Airplanes and Oceans

The tendency of right-wing wankers to drool over revenge fantasies is well known. The biggest mouths of the right, Coulter and Malkin, like to provide the basic jerkoff scenario in almost every column: some poor liberal has committed an unpardonable offense against conservatism and must die. Or, in the case of that woman at UC-Santa Cruz who committed suicide, has died.

Now, making fun of dead people is OK. Contrary to popular belief, the dead do not automatically deserve our respect or forebearance, and when an incredibly offensive, stupid conservative dies, I like to be there to taunt the widow. When you don't say bad things about dead people, you also open yourself up for years more exposure to those people and their odious ideas. If the Party had come out and really ripped Ronald Reagan when he died, maybe we wouldn't still have 90% of the population thinking he was just a great guy and wanting to name every public building after him.

But it's not so much that someone has died that's important to right-wingers, but HOW they died. It would be pointless, they seem to feel, for a Clinton to die in his sleep. No, he must die from the ol' red-hot-poker-up-the-ass, while being sodomized by a midget, broadcast on webcam.

The ultra death fantasy for the conservatives, though, seems to be the secret elimination. The really scary (by which I mean, "shouldn't be allowed to operate a motor vehicle," not "I'm scared of them") conservative pundits have spoken out in favor of secret torture programs, internment camps, and now increasingly the rhetoric veers towards what somebody with a knack for buzzwords has termed the "eliminationist" tendency in right-wing thought. It's not enough to silence your critics, or even for them to go off somewhere and die. You must, in fact, kill them, and in the most terrifying manner possible: in secret.

Now, I've no experience with disappearing people, but it doesn't take much imagination to conceive of a state that relies on secret death squads to repress dissent. And what's more, it doesn't take much more imagination to see that people like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin wouldn't serve much of a purpose in such a state and would likely head the list of people to be purged from the ranks of the ruling party. The fascist state doesn't need any cheerleaders; it does what it wants and desires no input from borderline-retarded lackeys.

Apparently, no one on the right has ever thought about coming home, closing the front door, and feeling just for an instant the cold sting of an icepick sliding into the base of the neck. Or the soul-death of waiting as an airplane flies 200 miles offshore, where you will be thrown out from a height of only a few hundred feet--perhaps not even enough to kill you, but rather leave you stunned as you sink to your grave gulping lungfuls of burning salt water.

And that would be it for you. Of course, it wouldn't just be you, but probably several friends and family members would have to go, too. All your things would be removed, you would become an unperson, and anyone who asked after you would likely share your fate. Your mother, your siblings, your spouse would have to go on knowing what probably happened to you, but not knowing for sure; and worse than that, having to imagine your last minutes of life as being terrifying, brutal, and utterly dehumanizing.

That's the kind of thing right-wing fucktards dream about--but in their dreams they're the ones wearing the fatigues and throwing people out into the ocean. In a world where being a liberal is impossible because it carries a death sentence, who do they think is going to be targeted by the state? Probably the people who want to keep guns, shrink the power of the state, and maintain a powerful counter-institution, the church.

What does it say about conservatives that they think murdering their enemies is the first option? They don't believe they will ever win an argument with a liberal? They know they're too stupid and trusting of what the party feeds them to actually make valid points or navigate political waters without recourse to violence or the threat of it? Republicans are the first to claim politics is a "game" (at which they suck and therefore have to cheat, rig elections, etc.), but they also resort first to the idea that opponents ought to be not just defeated but in fact eliminated.

How did things ever get so far?