February 27, 2012

There was an email/post/blogpoint going around for a while that captured the essence of the Culture Wars. It purported to be a history of the world in the telling of which “conservatives” had done or invented everything of value and “liberals” had contributed only the irrelevant or the exploitive. When it first appeared, many “liberals” tried to argue with it, point by point, saying, “No, we didn’t!” But there is no point arguing with satire. I mean, one can just state the truth and hope for the best. For instance:

World History 101

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

1. Liberals, and

2. Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement. To wit, after drinking a lot of beer and eating a lot of meat, many men would pass out or throw up and then pass out. When they woke up, many found that other men had taken their stuff and run off with their women. So, they founded "Conservatism," a movement to conserve what they had got while they drank and passed out. "Property" became the foundation of this movement--what I have is my property and must be conserved. What you have is potentially my property and when I get it from you, it must be conserved as mine, especially if I got it while you were drunk and passed out.

Other men, who had stronger stomachs and were better drinkers (as evidenced by their rapid evolution from relatively weak beer, which even at 3.2% has the capacity to render Conservatives stupidly drunk within minutes, to wines and Scotch whiskies, neat), realized that by offering enough beer and a warm place to lay down, they could get the Conservatives to bring all the meat to a central place. Then, while the Conservatives drank beer, threw up, and passed out, these guys made lists of the poor and ill and defenseless and made sure that they got their share of the meat in return for doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing that so fascinated the Conservatives when they were awake and/or sober. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some noteworthy Liberal achievements include the domestication of Conservatives, the invention of the individual, face-to-face sex, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that Conservatives provided.

Over the years Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most destructive land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the mule, the animal whose ability to pull the plow that broke the plains so grain could be planted and more beer could be brewed and civilization ensured, has been enshrined in the literature and art of the ages, including a magnificent series of films.

Modern Liberals avoid beer so as not to be confused by their French friends with Conservatives but will, if pressed, sip an imported beer (with lime added). They eat raw fish but like their beef well done and in very small portions called "medallions" (Conservatives prefer meat to come in slabs; most Conservatives are overweight, have high blood pressure, and die young, which is what makes them so testy; advocating a life style that provably leads to the premature extinction of your own kind is intellectually hard to reconcile). Liberals also like sushi, tofu, and French food including lots of red wine and are invariably slender, well-groomed and live very long happy lives with many serial wives and mistresses. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most Liberals have much higher testosterone levels than Conservatives as evidenced by the higher incidence of baldness among Liberals and African American basketball players. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are Liberals. Liberals invented the rule that a fly ball behind third base belongs to the shortstop to prevent Conservative infielders from injuring themselves and losing the game in the last of the ninth.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud or Miller Lite. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, white athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who, not being Liberals and so, not having careers but needing jobs, have to work for a living, and they pay them as little as they can, thus "conserving" their own wealth.

As much as Liberals would like to spend their time producing stuff, they realize that making it is only half the battle, so they take on the thankless task of governing the producers and deciding what to do with the production. Otherwise, while the Conservative producers, having drank, thrown, up, and passed out, were unconscious, other guys would come steal their stuff.

Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans and so work very hard to protect their Conservative friends from Europeans. It is this impulse to protect their Conservative friends that constitutes the basic weakness of Liberals, since Conservatives seem to have little more on their minds than the absolute eradication of Liberals from the earth and their embedded-ness in Hell (which, by the way, is also another Conservative invention worthy of notice; see, for example Alighieri, Dante and Santorum, Rick) or in Europe, not really part of Earth, actually.

Finally, this note: because Conservatives privilege action (or speech; the US Supreme Court says they are the same, which is why donations of millions of dollars from rich white men to Conservatives is not unconstitutional; what looks like an action is really a speech) before thought, it is hard to know what Conservatives really think, or if they do. One can only watch their actions. In fact, if you are in the presence of Conservatives, it is always good to watch their actions---and your back.