In the most depressing turn in a depressing week, our Canadian Conservative bloggers took yet another step in their absorption of the attitudes, beliefs, strategies and language of their American counterparts.
I respect sites that give a sober and fair consideration to American policy from a conservative perspective. But there are those for whom George Bush’s America is clearly a bit of a fetish, the New Jerusalem, a Holy Land of strength, virtue, and no-nonsense violence in the Service of the Greater Good (said “Greater Good” curiously ends up being the “Greater Good of The United States”, but that’s just one of the perks of being chosen by God, I guess).
You can tell those sites. They bristle with cranky-looking eagles and Stars’n'Stripes and images of the World Trade Centre in flames. They have really cool, tough names with words like “Angry” or “Dead” or “Thunder” or “Surly”, hinting at the righteous rage, barely suppressed, that surges in their true blue hearts at the spectacle of our friendly little socialist confederation. And they seem to view any aspect of our economy, foreign policy, or culture (if they can be brought to concede that such a thing exists, which isn’t always easy) that differs from the American Gold Standard as an embarassingly parochial aberration, to be either denied, derided, or destroyed.
Well, that’s fine. It’s a big country. Live and let live, I say. Chacun a son gout. Whatever happens, the Great Lake of Canadian Blogdom will always retain a few reliable isles of conservative sanity.
But then one of the islands - Andrew, thoroughly decent chap - let me down. He crossed the line. He threw down the gauntlet.
He used the word “Moonbat”. And he used it to describe Canadians.
Now, according to de Perry de Havilland, who coined the term, a “moonbat” is “someone on the extreme edge of whatever their -ism happens to be.” Over the last couple of years, however, the word has been pretty much appropriated by the American right as a descriptor for the American left (perhaps because it rhymes so nicely with “democrat”, which is what Americans, in the absence of a real alternative, consider to be “left”). It’s also come to exemplify a kind of discourse I find increasingly distasteful and, unfortunately, increasingly prevalent - the sneering, mocking, dismissive exchanges where epithets replace ideas, chains of insulting adjectives replace trains of thought, and cocky, amused arrogance trumps intelligent dialogue. Visit LGF for a sample of the undiluted source, or SDA for a taste of the exported version (yum! almost as nasty as the original!)
I’m afraid the battle for civility is already lost. Little pockets still remain, like Stageleft, where we, the calm and wise, gather like creaking Oxford dons in musty robes midst dusty tomes, and reason together. But clearly the days of these little pockets of resistance are numbered: the din rises beyond our ancient windows, and I hear the first blows at the library door as the rising tide of angry small dead anal goons surges over all.
But we shall not go quiet into that foul night. The Bunker shall draw a line, and say…this far, and no further.
And the Bunker says that line shall be…”Moonbat”.
Attend us, you barbarians of the right. Hear me now. If you must lump us all together with a dismissive epithet…let it be a Canadian dismissive epithet.
If you must insult us, let it be an insult that bears the scent of our own lands and waters, not the stench of Chicago’s stockyards and Pittsburgh’s dark, satanic mills. Let it be an insult that crackles with the Aurora, that stings like an Arctic Blizzard, that booms like a Lake Huron gale, that burns like the Centennial flame, that bites like our own beloved beaver.
We charge thee. Gather in your blueclad masses, and summon up all your wit, and in the fires of your imagination forge a phrase that towers like the Rockies and proclaims to the world:
“YES. These Are Leftists. And they are Assholes. But know ye that they are CANADIAN Leftist Assholes.”
I just can’t come up with something that simply isn’t anything more than a term that occupies the same semantic space as “moonbat”, only garnished with Canadian content to make it seem less American…kind of like how the little maple leaf below the Golden Arches doesn’t magically make the Big Mac Canadian food.
This dichotomy of wingnut vs. moonbat really doesn’t work for me. I admit I use the term wingnut (and only when I’m being civil), but I do reserve it for those on the Right who I perceive are importing, lock, stock and barrel, divisive political issues straight from the trenches of the American culture war.
Then again, I’m not a Canadian the way some other people are Canadian. Francophones don’t have divisions between “moonbats” and “wingnuts”…it’s more the divisions of class (colon vs. petit or grand bourgeois) or intelligence or wisdom (imbécile vs. t’es ben smatte, toé) or degree of federalist leaning (séparatwit vs….well…fédéraliste said with lips curling, I guess), so really, what do I know? But in thinking of issues like this, I’m reminded of this little joke:
Someone was asked once to come up with what might be a Canadian equivalent of the expression “As American as apple pie.” The best suggestion was “As Canadian as possible, under the circumstances.”
Maybe we should look for a term that would, at face value, suggest a huge political and cultural divide, while subtly implying that there isn’t a significant divide at all. Along the lines of the Duponts vs. the Duponds, only something that would work better in English.