Silly Season Begins...
Last week, it was John McCain. Today, it's Rudolph Guliani.
With the formation of "exploratory committees" the first two potential republican candidates for President in 2008 have stepped forward. I'll put together something later on all of this, but for now, ask yourself the following questions:
1. How does Guliani get past the religious zelots and flamthrowers-for-all crowd, and achieve a nomination in what is, for all intents and purposes, a party machinery dominated by concern for the sensibilities of the Religious Right?
2. How long will it be before John McCain's propensity to self-destruct makes itself apparent?
Seems I have some things to think about....
Monday, November 13, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Mark This on Your Calendar...
The dingbats are out today. Somehow, the republican electoral loss brought this out:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1735679/posts
Nostradamus predicted it!
Now, maybe it's just me, but if Nostradamus was really a friggin' genius, then why don't these morons come out of the woodwork with a prophecy BEFORE it's needed? That fact that Nostradumus usually only makes sense in HINDSIGHT does not necessarily mean he had any FORESIGHT.
The dingbats are out today. Somehow, the republican electoral loss brought this out:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1735679/posts
Nostradamus predicted it!
Now, maybe it's just me, but if Nostradamus was really a friggin' genius, then why don't these morons come out of the woodwork with a prophecy BEFORE it's needed? That fact that Nostradumus usually only makes sense in HINDSIGHT does not necessarily mean he had any FORESIGHT.
It Just Gets Worse...
The 'net is buzzing today with disgruntled Christians mightily upset that the republican party has been handed it's collective ass in the mid-term elections. Mostly, this is understandable; many of the same disgruntled religious masses crying in their Holy Water these last few days feel taken advantage of. They believed that politicians who took their money and votes would somehow act the way they wanted them to, neglecting the inconvenient truths about human nature and the fallibility of man.
But the tenor of much of this self-flagellation is eerily frightening.
The main point being discussed today seems to be that America is being overtaken by an evil cabal of gays, libertines, thieves and minor Anti-Christs who are leading us down the path to utter destruction by the Almighty as punishment for our collective sins. Some are wailing that even more strenuous efforts are required to prevent this (great, just what we need; more self-appointed hall monitors. Oh wait! We elected a bunch of them the other day!), and quite a few more are actively hoping for it (the Rapture crowd). Like the Muslims, defeat to this particular group of Christians, in any sense, is not attributible to rational, logical means, it is ALWAYS a sign of divine indignation. The results, and they are usually grisly results, are our just desserts.
However, the strongest undercurrent of discontent seems to be revolve around a contradiction that can only be ignored oreven understood, if one has faith (i.e. one has given ujp the ability to use his braincells and is willing to be told what to do by someone given that authority by his ability to memorize the bible, chapter and verse).
You see, God created man with free will. Free Will, according to most people's concept of the idea, is that man has the ability to do whatever he pleases, when and how he pleases. God gave him that power. That the worst results of this rampant "I can do what I want" mentality is restrained by mostly-invisble social restraints: it is not conducive to a peaceful, prosperous society to have people running around randomly killing each other, stealing from each other, or abducting each other's wives. Religion restrains such impulses by making them "sinful", attaching a stigma and sense of shame to them with implications in the eyes of God, and "the law" restrains them by raising the prospect of punishment by society as a whole. The same can be said for things that exist in both the religious and legal realms: marriage, for example.
However, it gets a little dicey when you start to apply the concept of God-given-Free Will with the concept of God-given-Rights. Mental gynmastics are now required to make sense of any of it.
So, if God gave man the Free Will to be gay, and the Constitution guarentees the God-given right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", what exactly is the difference or the conflict? God, apparently, has sanctioned both, has he not? Well, OF COURSE NOT, you COMMUNIST! God gave us Free Will only to exercise HIS will, and while God granted your constitutional rights, there's nothing that says he can't revoke them any goddamned time he pleases, or, kill a few million of us in a terrible way to remind us that we are not exercising our Free Will or Rights in a way in which he approves. God can, and will, punish you for taking advantage of a "defect" he built into you in the first place? My, and I thought he was perfect and infallible?
