of communist if you ever thought otherwise!
I don’t know about you, but I thought once around through junior high was enough for this lifetime. I’ve never been particularly anxious to relive the experience. Imagine my consternation, therefore, when the George Bushes and Dick Cheneys of the world arrived on the scene to subject us all once again to the nightmare of junior high – this time on steroids, and irradiated like a giant tomato.
It’s bad enough when you’re twelve, and likely to get whacked by a spit-ball, or smacked down by some devastating verbal cut. If you can imagine taking angry, aggressive kids like that and giving them napalm instead of spit-balls, or John Bolton foaming and snapping at the UN in place of schoolyard taunts, you’ve got the picture.
Unfortunately, no act of imagination is any longer required. We’ve been living it.
Hey, we don’t even allow freaked-out, immature, mood-swinging, devil-incarnate, little junior high brats to get behind the wheel of a car, let alone drive a country. And for good reason. You know?
So who the hell handed these terminal adolescents keys to the ship of state?
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