Theocracy showing a few cracks?

What the Bush Regime failed (albeit not for lack of trying) to do, drunk wankers with fireworks managed to accomplish. I now officially hate this holiday. Never mind that I'm supposedly a descendant of the guy who penned the document with this famous date. I have to think that his slumber is not easy of late.

But anyhoo...

Crooks and Liars had an entry about the Religious Right (finally) warming to McCain. My head says that many, many of the pew-warmers will swallow the sophistry and obediently vote Republican as prescribed. But my gut says that you're going to see a greater percentage than expected sit 2008 out.

Why? It's not so much a matter of holding their noses as it that their heads would just plain explode from sheer cognitive dissonance.

Could it be the divorce (after much philandering) from his first wife who was severely injured in an automobile accident?

Why, no.

Could it be that his second wife was a drug addict who committed prescription fraud, stole painkillers from her own medical charity, and got off with a mere fine and community service (confirmed by Snopes)?

Why, no.

Could it be the Keating Five baggage or the never-ending latter-day lobbyist associations?

Why, no.

Could it be the public financing shenanigans from the erstwhile co-champion of campaign finance reform?

Why, no.

Could it be the fact that his lifestyle is decidely un-Christ-like, with eight homes, bankrolled by his heiress second wife?

Why, no.

Forget actual questions of character and values. (And Heaven forfend that we actually expect anyone to walk the talk if it means that--gasp!--a black guy could actually park his @$ in an office formerly occupied by slave-owners.) Nope. It all boils down to asking pew-warmers to part with a wee bit of self-identity.

Y'see, these are people who loooooove their tin foil hats. They never outgrew the persecution complex (with all the narcissism it entails) that we maladjusted adolescents shed at about--what?--sixteen or seventeen years of age. They're not happy unless they're forwarding emails or writing Letters to the Editor warning that the world is about to be taken over by A.) Muslims, B.) Homosexuals (who are always, ALWAYS pedophiles, donchaknow), C.) The United Nations, D.) Atheists (who are indistinguishable from Communists and Nazis, donchaknow), E.) Non-white people, period.

Seriously, these folk were born fifty years too late. If it weren't for the fact that they know they'd be laughed out of town for lining their basement with tar paper and tinfoil, eating Dinty Moore from the can, and counting their shotgun slugs, they'd be doing it right now. (Never mind they'd do well to keep an eye on Russia at the moment, but, apparently, one bogeyman at a time is all that can fit on the radar screen...)

So you take a mentality like that, this paranoia that's been carefully--yea, even lovingly--cultivated from inside and out, and you ask it to vote for McCain? Senator "Agents of Intolerance"? Wellllll...that could be just a little...problematic.

This is most emphatically not a question of forgiveness, you understand. McCain's (pre-courtship) sound byte was no dime-store trinket to the self-anointed "real Christians." It was nothing less than a validation of their "persecuted" status. (Doubtless, any number could even hear the lions roaring in the Roman arena.) And thus they will not part lightly with it. But, at the same time, McCain won't part with enough of his dignity for a revival-meeting "conversion." (For tasters, his beer-baroness (second) wife would have to divest her holdings to appease the Baptist mullahs. And we all know that ain't gonna happen.)

So, even knowing that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will vote according to their pastors' orders, I will not be surprised at a low turnout among the soi-dissant "values voters" who rubber-stamped the Bush Gang's Great Giveaway of Iraqi oil and American birthrights.

Of course, if McCain's fool enough to tap Huckabee as Veep, then my head will be more correct than my gut. Then again, that scenario raises the question of whether the (long-overdue) exodus (i.e. stampede) of moderate Republicans will more than cancel out the "born again" McCain voters. Part of me wants to see that scenario, just for the relief of coup-de-grace. I suppose that I daren't hope for a viable third party in this decade. Sigh...

On second thought, seeing the legal thuggery to which Prime Minister Harper is willing to resort, a third party isn't all the panacea it's cracked up to be. Gaaagh. The sooner the Canadian voters come to their senses and put that catamite of the Bush Junta out on the curb, the better off that country will be.