No wonder religious conservatives are mostly unhappy, kill-joy types of folks. How do you reconcile the God-given-Constitutional-Right to Free Speech with God-given-Free Will when the result is someone saying "God doesn't exist", or worse, exercising those rights in such away as to make a mockery of everything else God said? It seems that God gave us the bullets with which to shoot holes in him. You have to choose: is your loyalty to your Creator or to your Country? It has to be either because it can't be both, because very often, they conflict badly.
Now, God can say "Thou shalt not kill", and we are supposed to take that as a rule by which to live, immutible wisdom, an insight which cannot be argued against or trifled with, a gift from the Almighty engraved on stone tablets. No sooner does God pass on this commandment, then the Israelites march into "the Promised Land" and have to kill everyone they find living on that land already. If God can gainsay his own commandment then, then he should be able to gainsay them whenever he wants to, so the religious kook might argue. Killing is, of course, when it can be applied to those who aren't members of the group. So, Jews might kill non-Jews, Muslims can kill whoever they want based on sect and political belief, Christians can kill muslims, and despite the fact that we are "all God's Children", God can sanction this or that bout of killing for his "selected" few whenever he sees fit,or for his own benefit when it comes to "killing the infidel".
If this is in fact true, that God is a hypocrite (or at the very least, a very bad contract writer), then why-oh-why would I have any confidence in him to "save the country" or make the proper decision on who should be saved and who shall be passed on to the torments of Hell? God seems ot be making the rules up as he goes along, changing this to suit his needs, allowing that when it's to his advantage, prohibiting this when he doesn't like it, and in the process, stampeding all over his "gift" of Free Will and his "grant" of Inalienable Rights.
I'll tell you this much: I've already decided that God, if it exists, must be a woman. Because only a woman could make THAT many contradictions and leave that kind of logical chasm and still be convinced of her righteousness,and have others either swallow them whole or throw their hands up in resignation (it's easier to subit than argue). I guess this explains why most Eveangelicals these days believ you can be "re-virginated" if you pray hard enough, huh? To argue for or against is simply too stupid and exhausting because the ground upn which your arguments stand can always be shifted by God the menstrual woman.
So, what becomes in one realm, Americans exercising their constitutionally-guarenteed, God-given rights to being gay or choosing to have an abortion, becomes in another realm the misuse of God's gifts, which he/she/it regularly contradicts, and which are given on condition that they only be used in the "right" (Good Churchkeeping Seal of Approval) way, despite the existance of Free Will?
Ah, yes it all makes sense now.
No wonder we lost the election: look at who we depended upon to vote!
I'm glad I'm an agnostic, because otherwise I'd have a raging heroin habit.
** Discalimer: I neither support the ridiculous notion of "Gay Rights" (what they seek is more rights than the rest of us, to be a protected species, like the Spotted Owl, untouchable by the legal system or the unwritten laws of polite society) or the disgusting process by which human beings are vacuumed from their mother's wombs for the sake of convenience and avoidance of personal responsibility. I simply refuse to be taken in by religious arguments which are contradictory, perposely obfuscatory and espoused by obvious mental patients.
The 'net is buzzing today with disgruntled Christians mightily upset that the republican party has been handed it's collective ass in the mid-term elections. Mostly, this is understandable; many of the same disgruntled religious masses crying in their Holy Water these last few days feel taken advantage of. They believed that politicians who took their money and votes would somehow act the way they wanted them to, neglecting the inconvenient truths about human nature and the fallibility of man.
But the tenor of much of this self-flagellation is eerily frightening.
The main point being discussed today seems to be that America is being overtaken by an evil cabal of gays, libertines, thieves and minor Anti-Christs who are leading us down the path to utter destruction by the Almighty as punishment for our collective sins. Some are wailing that even more strenuous efforts are required to prevent this (great, just what we need; more self-appointed hall monitors. Oh wait! We elected a bunch of them the other day!), and quite a few more are actively hoping for it (the Rapture crowd). Like the Muslims, defeat to this particular group of Christians, in any sense, is not attributible to rational, logical means, it is ALWAYS a sign of divine indignation. The results, and they are usually grisly results, are our just desserts.
However, the strongest undercurrent of discontent seems to be revolve around a contradiction that can only be ignored oreven understood, if one has faith (i.e. one has given ujp the ability to use his braincells and is willing to be told what to do by someone given that authority by his ability to memorize the bible, chapter and verse).
