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Well, the Obama inauguration has come and gone, and the transfer of power, as always, went peacefully -- if, that is, you define "peacefully" as "there were not actual tanks in the street, unless you count the great rolling behemoth that is the new presidential limo."
It was a happy day for many, but it was a real field day for the people I call the "Memento Republicans."
In case you'd forgotten, the "Memento Republicans" can't seem to remember relatively recent events and particularly what positions they've taken from one day to the next. The name is a reference to the award-winning movie Memento, which is about a man with a brain injury that leaves him unable to remember what happened yesterday. This makes his quest to find his wife's killer rather interesting.
A "Memento Republican" can serenely and without shame level a blistering criticism against a Democrat one day for something they'd ignored or even praised before.
Among the most prominent sufferers from Memento syndrome is radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh recently told his listeners that he'd been asked by "a major American print publication" to offer a 400-word statement explaining his "hope for the Obama presidency." Limbaugh said he needed only four: "I hope he fails."
Apparently the Oxycontin Limbaugh admits to abusing has eaten the part of his brain that holds his memories of Bush presidency and the many times he railed against critics of Dubbya as people who were "rooting for America to fail."
In those days, wanting the president to fail and wanting America to fail were one and the same, and they were wrong. Now, in Limbaugh's memory-impaired state, it's patriotic to want Obama to crash and burn.
A symptom of Memento syndrome that appears frequently among Republicans is the recurring delusion that George W. Bush was a great president because only one multi-victim terrorist attack occurred on U.S. soil during his presidency.
This indicates a severe failure of memory. After all, shortly after 9/11, we experienced an actual biological attack on our soil via anthrax. We also experienced a series of terrorist attacks in 2002 by D.C. sniper John Allan Muhammad and his underage protégé Lee Boyd Malvo. At least "terrorist attack" is what the Virginia Supreme Court called Muhammad and Malvo's well-planned killing spree.
Then there was the case of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a Muslim who drove his SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in his words, to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world." Taheri-Azar wrote in a letter that he "was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role models, Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11/01 hijackers" and that "people who fight in the cause of Allah are not guilty."
Sure sounds like a terrorist to me. If you've forgotten the anthrax attackers, John Allen Muhammad and Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, and still claim Dubbya kept terrorist attacks from occurring on U.S. soil, you may be a Memento Republican.
Perhaps the most advanced case of Memento syndrome is that suffered by columnist, author, and frequent Fox News commentator Ann Coulter, who was absolutely shocked -- shocked I tell you -- at the "disrespect" shown to departing President George W. Bush.
She decried the spectators as the "Hope-and-Change crowd," which moments earlier had showered Bush with boos when he walked onto the stage. "That must be the new tone we've been hearing so much about," she said. "We're not the ones who booed a departing president." Liberals, Coulter went on to say, "are the ones booing, heckling and publicly fantasizing about the assassination of those who disagree with them on policy matters."
No, Ms. Coulter, you're the ones -- or, more correctly you're the one -- who publicly mused whether it would be better to "impeach or assassinate" a sitting president, namely Bill Clinton. You're the one who referred to a former senator who disagreed with you on policy matters as a "faggot."
And, Ms. Coulter, as for your frequent whining about the "liberal media" -- well, a few bloggers on the Web may have said some unkind things about Bush, and a few people in the inauguration crowd may have booed him, but I don't recall any of them being invited onto the "liberal media" over and over, as you have. But I guess, being one of those Memento Republicans, you've forgotten that you've sowed the wind, and now you're surprised to reap a whirlwind.
Either that or you're a cynical con artist who thinks your audience is so dumb they won't remember the things you've previously written and said, so long as you keep dishing out the big bloody chunks of red meat to throw them.
But I'll be charitable, as I am to all Memento Republicans, and put your problems down to some form of brain damage, because I'm a compassionate guy.
Well, the Obama inauguration has come and gone, and the transfer of power, as always, went peacefully -- if, that is, you define "peacefully" as "there were not actual tanks in the street, unless you count the great rolling behemoth that is the new presidential limo."
It was a happy day for many, but it was a real field day for the people I call the "Memento Republicans."
