The Invisible Library

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon found a chuckle-inducing exercise in conservative culture jamming, in the form of the top 50 Conservative Rock Songs.* She reviews the reviews and really zeroes in on the Conservative mindset and it’s blindspots, both political and cultural:

“1. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who. The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naive idealism once and for all. “There’s nothing in the streets / Looks any different to me / And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye… Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.” The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend’s ringing guitar, Keith Moon’s pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey’s wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.”

The fact that they fall for the “small government” line and continue to elect Republicans who drive up deficits and curtail civil liberties demonstrates that conservatives are in fact easy to fool over and over and over again. Anyone who still trusts Bush after he lied to get us in the Iraq war is demonstrating a depth of gullibility previous unmeasurable by any instruments known to man.

But the choice of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was inevitable. The critical mythology of neo-conservatives is that they were once idealistic leftists and totally cool and could so get laid and knew where to buy the best weed but the tawdry stupidity of liberal beliefs ran them off. The seedy reality is that the only known human being to actually make the legitimate case that this is his life story is P.J. O’Rourke. The rest of them were just Marxists who ran off to be right wingers when they realized the American left wasn’t ever going to embrace Stalinist authoritarianism. All attempts to claim the mantle of pseudo-cool rebellion must be viewed in this light.

This right here explains two very important things about the Neo-Conservative mindset. First, they have no grasp of the concept of irony what so ever. None. Second, it explains why they love, love, love The President so much; they’re disgruntled radicals looking for a Daddy figure to teach them how to do the lockstep line dance. Who better to do that then the Decider?

It also points to why the vilify liberals so much, because they see us as simply younger, less mature versions of themselves. Sort of the way College Sophomores look down their nose at High School Seniors. They are just so unhip, because they haven’t figured out that all the cool kids are lining up to conform and join the trustfund revolution, where the rich steel from the poor and call it charity.

Now that The Decider and his gang have dropped bellow the point of no return in the polls, some old- school Conservatives are trying to play them off as closet liberals. And even though clearly some of the Neo-Cons– Rumsfeld and Cheney, most notably– come from a Marxist background, they are clearly enamored with authoritarian ideologies of the Right (It’s all that Traditional Family Values crap. Anytime someone starts nattering about The Old Time Religion and the Way Things Never Were, what they mean is, they want their Pa).

But the truly frightening fact about American Politics today is that the only thing standing between us and and a full blown Dictattorship is The Democrats.

Dan Savage is consistently one of the most amusing and provocative sex-columnists around. For the last few months he’s been running the occasional Straight-Rights Update, in which he keeps his regular readers appraise dof the shenanigans of the prudes and moralizers (all of whom, I’m sure have more than a few kinks in their closet, eh, Senator Santorum?). This week, he brings to our attention a truely frightening piece of legeslation, right out of The Handmaid’s Tale:

STRAIGHT-RIGHTS UPDATE: After tossing nearly half of last week’s column away on a straight-rights update, it was my intention to give it a rest. In fact, every time I write one of these, I think, “This is the last one. Banning abortion, evicting unmarried straight couples and their children, moving to ban birth control—things can’t get any worse, can they?”

Oh, but they can: Not satisfied with meddling in the lives of the relatively small percentage of women who are pregnant, the American Taliban is moving to regulate the lives of all American women.

“New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves—and to be treated by the health care system—as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon,” reports The Washington Post. “[T]his means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control… [I]t’s important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.”

Color me paranoid, but ordering American women to regard themselves as “pre-pregnant” because they may harm a fetus they don’t know they’re carrying opens the door to prosecuting women who harm their fetuses by failing to regard themselves as “pre-pregnant.” How long until “women should… refrain from smoking [and] maintain a healthy body weight” becomes “women must…” Does that sound paranoid? Well, so did a war on contraception once.

Next week, Dan is going to have an all Stright-Rights column. Spread the word.