Sex For Stupidos

Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservative--John Stuart Mill 

   What makes yahoos tick? How can rightwingers keep intoning trumpery like a dog that won't stop barking There are progressives (you’ll find them most readily on AlterNet) who are actually looking into the dark void of the conservative cranium to see how the flapdoodle gets cooked up and served.
   One notion, bruited by George Lakeoff, a word wizard at Berkeley, is that our tories tend to come from patriarchal families where pop bosses the brood and teaches right from far right. The result is said to be an exaggerated obeisance to authority and an absence of critical thought. This was summed up nicely back in Watergate days when a Congressman who retained his faith in Richard Nixon exclaimed, “Don’t confuse me with the facts!”
  Researchers also say that righties are successful at pushing their policies because they deliver them with moral and Manichean rhetoric. Indeed, they claim the diety as a dittohead.
   The problem with these premises is that the righties are very picky about the authority they respect and the morality they proclaim. So much so that I can’t think of a more brazen bunch of hypocrites now doing business in the USA. A perfect example is the right’s obsession with gayness, which the Ten Commandments ignore and the Bible abominates only in passing along with such sins as skipping the Sabbath and seducing your sister-in-law. Meanwhile, the good book is brimful of denunciations of usury. Jesus himself chased the money changers from the temple.
  At three score and twelve, I have yet to find the actual harm homosexuals (married or single) do to the social order. But I do know that high interest rip-offs are ruining countless families, while debt of all kind is wrecking our economy. Poor neighbs and the strip malls that ring military bases are chock-a-block with pay day sharks who lend bucks by the week at 300 percent a year. That reads like usury to me.
   You might think that God-fearing teabaggers would have greater concern about their soldier sons and daughters falling into hopeless hock than about whether Oscar and Henry should be allowed to emulate Ozzie and Harriet. I can’t peruse all the news, but I have yet to hear about an outraged congregation picketing the local shylock.
   To give them the benefit of the doubt, it might be that conservatives fret more about lust than lucre because the former doesn’t involve math. With their adoration of the avid, the only financial sin they ever acknowledge is letting a sucker keep his money.
   PS--There’s an inspiring Occupy-type movement in the UK protesting usury and, indeed, the whole credit swindle that has ripped off our economy. We should be building such a movement here.