We Are the Enemy, cont...

I wasn't kidding. I didn't write about this incident, but a few weeks ago, at a neighborhood tavern where I've been stopping by for fifteen years or so for a beer and a game or two of pool on nights I work late, I was attacked - literally, physically attacked - by a drunken regular for "undermining the troops by badmouthing the commander-in-chief." I've long had the label "house liberal" and been teased as such, almost always in friendship and good humor. I know what not to say, which topics to avoid, which is why when I said something relatively innocuous (I had commented, quietly, to the bartender, a friend, that it seemed that the press was beginning to turn against Bush) I was more surprised than startled that Randy grabbed my arm, tried to punch me (he was easy to dodge, drunk as he was), and fell to the floor. I helped him up, calmed him down, shook his hand, left, and haven't been back.

James Wolcott here and Gary Sargent, commenting on Wolcott over on Tapped here, both address the language used by hard right shitforbrains, especially their lusty employment of the severed head of Daniel Pearl as an example of what should happen to me for my dissent with the King. Wait until my head is pulled back by what little hair I have left and a filet knife disconnects said head from my body, then I'll see the wisdom of the Boy King.

It would be easier to believe that the far right's wish to spare America violence was sincere if they weren't so masturbatorially eager to witness, celebrate, and threaten violence to all who disagree with their masturbatorial eagerness for violence. What a bunch of wankers. What a wankful of impotent voyeurs. Brave behind their beers, they may throw a punch, fall on the floor, and vomit on your shoes, and while they are not a physical threat to you, do not mistake the emotional impulse as a side-effect of too much Miller Lite, for they hate you. They hate you.

Friends from the bar have told me that in the eyes of the hard right regulars my greatest crime was not accidentally inciting Randy to violence but my unwillingness to beat the shit out of him when I could have and should have. I'm now considered a pussy for not beating the shit out of a drunk; my decision not to is considered a sign of cowardice. I was attacked, I didn't respond with violence, I am weak. And because I didn't respond with violence, not only am I a coward, I think I'm morally better than them for not beating the shit out of Randy.

And if I told them, it's more complicated than that, they'd hate me all the more.