You see, God created man with free will. Free Will, according to most people's concept of the idea, is that man has the ability to do whatever he pleases, when and how he pleases. God gave him that power. That the worst results of this rampant "I can do what I want" mentality is restrained by mostly-invisble social restraints: it is not conducive to a peaceful, prosperous society to have people running around randomly killing each other, stealing from each other, or abducting each other's wives. Religion restrains such impulses by making them "sinful", attaching a stigma and sense of shame to them with implications in the eyes of God, and "the law" restrains them by raising the prospect of punishment by society as a whole. The same can be said for things that exist in both the religious and legal realms: marriage, for example.
However, it gets a little dicey when you start to apply the concept of God-given-Free Will with the concept of God-given-Rights. Mental gynmastics are now required to make sense of any of it.
So, if God gave man the Free Will to be gay, and the Constitution guarentees the God-given right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", what exactly is the difference or the conflict? God, apparently, has sanctioned both, has he not? Well, OF COURSE NOT, you COMMUNIST! God gave us Free Will only to exercise HIS will, and while God granted your constitutional rights, there's nothing that says he can't revoke them any goddamned time he pleases, or, kill a few million of us in a terrible way to remind us that we are not exercising our Free Will or Rights in a way in which he approves. God can, and will, punish you for taking advantage of a "defect" he built into you in the first place? My, and I thought he was perfect and infallible?
No wonder religious conservatives are mostly unhappy, kill-joy types of folks. How do you reconcile the God-given-Constitutional-Right to Free Speech with God-given-Free Will when the result is someone saying "God doesn't exist", or worse, exercising those rights in such away as to make a mockery of everything else God said? It seems that God gave us the bullets with which to shoot holes in him. You have to choose: is your loyalty to your Creator or to your Country? It has to be either because it can't be both, because very often, they conflict badly.
Now, God can say "Thou shalt not kill", and we are supposed to take that as a rule by which to live, immutible wisdom, an insight which cannot be argued against or trifled with, a gift from the Almighty engraved on stone tablets. No sooner does God pass on this commandment, then the Israelites march into "the Promised Land" and have to kill everyone they find living on that land already. If God can gainsay his own commandment then, then he should be able to gainsay them whenever he wants to, so the religious kook might argue. Killing is, of course, when it can be applied to those who aren't members of the group. So, Jews might kill non-Jews, Muslims can kill whoever they want based on sect and political belief, Christians can kill muslims, and despite the fact that we are "all God's Children", God can sanction this or that bout of killing for his "selected" few whenever he sees fit,or for his own benefit when it comes to "killing the infidel".
If this is in fact true, that God is a hypocrite (or at the very least, a very bad contract writer), then why-oh-why would I have any confidence in him to "save the country" or make the proper decision on who should be saved and who shall be passed on to the torments of Hell? God seems ot be making the rules up as he goes along, changing this to suit his needs, allowing that when it's to his advantage, prohibiting this when he doesn't like it, and in the process, stampeding all over his "gift" of Free Will and his "grant" of Inalienable Rights.
I'll tell you this much: I've already decided that God, if it exists, must be a woman. Because only a woman could make THAT many contradictions and leave that kind of logical chasm and still be convinced of her righteousness,and have others either swallow them whole or throw their hands up in resignation (it's easier to subit than argue). I guess this explains why most Eveangelicals these days believ you can be "re-virginated" if you pray hard enough, huh? To argue for or against is simply too stupid and exhausting because the ground upn which your arguments stand can always be shifted by God the menstrual woman.
So, what becomes in one realm, Americans exercising their constitutionally-guarenteed, God-given rights to being gay or choosing to have an abortion, becomes in another realm the misuse of God's gifts, which he/she/it regularly contradicts, and which are given on condition that they only be used in the "right" (Good Churchkeeping Seal of Approval) way, despite the existance of Free Will?
Ah, yes it all makes sense now.
No wonder we lost the election: look at who we depended upon to vote!
I'm glad I'm an agnostic, because otherwise I'd have a raging heroin habit.
