Ringing the Mighty Cowbell of Rageohol

Good goddamn, these new-presidency-birth-pangs sure are pretty fucking loud, aren’t they? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I thought I was finished for the year-it’s way, way, way past my politically-psychic bedtime-and I’ve been looking for a nice quiet place to lie down ever since Election Day, but no, the infant Obama administration and its erstwhile supporters on the “far left” have both robbed me of my sweet repose. Everyone seems to be swilling the sour grapes of Rageohol this winter, but as the whole world collapses around us all yet again, we still can’t seem to admit that Teh Rage is our precious cause of and solution to All of Life’s Problems.

Yes, I should have expected this. I was far too green in the winter of 1992/93 to know or care who Bill Clinton threw into the vicious maw of confirmation-but I remember Lani Guiner, Zoe Baird, and Kimba Wood all getting mauled by rabid congress-critters eager to take a bite out of anything Big Bill ever valued. In the frosty post-election winter of 2000/2001, I was graduating college and likewise too self-absorbed to really give a shit who George Bush would appoint as his own vile henchmen (and women), but I do recall the many bricks shat over Ashcroft.

And now? Well, now of course we, the blogging masses, have Insta-Outrage, and we have become highly dependent on its vicious whims and horrible demands. We’ve had it coursing through our veins since we all tasted blood two years ago-when Harry met Nancy and they both conspired to Not Do Jack Shit About Anything (or at least that’s what I think I remember). And that insta-outrage has been building up for weeks now, man. Of course, it was interrupted there for a brief minute by the backslapping, rip-roaring mania of WINNING, BITCHES!-except out here in California, where the death-shrieks continued and the Cold War With Utah began.

Everywhere else, though, has been tagging along behind the Forced March of Consolidation that our President-Elect has been leading ever since he snatched The Prize away from Grandpa Simpson. It has been a gloriously dull slog, hasn’t it? Lieberman, Rahm, Hillary, Gates, Vilsack, Salazar, that simpering geek Duncan, that other guy who withdrew, blah blah blah. Oh, but there’s Hilda! Hilda is Here, motherfuckers! Who gives a shit about Corruption in Chicago, Part MCCXXVII-or even Depravity and Decadence in Detroit?

Yes, it’s been horrible, hasn’t it? You know how I know? I heard that slimy bastard Juan Williams sneering at the “far left” today on NPR, and I knew that the warnings about the Heathers were true. Ho ho, that’s some honeymoon, Barry. And not only that, but our very own orange vortex of angst has wrenched open its pit of despair, and the accompanying soundtrack has been such a sustained back-and-forth of hyperbolic projection and snide condescension that I believe I’ll never be able to get to sleep again. Woe is fucking me.

Indeed, and by the time I latch onto something it’s usually over, or at the very least over-staying its welcome-but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. No, I will not be yet another voice of white straight male entitlement to join in the cynical chorus of “Be Angry at the Sun,” snidely shouting down all the angry Kirks raging at Khan throughout the President-Elect’s transition. But neither will I continue to shriek like a naked banshee over Warren the Hutt, Ruler of Saddleback, because I am too tainted by the same things that led him down the tunnel of filth where he now makes his home.

No, not because we’re both white, straight, male Orange Countians. I ditched that Bircher preserve many years ago, thanks very much-though I do occasionally perform heroic sorties to bring sanity to my relatives still behind the Curtain-but I have never been able to shake off its foul stench of Suburbia. I’ve said all this before, of course, and flagellated righteously many times-and I thought that I was done with all that back in the heady days of November, but of course it was not to be.

Not with the spiritual successor of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” howling through the land. Not with the Beast of Bipartisanship terrorizing innocent party hacks whenever they dare to step outside. Not with the threat of socio-economic collapse continually fucking up our chosen commercial winter papering-over-previously-pagan holidays. And of course that goes double for all of us who waste our lives staring at websites. No meta can save you now, people-not even when some asshole points out that some other assholes have been secretly colluding their assholery for months now-no, no soap opera will divert the Great Eye from its laser-like focus on our new Temporary Capital of Chicago, D.C.

You might laugh, but it’s True. When a sitting President of the United States gets the Random Task treatment from Iraqi gonzo journalists, and when his annoited Successor can’t shake a toupéed leech like Blagojevich off his stylish pant legs, when these symptoms of a crumbling civilization simply won’t go away no matter how much we hope they will, it’s time to change the channel. It’s time to go out and get fucking blitzed, dude. Maybe in 20 years our queer friends will get to join us, and-oh Christ, who gives a shit. The Padres traded Khalil Greene to St. Louis and the NFL playoffs suck balls.

Well, damn. Throw up my hands. Welcome to the majors, Mr. Hobbs. Don’t let ’em give you any shit about your ponytail, and if they do, give me a call. We’ll kidnap their children and ship them to Provo. No one will ever know. The time for civility has passed-there’s still a war on, after all.