Pitchforks and Rainbows

America dodged the immediate damage of the killer tsunami, but a potentially more dangerous phenomenon threatens to wash across our nation. That being the new political paradigm- concrete intransigence. No quarter asked for, no quarter given. Us versus Them, and Us is me. And whoever likes me at the time. I’m so right and you’re so wrong that anybody who agrees with you should be ambushed, assaulted and abused.

Say what you will about the Liberals, for the most part, they actually believe deep down in their hearts that impoverished kids enrolled in Head Start programs can contribute to society and make the world a better place to live. For all of us. And rich people should pay for that. Conservatives wonder why these kids don’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps the way they did when daddy bequeathed them their first oil well. Life is a race and anybody with a Head Start is cheating. Anybody not part of their family, that is.

These basic attitudes stem from deep-rooted philosophical differences. The Liberal idea essentially boils down to this: by working for the greater good, it will eventually come back and benefit everyone. Conservatives believe exactly the opposite. By helping themselves, it will eventually come back and benefit themselves.

And now that politics is a 24/ 7 media proposition, those positions are calcifying. Conservative voices that are currently dominating center stage can be divided into three groups: The Greedy, The Mean, and the Stupid. They live in a black and white land where compromise equals defeat and discussion means you taking notes while they talk.

Liberals can be distilled into three groups as well: The Pompous, The Weak, and the Stupid. Their world is a rainbow of colors where the government provides everyone with that big box of 64 crayons and encourages them to write on the walls. Anybody’s walls.

Liberals want to nurture the brotherhood of man, while Conservatives deem this mythical brotherhood just another left-wing conspiracy trying to separate them from their money. Conservatives are sincerely of the opinion that they stole all their stuff fair and square, while Liberals think people with too much stuff should give some of it to people who don’t have any stuff.

Liberals want to reform prisoners. Conservatives don’t believe in taking any. Liberals would rather lose honorably than be accused of acting unfairly. As a matter of fact, Liberals are more comfortable losing than they are winning. Conservatives will do whatever it takes to win, including painting their kids’ teachers as the enemy. Not only are they bad losers, they’re bad winners as well.

And the two sides continue to play the game under entirely different narratives. Liberals act like associate producers at a folk fair trying to choreograph the welcoming dance of converging cultures, failing to notice the ragged band of Conservatives lighting torches and running headlong towards them up the castle hill, armed with pitchforks.

There’s a war going on but only one side seems aware of it. You’d think the mugging that went down in Wisconsin would be the sharp poke in the side necessary to wake Liberals up. But knowing them, they’ll probably be more concerned with strengthening the guardrails on the castle hill road and introducing legislation to reform pitchfork safety standards.

The New York times says Emmy-nominated comedian and writer Will Durst “is quite possibly the best political satirist working in the country today,” and the Chicago Tribune calls him a “hysterical hybrid of Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Osgood.” He also tells jokes. Go to willdurst.com to find out when.