| THE RETURN OF THE VENGEFUL NERDS | 
 By Mark Ames
By Mark Ames
    In order to understand the "new realism" between Russia and America, you've got 
to understand the psychology that under-pins the ideology. Who are the 
Republicans really, and why do they seem to derive such thinly-disguised sexual 
pleasure from their Bismarkabee shtick. 
    I'm here to tell you why. The 
Republicans are the party of nerds. If you understand that, then you understand 
everything about this administration, its policy and its constituency. What we 
are witnessing is not "new realism" but "new nerdism", a "revenge of the nerds" 
on an Imperial scale. This is not a laughing matter. The thing about nerds, as 
we at the eXile can personally attest, is that they are dangerous, sick people. 
Sure they're funny and cute when they're spilling sloppy joes on their plaid 
shirts or getting taped to the flag pole. But in the adult world, nerds are a 
menace to civilization. They have no place running anything beyond the borders 
of their bedrooms. Because nerds respect nothing beyond the stale biscuit odor 
of their closets, and the comforting urine scent of their mattresses. That is 
their only reality, their only real friend. The only world that was ever 
accepting and forgiving. The rest of this planet is hostile, horrible, 
unbearable. Don't be fooled by nerds; as children, they pose as harmless, shy, 
sensitive souls, but in reality, in the darkness of their minds, nerds dream 
about administering concentration camps and conducting lengthy interrogations 
using a variety of curved instruments. The scars of teenage and twenty-something 
nerddom never heal, no matter how much acceptance they may gain later in life. 
Richard Nixon is a perfect example of this. 
    When they grow up, American nerds 
find that there is a great big home for them. A political party that adulterates 
the fantasy-rhetoric and collective unconscious of the nerd. That party is the 
Republican Party. It is little more than an open-air asylum for perverts, 
impotents, closet homosexuals, cross-dressers, born-again Christians, chronic 
masturbators, Caucasian crackheads, pedophiles, rapists, racists, Risk addicts, 
conspiracy theorists, fetishists - that, my friends, is a snapshot of the 
Republican Party.... And I'm only on the proverbial "letter A" of this alphabet 
of mental abortions. I should know. I was a card-carrying Republican from 1984 
until 1991. That was an awful period for me, sexually and otherwise. After that 
things went from troubled to horrific. Sometime around the Gulf War, I fell 
completely off the sexual/political map. I became such an irredeemable loser and 
deviant that no major political party could possibly accommodate me. Not even a 
leper orphanage like The Republican Party. I officially canceled my party 
membership and started getting seriously into the idea of separatism. I was a 
party of one, ready to take up arms in order to found a Republic of California. 
If only I could get out of the bedroom I was living in at my father's, I was 
sure I'd ignite an historic uprising... Blood would stain the beaches from 
Mendicino to La Jolla. I had plans, baby. Plans. 
    Only over the past few years, 
thanks to the kind services of so many well-meaning dyevushki, have my politics 
become more rational. Well maybe not my politics, but at least my ability to 
judge what's right, and separate that from what I'd like to see happen. That's 
what distinguishes me from the common Republican. At least I know that I'm not 
in any shape, mentally or morally, to run things. 
    Let's face it: in American 
politics, the Democrats are the only healthy political party. Democrat 
supporters are, as a rule, healthy, balanced people. With a lifetime of healthy, 
active sex lives under their belts. That's why, at some visceral level, I hate 
the Democrats. I can't help it. I hate them, I hate being around them, I hate 
watching them and I could never in my life imagine voting for one. But I am 
sober enough to understand that that is wrong of me. 
    People like Bill Clinton 
and Jesse Jackson and John F. Kennedy have active sex lives; people like Nixon 
and Reagan dream of getting urinated on while dressed in pink tutus and titanium-
plated stiletto heels -  or worse, they dream of nothing at all. 
    Most of 
Hollywood, America's aristocracy, is Democratic. They're Democrats because 
they've succeeded. Among them, only the most sexually deviant entertainment 
barons (Marilyn Manson, David Lynch) are admitted Republicans. 
