Respect Authority

Nate Silver is a piece of shit. From day one, this blog has linked to FiveThirtyEight.com because of its cute info-graphics and an impetuous, insolent analytical style. But now that it’s springboarded itself to success off our coattails, I have a bone to pick.

First of all, fuck you. You’re a baseball stats fan. Just because you leverage polls off each other doesn’t make you a genius, its just makes you a fancy monkey. Yeah, I said it. A monkey could do your job. Which is fine, I guess. Monkeys are proving themselves to be pretty smart and fairly capable these days.

Point is, you didn’t rock the world by proving that in all likelihood a Democrat without substantial ties to Iraq, Katrina, the economy, Bush and whites would win a political battle for what’s left of America. I probably could’ve thrown a bucket of paint against a wall, told you it was a graph predicating Obama’s sweep, and you would’ve factored it into your stupid algorithms, calculations, and computations.

Well, how about you match this, motherfucker. I’m going to use a shallow understanding of Christian dogma with faux academic stoner logic to project Obama’s inevitable failings as President; contextualized with historical character flaws of the last six presidents as they manifest themselves into archetypes of the seven deadly sins. GRAPH THAT. Better yet, try and understand that, because I don’t.

SLOTH/LUST — I understand Jim Carter only qualifies as one president, but Ford was never elected president so he shouldn’t count. Besides, this is all about understanding from the balls; making bold assertions and backing them up with nothing but bravado.

Carter is remembered for one of the most depressing speeches in the history of America (ed. note: see Disney’s Miracle), which would be fine if it wasn’t for all the other times when shit was even worse than it was in the 70s. Carter’s bout with existential depression cost him a second term while his depraved and perverted mind cost him his soul. In an interview with Playboy in 1976, Carter said, “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.” Well, too bad God voted for Reagan.

GREED — Reaganomics was both his biggest biggest policy failure and his best philosophical asset. Somehow this man was able to convince ignorant rednecks and MBAs alike, a fitting socio-economic mesh for his ridiculous coalition, that letting the richest Americans horde liquid assets would be a good thing for society. The hope was that once their money bladders were engorged they’d simply have to piss, and maybe a little of it would pour into our wallets/mouths — a golden shower of prosperity. Except, haha, they bought gargantuan mansions, deserted islands and spent the rest of their money on vacations outside the US.

PRIDE — The tall, elite, know-it-all got his comeuppance when he dared to marginalize born again nutjobs. Too good for zealots? What are you, a queer? But besides that fail, George Bush always seemed so smarmy and entitled with his silly grandpa glasses and his fat, wannabe Queen of a wife. Just because he won a decisive and clean war, and Whitney Houston was making people cry at the Super Bowl, he thought ‘92 was in the bag. But it wasn’t, and I’m pretty sure it was because most of the electorate could tell he despised the American people while some thought Ross Perot, conceptually, was a good idea. In any event, it became absolutely clear what kind of household he was a part of when his fat wife blessed us with anecdotes like:

But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch [George H.W. Bush] suffer?

or

They [the Hurricane Katrina refugees in the Houston Astrodome] all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.

So, the Bushes’ beautiful minds are too precious to be tainted by the blood-toil of their idiot son and they think that stadium refugee camps are preferable to the conditions of American poverty. Looks like my gut instinct was right, those stupid glasses were elitist.

GLUTTONY — The classiest Rhodes scholar ever campaigned a great deal in fast food restaurants across the country, so much so that Phil Hartman’s job became simply wearing a fat suit, jogging pants, and holding a hamburger. But obviously, his appetite didn’t end there. Clinton devoured pussy like a starving man, and projected his gourmandism into the economy, creating housing bubbles, dot-com bubbles, and scores of other vaporous institutions that consumed so much that they ended up cannibalizing the American dream itself, a task made easier with a fiscal abundance of Chicken Nugget BBQ Sauce. Listen, that shit is incredible, seriously, makes me want to eat my finger when I carelessly dip it in.

WRATH — This is a bit of a stretch since I don’t sincerely believe that Bush has a mean bone in his body. Which is incredible considering that he has had the most violent political career of almost any American politican, ever. His Governorship of Texas was marked by a record number of executions, including the executions of a retard and a child. A RETARD AND CHILD. His inability to protect the country in his first year as president led to the deaths of over 3,000 Americans on our own soil. His subsequent campaign for justice on their behalf has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands more people with some estimates of well over 150,000 deaths to date. The sectarian violence he’s unleashed will probably continue to compound those numbers indefinitely; but that’s only technically his fault.

Still, he’s jovial and unapologetic. Probably because he only sees things through a warped paradigm of right and wrong. He’s got this deluded sense of justice and duty that gives him a self-appointed transcendence above law and order. He thinks God talks to him on a personal level so a measure of divine infallibility seeps into his worldview, making him immune to truth or facts or hurt feelings, apparently. Actually, Bush is the perfect embodiment of wrath. I just wish he wasn’t so fucking likable.

There you go folks, we only have one sin left and a rhetorical mandate that sins can’t repeated which leads us to:

ENVY — “Yes We Can” (too). Obama’s mantra has always had this subtle undercurrent of resentment towards historical patterns of exclusion, SOMETIMES CALLED DISCRIMINATION. This son of a bitch campaigned on the premise that he was going to take from the establishment what the people believe they deserve; the possessions of their betters that they envy. He wants change, he wants what they got, and he’s not going to stop until he gets it. Sure, he isn’t exactly a socialist, but he’s definitely a hater and he wants some of that WASP wealth to spread around. Clearly this will backfire.

Case in point: right now I’m all about fair play, free schools, a concept of the public that invokes a sense of pride rather than welfare; but as soon as I make billions of Internet dollars for posting my opinions online, I’m not going to want to pay taxes on it. It’s my money, I fucking earned it by tricking companies into sponsoring my ramblings. In no way did the society I live in contribute to constructing such a convoluted and ridiculous system of valuation.

Mark my words (because I can’t put this in a graph, I mean, I tried and it just didn’t work), Obama will socialize our nation until we’re just as pointless and shrill as Europe. You won’t see a probability scale for that outcome on FiveThirtyEight, but you will find that’s its the most prominent conservative meme on nearly every blog you read. Where’s my Newsweek profile?