** Discalimer: I neither support the ridiculous notion of "Gay Rights" (what they seek is more rights than the rest of us, to be a protected species, like the Spotted Owl, untouchable by the legal system or the unwritten laws of polite society) or the disgusting process by which human beings are vacuumed from their mother's wombs for the sake of convenience and avoidance of personal responsibility. I simply refuse to be taken in by religious arguments which are contradictory, perposely obfuscatory and espoused by obvious mental patients.
This Just In...
The first, I think, documented insinuation of "Christian Voter Intimidation":
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1735629/posts
So, I guess cries of discrimination are not just for minority democrats anymore, but disappointed social conservatives, who should know better, too.
It's getting to the point where the solution to all of life's little disappoinments is to cry "discrimination" and drag the lawyers into it.
Hell, I haven't won the lottery yet, there must be some nefarious conspiracy at work! Get me a mouthpiece!
The first, I think, documented insinuation of "Christian Voter Intimidation":
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1735629/posts
So, I guess cries of discrimination are not just for minority democrats anymore, but disappointed social conservatives, who should know better, too.
It's getting to the point where the solution to all of life's little disappoinments is to cry "discrimination" and drag the lawyers into it.
Hell, I haven't won the lottery yet, there must be some nefarious conspiracy at work! Get me a mouthpiece!
The Aftermath...
Short version: Democrats took back the House of Representatives, Senatorial disaster was narrowly averted. Donald Rumsfeld took the fall, the libertine press took the opportunity to gloat at a Presidential presser yesterday, and the spectre of a Speaker Pelosi has panty-bunched conservatives from coast to coast. Vast quantities of Kaopectate, Alka Seltzer and Johnny Wlaker Black have been consumed by those who had not only an electoral, but an emotional, stake in the outcome of Tuesday night. Finally, Karl Rove has proven to be human, and it should be funny watching the press that has accused him of being the Prince of Darkness, in league with the forces of the Underworld, busily write retractions and try to explain how such a tactical genius, master manipulator, uber-propagandist and politican magician utterly failed. Don't hold your breath waiting for those articles and columns, though.
Afetr all, Rove served his purpose as strawman, and now can be safely ignored. But anyway...
What does this all mean?
Well, to begin with, you can now look forward to a Congress that will do even less than the one just voted out. Whatever the Democrats believe they can accomplish, they will be hindered and hampered by their own hubris; they will trip all over themselves launching investigations and scandal hunts designed to hurt any republican nominee in 2008, assuring an easy coast for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive nominee. While they egage in this sort of activity, they will a) fail to focus on anything resembling regulation, b) potentially turn off a whole slew of independant voters that they will desperate need two years hence by ripping the government apart, and c) be following the script of the Howard Dean/Tie-died-and-tattooed wing of the Democratic party, making themsleves fairly unattractive in the future.
That, ultimately, is to the public good. Politicians preoccupied with petty turf and political battles are simply too preoccupied to screw with the rest of us. Oh, you'll be giving back that tax cut that GWB got passed a few years ago, certainly, but the regulatory monster that is the US Government will be put into hibernation while the Democrats engage in the politics of personal destruction. Of course, the 800-pound gorilla in the room will be the Clinton Machine, which will ensure that when Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schumer get too rambunctious, their leashes will be forcibly and abruptly yanked. They will not be permitted to stray too far formt he reservation. The keyword for Democrats is: maintain the status-quo until the Hildebeest wins. Don't rock the boat too severely.
You can also look forward to the Republicans fight tooth and nail for everything the Democrats do manage to bring to the plate that doesn't have anything to do with GWB or Haliburton. So, we're pretty safe from intrusive meddling from either extreme. Conservatives (who more and more cease to exist in the true sense of the word) will cry, wail and gnash their teeth, feelingmore and more alienated in a wilderness that is becoming ever-more moderate and ever-more interested in what their politicians actually do.
As to why the Republicans lost Tuesday nioght, well, even a democrat (small 'd' intentional) can figure that out; other than "stay the course", "don't let the terrorists win", and "the other side is worse", they had nothing to offer. This last congress has achieved nothing of consequence, and in the last six years has done nothing but violate every republican/conservative principle from lack of fiscal restraint, to arrogance in the performance of their duties, from the outright taking of bribes to the sexual harrassment of teen-aged males in he very corridors of Congress.
