looney tunes

Yesterday I read about Clarence Thomas' wife.

I pause to let you contemplate just how much I didn't want to leave the hot tub if I read an article about Clarence Thomas' wife.

She's a Tea Party enthusiast. Excerpt:

Thomas bantered with Hannity about the "tyranny" President Barack Obama and his party are inflicting on the country. Then Thomas, who had recently launched a nonprofit called Liberty Central, sounded a dire warning. "We are in a fight for our country's life," she said. "We've all got to do whatever we can." Channeling Tea Party rhetoric, she called on conservative voters to give money, sign petitions, and, in November, overthrow those who are turning "citizens" into "subjects."

It was at this point that I set the magazine down and considered what she'd said. I carefully deconstructed her arguments into syllogisms. And there was no escaping it: I have no idea what these people are talking about.

It isn't for lack of trying. When left-wing looney tunes called Bush a "Nazi," I'd figured it was because under his administration, civil liberties were curtailed and countries were invaded. Theirs was a hyperbolic charge fueled by contempt, but at least there was a broken stub of a nail on which I could hang some logic.

Obama a tyrant? Me his subject? Huh? I'm at a loss. I look at his policies, and I look at their charges, and I cannot see a connection, not even if I look through the lens of paranoid schizophrenia. When my schizophrenic sister makes a wild accusation, after all, I can still understand her underlying logic.

But Tea Partiers? Their logic is sliding down the wall and lying in a heap on my floor.