Jerkoff Conservative Narcissists: Evil, Pathetic, or Pathetically Evil? by KTK

More on what’s worst about the right wing (see here for a classic example).

As much as anything else, it’s the sense that only they matter – that they are entitled to take whatever they want, however they can or choose to, and no sense of propriety, no consideration of fairness, and in fact no law, rule, or procedure, offers any reason for them not to do so. That nobody else’s interests but their own count for anything, and that it is in fact immoral for anyone but themselves to be given any consideration. Two examples, small and large :

GOP Donor Buys Ambassadorship, Congressmember Names Building For Self and Friend

Big donors often get ambassadorships – it’s a (reprehensible) political fact. Decent administrations farm them out to non-strategic countries; the GOP sells the world to the highest bidder. But once in the job, the standard forms and procedures are expected to apply. Unless you’re Republican. Al Kamen notes the story in his political gossip column in the Washington Post (apparently nobody thought it was worth a real news story):

In Rome, . . . real history was made with the dedication of the Mel Sembler Building. This lovely, ornate building in the heart of the Eternal City had been put up for sale a couple of years ago by an Italian insurance company. U.S. Embassy officials jumped at the chance to consolidate outlying offices in a more secure location near the embassy.

And who better to negotiate the $83.5 million deal than the ambassador himself, a wealthy former shopping center developer in St. Petersburg, Fla., and former Republican National Committee finance chairman who gave the GOP boatloads of money over the years?

And this would be . . . yes, Mel Sembler. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush rewarded Sembler with a fine ambassadorship in Australia. But the money kept coming in, and Sembler got the RNC post in 1997. So by 2000, something much better than Canberra was only fitting. Only one of the great ones — say, Rome — would do.

But how is it the building came to be named for a sitting ambassador? This is something that apparently has never happened in U.S. diplomatic history, no matter how meritorious the diplomat. Not even for such folks as Llewellyn Thompson or Charles “Chip” Bohlen, both ambassadors to Moscow during the darkest days of the Cold War.

Well, turns out that in December, Congress passed a bill saying the annex “shall hereafter be known and designated as the ‘Mel Sembler Building.’ ” Who did this? None other than Sembler’s pal, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), who was then chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. . . .

But there was more. If you go, as you should, to the Web site to look at the stunning photo display, you’ll come to a gorgeous photo (shown above) of the frescoed ceiling of the C.W. Bill Young Conference Center right there in the Mel Sembler Building.

A wealthy influence-peddler bought himself two ambassadorships to major countries. His personal friend – a member of our national legislative body – then snuck a line into the Omnibus Budget Bill naming that ambassador’s embassy after the ambassador himself, in violation of historical protocol (the story notes that even George Bush objected to this, until he was informed he himself had signed the budget bill without reading it, and thus made it official). The friend also found time to name part of the same building for himself. Now this privileged clown receives foreign diplomats every day in a building with his own name on it like some sort of banana-republic potentate – as the official face of the United States of America. (Note, too, that if Bush really objected he could tell the GOP Congress to knock it off and correct the error with a new bill – it would be done in a day. He hasn’t asked for any action on it.)

For the sake of their personal self-indulgence, these two jerkoffs – and the GOP conference chairs who acquiesced, and the President who let it slide – have trespassed on the dignity of the nation, and made this country look like a tinpot oligarchy – which in fact it is, more and more each day these spoiled children are allowed to treat the nation, and the world, as their personal inheritance.

Jonah Goldberg: “Screw Anyone Who’s Not Like Me”

Jonah Goldberg makes it as clear as possible what the right wing stands for and what it thinks about those who are not like them. That has always been clear, certainly, but occasionally they just come right out and say it. Here’s a good example.

The New York Times today ran an article on the growing movement for single-user gender-neutral public restrooms to accomodate transgender persons (transsexuals and those who do not fit unambiguously into one or the other of the two recognized gender categories). The problem is significant: not only is there a not-inconsiderable number of such persons, but they face difficulties ranging from hostility and harassment, being barred from gendered facilities, or even physical assault when they attempt to use public restrooms. The push for single-user, open-to-all facilities eliminates the problem of insisting on a dichotomous categorization that is simply false for many people, and provides a safe space where others cannot enter and commit violence.

The Times quotes one MtF transsexual woman describing having been beaten by a man who took it on himself to object to the fact that she had used a women’s restroom at the same time as the man’s girlfriend.

“The boyfriend hit me, even in mellow California,” said Ms. Dennis, who was in the early stages of becoming female when she was assaulted by a stranger after using the women’s room. “I said, ‘Sir, I have no designs on your girlfriend.’ I just want to use the bathroom.”

The story quotes numerous other people describing their experiences with harassment and their fear of violence – problems that then result in significant practical difficulties, making it impossible to use restrooms in many places.