The lesson that should be learned is simply that you cannot continue to cry "terrorist" 24 hours a day (even if it is necessary), while in the background, you fail to accomplish everything you've set out in your agenda and expect to stay in power, or even worse, expect to be invulnerable. The Republicans counted on the national security card, but failed to recognize that after five years of all-terrorist-all-the-time, that the people were sick of hearing it. They already get it. So, now how about you do something about rampant spending, escalating entitlement costs, keeping illegal aliens out of the country and perhaps, learn to behave like law-abiding, responsible adults?
Scanning the "Conservative" web sites these past few days, several themes centered around this electoral setback seem to be raering their ugly heads:
1. Republicans were betrayed; a cabal of libertarians and liberal republicans conspired to jump ship and voted for the democrats, hanging the poor, hassled and oppressed "real" conservative majority (the TRUE inheritors of the Reagan Legacy, dammit!) out to dry. Nothing could be further from the truth. The belief that there was a conspiracy is par for the course; when the truth is too painful to face up to (Republicans simply sucked for the last few years), point to conspiracy. It relieves you of the necessity of facing up to the truth and relieves you of the responsibility of having hijacked the nomination process which created this mess in the first place. First rule of thumb: if you build a house with rotten wood, you deserve what you get.
2. A conspiracy of the Mainstream Media and very good democratic propagandists brainwashed the masses into voting democrat, especially those easily-bribed "swing voters". Yeah, that's right: the MSM and Bob Beckel were somehow required to convince millions that what they saw happening before their very eyes was true. So now electoral loss is due to the millions of mindless sheep out there who need to be told how to think or what their personal interests are. Again, conspiracy theory is the last refuge of those preternaturally opposed to telling themselves the truth.
3. Republicans lost because America is the New Sodom. In this case, it's God's will that republicans have failed because they did not frog-march the abortionists to the ovens, institute a system of street executions for the gays, round up the illegals and impress them into slave labor and purge themsleves of immoral sexual predators (they got the last part right). This comes from much the same legion of idiots who claimed that the (/11 attacks and the shooting deaths of 8 Amish girls were God's just punishment for libertinism and rampant sin. The sooner we get these jackasses out of the republican party and into padded cells, the better. They are no better than the "Earth First" bunch on the other side, and a fair deal loonier than anything I have ever seen in my life. In a different place and time, both of these extremes would have been the people burning witches, branding people with great, big "A"'s on their foreheads, and gathering at the weekly hanging as if it were prime time entertainment.
Now what makes this particular point of view interesting (once one gets past the disgust factor) is the the conservative websites are now pasting FOREIGN anti-gay, pro-religious propaganda to bolster their case, possibly because they have lost faith in their own, domestic sources of prudishness and bigotry. Given the recent past (the Mark Foly scandal and the Republican response, and the admission by one of the leaders of the biggest Evangelical Christian group that he engaged in gay sex and drug use with a prostitute), they seem to have lost their faith in the institutions they previously looked to for guidance and sureity. Now you will find fire-and-brimstone-snake-handling baptists, Rock-solid-no-idea-that-doesn't-come-from-Scripture-will-penbetrate-my-skull Evangelicals making common cause with the CATHOLIC CHURCH and posting Catholic commentary on Conservative websites. Yesterday alone, on FreeRepublic, there were anti-gay articles posted from Israeli, Polish and Vatican newspapers,andposters that I know personally to be of the mind-set that the Catholic Church is the next-best-thing to being involved with organized crime, have now eagerly made common cause with the Church. That such things have already happened in the span of 72 hours is simply amazing, and reminds one of just how predictable and hypocritical some people really are.