    That Republicans 
can win elections only brings to light something we at the eXile have been 
trying to tell you all along: The American People are for the most part mental 
mutants, half-baked sex offenders, wannabe degenerates. They are nerds without 
the guts to Dahmer their way through life, so they vote for Republicans to 
vicariously Dahmer for them. The previous three Republican presidents were 
snitches, that ultimate nerd profession; the newest is merely a Son of a Snitch. 
They steal elections, stain their mattresses with plans for missile shields, 
invent enemies where none exist, and enjoy raping the environment of a planet 
they abhor. For nerds and their Republican representatives, there is no greater 
rush than raping Mother Earth, the matron of this hellish world -  every time a 
coral reef shelf dies, or a rain forest disappears, the nerd thinks to himself, 
"The bitch had it comin'!" Nothing gives a nerd-Republican more satisfaction 
than hearing Mother Nature's healthy tree-hugging sons and daughters squeal.
     
Healthy people want everyone to get along. They actually enjoy life, they think 
that God's Plan for us is pretty good. That's why the Democrats' whole approach 
to Russia was to make them our friends. The Republicans, on the other hand, 
could-n't score in a provincial whorehouse, and they know it. They haven't 
engaged in healthy missionary-position sex since the invention of the water 
closet, and no longer care to either. So they've got a different agenda with 
Russia. A nerd's agenda. It involves Risk-like geopolitical color-in-the-map 
games, apocalyptic threats which they never intend to carry out, weapons 
buildups and lots of reading and citing of other Bismarkabee nerds like Henry 
Kissinger, Dmitri Simes and the like. They need to scrape down a few levels into 
the dark recesses of their unconscious to get a rise out of life. That's why for 
them, repressed hostility is a desirable state of affairs. Hostility is a kind 
of S&M game, a B&D party. It's the only narrative that inspires a Republican to 
get out of bed. 
    Like it or not, the people who now run the foreign policy show 
in the U.S. -  degenerates like the alarmingly single Condaleezza Rice and obvious 
urine fetishists like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney (ever wonder how his 
daughter became a turbo dyke!) - get off on the idea of having a big bad enemy 
whom they know they can beat. Even more, they love to hold press conferences in 
which they issue speeches which are supposed to be menacing in their reserve. 
Since nerds tend to be hysterical by nature, they dream of nothing more than 
scaring people with unemotional, laconic threats. They enjoy threatening Russia 
with a New Hostility just as much as sexually confident jocks like Bill Clinton 
and Michael McFaul enjoyed the concept of a devoted, grateful Mother Russia. 
    And 
what scary timing too, because the Republicans come to power just as Russia's 
own King of the Botaniki has consolidated his dictatorship. Putin is such an 
over-the-top botanik that it's hard to believe he doesn't wear giant coke-bottle 
glasses with tape on the bridge. Thank his wife for that - and for sticking him in 
those ridiculous oversized blue boutique suits, one of the saddest attempts to 
camouflage a nerd that modern man has ever witnessed. Just consider Putin's nerd 
qualifications: he's a short, squeaky-voiced, chinless despot who offered 
himself up as a snitch way back in high school, starts a war his first day in 
office, flies around in a boss-o jet, and awkwardly appropriates the language of 
authentically scary bandity ("we'll bust a cap up their asses while they're 
taking a dump!"). But the biggest giveaway of all is Putin's lifelong obsession, 
the obsession of all downtrodden nerds: karate. What nerd didn't take karate? Or 
rather, what healthy, tall, sexually successful jock ever did? 
    After millions of 
nerds wash through the human cycle, eventually it was bound to happen that one 
karate-chopping twerp would seize control of a nuclear arsenal. The scary thing 
is that now, he's squaring off against an even more powerful force of twerps on 
the opposite side of the Atlantic. 
    So this is it, the Great Nerd Showdown that 
every playground geek dreamed of. The ultimate Revenge of the Nerds. Twerp 
Versus Botanik. No matter what they say or do, remember one thing. Had a few 
girls just been a little nicer to people like Rumsfeld, Rice and Putin, we would 
never have found ourselves at this perilous moment in history. And come to think 
of it, we would have never had this newspaper either.