Republican Moral Equivalence: How a Flea Is Like an Elephant

[Coexist]

When I can't think of a way to put it, I check with The Rude One. He always puts it just right, with more color and emotion than I could ever dream up. This boxing ticket thing is beyond ridiculous. I will let these words speak for me:

5/30/2006
Republican Moral Equivalence: How a Flea Is Like an Elephant:

Ahh, the sweet bliss of false moral equivalence, so soothing, so conscience-easing. Like the young teenage boy who comes home from a party at 7 in the morning, covered in shit and jism, pulse speedballing around his body like a fly trapped between window and screen, and when Dad dares to say that perhaps a 14 year-old shouldn't be sucking dicks while shooting up with the coke/smack cocktail, the boy pulls out that trump card, man, the one he's been saving in his back pocket for that time dear ol' Dad questions his morality and behavior: "Fuck you, Dad. You told me you smoked dope when you were a kid." See, the teenager is counting on the guilt of moral equivalence absolving him, cleansing him.

If Dad's a moral relativist, which the kid's counting on, Dad'll crumble like a house of cards, thinking, "Oh, fuck me, the boy's right, even though I sat around a living room and toked up with friends before falling asleep on a couch." That's Pussy Dad. Pussy Dad says that perhaps we all need to be better people in general. Pussy Dad may even feel a twinge of regret at all the shit his son gets to do and get away with. Pussy Dad has fallen into the bullshit trap of moral equivalence, where greater evil is ameliorated by the invocation of lesser evil.

For instance, the desperate, craven efforts by the Republicans and their lackeys in the right wing press to find anything, any goddamn thing, to make sure that Democrats look as corrupt as Republicans. So we get the bizarro, does-any-real-person-give-a-fuck article that says Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid got free tickets to three boxing matches in Nevada. And we get the gleeful piling on Rep. William Jefferson, who likes his cash cold, by everyone in the media. Or the pathetic attempts to tie any Democrat, in any way, shape, form, or thread, to Jack Abramoff, even if it means just lying about it. Because, you know, we wouldn't wanna say that one party has become rank with "decay" and "failure," full of "traitors" who are "shallow, pathetic, corrupt, imcompetent, and sick," as a training tape for Newt Gingrich's GOPAC instructed Republicans to talk about Democrats back in 1994.

Republicans have to cling to moral equivalency, and hope that Pussy Dad shows up, because comparing Harry Reid and William Jefferson to, let's say, Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham, with Bob Ney and others pulling up the rear, is like saying that unsolicitedly squeezing a nice ass in a bar is the same thing as engineering and participating in the gang rape of abducted illegal immigrant children. It's like saying a shoulder punch is the same as getting kicked in the nuts repeatedly. It's like saying that a paper cut is the same thing as a sliced jugular. It's like saying that X equals Y, even if X is a flea and Y is, well, an elephant. At worst, Reid had an ethical fart. At worst, Jefferson is a greedy motherfucker acting alone. Remember: they're not even part of the majority in Congress. DeLay and Cunningham represent a systemic sickness, a malignant tumor of graft and power madness that revealed itself in bill after bill, vote after vote.

'Nuff said.

[redqueen]

1. Brilliant.

Thank you. :)

[Coexist]

2. No problem!

I love that blog.

[redqueen]

3. I should check it more often!

:)