Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Tony's road to Damascus

In the funniest scales-falling incident in recent memory, Tony at Always Right, Usually Correct pours out his calcified little heart about the state of the Republican Party. Spotty only found out about it by reading a post at the Power Liberal. There are several comments to both posts, a giant kum ba yah of commiseration, therapy, and derision. Guess which one Spot will contribute.

Tony is disillusioned and washes his hands of the Republicans because, as best as Spot is able to determine, Tony has figured out that the Republicans are mostly about trying to win elections, not ethics. This apparent epiphany has shaken Tony to his core.

Republicans have been good at targeting the moralists, the true believers, the anal-retentive, the people who want to carry every human transaction out to ten decimal places. The chumps, in other words.

Tony, the rapture ain’t gonna happen, either. There is no Easter Bunny (but there is a tooth fairy). Your life-long search for the Absolute Truth, the Holy Grail, is just moral laziness, an unwillingness to study ethical dilemmas, moral uncertainty, and religious doubt. Congratulations, Tony, a little thinking finally broke through. You have a lot of work ahead of you.

Spotty has seen this all before. Spot’s Dutch Calvinist grandma was a huge Richard Nixon fan. She had an autographed picture of Nixon on an end table in her living room. After Watergate, the picture wasn’t removed, it was just placed under the table where it peered up at visitors from its berber purgatory.

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