Theater of the Insane

Symbolism can be a powerful thing and it's naive to believe that things only have literal meanings.  Thus said, it's much too easy to take this sort of thing too far, and when we get to the point at which events primarily have symbolic meaning, we delve into the realm of insanity.  No longer is anything as it seems,  Rather, it's all part of a vast morality play that mere mortals can never comprehend.

And so it is with conservatives.  Nothing is as it seems and everything has some deeper meaning to what is intended.  And that's the only possible way they can view Obama as an anti-American socialist, as they have no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.  But they "know" that he's a socialist out to destroy America, so it's safe to interpret every move and utterance he makes as having a deeper significance than it appears.

They've now gotten to the point where Senator Boehner is a RINO who's sold out the party merely for suggesting that Obama is a US citizen.  I can find quotes for that, if you like, but feel too lazy to do so.

Anti-Racism Racism

And so it is with Andrew Breitbart, who is now being sued by the woman he ruined with an edited video that showed the opposite of what Breitbart claimed it showed.  And hell, I'm willing to see him as a victim in that episode.  He was fed a video that he "knew" was accurate because it finally confirmed his suspicions that black people hate whites as much as he hates black people.  And he believed this so much that he failed to request the full video before using it to smear someone he knew nothing about.  I can believe that.  The man's a self-deluded moron so this could make sense.  I'm not sure how that works in his favor, but I can see him as a victim here.

But the funniest part is his explanation of the whole thing.  As he explained at the time, he wasn't trying to destroy Shirley Sherrod by casting her as an anti-white bigot.  Far from it.  He wasn't even thinking about her as a person and what it might mean to her life for him to show this video.  He was just trying to disgrace the NAACP.  Why?  Because they had pretended to be outraged by false claims of racist Tea Partiers as a way of getting them to shut up, and so he released the video as a way of showing that they were the real racists.  Oddly, that he was using her as a meaningless pawn in his war against the NAACP was his defense.  And again, I can believe that.

And now that Sherrod is suing him, this isn't about her being injured by his actions.  No, she's suing him as part of a grand conspiracy because he was about to expose something regarding the Pigford settlement; which Sherrod was a part of.  Once again, blacks bad people are trying to stifle Breitbart by pretending he had done something wrong; when they're the ones who were wrong all along.  Is it any wonder he hates blacks so much?

The Dude's Not Alright

And sure, it's possible he's just playing a game with this, but if it's a game, it's a really really dumb one.  Because arguing that this lawsuit is part of a black conspiracy involving the Pigford settlement isn't going to help Breitbart in court.  If anything, it'll make him look like a kook, and possibly get the judge to hate him.  So if this is a ruse, it can only backfire.

More likely, Breitbart is just insane.  Seriously.  Because he really did see a conspiracy of the NAACP trying to stifle Tea Partiers by invoking racism that didn't exist.  And he really does think they were just sitting on this lawsuit, waiting until he did something, and now blam!, they throw it at him just in time for Pigford.  Nothing is as it seems and everything is part of some giant plan that he's in the middle of.  And that is, of course, utterly crazy.

And that's who we're dealing with on the right.  These people aren't sane.  Seriously, that's not an insult.  They're crazy.  They see hidden meanings that don't exist and imagine conspiracies that don't make any sense.  After all, if they wanted Sherrod to sue as a way of stifling Breitbart, they'd have done it immediately; to tie him up before he could dig deeper into whatever he imagines he's uncovered regarding Pigford.

And you're not going to like this, but these guys are to be pitied.  They're crazy.  They can't help it.  We can have some fun at their expense, but at the end of the day, it's no different than mocking the homeless guy on the street or your crazy uncle who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt.  They live boring pointless lives that weren't at all what they were told to expect, and now they've placed themselves on the cusp of a giant movement on the precipice of history. 

And so, yeah, sure, there certainly are racists within the Tea Party movement.  And what Breitbart did by posting that edited video which he misled people about really could be libel.  But that's not what's happening at all.  This is all part of the cuspy precipice that's swelling around him and he couldn't be any happier about it.  Some people have to save lives to be someone important.  Breitbart just has to be crazy.