Loofah Man Strikes Again

The oldest wheeze in the conservative playbook is the notion that conservatism is a matter of thought while liberalism is a realm of emotion. El Rushbo himself has frequently said the biggest difference between lefties and righties is that lefties say “I feel” while righties say “I think.”

Sure. I’ve been getting lots of logic and rationalism from wingers over the past few years during arguments about the Iraq war and terrorism. Uh huh. What I’ve actually been getting is knee-jerk outrage that someone would dare to question the president’s actions. I’d say that during at least two-thirdss of the encounters I’ve had with wingers, it quickly becomes obvious that their politics is rooted in an instinctive need to bend the knee to authority figures. They see the president as a father figure who spends every evening tucking loyal Americans into their bunny pajamas and giving them a cup of hot cocoa. And if Big Daddy then goes down into the rec room with his buddies for a jolly evening of waterboarding detainees — well, those dark-skinned people must have done something wrong, or else why would Daddy’s friends have arrested them?  

Then there are the neighborhood blowhard types who had their mental filters put in place sometime back in high school and haven’t changed them since. Just like King George II, they go by gut instinct. Thinking with your GI tract instead of your brain is bound to get you into trouble sooner or later, and I devoutly hope some trouble is coming Bill O’Reilly’s way for his horrifyingly ignorant and arrogant bloviations about the Missouri abduction case. Those of us who prefer thought over feeling, when faced with a disturbing case in which a young boy is held captive by a pedophile for several years, knowing that all the facts are not yet in, would simply keep our mouths shut and wish the boy well. Instead, O’Reilly goes on the air and suggests the whole thing was a lark for the kid because he didn’t have to go to school while he was being abused by a hulking pedophile.

If there’s any justice in the universe, the kid’s parents will come after O’Reilly and take him to the cleaners.