the timboucher experience

What’s happening? Where are the people in the streets screaming and looting? What are all the people who couldn’t stop bothering me about voting for Kerry doing now? Now that they’ve finally seen that fear beats reason every time. Where is the outcry? Every progressive person seems to be sitting around licking their wounds, waiting and wishing that Kerry’s going to somehow win it in Ohio. GUESS WHAT! He’s not. This part of the game is over. We all knew secretly in our hearts that it wasn’t going to work out. And it hasn’t. The sooner we face that, the sooner we can decide what we need to do next. It seemed like we could just put all our faith in somebody else to fix our problems for us, but now it looks like we’re gonna have to do it ourselves. I realize most people aren’t going to like that, because they feel like, “Hey, I did my part. I voted against Bush.” GUESS WHAT! That’s not enough. You’ve seen what these people are capable of. And if you think that’s bad, just wait till they overturn Roe V. Wade, pass PATRIOT ACT II, invade Iran, start a draft, and institute a virtual Christian theocracy in America. What are you gonna do then, say you voted for the other guy, and that’s it?

Here is how Bush won, for people who are sitting around scratching their butts over the whole thing. There is an extremely important underlooked force in America. It is called the angry under-represented white male. He is not a bad guy, but he has become fearful, because his cultural star has been steadily dimming since the 1950’s. He was threatened by the explosion of liberalism, hippies and drug use in the sixties. He was timid yet finally accepting when blacks won the right to vote. He figured they had cool music, so why not? He grudgingly accepted women’s liberation in the 70’s, but only because he secretly hoped some of these strong women would tie him up and whip him. Now, he looks around him and he sees: (1) Latinos taking all the lowest rung jobs which he could always count on before this to give him a sense of purpose and duty; (2) black dudes with probably enormous penises taking over most of the biggest spots in sports and entertainment; (3) women who don’t want anything to do with him because his ideas about how things should work are hopelessly outdated; (4) gay people with sitcoms and moving in next door who are in “love” and want to get “married;” (5) the rise of “metrosexuals” which threatens to feminize men forever…

The world, to him, has gone topsy-turvy, and he no longer sees clearly how he fits into it all. He no longer can really understand what is expected of him. This man sees amorphous threats and creeping disappointment on all sides at home, so when he was given the chance to take all these cloudy negative feelings and project them onto a “cool” external enemy (which Hollywood movies had been preparing him to do for more than ten years), he jumped at the chance. And he didn’t just make this leap of logic on his own either. Leaders looking to turn back the clock, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson helped him along when they said about 9/11:

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.

And Bush’s team has set him up as the complete antithesis and solution to the problems and threats perceived by the angry white male. When the angry male feels like foreigners and “coloreds” are taking his jobs and cultural status away, Bush stands up and drops bombs on them. Sure, he’s doing it in another country, but the symbolic message is clear. Bush has lead an invasion of white males to re-Christianize and civilize a land gone wrong. That land may outwardly be Iraq, but inwardly, the angry white male knows it is America. When the angry male feels threatened and confused by strong women and the concept of women’s rights, Bush counters by offering a staunch and unswerving role model for all men, to “do what they know is right” and not worry about what the (international) community thinks, because what’s right is right dammit - and that your little wife will always be smiling supportively from your side. She will never backtalk or say mean things or speak the languages of the dastardly foreigners, like Theresa Heinz-Kerry.

And you know what they really meant when they called John Kerry a “flip-flopper?” They were saying, in a majestic double-entendre, that he has a limp dick. That it just flaps around like some kind of leaf in the breeze. That not only can’t he figure out how to protect our band of monkeys from the enemy monkeys, but he can’t even get it up. At least Bob Dole was into Viagra, and Bill Clinton… well, Clinton actually couldn’t keep it down.

And guns. There’s no better way for an angry white male to feel like a bigshot than to have a gun. How else is he going to force his girlfriend not to have an abortion? How else is he supposed to fight off gay guys at the gym when they try to look at his ass? How else is he supposed to hunt down woolly mammoths on the cold suburban tundra. Bush and the NRA made damn sure that every angry white male in America knew that John Kerry was personally going to come to their houses and take away their guns with a posse of wimpy gay limp-dicked foreigners. I know, I live in a swing state, and I saw the infomercials night after night.

And that is how Bush won. It’s really very simple. Fortunately, for the rest of us, this is the last stand of an outdated way of life, based around the ascendency of the angry white male. It will be brutal and painful, but it cannot last long. Biologically, it will not. Spiritually, it should not. And intellectually, it makes no sense. But this was never an intellectual battle, and Kerry’s big mistake was to be the more intellectual, and less emotional. People said they didn’t know what Kerry’s plan was or what he stood for, even though he kept explaining it over and over again. What they wanted was not an explanation though. What they wanted was an emotional connection. Bush gave them that, again and again and again. And now, what we need to do is to look at Bush’s tactics and reverse-engineer them so that we can use them against him.

And if you think that Bush is going to try to forge a middle path, to make sure Kerry supporters are accounted for in the upcoming term, forget it. Bush no longer has to worry about re-election. Cheney most certainly won’t be running. They gained seats in both the House & the Senate. Bush is poised to appoint hundreds of conservative federal judges, and several seats on the Supreme Court. They are already priming the pump, talking about how Bush has such an overwhelming mandate. There will be no moderation. There will be no middle path.

What happens next is anybody’s guess. But sitting around, waiting, wringing your hands & licking your wounds is not going to help. As Kerry has called Bush to offer his concession, I’d like to offer a little concession speech of my own, from the words of Thomas Paine, Revolutionary War patriot and pamphleteer:

Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

And if nothing else, there’s always Tecumseh’s Curse to look forward to.

LATER…

> Check out my follow-up post about some of the comments received over this one.

• Conspiracy Theory, Parapolitics, Whining
• The Cloth
• Meanwhile, back on the ranch…
• The Churian Separatists
• Angry white males