4. (And this one SLAYS me) Republicans lost because we had "no outlet" for telling the truth about the democrats. This, naturally, has been posted all over the Internet (I've seen it in about 30 places, thus far), which shows just how oblivious some people really are; you've just posted, in a public forum that reaches millions, that the media is somehow denied to you and you can't "get your message out"? Rush Limbaugh, I guess broadcasts to no one from a closet? Fox News, which at least makes the effort to provide both sides of an issue, is watched by no one?Republican candidates were not allowed to purchase advertizing space and run campaign ads on TV and radio? Quite honestly, the message wasnot one people wanted to continue to hear; they've heard it for the last six years. The message was: "Yes, so I might be an all-round sonofabitch, profligate spender, accountable-to-no-one hypocrite, who won't build a border fence, can't tell you the truth about the war in Iraq, and who doesn't really care if the government agency tasked with saving your life from natural disaster doesn't work, vote for me anyway...or the terrorists will kill you."
Non-starter. The country is tired of war and terrorism, and while they don't want the Iraqi adventure to end in defeat, they certainly don't want it to continue in the present fashion; aimless, leaderless, ill-defined and apparently endless. Americans are dying for Iraq, no Iraqis are dying for it. That's a problem. Depsite all the successful thwarting of terror plots in the last five years, Usama Bin Laden is still alive (we believe) and seems to have been forgotten. Saddam Hussein my be getting hanged, but, heck, that was a foregone conclusion and it has very little to do with ending the conflict or setting the conditions for a democratic Middle East.
Unfortunately, it'sa truism that more islearned from failure than from success. What the republican party, MY republican party, must now learn is how did it all go badly, and how do we correct it? Well, the first step is going to have to take a look at how we nominate candidates. We were given a truckload of Hasterts and Frists, Lotts and DeLays, and look where it got us. We have to suffer the insufferable with John McCain and people like Newt Gingruch have been exiled for minor sins. Condoleeza Rice and Rudy Giuliani can't even get a fair hearing because they are (or might be in the case of Rice, I don't know for certain) pro-choice and separate from "the base" on a number of other social issues. "The Base" incidentally, is the problem; candidates have to be tailored to their particular pet peeves or they stay home, which gives us candidates which are politically-reliable (until the candidate can safely get away with being politically-unrliable, see the last six years), but also makes them unimaginative technocrats who managed to manipulate the party machinery, but who otherwise couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag, even if you gave them a chainsaw.
It's time for new blood and new ideas, but I'm afraid we'll get none of either in the next two years. The Right-wingers of the Buchanan stripe (the God, Guns and Gays coalition, as I call them, the American Taliban is apt, as well) will prevent it, and if they can't, they'll do what they always do: stay home or find a Ross Perot type to waste a vote on. Perhaps now is a good time for the Republican party to cut them loose. It will be painful, it might lead to electoral disaster again, but in the long run, purging the party of the lunatic fringe and the Social-Conservative-Litmus-testers,migth pay dividend by making REPUBLICANISM more attractive. This future republicanism can still draw lessons and bullet points form Conservatism (fiscal responsibility, national defense, law and order, end rampant illegal immigration, etc). Conservatism, it seems to me, was and still is a great philosophy, but it's attracting the entirely wrong sort. The problem is the proponents, not the philosophy.
Anyway, I won;t hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
In the meantime, Democrats now have two years to fix what they say they will. I have no confidence that they actually will accomplish anythign of consequence because they are, at heart, vicious little school-yard bullies and mental retards, to whom comon sense is something to be avoided like typhus. There are many who are just as small-minded and convinced of the tuth of their idiocy as the most staunch conservative. In the final analysis, both parties are being ruined by their extremes. But anyhow, it should be entertaining TV for the next two years, if nothing else, until the cut-and-run-apologize-to-Hamas-tax-everything-within-an-inch-of-it's-life party drops the ball and a few thousand Americans get killed in a horrifying terrorist attack. I don't wish for it, but I can see it happening.
Perhaps only then will the American people stop this nonsense of electing and paying heed to the extremists in both partys and start thinking about being AMERICANS first and members of a political party, second. But gioven the track record, if 9/11 only equated to a 51-49 race between Bush and Kerry, you have to wonder whether a second attack will do much more in changing minds.
To sum up: republicans lost because they deserved to. They fell asleep at the wheel, and when they weren't sleeping, they were feathering thier own nests and acting like drunken sailors on shore leave. Teh democrats now have an opportunity to prove they can be serious and grwon up, too, but will fall far short of this seemingly easy goal.
