How much do the bloggers of the Daily Kos hate conservatism and the limited-government ideas that informed America's founding? They associate them with Satan...and with disease. Blogger Kevin Tully is really angry about the election returns and wondered if "all of us, [are] being played like one huge, oxygen starved, exhausted, gullible fish? Is the destruction of the environment and civil society absolutely necessary to maintain the "American Dream?" He suggested on Thursday that the American Dream is a deadly disease we spread globally:
The “American Dream” is a worldwide viral phenomenon - with many more potentially dire consequences than AIDS or Avian Flu. We have exported this thing from one end of the earth to the other – it’s like the gifted puppy that can never be housetrained, it grows up, still, so cute and familiar – your proud of your gift, it craps on the floor and tears down the curtains – it’s [sic] new owners overlook the crap; the dog is so cute – however, you can’t get over the crap and torn curtains when you visit.
This past weeks [sic] election was a referendum on the puppy. The rhetoric and the outcome were very predictable: The folks that are still very proud of the puppy were very persuasive and voted, most of us other folks – stayed home.
Just before this thought, Tully suggested we've apparently surrendered our autonomy to Sam's Club and the NFL:
We are dumber than stinken sticks! When and why did we give over our personal power to Sam’s Club and The National Football League? Why do we refuse to take personal responsibility for shopping at Wal-Mart and building a MacMansion? – Sophocles waxed prophetic on the subject: “It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself and no one else has made it”.
On Monday, the blogger Louise (one name, like Madonna) had a vision: "Tonight, I saw Lucifer on The Daily Show." Satan was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and he had "perfect plastic hair, glaringly-white teeth in a static smile, a bespoke sharkskin suit, and a smooth, fast patter." He had turned Texas into a [free-market] Hell. "What I am calling 'Hell,' Rick Perry describes as a paradise. It is a paradise for plutocrats."
In summation, Perry made his final sales pitch to explain why Texas, as he governed it, was a Plutocrat's dream. It had low taxes, "fair" environmental laws, a legal system that was also attractive to business, and some other things that I have forgotten because I was so stunned by his final sales point: " a school system that puts out a skilled worker."
That's Texas. A whore for business, a land that doesn't value its land, and a factory that produces docile, biddable servants that can read, write, do basic mathematics and follow directions. It "puts out" "skilled workers."
This, apparently, is the most tantalizing morsel to Plutocrats of all. The fantasy of being able to rule over Workers who look like the masses in German Expressionist films, or curtsying parlor maids. The employees can have the basic skillsets; they are capable of handling variety of tasks; they know their place and don't make trouble. They are the Worker Ants.
After she published her Perry-as-Satan theory, Louise felt she needed to clarify in an update:
Perhaps it seems like a stretch to call a mere mortal Lucifer, but his creepy persona and relentless boosterism of a place that sounded like Hell brought the analogy to mind. Certainly Lucifer could ventriloquize through an apparently dull-witted salesman to make a plutocracy of environmental degradation and state-sanctioned greed sound attractive.
