…where jack sometimes does stuff, but mostly not

I often have the urge to write something political on this blog, but I usually don’t, for a number of reasons – there are plenty of political blogs in the world, many of which are better written and more often updated than I could manage myself; also this website is mostly a family affair, and I don’t want to alienate any family members who might disagree with my politics; also I often get so mad when thinking about politics that I have to count backward from 100 and go do something else for a while.

That said, I’m going to post political stuff every once in a while, because I just can’t help myself.

Through Philosoraptor (a blog I started reading occasionally because of this excellent post) I see that Orson Scott Card wrote an opinion piece about how badly the Democrats suck.

Card is a Sci-Fi and Fantasy author whose work I’ve followed for many years. He’s also probably the most famous LDS author of non-LDS-themed books (although he writes LDS-themed stuff as well).

Philosoraptor covers Card’s editorial pretty well, but I still feel some compulsion to talk about it. So, I’m going to briefly list some of the excellent points Card makes in his eminently well-reasoned article.

1. Howard Dean’s platform is “Bush is the devil”.
2. The national news media is steadily campaigning to win the ‘04 election for the Democrats. (Note: If only a multitude of national news outlets would uncritically run Republican National Committee talking points and administration press releases as if they were gospel truth! Perhaps some of the news outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch or the Rev. Sun Myung Moon!)
3. The Democratic party is insane, self-destructive, and extremist-dominated. (Note: Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone being to the left of Bill Clinton and the like-minded people who run the Democratic party today! If only those extremists could take a lesson from the completely centrist ruling Republicans!)
4. The media are trying as hard as they can to pound home the idea that Bush is a failure. (If only they would accept 90%+ of what he said without any trace of journalistic skepticism and abandon the practice of investigative journalism to tiny independent outlets with few resources!)
5. Bush is not a failure, by any rational measure. (I’m especially proud of how he found Osama Bin Laden and confiscated all those WMDs from Iraq!)
6. The Democrats are using the War on Terror as a political club against Bush. (The Republicans would never think of using the War on Terror as a political tool!)
7. If Bush does not win the next election, we will lose the War. (Note: this means that you shouldn’t vote against Bush unless you want America to be overrun by the Islamofascists!)
8. Criticizing Bush undermines our war efforts, encourages our enemies, and costs American lives. (That means it’s capital-T Treason to disagree with Bush! It’s impossible to conceive that someone might criticize Bush because they actually think he’s botching the fight against terrorism!)
9. If only we had closed the North Vietnamese ports and “carried the war to the enemy”, we would have won the Vietnam War relatively quickly. (Geez, I wish Card could go back in time and tell McNamara!)
10. Democrats have placed their own party’s political gain ahead of the struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil. (Because, as everyone knows, Saddam had something to do with 9/11! As did anyone we don’t like for any reason!)
11. Vietnamization (the program to turn over the primary role of defending South Vietnam to the South Vietnamese) worked, by all measures Card knows about. (Geez, I wish Card could alert all the various historians who think Vietnamization was a fig leaf to cover American withdrawl and therefore doomed from the start!)

There’s quite a bit more actually, but I’m exhausted so I’m stopping there.

As a last note, Card refers to himself as a Democrat several times in the article. Some cynical souls might be tempted to dismiss this as a cheapo rhetorical ploy meant to boost the credibility of his criticisms, not far removed from the old classic: “Black people are X and Y and Z; it’s not that I’m a racist, I have Black friends!”

I’ll take Card at his word though, although I have to wonder why he persists in belonging to a party that is not only self-destructive, but extremist-dominated and insane. But, inspired by Card’s candor in criticizing his own party, I’ll offer this critique of my own beloved GOP (you all knew I was a lifelong Republican, right?): everything they do is unquestionably perfect and of unalloyed honesty and integrity, but I sure wish the Republican leadership of the House and Senate, along with the President and his advisors and cabinet members, would stop worshipping Satan at orgiastic witches’ sabbaths involving the ritual slaughter of endangered animals and the drinking of human blood.

Whew! Glad I got that off my chest.