Kleptocrats

So here I am in this "social situation."
You know, finding yourself in the company of people you don't know, don't care to know, probably wouldn't spend any time with even if you did know them.
Having lunch in a cafeteria with friends of friends of friends.
And a lady says something like, "They've even coined a new word for people like Bush, Rove, and Cheney - for politicians who seek office so that they can use their power to make themselves rich. It's 'kleptocrat.' From the root word 'klepto' as in 'kleptomaniac.'"
We all nodded or chuckled or hmm-hmmed in appreciation of her political astuteness.
There was more banter along those lines.
Then I piped up, "I guess that would make Clinton a nymphocrat!"
Crickets.
[Meaning that you could hear the crickets in the background. Kind of like "You could hear a pin drop." I think it was Hemingway who wrote "And somewhere in the distance, a dog barked" meaning essentially the same thing.]
This line was dropped in the middle of what one might call an "artsey" group, which, as you may know, usually means a "liberal" group.
Now I don't really mind if people don't share my brand of humor, if they just don't find funny something that I say that is funny in my opinion.
I really don't care if they found my comment too "racy" for their tastes.
But neither of these was the case.
They would have politely chuckled anyway, just to be nice. That was the tone that had been established.
They were stone silent because they took offense.
Even that would have been okay - but let's examine what it was they took offense to.
From their viewpoint, the most important factor of my statement was that they felt that I was DEFENDING BUSH.
Attacking Clinton was, perhaps, excuseable. But in this case, following on the heels of an attack on Bush, attacking Clinton was seen as defending Bush. And that's not allowed.
Of course, I was neither attacking Clinton OR defending Bush. I was just trying to be funny. And maybe inject a little political astuteness of my own. I happen to think Bush is a "knucklehead." It doesn't matter that Clinton is just as bad, if not worse.
But they were momentarily afflicted with the Us-and-Them Syndrome.
GASP! There's a Republican in our midst!
Nope, not a Republican. Would they have run from the cafeteria screaming if they had known it was a Libertarian?
It goes way beyond, "Hey, can't you take a joke?"
Our so-called Two-party System has become a National Schizophrenia, some kind of hideously twisted Catdog-like beast that loathes its other self, like a set of Siamese twins each dreaming of clubbing the other into oblivion so that it could be "whole."
And becoming more and more like each other every election.
We pat ourselves on the back every four years telling ourselves that, in this country, we have a "choice."
We had a choice between Kerry and Bush.
A choice between two of the finest "kleptocrats" this country had to offer.
Kleptocrats?
If only they were simply stealing money, power and property.
What they are all stealing is so much more precious than any of that.
They are stealing nothing less than mankind's best hopes for a meaningful existence.
They are stealing our Freedom, our Liberty... and even our ability to visualize what those words really mean.