We need a good insurrection

The U.S. is heading toward insurrection.  We are in times that try men's--and women's--souls.  Those times are when we have those toothpaste moments:  once words are uttered, like toothpaste, they can't be stuffed back into the tube.  Some words can be forgiven, but never forgotten. They signal irreconcilable differences, when people don't want reconciliation.  People want to be rid of each other.

President Obama's re-election has inspired some of those irreconcilable circumstances.  The conservative reactions to his win range from the merely absurd, to the dangerously obtuse, to the downright insane.  We have come to expect and to live with the malevolent scurrility that comes from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and those many antediluvian "conservatives" whose American dreams are of monarchies that preside over hordes of worthless workers, shirkers, and slaves.  But Obama's win has moved some otherwise fairly circumspect people to the fury and rage of Shakespeare's idiot, whose ranting signifies nothing.  Except lost mentalities.  

Among the notable descents into madness is a demonstration from Republican strategist and adviser and CNN analyst Mary Matalin. She wrote in the National Review:

A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division.

With Mitt Romney's well documented and recorded performances of duplicity, brazen mendacity, and general foolery, one can only wonder that she would dare to accuse Barack Obama of the very things at which Romney excelled.  But she continues:

Mitt Romney distinguished himself and conservatism with a grounded, courageous, forward-thinking problem-solving reform agenda for a nation ready to renew and starved for leadership and maturity. He is a man of integrity and character, as is his whole family. And unlike in the 1996 and 2008 Republican campaigns, which — though led by men of great personal integrity — were marked by dead-end policy prescriptions, Romney/Ryan laid a durable philosophical and policy foundation for the next generation of conservative leadership.

For Christ's and Joseph Smith's sake, Romney occupied almost every political position on the menu.  You could choose any stance you wanted.  That must be what Matalin must have done.  She found a "durable philosophical and policy foundation" where most people who had not slipped off into racial schizophrenia saw only quicksand and muck. She  closes her tirade by referring the reader to the Catholic lectionary for the day and invoking the sacredness of Jesus Christ in her blessing of Obama as a "narcissistic sociopath [who] leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice."

With the Lord on her side in such words of perspicacity and finely-honed reason, what chance do we 47 percenters or 99 percenters, or whoever we are, to find redemption for supporting President Obama.  

The marvel is that Democratic strategist and analyst James Carville is married to Matalin, and one can only assume that the Cajun must crave a lot of ragin'.  He must be more Christlike than Christ to ever be reconciled with those words.  

All the peacemakers are calling blessings on themselves by insisting that it is time for partisans to reconcile and find areas of agreement.  President Obama says we are not Democrats and Republicans, we are Americans.  Some students at the University of Mississippi did not think so.  Give President Obama his due for considering that his raging opponents such as Matalin have better angels, but those angels are wearing white sheets with eye-holes in them.  We've been there before.  And a lot of people are working hard to make sure we stay there.  

Maybe we need a really good insurrection to decide who we really are.