In case you'd forgotten, the "Memento Republicans" can't seem to remember relatively recent events and particularly what positions they've taken from one day to the next. The name is a reference to the award-winning movie Memento, which is about a man with a brain injury that leaves him unable to remember what happened yesterday. This makes his quest to find his wife's killer rather interesting.
A "Memento Republican" can serenely and without shame level a blistering criticism against a Democrat one day for something they'd ignored or even praised before.
Among the most prominent sufferers from Memento syndrome is radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh recently told his listeners that he'd been asked by "a major American print publication" to offer a 400-word statement explaining his "hope for the Obama presidency." Limbaugh said he needed only four: "I hope he fails."
Apparently the Oxycontin Limbaugh admits to abusing has eaten the part of his brain that holds his memories of Bush presidency and the many times he railed against critics of Dubbya as people who were "rooting for America to fail."
In those days, wanting the president to fail and wanting America to fail were one and the same, and they were wrong. Now, in Limbaugh's memory-impaired state, it's patriotic to want Obama to crash and burn.
A symptom of Memento syndrome that appears frequently among Republicans is the recurring delusion that George W. Bush was a great president because only one multi-victim terrorist attack occurred on U.S. soil during his presidency.
This indicates a severe failure of memory. After all, shortly after 9/11, we experienced an actual biological attack on our soil via anthrax. We also experienced a series of terrorist attacks in 2002 by D.C. sniper John Allan Muhammad and his underage protégé Lee Boyd Malvo. At least "terrorist attack" is what the Virginia Supreme Court called Muhammad and Malvo's well-planned killing spree.
Then there was the case of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a Muslim who drove his SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in his words, to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world." Taheri-Azar wrote in a letter that he "was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role models, Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11/01 hijackers" and that "people who fight in the cause of Allah are not guilty."
Sure sounds like a terrorist to me. If you've forgotten the anthrax attackers, John Allen Muhammad and Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, and still claim Dubbya kept terrorist attacks from occurring on U.S. soil, you may be a Memento Republican.
Perhaps the most advanced case of Memento syndrome is that suffered by columnist, author, and frequent Fox News commentator Ann Coulter, who was absolutely shocked -- shocked I tell you -- at the "disrespect" shown to departing President George W. Bush.
She decried the spectators as the "Hope-and-Change crowd," which moments earlier had showered Bush with boos when he walked onto the stage. "That must be the new tone we've been hearing so much about," she said. "We're not the ones who booed a departing president." Liberals, Coulter went on to say, "are the ones booing, heckling and publicly fantasizing about the assassination of those who disagree with them on policy matters."
No, Ms. Coulter, you're the ones -- or, more correctly you're the one -- who publicly mused whether it would be better to "impeach or assassinate" a sitting president, namely Bill Clinton. You're the one who referred to a former senator who disagreed with you on policy matters as a "faggot."
And, Ms. Coulter, as for your frequent whining about the "liberal media" -- well, a few bloggers on the Web may have said some unkind things about Bush, and a few people in the inauguration crowd may have booed him, but I don't recall any of them being invited onto the "liberal media" over and over, as you have. But I guess, being one of those Memento Republicans, you've forgotten that you've sowed the wind, and now you're surprised to reap a whirlwind.
Either that or you're a cynical con artist who thinks your audience is so dumb they won't remember the things you've previously written and said, so long as you keep dishing out the big bloody chunks of red meat to throw them.
But I'll be charitable, as I am to all Memento Republicans, and put your problems down to some form of brain damage, because I'm a compassionate guy.
Should be "Demento" republicans...
ReplyDeletegeeze.... you make some great points.... well thought out ...is this really your original stuff? very, very good post.
ReplyDelete*stands on several stacked chairs and applauds till her hands fall off*
ReplyDeleteYou know what annoys me? The "hate" and "you're all thieves" messages are so much easier to sell.
ReplyDeleteFirst we have to diagnose the lies, then disassemble them, and finally refute them. Carrying the truth is terribly encumbering.
Forget, please, "conservatism." It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
ReplyDelete"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com