If conservatives don’t want to be seen as bitter people who cling to their guns and religion and anti-immigrant sentiments, they should stop being bitter and clinging to their guns, religion and anti-immigrant sentiments.

The conservative base is absolutely apoplectic because, because … well, nobody knows. They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Even though they’re not quite sure what “it” is. But they know they’re fed up with “it,” and that “it” has got to stop.

Here are the big issues for normal people: the war, the economy, the environment, mending fences with our enemies and allies, and the rule of law.

And here’s the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

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If the average middle-class suburb-dwelling telecommunications salesman couldn’t pat himself on the back for having achieved a bunch of shit that was actually handed to him by a society designed to meet his needs, he’d have time to think about his life and might actually realize just how uninteresting and unnoteworthy he really is. These asshole myopic Libertarian types truly don’t understand that taxes create the government that creates the institutional and administrative structures that allow businesses to exist and succeed. They don’t understand that they’re able to make a shitload of money in the value-added goods sector because people in other countries toil for almost no recompense in order to provide the basic components that go into the production of those value-added goods. They don’t understand the luck they’ve had being born male/white/able-bodied/etc. and being born into a family that could provide them with the kind of home environment and education that they need to take advantage of the opportunities that privilege presents to them. They don’t understand that our entire social structure exists to allow them to succeed. You can tell they don’t get any of this when you hear them (attempt to) explain why they object to the stimulus plan (or welfare, Social Security, food stamps, national health care, etc.). Republicans and Libertarians love to talk about “personal responsibility” and “pulling oneself up by one’s boostraps,” which is basically code for “I think niggers, beaners, and lazy whores deserve to starve.” I fucking hate conservative economic ideology. It’s so disgusting, entitled, and willfully myopic that I just want to puke on everyone who dares bring it up in my presence.

Read the rest here.