Ocelopotamus

Just riffing off this most excellent post by Devilstower — as you probably know, Mike Huckabee has attempted to justify his opposition to gay marriage and civil unions by saying:

There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived.

For some reason, this is a very common “deep thought” among the right-wingnuts. They think that this represents some amazing analysis of history or something, to say that because past civilizations didn’t do a certain thing, somehow we’re all doomed if we attempt to live differently than, say, people lived in Great Britain in 1879. Or something.

Apparently, nothing must ever be done that has not always been done, or the very pillars that hold up the sky will crumble and the earth will shake and we will all be cast into the sea.

This is such a brilliant and fascinating little intellectual formula that I figured we could make it work a little harder for us by plugging some different variables into it.

So. The following statements are also all true — logically they are every bit as true as what His Governosity the Huckabee said above.

Prior to our current historical era:

• There has never been a civilization that has connected many computers together into a great network that can be accessed in homes and offices and cafes all around the world and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has allowed Britney Spears to record and market multiple albums and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has carried around tiny telephones capable of unexpectedly playing all sorts of annoying melodies at loud volumes in crowded public places and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has allowed two different men named “George Bush” to serve as president and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has regularly dined on frozen Lean Cuisine entrees warmed up in microwave ovens and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has migrated to Windows Vista and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has allowed Dick Cheney to shoot his hunting companions in the face and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has set up giant factory farms, with hogs kept in miserable confinement, generating giant lagoons of feces, and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has allowed Jim and Pam to get together and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has put lots of silly misspelled captions on pictures of cats and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that allowed a falafel-crazed, sexual-harrassmentizing blowhard to have his own TV show and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that had the Backstreet Boys get back together without Kevin (the cutest one!) and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has bought into the idea that Rudy Giuliani was a competent mayor and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has cast Sylar as the young Mr. Spock and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has baked cheese right into the crust of pizzas and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has believed Mitt Romney means anything he says and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has adapted Young Frankenstein into a musical and survived.
• There has never been a civilization that has treated Karl Rove, Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson, and James Carville as respected pundits and survived.

So, you know, just some food for thought for y’all. Clearly, we’re all doooooomed.