It all makes sense

Attention citizens: atheists are now to be shot on sight:

No, I don’t know what the hell that ad was about either but I’m told that today is tax day in America — maybe that’s why half the country seems to have gone insane. Tea parties? Really?

While these weird right-wing obsessions with “teabagging” and gay marriage seem to have turned Glenn Beck gay, satirist Andy Cobb is among the few to realize where they’ve gone wrong:

All kidding aside, this tea-party meme is creepy because it’s so irrational. Left-wing protests these last few years had clear aims — end the war in Iraq, shut down Guantanamo, impeach Bush and Cheney for war crimes — but these new right-wing tantrums are making no sense.

Stop taxing? Umm, okay, but how do you propose we pay for common services?
They’ve no idea.

Protect marriage? Umm, okay, but how does discriminating against gay people do that?
They’ve no idea.

Impeach Obama? Umm, okay, but who do you replace him with?
Oh, they do have an idea — but it’s Sarah Palin!

These people are just as delusional as Philadelphia actor Arthur Kade (best blog ever!) but, according to one former conservative writing to Andrew Sullivan, a lot more dangerous:

I am actually frightened by what I see going on now. This level of rage

 

and unreason is measurably worse than its corollary on the left over
the eight years of the Bush presidency. There is a call to violence
going on out there, whether conscious or not, and it cannot end well.

Responding to social issues with insane and irrational “solutions” — like the criminalization of HIV, ransacking a college dorm over an email (“gay” or otherwise) or the wave of US tax protests today — only make our collective troubles worse. Reason, honesty and communication are, as ever, the only things that will save us. In that spirit, Rob Tish is my hero this week for responding to homophobes with solid and simple rationality:

And finally, the new Peaches video. Why? A perfectly rational reason: she’s awesome!!

A former editor of the late, lamented fab magazine, Scott has been writing for Xtra since 2007 on a variety of topics in news pieces, interviews, blogs, reviews and humour pieces. He lives on the Danforth with his boyfriend of 12 years, a manic Jack Russell Terrier, a well-stocked mini-bar and a shelf of toy Daleks.

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