Bait And Switch (My American Dark Age, Part Six)

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it. ~William F. Buckley, National Review Mission Statement, 1955.

I saw this, this morning.

Apparently, while also wearing a mask, at some point Jeanine Pirro also had a topless picture of Chrissy Teigen on her phone.

My first thought, as articulated so eloquently along with most of the rest of Twitter was "LOL."

The second was; Okay, whatever floats your boat, I guess, I'm going to be honest here. I don't give a damn if Jeanine Pirro likes boobs. Hell, as a guy who likes boobs myself, I applaud her tastes. Also, at least she has the sense to wear a goddamned mask when she's out in public. So why the hell all the garbage-fire crap on Fox News every night?

Isn't a woman who's masking up...and who likes boobs...generally thought of as (gasp!) A Democrat at first glance these days? As I wrote recently I've known some LGBT Republicans...of those I still know, most are actually voting for Democrats nowadays.

And then I thought about it, and of course for some people all any of this political shit is, is just a big scam. I suppose from a certain point of view that has merit. The truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view, to quote Obi Wan Kenobi. I mean, she's reasonably good at her job, if one looks at Jeanine Pirro's actual job as getting people to believe stupid bullshit and making money off of it.

But as somebody who actually believed in this stuff for a majority of my life so far...despite the fact that I'm now on the other side, I'll admit to feeling a little bit offended by that whole idea.

Of course, the reasons I'm on the other side have a lot more to do with my own morality and what I was taught and the fact that I haven't moved, while a lot of other people have gone along with the crowd and whatever the actual truth is be damned, they've a crowd to follow!

And that's what a lot of this comes down to, belonging, even though the group you're a part of is an absolute human garbage fire and, well, if we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic it's that part of these fucking people's aversion to lock-downs and social distancing and not going out is, well, they can't fucking stand each other.

But all too many of these fucking people lack the intellectual curiosity or the just plain guts to go out and make new friends or see something different or try something new, and all too often a philosophy that once was about caution and avoiding unintended consequences is constantly tumbling ass backwards into the unknown simply because far too many of these fucking people don't want to look forward or think ahead or wonder what the future holds. They're mostly too fixated on a mostly-imagined past.

I don't know what Jeanine Pirro's actual sexuality is and I'm not going to lie, I don't care., I feel kinda comfortable in saying she probably doesn't know either. But you know, I bet she'd be better able to deal with her issues, not drink or whatever, and maybe even shed that nickname of "Judge Boxed-Wine" if she'd find herself a girl partner with big boobs to play around with once or twice.

I mean, hell, find a woman willing to go along, film that shit and split the profits and from the viewpoint of what conservatives actually are, rather than what they insist on claiming to be, it's a win-win. Scratch that itch that confounds your life (or at least confounds the rest of us concerning your life for a couple hours) and make BANK doing it.

You can't tell me there ain't tons of Fox News-watching dudes out there who wouldn't pay to get that video. I know a fair number of these guys. The vast majority of them think with their peckers to start with.

I promise, the Evangelicals might act mad...but you watch and see who gives it the most clicks or spends the most money buying it and I bet it will turn out that the biggest customers for the Judge Box Wine sex video are...guess who? Evangelical conservatives.

I am 110% not joking, mathematically incapable of lying about this.

Which of course brings me to the crux of the matter.

This actually happened in Florida a couple weeks ago. Some anti-vaxxer Q-Bot dipshit took her daughter to a Church-sponsored "Covid-19 Party" and a couple of weeks later the girl died.

I've been saying for awhile now, that when the historical dust settles all that American-style "Conservatism" will be known for is the trail of broken souls and dead bodies it left behind in its wake as it marched on toward the endless horizon like some Lovecraftian horror.

Conservatism has become a philosophy that aligns closely with faiths that promise Eternal Life, yet all it brings is physical and in many cases spiritual death. It offers riches and wealth, but instead leaves all but the very few broken and destitute. It's a philosophy that trumpets manliness, yet finds itself ruled over by a teenage mean-girl in the body of a 73 year old man who likes gold and gossip and wears more makeup than a South Beach drag show.

Conservatism has become the ultimate con, a bait-and-switch that should be noted mostly for its sheer cruelty, and it's becoming my view that it should be treated accordingly. For too many people, claims of conservatism and religiosity are nothing more than cover for bad behavior, or to make their shitty political and social agendas acceptable to the fearful or palatable to the feeble-minded or to fool decent people...or far worse think that the people fooled by this shit are decent people with differing opinions in the first place. There was a time when that was true, but those days are long over.

The lack of self-awareness of people like Jeanine Pirro may be, in and of itself, amusing and mostly harmless to anybody else, but there are legit bad actors out there who want to use our multifaceted crises and that lack of self-awareness to kill people, or to break society so that they can re-order it to their own benefit with an end goal of ethnic and racial strife for profit, and death and disease for their own sakes.

And that is probably the cruelest bait and switch of all, that the belief system that once stood for "Things as they are" evolved to stand for "Things as we wish they would be" and ultimately became "We want what we want, and we're going to try and get it even if it kills our own people."

Fuck. Conservatism.

Note that I say this as somebody who used to be a conservative.

Part Five.

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. ~William F. Buckley, "Free Weed" article in National Review, 2004.