Modification of Body Electorate

So I’m reading this story about the growing popularity of body modification, and I learn that some states are starting to criminalize procedures like tongue bifurcation. In my typical MYOB kind of way, I’m like, “Why the fuck should it be illegal if someone wants to split their frigging tongue in two?” I can understand regulating where something like that can be done, but banning it outright? Weird. Especially since “Many artists also won't do them for fear of lawsuits or insurance fiascos.” Isn’t that precisely the kind of self-policing by the marketplace which conservatives are always advocating? If no shops will do it, or only shops with properly trained staff and appropriate self-protections, then there’s no need for “Big Government” interference.

But, you know, only maladjusted, nonconformist freaks do body modification, and most of them—with all their high-falutin’ notions of personal freedom and whatnot—probably aren’t Bush voters, so like the dirty gays and uppity women, all sense of conservative principle can be damned when it comes to considering legislation to limit the pursuit of their particular happiness.

Everywhere you look these days—from hospital beds to tattoo parlors—is evidence of the abandonment of true conservatism in favor of the creeping fascism that the conservative movement has become. It’s not about small government; it’s about using the government as a weapon to limit the rights and freedoms being expressed (or fought for) by people with whom they disagree. Forget keeping the government out of our bedrooms—they’ve turned the government into a dirty little panty-sniffer.

And, somehow, this notion has gone mainstream in America, Land of the Free, in spite of most Americans’ declaring their commitment to its opposite, and what we’re left with is an electorate who doesn’t want the government sticking its pervy little nose in their business, but cheers when the government sticks its nose in someone else’s. The GOP has perfected the exploitation of this dichotomy, framing the denial of rights as a protection of existing rights, declaring the need to meddle in others’ lives as imperative to improving yours. Freedom is a zero-sum game—there’s only so much to go around, and if Joe Gay or Jane Feminist or Jamal Suspected Terrorist get theirs, Joe Straight gets a little less of his—and hey, if we need to expand the government to do it, it’s cool. It’s all in the name of Freedom.

All while they trumpet their credentials as the party of privacy and limited government.

All I know is that I’m so bloody sick of the hypocrisy, evident—so painfully evident—in nearly everything movement conservatism does, that I could puke. And I’d take all the beautiful, independent, bifurcated-tongued freaks in the world over the forked-tongued miscreants who would see them legislated out of existence.