Pure High Octane Stupid: WWHD

The Daily Caller isn’t exactly known for its in-depth analysis, but this piece by Mark Judge is just so massively stupid that I have to mock it. It really is the stupidest thing I’ve read in a long time. And I read an interview with Glenn Beck earlier today. 

Judge informs us that Washington National’s outfielder Bryce Harper is apparently a conservative hero, because of awesomeness and 80’s punk rock, I think. Unlike those lazy liberal welfare recipients and loose women that comprise the rest of Major League Baseball, Harper is a true American Hero who will usher in the “inevitable and upcoming rebirth of conservatism in November.” Harper’s ability to field a baseball more rapidly than Atlanta’s Jason Heyward is, of course, proof that teachers and Barack Obama suck. Or something:

Heyward was like one of those public school teachers who, because they are a union member, can’t be fired and so are relegated to the “rubber room” to sit and read the paper and gather a check for the rest of their lives. Or even Obama, who went from Hawaii to Harvard to the White House and never seems to have had to slide head-first into a base his entire life.

Yes, someone actually sat down and typed those words, and someone else actually decided to publish them. But the fun continues! 

Watching Bryce Harper play is like listening to an economic speech by Paul Ryan: It’s long on reality and short on excuses

Oh God, watching this guy play baseball is like listening to a speech by Paul Ryan? Wow, it must seriously suck to go to a Nat’s game. I mean I know a lot of people think baseball is boring, but holy shit! If that’s how boring baseball is, imagine what this guy thinks about golf! Now I’m wondering, what else can our intrepid young outfielder / fiscal policy wonk teach us?

Harper also adapts. When pitcher Livan Hernandez froze the 19-year-old Harper with a slow curve ball, Harper adjusted his batting and next time up Harper hit a game-winning home run.

Ironically, it is modern conservatives who have embraced change more than liberals, who are dogmatic in their adherence to old ways of doing things. The left, like Jason Heyward dozing in the outfield, sees nothing wrong with the way things have worked, or even not worked, for the past 40 years. Teachers should never be fired, no matter how incompetent. It is anathema for public-sector union members to pay for even a small percentage of their own health care. Sex-ed taught without reference to the human soul can only do good, and has nothing to do with promiscuity and the collapse of female self-esteem. And we can spend all the money in the world and never have to pay it back.

OK, let me be serious for a second here. I have literally never met any liberal (or actually anyone, for that matter) who believes those things which I have highlighted in bold. Liberals are, in fact, pretty pissed off with the way things have been going the past 30 years, and especially the past 10. We have been, to a large extent, following republican economic policies since the eighties. I have never met a single person (liberal, conservative, or whatever) who thinks no teacher should ever be fired or that no union member should ever pay for their health care. Ever. And that includes teachers and public sector union members. Exactly no one really thinks those things, because they’re ridiculous. And why should sex-ed classes refer to the human soul? Does it have prophylactic or anti-viral properties that I am unaware of? As for the debt issue, well, it was Dick Cheney who said that “deficits don’t matter.” Not even Paul Krugman, the most liberal economist I can come up with, thinks that “we can spend all the money in the world and never have to pay it back.” Liberals don’t actually think these things. That Judge has to invent these positions in order to refute them is telling. 

So what’s next?

Harper is not going to sit back and accept what the status quo tells him to accept (where does he get off stealing home?). And conservatives are not going to expect to retire at age 65 or to send their kids to the college of their choice if it costs $50,000 a year. We are going to adapt. (In a strange way, conservatives are not only like Bryce Harper, but have become like the do-it-yourself punk rockers of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Don’t have a record label? Start your own. Are the old rock groups bloated and sloppy? Boot them off the stage.) Meanwhile, liberals occupy everything so that they can demand — what was it again? Oh yeah, peace. And taxes.

So apparently, rather than attempting to solve our problems in such a way that people can still retire at age 65 and afford good colleges, conservatives and Bryce Harper will just accept the fact that life is shitty and what can you do? Which is kinda exactly the opposite of what Judge is saying Harper is like, no? And liberals are just too busy demanding peace and taxes. The nerve of those people! But wait, why would liberals demand taxes? I thought we could just spend all the money in the world and never pay it back? Why would we need taxes to do that, we can just borrow it all! And peace? Fuck peace, man! Only hippies care about that! Real Americans know that we should just kill all the Iranians. And pay for it without taxes or, ya know, money. Because free markets and confidence!

So next time, boys and girls, you find yourself facing any kind of choice, you need only ask yourself this question: What Would Harper Do? And if “catch the ball before it hits the ground” is not adequate advice for your current situation, well, shit.

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