Thoughtless for the Day

Last week my car's fuel pump decided my life had become rather routine so, in order to liven things up a bit, it sprayed gas all over my sparkplugs essentially transforming my 1989 Geo Spectrum into a sort of rolling bomb. Being in no way desirous of joining the Green Party's Martyrs Brigade, I dropped my car off at a garage in Wilmington and caught a ride home with a friend.

On the way into Philly we decided to amuse ourselves by listening to one of the greatest comedy programs ever to grace the airwaves: The Sean Hannity Show. Now, if you regularly listen to NPR, the first thing you'll notice about Sean's callers is that none of them are what you or I might call "experts". By which I mean that no one who called in on the wide breadth of topics - ranging from abortion to ...well, abortion - professed to have a PhD or, for that matter, to have even read a book. That right there should ring some bells: a whole fuckin' belfry's worth. Oddly, practically every caller began by saying "I'm not some college educated 'ekspurt'" as if having an education and some degree of expertise were tantamount to having clumps of shit on your lapels. Personally, if it were my radio show I'd have the person who screens the calls handle this dorkholes thusly: "Oh, you're not an expert in today's topic; in fact you're not very knowledge on any subject whatsoever? Please have a seat in our Green Room where you may enjoy a complimentary piping hot bowl of SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

While Sean's callers decried any pretense to expertise they all proudly claimed to "simple folk" as in "Sean, I may not have a lot of whatcha might cawl book-learning: in fact, I'm juz a simple, honest farmer/housewife/trucker/roadkill gourmet." Who the fuck takes pride in being "simple"? I don't know about you but I like to think of myself as "complex". Shit Luther, I'm so complex that it's contagious. My mother used to always say "Cut it the Hell out! You're giving me a complex!"

I know I've mentioned this before but I'm one of the few Leftists who'll admit to having an intense dislike for The Common Man: and being a Leftist who can't abide the Working Class is like being a Libertarian who has never jerked off to Atlas Shrugged. Recently I've concluded that we on the Left should embrace the term "Liberal Elite" as a way of saying to the Common Man, "Look, we're willing to help, but only because transforming you from a bunch of semi-literate, homophobic, racist, uncouth louts makes our lives easier in the long run. On an individual level you folks might be decent, hardworking simple folk, but when you get together you tend to royally fuck things up." You see, it's not people that I have a problem with, so much as humanity as a whole.

I was never a huge fan of Star Trek (although many Trekkies are, indeed, grossly overweight) but I'm sure-as-shittin' that there are at least sixty-four episodes in which some aliens with wrinkly foreheads put the whole of humanity on trial. These exciting meditations on the nature of our race always ended with mankind beating the wrap because Kirk cries and asks Spock for a hug, or blows a Romulin, or some goofy shit like that. "Sure," the aliens conclude "these Earthlings are capable of countless acts of genocide but as long as one of them weeps like a baby at the end of Brian's Song, they can't be entirely bad. Now, tell me of this Earth 'kiss'."

Whenever I've brought up the idea of placing humanity on trial at parties (which might explain why I don't get invited to them anymore) some closet-hippie always counters with something like "Yes, but what about men like Gandhi, Martin Luther king Jr., and Joey Greco, host of TV's Cheaters?" That's exactly my point! If the overwhelming majority of humans weren't ignorant, violent assholes then men like Gandhi, MLK, anf Joey G. would've been free to follow vocations that didn't involved telling large segments of the population to pull their heads out of their asses. And they wouldn't have had to deal with the inconvenience of being shot or stabbed either.

If I were to be the lead prosecutor in the case of Sanity vs. Humanity, I would present one piece of evidence and then rest my case. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you Exhibit A:

During the Crusades (which I'm sure were already entered into evidence on Star Trek), a group of religious pilgrims/homicidal maniacs set off from the Rhine valley destined for the Holy Land. Their leader: a goose they believed to be divinely inspired.

How they came to believe that the all-seeing, all-knowing creator of the universe had decided to manifest Himself in the form of a goose is irrelevant. The point is that a group of people actually believed it. If it happened once, it could happen one it could happen again.

Now the defense would have you believe that these simple folk eventually came to their senses and gave up following the Holy Goose. And they indeed did - sort of. Eventually the goose-steppers fell in line behind Emich of Leisingen: a man uniquely qualified to lead an army - he claimed that a cross had appeared his chest. No, not on the outside of his clothes: on his skin. In retrospect, they should've stuck with the goose. Under Emich's "leadership" the pilgrims decided to warm up for the slaughter of the Infidel abroad by killing as many Jews in Germany as they could find.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury; the prosecution rests.