Last night, while channel surfing, I came across the former Saturday Night Live performer, failed sports commentator, and middle range rightwing comedian  Dennis Miller on the Tonight Show making bad jokes about "Obama Care" "kicking ass for terrorists" while calling himself someone who was "socially liberal" and "economically conservative(Dwight Eisenhower, who was on most issues much more progressive than Miller, not to mention the present GOP leadership) used to say something to that effect. 

There has been a lot of chortling by the Republican Right over the last week, so let me chortle back a  bit.

First religion.  In Republican heaven, no one pays any taxes, but to get to Republican heaven, you have to be so very wealthy to begin with or believe in an after life where your suffering here will be rewarded.  So the countries with the highest rates of progressive income and corporate taxation have the highest standards of living and the countries with the lowest levels of progressive income and corporate taxation have the lowest standards of living. Big deal. How many Swedes and Germans and Frenchmen will you find anyway in Republican heaven?  Who says Republicans are prejudiced?  When the reach Republican heaven they will have many Congolese, Haitians, Indonesians, et al, to get to know.  It will be a broadening experience for Republicans, whatever it means to the others, who of course won't be permitted to redistibute wealth in Republcan heaven.

Then  there is pschology. So Sigmund Freud defined a neurotic once  as someone who digs  his way out of a hole only to dig another one to fall into. Now is the time t o  get out of the hole by reducing deficits, which rose to over 10 trillion thanks to thirty years of military spending and tax cuts by keeping the tax cuts and reducing social spending. Freud was a phony anyway, who knew nothing about supply side economics, and encouraged people to waste time in psychoanalysis when they could be finding ways to improve their credit ratings. If you want Pyschology, Republicans would turn to Ernst(Ernie) Jung, who was into the unconscious in mystical ways and made sure not to get on the bad side of the Nazis.

Then  there physical health care. We must save America the Republicans say from the socialist health care Obama policies or we will be reduced to the level of Sweden, the Netherlands, even Japan with Chevys instead of Hondas. This will mean that the people will live longer as they do in those countries, have less out of pocket expenses for health care which they probably waste on their children's education, and in general spend less time exploring the joyes of chemotherapy, radiation, and the wonderful world of prescription drugs.  How can they prove that they are worthy of  Republican heaven if they don't suffer on earth. We must repeal the health care legislation because no one without an HMO insurance card stamped by a major insurance company will be admitted into Republican heaven.

And then there is war, if all else fails.  In the 1930s, Robert Sherwood wrote a powerful anti-war play "Idiot's Delight"(fron whence my title comes) about a troup of carefree entertainers traveling in a Europe on the verge of war.

When it comes to war, the Republicans are pretty much a gang of happy idiots, like the crowd that was cheering Dennis Miller last night and those who shout in unision "we will, we will rock you at football games." It is true that the last war to expand the economy wss the Korean, but Republicans after all have only one size fits all criticism of war: we didn't fight kill enought to win enough anywhere at any time. But who to fight.  Not Panama again. Not Grenada. Afghanistan is a disaster.  So  how about Bermuda. England would not intervene and perhaps the Chinese could be blaimed for trying to use the island as a base to not only take over Bermuda shorts, but the achievement of their ultimate objective--complete control of Wal-Mart.

You don't believe that. Look at the resume of some of the new Republican congressmen.  They have believed much stranger things and will now on the floor of the house.