JFK, RFK Your old party is overrun with Master Bullies!

I am so glad to see this article by Doug MacEachern in The Arizona Republic. He notes, quite rightly, that the last great Democrats (from back when the Democrat Party was a serious party, almost choking with greatness) would never behave like the small, bigoted and peculiar people we’ve see seething, whining, threatening run away or do something violent over the past few weeks.

Considering JFK believed in low taxes, smaller government and a strong defense, I wonder if he would even BE a Democrat today.

If he where, he would undoubtedly be urging the Democrats to try to find a little grace within themselves, a little generosity of spirit, a bit of class and maturity. Because really, they’re just getting embarrassing, now.

UPDATE: No, check that. They’re not getting embarrassing, they’re getting scary. LittleGreenFootballs is showing a form letter from NY Times writer Dean E. Murphy wherein he doth protest too, too much that “why no, NOOO, he never, ever meant, in this article to suggest that the world might be served by the assassination of President Bush!” However could anyone have misunderstood him! It must be the yahooness of the conservatives! They missed his nuance! They missed his historical scholarship!

It is astounding to me that a writer from the NY Times (forgive me, I am a creature of habit who admired journalists for too many years to yet quite accept that so many are scoundrels) is so completely feckless with the privilege of his rhetorical real estate. I can’t tell if I am more disturbed by his evident ignorance of what precisely might be construed as an “act of God” (here is a hint, Murphy, a terrorist attack is not an Act of God; an assassination is not an Act of God – are you really THAT stupid? You clearly think WE are!) or if I am more taken aback by the disingenuity of his “letter” of explanation. Note, it is a FORM letter. Because his “nuanced” meaning evidently required a massive response to the dumb, uneducated cow-bell wearers who (I am quite certain) he simply never imagined would read his oh-so-sophisticated and enlightened publication and perfectly understand his meaning!

This poisonous little article reads – between its little lines – like a veiled request (“oh, please, please, someone do it! Do it for the theories of political science! Do it just to fill us with glee!”) for assassination. The writer would have us believe he was merely sitting about thinking scholarly thoughts on the effect of chaotic events on history. He apparently believes that the fully democratic and participatory elections of 2004 were a chaotic event, and he’s looking for an answering event.

This is sick. This is a profoundly disturbed mind dressed in uptown nonchalance, speaking of very dark things. I am beginning to think that some – I say SOME – of these people are so completely owned by their mindless hatred that they are out of reach, and almost out of control.

And I worry. I worry because all of this weird howling and foot-stamping, and excessive purple prose – carrying on about the End of the World As We Know It and The Death of Freedom – none of which appears to be based on anything remotely like reality – is beginning to seem like a deliberate provocation. These leftists are beginning to remind me of the Master Bully on the playground. I don’t mean the obvious guy in the striped shirt who is looking for a runt on which to whale. The Master Bully was the quiet guy with the genial smile who would never throw a punch. He’d just talk, and talk, and talk – saying all sorts of hateful, provocative things – and then, when someone finally took at shot at him, and bloodied his nose a little, he’d go crying off to the principal whining, “I didn’t DO anything, I was just TALKING and he came up and HIT me!!!!”

Little bastard nearly always got away with it, too.

I am imploring my fellow conservatives not to take the bait that is being offered here in typical passive-aggressive fashion. Write to the NY Times and get their snotty, perfunctory response from Arthur Bovino, by all means. Stand outside the building in peaceful protest. But do not allow this (and any future) irritant to throw you off track, to take your eyes off the prize. Don’t be goaded into a fight with the guy who owns the megaphone. He’ll always be louder than you and better at spreading propaganda. Do not be goaded into violence; it plays into their hands. (Apropos the Master Bully: Look at these rightwing nutjobs! All we did was write an article, and they attacked us! The right wing is ignorant and dangerous!).

When faced with this sort of smarmy, contemptible, passive-aggressive manipulation…the best thing to do is remain on your guard, and give it up to God – and whisper up a prayer for the President while you’re at it.

God has a way of dealing with Master Bullies, that doesn’t have to involve you at all. Acts of God, after all, have no human component. Something Mr. Murphy still does not understand.