Pro athletes are known to play logical twister in order to convince themselves that they are being disrespected by their opponents. I once read of a football lineman, (played for the Saints I think, forget his name) who would work himself to tears before every down convincing himself that his assignment had raped his mother, though this phenomenon isn't usually that extreme. Mostly it involves players making themselves feel insulted by the most mundane things their competitors say, things like, 'this is just another game for us' or 'we're not afraid of those guys' 'they can be beaten just like anyone else,' etc. Players and coaches are both drilled in the art of political non-statements but it makes no difference. Anything less than 'we suck and we haven't a chance' will be taken as offensive by those who are straining to feel offended.
This behavior displays one of the more despicable aspects of human nature. Everyone wants to dominate others, but no one wants to feel like a thug or an bully. The easiest way to solve this conundrum is to convince yourself that struggle and competition are the essence of existence, that different groups of people (at root, it doesn't matter what marks them as different) exist naturally as enemies, and life is an endless stream of threats to home and hearth to be fought off and affronts to sacred honor to be avenged.
American history is full of one Southern gentleman after another asserting that equality and harmony did not exist, that in this universe there was only master and slave, and since we must choose between one or the other, why shouldn't we be the masters? This is the appeal of the eternal struggle.
It's self-apparent why pro athletes would buy into this mindset. They center their entire lives around competition. And after being paid millions of dollars and receiving culture-wide fellatio they can hardly be expected to think of themselves as mere entertainers, instead of the sum of human existence. But there are also scores of people in the general population who believe this way, the romantics of hatred, gamefish for the demagogues nightcrawler, common clay of the new west, the fucking assholes.
Which finally brings us to this ad right here.
An ad placed in the Arizona Republic on Friday by the Sonoran tourism board pokes fun at fun at that state's new immigration law, while at the same time making it clear that feelings are nowhere near hard enough to turn down their Yankee neighbor's cash, and that you Gabachos are still free come on down, puke on our sidewalks, cough up ten bucks to get your picture taken in one of those big cartoon hats, mistake our bank tellers for prostitutes, expect a medal for knowing what cerveza means, etc.
Here then is the ad as altered for Michelle Malkins blog
The ad certainly doesn’t imply that somebody in Mexico is on the lookout for you so they can bring over the welcome wagon, does it? Doug Powers on MichelleMalkin.com Actually, yes, it does. Even with the happy beachgoers photoshopped out, and the 'have a good time part' chopped out, the jovial and welcoming intention is still clear. What we have then is Malkin and her underlings caught in a lie that is both blatant and pathetically incompetant. This is in no way surprising, However sincere Malkin may be in her general worldview, she removed any doubt that she was a bad faith actor with the Racheal Ray terrorist scarf incident of 08, which left everyone except the biggest hate addicts in tears of laughter.
This, children, is what shamelessness is. It's not tht the sense of shame makes one magically incapible of telling a lie, but it will make you go through the trouble of making your lie plausible. Malkin doesn't have to worry about this. She makes a good living catering to the objectively moronic, and knows full well that no matter how absurd her latest
causus ira these morons will never check her claims against an evil liberal media source.
Of slightly more interest are the tweets from Joe Arpaio, the Pheonix sheriff whose brave willingness to make criminals suffer like they're supposed to has kept the crime rate there slightly above the national average. "I want the public to call 1-800-4SONORA & demand to know the meaning of this ad that was in the AZ Republic today" and about an hour ago,
"I am calling for Arizonans to boycott travel to Mexico" (You should look at the pic of himself he uses for Twitter. That face of his is so hard and unyielding and hard. Oh my.)
While the Malkin photshop fun seems meant to make the ad look somehow threatining, Arpaio's attitude seems to be that the immigration law is so sacrosant that even lighthearted "criticism" ,on the level of that old Catholic joke*, is beyond the pale.
(*Jesus walks up to the crowd about to stone Mary Magdalene. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" he says. The crowd goes silent for a moment until suddenly Magdalene is hit by a single stone. "Damnit Ma! Jesus says.) Arpaio's recent postering as a leader of the anti wetb--illegal immigrant movement has revealed him to be every bit as much of a clown as Malkin. He has stated several times over the years that he would win the Arizona governorship whenever he might decide to run, but it's obvious he never trully believed this. This is a man who clearly wants as many people doing what he commands as he can possibly get, and Lord knows there are enough assholes in Arizona to possibly put him in the governor's chair. But like all fascists Arpaio is a coward and a fraud at heart. A possible victory is not enough for him, because the possibility of losing, of being a gracious loser for apperences shake, shaking the victors hand and by so doing acknowledging his own inferiority, makes him die inside. No, Arpaio would run for governor only if he really did feel certain that he would win, and this is why he's taken on the anti-immigration armor, so that he can gain popularity in the only way he knows how, by promising to bring pain to whatever shadowy 'them' keeps the assholes awake at night.
And it is at the common assholes feet that the blame for all the tyrants and jokers of the world ultimately lies. I am not at this moment in a forgiving mood, and am unable to excuse asshole behavior by ascribing it to a failure of tolerance of understanding. They typical asshole knows perfectly well what tolerance and understanding are and hates them precisely for what they are. It isn't some innate stupidity that makes them morons, some natural deficency that makes them believe in terrorist scarves and secret Muslim presidents. It's an addiction to being heroically besiged that makes them consciously willing to turn their brains off, to swallow any dysenteric rat shit that allows them to keep on feeling besiged.
I don't buy into the "great man" theory of history. I've always figured that it's generally history that makes the men and not vice-versa. In the end it isn't the Hitlers and Caesars of the world that bring empires down but the people who want to have Hitlers and Caesars. And since these assholes never learn, will fight you and themselves and everyone to prevent themselves from learning, the rest of us will never be rid of them.
