Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The authoritarian mind at work

Read Glenn Greenwald's take on the conservative movement reaction to Senator Larry Craig - who supported the Defense of Marriage Act and favored impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual relation with his intern - being arrested for soliciting homosexual sex in a bathroom stall to see the authoritarian mind in action.

Glenn's post compliments nicely a post that I'll have up later today on a related subject.

I will say this, though. Setting aside the indignance I have over the rank hypocrisy of this man setting himself up a champion of "family values" while attacking individuals like Bill Clinton for private sexual affairs, I do find this episode somewhat sad.

Its sad that someone would be so determined to deny who they are that they turn their life into a mockery ... into a fraud. Perhaps Craig wouldn't be driven to cheat on his wife by seeking secret sex with men in bathrooms if he just acknowledged that he has an affinity for men. But the conservative Christian worldview he espouses doesn't allow for that, so he has to pretend to be something he's not.

That's just sad.

Update: Commenter El Cid at Greenwald's sums the mental gymnastics of the conservative movement perfectly

Then [when a reporter wrote a story about Craig's homosexual adultery], with an election to win, the Republican idiot machine geared up to denounce such truthful reports of the hypocritically homosexually adulterous Craig because that was what they felt would best help The Right.

Now, with Craig in office, the Republican idiot machine has received the hive-mind command that it is in their best interest to feign disapproval at Craig's bathroom forays.Two months from now they can spin on a dime, change their hive-mind, and come out against any criticism of Craig and no we have never ever said what he did was really that wrong, as long as it seems to advantage The Right.

For The Right, there simply is NO SUCH THING as hypocrisy or irony. None.

What they harshly condemn today they will proudly embody tomorrow. They don't care.

1 comment:

Dr Zen said...

He is right. They don't care in the least. They truly believe that when you do it, it's wrong, when they do it, it's right.

I read Neiwert's piece too. I think you should begin to be worried. It really isn't impossible that you could have a war there. If they felt they could get away with it, you would probably already be fighting it.