Short version: Democrats took back the House of Representatives, Senatorial disaster was narrowly averted. Donald Rumsfeld took the fall, the libertine press took the opportunity to gloat at a Presidential presser yesterday, and the spectre of a Speaker Pelosi has panty-bunched conservatives from coast to coast. Vast quantities of Kaopectate, Alka Seltzer and Johnny Wlaker Black have been consumed by those who had not only an electoral, but an emotional, stake in the outcome of Tuesday night. Finally, Karl Rove has proven to be human, and it should be funny watching the press that has accused him of being the Prince of Darkness, in league with the forces of the Underworld, busily write retractions and try to explain how such a tactical genius, master manipulator, uber-propagandist and politican magician utterly failed. Don't hold your breath waiting for those articles and columns, though.
Afetr all, Rove served his purpose as strawman, and now can be safely ignored. But anyway...
What does this all mean?
Well, to begin with, you can now look forward to a Congress that will do even less than the one just voted out. Whatever the Democrats believe they can accomplish, they will be hindered and hampered by their own hubris; they will trip all over themselves launching investigations and scandal hunts designed to hurt any republican nominee in 2008, assuring an easy coast for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive nominee. While they egage in this sort of activity, they will a) fail to focus on anything resembling regulation, b) potentially turn off a whole slew of independant voters that they will desperate need two years hence by ripping the government apart, and c) be following the script of the Howard Dean/Tie-died-and-tattooed wing of the Democratic party, making themsleves fairly unattractive in the future.
That, ultimately, is to the public good. Politicians preoccupied with petty turf and political battles are simply too preoccupied to screw with the rest of us. Oh, you'll be giving back that tax cut that GWB got passed a few years ago, certainly, but the regulatory monster that is the US Government will be put into hibernation while the Democrats engage in the politics of personal destruction. Of course, the 800-pound gorilla in the room will be the Clinton Machine, which will ensure that when Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schumer get too rambunctious, their leashes will be forcibly and abruptly yanked. They will not be permitted to stray too far formt he reservation. The keyword for Democrats is: maintain the status-quo until the Hildebeest wins. Don't rock the boat too severely.
You can also look forward to the Republicans fight tooth and nail for everything the Democrats do manage to bring to the plate that doesn't have anything to do with GWB or Haliburton. So, we're pretty safe from intrusive meddling from either extreme. Conservatives (who more and more cease to exist in the true sense of the word) will cry, wail and gnash their teeth, feelingmore and more alienated in a wilderness that is becoming ever-more moderate and ever-more interested in what their politicians actually do.
As to why the Republicans lost Tuesday nioght, well, even a democrat (small 'd' intentional) can figure that out; other than "stay the course", "don't let the terrorists win", and "the other side is worse", they had nothing to offer. This last congress has achieved nothing of consequence, and in the last six years has done nothing but violate every republican/conservative principle from lack of fiscal restraint, to arrogance in the performance of their duties, from the outright taking of bribes to the sexual harrassment of teen-aged males in he very corridors of Congress.
The lesson that should be learned is simply that you cannot continue to cry "terrorist" 24 hours a day (even if it is necessary), while in the background, you fail to accomplish everything you've set out in your agenda and expect to stay in power, or even worse, expect to be invulnerable. The Republicans counted on the national security card, but failed to recognize that after five years of all-terrorist-all-the-time, that the people were sick of hearing it. They already get it. So, now how about you do something about rampant spending, escalating entitlement costs, keeping illegal aliens out of the country and perhaps, learn to behave like law-abiding, responsible adults?
Scanning the "Conservative" web sites these past few days, several themes centered around this electoral setback seem to be raering their ugly heads:
1. Republicans were betrayed; a cabal of libertarians and liberal republicans conspired to jump ship and voted for the democrats, hanging the poor, hassled and oppressed "real" conservative majority (the TRUE inheritors of the Reagan Legacy, dammit!) out to dry. Nothing could be further from the truth. The belief that there was a conspiracy is par for the course; when the truth is too painful to face up to (Republicans simply sucked for the last few years), point to conspiracy. It relieves you of the necessity of facing up to the truth and relieves you of the responsibility of having hijacked the nomination process which created this mess in the first place. First rule of thumb: if you build a house with rotten wood, you deserve what you get.