So, what about Goldberg? Well, he’s very concerned that we’re becoming a society that is too focused on the needs of people . . . who have needs.

Pragmatic liberalism has evolved into an obsession with the cultural and social outliers rather than the reasonable man. I wrote [in a previous column]:

The reasonable man’s behavior was the group average of moral conduct in a very moral country. Today, all of our arguments are about how much the society must bend to the behaviors and attitudes of the man of the fringe, the outlier, the arrow that sails farthest from the bulls-eye. Schools are paralyzed by the question of what to do about the atheist, the homosexual, the handicapped, while the average kids — i.e., most of them — are given short shrift.

Immediately after that quote, he quotes exactly the same passage above about the woman being assulated for using a public bathroom!

Now, we could do pages of (philosophical? – or, perhaps more usefully, psychological) analysis on why Goldberg thinks “cultural outliers” are not “reasonable” people. (Apparently having surgery on your genitals affects your brain – which perhaps tells us something about Goldberg’s brain.) Then there is the question of why his “bullseye” has to be a target anybody else must shoot for. The right wing’s arrogant aggrandizement of itself as the standard of being for everyone who’s not like them – Goldberg literally says that not to share his sexual orientation, his religion, or even his health status is to “miss the target” – is as clear here as it can ever be.

It might also be worth noting that “average” people are simply not being “given short shrift”. The whole point to greater recognition of and accomodation for “outliers”, as Goldberg quaintly calls them, is that the entire society is set up for the convenience of the dominant mass. The example Goldberg himself uses of “bending” to others is a perfect illustration: toilets are almost always designated by gender, and people are being physically assaulted for not matching some idiot conservative’s idea of the “right” gender. There is no solution at all for people who don’t conform, while almost every existing facility (other than at Starbuck’s) is specifically designed for people who do. And the solution proposed takes nothing away from those who are already being accomodated, while providing some options for people who so far have been left out. Who is being inconvenienced? Other examples abound: buildings and streets were, until passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, almost uniformly designed for the convenience of people without physical disabilities. Adding ramps, elevators, and curb cuts does not inconvenience anyone, and makes vital activities possible for many others. Why would anyone object? How is that possibly “giving short shrift” to the ones who already had it all their own way? Why is preventing intrusive religious people from forcing others to recite their prayers or observe their monuments any intrusion on what those people themselves may do? In every case, it is the mere fact that others are different that is the offense Goldberg is worked up about. You might think a decent person could over look that.

And, finally, we might observe that schools and public institutions are “paralyzed” (paralyzed?) by agitation over these issues only because conservatives are agitating about them. Liberals aren’t trying to censor schoolbooks, impose forced prayers, establish public religious monuments, or obsessively intrude themselves into other people’s sex lives. And it requires very little effort or expense to designate a bathroom “gender neutral”, or build a wheelchair ramp. It is the fearful opposition to simply making our public spaces ones where the entire public feels comfortable that causes such upset and drags these issues out interminably.

But let’s skip all that and simply note that Goldberg’s a vicious asshole: he citesprotection from being physically assaulted by strangers as one of the “obsessions” that is distorting our culture. He actually quotes a report of a physical attack as his only example of what is wrong with providing facilities for the transgendered! Of course, the attack was on a transsexual woman by a het-up heterosexual male, so of course it was her fault – for being transsexual, for choosing to be a woman, for daring to imagine that her needs and interests counted against his convenience, his insecurities, and his right to use violence against anyone who doesn’t meet the hetero male norm of the “average” person. This is unbelievable, or would be in any country not plagued with today’s American right wing. Conservatives at least used to pretend to care about the people whose rights they trampled. Goldberg is out and proud – he simply doesn’t care about certain people, and doesn’ t care who knows it. He openly argues that people too far from the “bullseye” in their dress, sexual or gender identity, religion, or body type simply don’t deserve accomodation or even protection from violence. They aren’t part of our society, or aren’t part of the part that matters. They’re “paralyzing” our society with their demands that they have the same access to public facilities, the same protection and accomodation, the same rights to pursue their interests and live by their values, as the “average” people Goldberg approves of.

In one way and another – from appropriating public buildings and the national honor to scribble their names on walls like childish graffitists, to writing sections of the population out of American society and the protection of its laws, today’s conservatives and their GOP enablers are as self-absorbed, arrogant, condescending, and just plain vicious as any group you care to name. Their unreflective confidence that they alone matter, that they are the model and mold to which everyone else must conform, that their (dull, fearful, stultified, and unimaginative) lives are the ones everyone must lead, that their values and beliefs are the only ones worth recognizing, demonstrates how in love with themselves – and how fearful of exposure to anything new or different – they are. And more and more they’re unashamed to admit it. That, as much as anything, is evidence of the depravity they’ve embraced.