So Predictable.

I've learned a lot through my forays into the comments section at my local fishwrap:

People on unemployment are lazy, drug-addicted freeloaders, for one thing. Anyone with a Spanish surname who is accused of a crime is an illegal alien, for another. Public employees are all greedy bastards intent on sucking every last nickel out of taxpayers' pockets. Anyone who can't find a job around here should just move ("I hear the unemployment rate is 4% in North Dakota.") People on food stamps are always spotted in the supermarket buying lobster tails and fillet mignon. And if your house was foreclosed on you should have bought a smaller house -- or none at all. Bicyclists deserve to get hit by cars because they ride around like they own the whole damn road. And if you call someone a racist for forwarding an email of the President with a bone in his nose, well...that makes you a racist. Yep, there's not a cliche the teabaggers can't beat to death.

That's why when these stories started cropping up about three college girls getting raped in one week up at Cal Poly, I knew it wouldn't take long for the victim-blaming to roar up into a full-fledged wildfire of slurs and recrimination. I was not disappointed, and now that the campus police department has decided not to press charges in two of the cases, it's scorched-earth season on the shameful behavior of drunken college girls. You'd think none of these people ever had a sister or a daughter of their own to worry about. Hell, half of the ones flinging blame around like shit in a monkey house are women themselves.

I know I've asked this question before, but I just don't get what the problem is with these right-wing nuts and they way they wear their resentment against just about everyone who isn't "them" like a 500-pound anchor around their necks. Apparently they think the Gasden flag and its message of proud rebellion is there to help lift them out of their self-imposed prison of resentment, but these red-throated conservatives are only drowning themselves in the bile of hatred and anger. And woe-be-tide any who attempt a reasonable debate with these monsters, for you shall suffer a blitzkrieg of poorly-written, ungrammatical and misspelled vitriol. It's hard to fight an army of red-assed trolls, but interesting to note the merciless ignorance on display amongst our more conservative brethren.

Illegal immigrants, anchor-babies, government workers, women, "community organizers," blacks, Mexicans, the poor, the pacifists, the socialists, the young...the dirty fucking hippies, all are ripe targets for right-wing rancor, low-hanging fruit for a people conditioned to blame "the other" for their problems, rather than the blame-worthy.

But to turn the tables on victims of sexual assault? To entertain the notion that there is any rationale for a woman's violation?? Whatever the circumstances (whether they said "No" or were simply compromised -- even drunk -- and defenseless), to blame these girls for what happened to them is nothing short of indefensible. And it compels me to ask, in the immortal words of Senator Joseph Welch, "Have you no decency? At long last, have you no decency?"