The A-rabs are coming!

The A-rabs Are Coming!
By Joseph Walther

It’s happened! Earl—chief spokesperson for the McGoofy Group—bought a computer. Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. Earl, eschewer extreme of all things capitalistic and paranoid par excellence regarding all things Republican, especially George W. Bush, has thrown himself, with wild abandon, into the technological nebulous called Internet. Since this past Thursday, he has sent me twelve emails.

His email address, at least the one he used for his missives to me, is—I swear that I’m not making this stuff up—Sir.Earl.of.Wisom@gmail.com. The fact that he has a Gmail account is significant. It means that he has to know someone who has an account. Google, at least for now, issues Gmail accounts by invitation only.

Earl’s first email arrived this past Thursday evening. He informed me that he had purchased a Gateway GT5034 with a 64-bit Athlon AMD dual core processor. He said he purchased it through the Home Shopping Network for just 5-easy payments of $260 each. He attached a specification sheet and asked me what I thought about the purchase.

I replied with my congratulations and welcomed him to the world of hi-tech bedlam. While acknowledging that he had purchased a powerful computer at a reasonable price, I expressed considerable surprise. “After all,” I explained, “based on our first conversation down at Momma Gina’s Pizza Shop, you left me with the impression that the possession and use of electricity was tantamount to being in bed with the Republican devils.” He replied that he sometimes gets over-zealous when it comes to condemning Republicans but that he does not hate all Republicans, just the rich ones. He thanked me for my reply and told me that he’d be in touch again later.

“Later” arrived in the very early hours of this past Friday morning (1:30 AM… 0130 to all of us techies). This time, Earl asked me what I thought of the Bush Administration’s decision to turn the management of six of our major ports over to the Arabs (Earl pronounces it A-rabs). He also asked me how I thought Ronald Regan would handle this if he were our current president.

I replied to him explaining that the Internet is loaded with information regarding this very move. Most of it is unabashedly political and blatantly partisan. Bush haters of all persuasions are calling for impeachment or, at the very least, his castration. Bush lovers still think he walks on water. That huge silent majority that we all claim to be part of, has no idea what’s going on, but they are sure that he could have gone about this in a more intelligent way.

For sure, though, the majority of Democrats, along with an increasing percentage of the national Republican leadership, have expressed a need for a congressional review. The need for the review is a political reality rather than a security reality. This happens during reelection years.

“Earl”, I said, “I have been doing Internet research longer than I care to admit.” I’ve learned some things, though. The first order of business is to separate fact from fiction. This is easy once you understand that both politics and the media reporting on politics have become bloated with idiocy and hypocrisy.

Each of these entities likes to claim a leadership role. Both attempt to display the perseverance, assertiveness, and aggressiveness of a “true” leader. I do agree that great leaders tend to display such qualities. However, truly great leaders understand that the line between demonstrating these qualities and going too far, even just a teensy bit too far, is microscopically thin. They also understand that crossing this line, just once, redefines you as an asshole, not of a leader.

On the media side of the equation, the talking heads at CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and TNN would do well to remember this. Politically, just about all of the Democratic National Committee leadership and a smaller number of Republicans would also do well to remember it.

Reading between the lines of all of the hyperbole, I think the political motivation behind all of the brouhaha trumps the hell out of any national security concern. Ignoring speculation taken to the extreme, I find myself hard pressed to find any real security concerns. I can think of several other things that scare me a lot more than this.

I am not going to belabor the issue. I have stated in this medium that I am a conservative who thinks that George W. Bush, while a man with a great heart, has a bad head when it comes to leadership. Listening to his many impromptu pronouncements, leaves many people with the impression that he’s a well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-class idiot on a mission to change the world one factual error at a time.

I disagree with this impression. I just think that George Bush is a professionally ridiculous, over-confident moron, better suited to a career in public school administration. And, he would not stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. It would be impossible for people to distinguish him from so many other like-minded people! He’d feel right at home.

Last, I think that Ronald Regan would have approved the same move. However, he would have done it WITH the approval of the United States Congress because he would have discussed it with them BEFORE he announced it. You see, Ronald Regan could speak in complete sentences. He was able to talk to us rather than at us. The late President dealt with a first term, democratically controlled Congress that was far more hostile toward his agenda than anything George Bush has had to face. Essentially, Regan was a lot smarter than George Bush is.

Regan understood the difference between leadership and management and didn’t care a hoot about the latter. He’ll go down in history as having been very effective in dealing with matters of foreign affairs as a result.

Bush will have to spend the next several weeks making a bigger fool out of himself than he usually does. Why? Because he shuns thinking, that’s why. He is a “believer.” Before this matter is settled, his own congressional majority will force him to accede to their collective thinking. They all face reelection in November of this year. He doesn’t. There will be a noticeable compromise.

It’s Harriet Myers all over again. Someone should explain to George that while there is nothing wrong in “believing”, it doesn’t necessarily hurt to “think” about what you “believe” before announcing it to the rest of the country.

I don’t know how any of you feel, but I’m sick and tired of the “my way or the highway” mentality. This growing attempt to impugn peoples’ integrity, patriotism, or any other human attribute, solely because they disagree with us, has done more to polarize the United States, as well as much of the rest of the world, than anything I can remember during my adult lifetime.

Neither liberalism nor conservatism is inherently evil. Similarly, neither is inherently good, either. Millions of Americans claim an affiliation with one side or another. They do so without embarrassment or apology. I respect people, regardless of political attachment, who fight for their beliefs and vote their conscience.

However, people who must stoop to the incessant use of offensive linguistic camouflage and sanitizing euphemisms are neither conservative nor liberal. They are just stupid and, in many cases, plain batshit crazy. I thank God every day for Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. It requires… no, it screamingly demands, that dummies remain completely free to do increasingly stupid things. This is His way of effectively thinning the gene pool without any direct intervention!

See you next week. Oh yeah, if you really want to think about something that is far scarier than assigning the management of our major ports to the A-rabs, try this one. There is a movie, in the making, depicting the life of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Paris Hilton is a leading candidate for the role of Mother Theresa.

I read this on the front page of one of those supermarket tabloids. So you know that it must be true. If this doesn’t reduce you to a whimpering blob of drooling depression, nothing will.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.