I Got Nothin' For You

     It's been fun and interesting, these last few years, as a kind of semi-sorta-insider to the right wing of the Parties of Treason, but it's starting to turn my stomach, in much the same way that my day job's insight into the glittery media leftthink tends to put me off my feed.

     Sure, the Left is bad and -- at present -- a lot more real-world (as opposed to ideologically or potentially) bothersome, but both sides want to police other people's lives and both sides claim it's for the greater good.

     And the whining--!  My word, the damnable whining about people, lives and parties y'all don't like; I'd almost rather the strident blame-bleatings of the Left than the whining of the Right -- and both parties can't actually stand to look the naked First Amendment in the eye.  Like John Ashcroft trying to drape over the exposed boobies of poor, blind Justice, they keep pleating and folding and pinning, muffling a corporation here, swaddling a dirty book there, trying to make sure the other side's rich guys (and poor ones, too) can't get a word in while trying to make a megaphone for their own men of wealth and prestige (and a few of the huddled masses, brung in for emotional appeal).

     (Oh, and aren't they always 95% men?  Hey, "men's rights" whiners, I might be able to listen to you without giggling if the demographics in the Halls Of Power came anywhere near matching the ones in the hospital nursery.  They don't.  It's so staggeringly uncorrelated in favor of male power and male privilege that only the most self-pitying of adult children could even begin to complain about Teh Menz gettin' pushed around by Teh Wimmenz.  Nope, sorry, here's the issue: you are losers.  You failed as human beings and that's why you are single and still living in Mom and Dad's basement.  Where you will probably reside all the rest of your days.  Unlike most men -- and most women, too -- you won't face up to it.  Sucks to be you.  Srsly, if you're a  men's-righter, go away.  I don't want you around. Go, and take the strident feminists with you.  The grown-ups have work to do and y'all are in the way.)

     Then there's the tattling, "Senator X said so-and so!  President Y smoked the dope! Mr. Justice Z is a mean ol' poopyhead!"  The media does it.  Opposition politicians do it.  You do it.  Hey, guess what?  They're flawed.  It's no surprise when they have a skeleton or ten in the closet.  Nobody wants those jobs without being deeply flawed -- workaholics, people with so much to hide they figure they'd better help write themselves clear of the laws, attorneys with no knack for wills, contracts or litigation, weirdos who have never really felt loved or secure, philosophical whackos with an ax to grind: our government is mostly made up of people who couldn't function in a real job.  Some of them are plenty bright, plenty useful when kept on task; others help keep the chairs warm. The actually functional ones only do it as a part-time job.

     Nearly all of them think of the Bill of Rights as something to be read closely and weaseled around.  It will not surprise you that most of them have law degrees.

     The dear old Bill of Rights, a cornerstone of the republic.  The First Amendment has always been my favorite. Oh, the Second is nice, too, and there's a lot to be said for the Fourth, the Ninth and even the silly old Third; but if you take away my guns, I'll just sneak up behind you and clonk you over the head with a rock or a hammer or whatever, and if you quarter soldiers in my house, their appointment with Mr. Rock will happen by and by, too.  The State may seize me and search me, but they can't rummage around inside my head and come up with anything more useful than a pint or two of pinkish-gray goo  -- and that's kind of what the First Amendment is about, not just freedom of the press but freedom of belief, not only books and churches and free assemblies of hoi polloi but free thoughts. The First Amendment hasn't got any real friends, just nitwits who want to climb in its lap for a photo op, then knife it in the back when they stand back up.*

     In particular both parties are out to tear it down.  They recognize it for the obstacle it is and want it whittled down.  I haven't any use for them and I have no use for you either, if you are still waving that donkey-and-elephant flag, convinced you can only vote for the least-awful choice of dysfunctional losers and convinced the only good freedom is Party-approved freedom.
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* You'll notice that sub-screed didn't address the Ninth Amendment.  There's a reason for that: it and the Tenth have become mere historical footnotes much like this one, tiny, insignificant.  The rot appears to be spreading.