They shoot elephants, don't they?

According to its bloviating media cheerleaders, the United States is a Leviathan guided by two warring and equally profound spirits (one oddly represented by a Donkey and one by an Elephant, but let that pass). The two-party system - or so the theory goes - ensures that one of these folksy animals doesn't get too large a share of the public's attention. If either voice dominates the political landscape for too long, everyone will end up either a. making bead necklaces and singing Kumbaya with a bunch of gay kindergarten teachers (Donkey dominant) or b. shooting immigrants for fun while levelling national parks to get the oil underneath (Elephant dominant).

From this unending process of struggle between the Voice of Tradition and the Voice of Progress, a great nation is forged. Or so the theory goes.

But US politics is funny, in a terrifying way, because one of the guiding spirits has Mad Elephant Disease and should have been taken out into the back paddock and shot in the back of its wrinkly grey head a fair while back. That would be the logical way to quell the rabid, paranoid rantings of a political party seemingly unencumbered by humility, compassion or logic.

That's why it's so funny to see the conservative journos weep tears of blood at Obama's dramatic left-wing-isation of the economy over the past few weeks (and don't get me wrong, he really hanged, drew, quartered, cremated, exploded and danced on the grave of post-Reagan politics pretty enthusiastically). Representatives of the Southern Baptist Convention, gun nuts and little else, Republican party members are slowly starting to realise that most people see them as a bunch of nasty, crazy, greedy, racist, rapacious nut jobs, fit for little but toenail harvesting.

'Reaching across the aisle' in this situation to reach some post-partisan agreement - as recommended by self-fellating hicks like Rush Limbaugh et al. - would be like awarding joint custody of a child to a charity worker mother and an axe-murdering father (caring Mom on Mon, Tue, Wed; psychopathic Dad on Thurs, Fri, Sat).

It won't work, blowhards, because people all around the world are really, really scared of y'all.