Overflowin’

Sometimes the amount of shit in the toilet exceeds the toilet’s ability to process it. This can occur for one of two reasons. Either someone has laid down one ginormous poo, or several people pooed in succession, each one failing to flush and thereby growing the cumulative shitblob to a size the toilet drain is unsuited to dealing with.

Lately the rhetorical toilet has been getting pretty full on a regular basis and overflowing onto the Indignant Citizen’s nice, clean floor.

Case in point: Bill O’Reilly. On Tuesday he said on his radio show that because San Franciscans voted to oppose military recruitment in public schools and to ban handgun ownership that the United States government had no responsibility to defend that city from a terrorist attack and that it should be effectively cut off from the rest of the country and denied any federal funds.

Occasionally O’Reilly will say something that the Indignant Citizen can stomach, but that usually happens when O’Reilly is advocating a common sense approach to dealing with some stupidity like Wal-Mart asking employees not to say “Merry Christmas” this year.

Tuesday’s hyperbole serves no one’s interests save Bill O’Reilly’s, however. It’s just a stupid thing to say. And it could be easily dismissed as such were it not for the fact that the three to five million people watch his TV show on any given night, and Lord knows how many listen to the radio program, believe he’s operating in what he calls the “No-Spin Zone.” Which of course is bullshit because if he wasn’t spinning he wouldn’t be on TV. Everyone spins, especially on TV. By having an opinion, you spin. By choosing guests, you’re spinning. It should be called the “No One Else But Me Can Spin Zone.”

Reading what O’Reilly has to say about San Francisco is stomach-turning and illustrates the depths to which discourse in this country has sunk. Apparently you can’t get on TV anymore unless you’re advocating for terrorists to blow up landmarks in cities whose policies you disagree with. Hey, Chicago bans handgun ownership, too. Got sumpin’ to say about dat, Bill?

O’Reilly’s over-the-top idiocy ranks right up there with Pat Robertson saying on his “700 Club” show Thursday that residents of Dover, Pa., shouldn’t look to God for help if a natural disaster hits the town because voters there dumped the school board members who favored teaching intelligent design in public school classrooms. “I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God. You just rejected him from your city.”

Later, Robertson clarified his remarks: “God is tolerant and loving, but we can’t keep sticking our finger in his eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them.”

Oh please. For chrissake, Robertson, you have the reasoning ability and the vindictiveness of a 13-year-old girl. This whole intelligent design brouhaha has gotten entirely out of hand. Someone needs to reign these Christian wackos back in. They’re becoming as militant as Middle Eastern terrorists. And that might be the next step. We already have fundamentalists and Catholic extremists killing abortion doctors and bombing abortion clinics. How long before they start shooting school superintendents who don’t support intelligent design and blowing up natural history museums?

People, it’s time to cool it the fuck down. San Franciscans pay taxes that support the federal government, and probably get back way less per dollar than they contribute. San Francisco’s infrastructure could use some upgrading, its less fortunate citizens more help from government programs; instead the city has to watch Alaska build bridges to nowhere for people who will never use them.

And by the way, Bill, in America voters make decisions. It is the American way. In fact nothing is more American. The fact that you disagree with it is irrelevant. An election was held; a decision was made. Live with it like a grownup. The Indignant Citizen has had to live with this Bush fucker, and he wasn’t even duly elected the first time. So shut the fuck up about San Francisco and concentrate on real issues.

Pat Robertson: You are going to hell. Plain and simple. God hates hate, and it’s clear you’re a hater. Buy some shorts and get ready for the trip, bitch. The Indignant Citizen will see you there and he will be coming for you.

What else? Oh, Bush’s latest attempt to rally support for this sad war in Iraq. This is a no-win situation. Democrats in congress have no room to criticize, here. They voted to give Bush the authority to wage this conflict, and they have no rhetorical standing to come back now and say it was wrong. To them the Indignant Citizen says: You should have stood up to Bush before. Now it’s too late. You’ve lost credibility. Step aside and let new leaders engage the fight.

As for Bush, he has, apparently, lost his mind completely. “We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory.” Holy shit, he sounds like Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now.” Maybe he means to. But someone should tell him that we’re fighting an unwinnable war. How does one measure “victory” against a slippery enemy like terrorism?

The tactic is brilliant from a rhetorical perspective, though, because it sets the stage for perpetual warfare. We’ll always be at war with terrorists because there is an inexhaustible supply of them, they have unmeetable demands and simply by fighting them militarily we make more of them.

Life must be strange for Ray Bradbury these days, because we have achieved the perpetual warfare he envisioned. We don’t even notice the bombers flying overhead any more, we have grown so used to the noise. In fact this Bush administration has managed to do what no other has ever done—push the bounds of the war debate beyond whether or not we should even be at war. That has already been settled. We are at war and will be for a long, long, long, long, longlonglong time. It is accepted. To end the war and seek a peaceful solution is to admit defeat, and we can’t do that.

Just one question, though. Wasn’t this mission in Iraq already accomplished?

Anyway, there’s a lot of shit in the toilet. Most of it doesn’t need to be there; it is a result of overeating, and eating the wrong things. But there it is. And so the Indignant Citizen asks: Where is the plunger? What plumber might act to drain the swirling, unflushable shitwater? The world dances and squeezes its ass cheeks together, trying to hold it in, as it awaits an answer.