2. A conspiracy of the Mainstream Media and very good democratic propagandists brainwashed the masses into voting democrat, especially those easily-bribed "swing voters". Yeah, that's right: the MSM and Bob Beckel were somehow required to convince millions that what they saw happening before their very eyes was true. So now electoral loss is due to the millions of mindless sheep out there who need to be told how to think or what their personal interests are. Again, conspiracy theory is the last refuge of those preternaturally opposed to telling themselves the truth.
3. Republicans lost because America is the New Sodom. In this case, it's God's will that republicans have failed because they did not frog-march the abortionists to the ovens, institute a system of street executions for the gays, round up the illegals and impress them into slave labor and purge themsleves of immoral sexual predators (they got the last part right). This comes from much the same legion of idiots who claimed that the (/11 attacks and the shooting deaths of 8 Amish girls were God's just punishment for libertinism and rampant sin. The sooner we get these jackasses out of the republican party and into padded cells, the better. They are no better than the "Earth First" bunch on the other side, and a fair deal loonier than anything I have ever seen in my life. In a different place and time, both of these extremes would have been the people burning witches, branding people with great, big "A"'s on their foreheads, and gathering at the weekly hanging as if it were prime time entertainment.
Now what makes this particular point of view interesting (once one gets past the disgust factor) is the the conservative websites are now pasting FOREIGN anti-gay, pro-religious propaganda to bolster their case, possibly because they have lost faith in their own, domestic sources of prudishness and bigotry. Given the recent past (the Mark Foly scandal and the Republican response, and the admission by one of the leaders of the biggest Evangelical Christian group that he engaged in gay sex and drug use with a prostitute), they seem to have lost their faith in the institutions they previously looked to for guidance and sureity. Now you will find fire-and-brimstone-snake-handling baptists, Rock-solid-no-idea-that-doesn't-come-from-Scripture-will-penbetrate-my-skull Evangelicals making common cause with the CATHOLIC CHURCH and posting Catholic commentary on Conservative websites. Yesterday alone, on FreeRepublic, there were anti-gay articles posted from Israeli, Polish and Vatican newspapers,andposters that I know personally to be of the mind-set that the Catholic Church is the next-best-thing to being involved with organized crime, have now eagerly made common cause with the Church. That such things have already happened in the span of 72 hours is simply amazing, and reminds one of just how predictable and hypocritical some people really are.
4. (And this one SLAYS me) Republicans lost because we had "no outlet" for telling the truth about the democrats. This, naturally, has been posted all over the Internet (I've seen it in about 30 places, thus far), which shows just how oblivious some people really are; you've just posted, in a public forum that reaches millions, that the media is somehow denied to you and you can't "get your message out"? Rush Limbaugh, I guess broadcasts to no one from a closet? Fox News, which at least makes the effort to provide both sides of an issue, is watched by no one?Republican candidates were not allowed to purchase advertizing space and run campaign ads on TV and radio? Quite honestly, the message wasnot one people wanted to continue to hear; they've heard it for the last six years. The message was: "Yes, so I might be an all-round sonofabitch, profligate spender, accountable-to-no-one hypocrite, who won't build a border fence, can't tell you the truth about the war in Iraq, and who doesn't really care if the government agency tasked with saving your life from natural disaster doesn't work, vote for me anyway...or the terrorists will kill you."
Non-starter. The country is tired of war and terrorism, and while they don't want the Iraqi adventure to end in defeat, they certainly don't want it to continue in the present fashion; aimless, leaderless, ill-defined and apparently endless. Americans are dying for Iraq, no Iraqis are dying for it. That's a problem. Depsite all the successful thwarting of terror plots in the last five years, Usama Bin Laden is still alive (we believe) and seems to have been forgotten. Saddam Hussein my be getting hanged, but, heck, that was a foregone conclusion and it has very little to do with ending the conflict or setting the conditions for a democratic Middle East.
Unfortunately, it'sa truism that more islearned from failure than from success. What the republican party, MY republican party, must now learn is how did it all go badly, and how do we correct it? Well, the first step is going to have to take a look at how we nominate candidates. We were given a truckload of Hasterts and Frists, Lotts and DeLays, and look where it got us. We have to suffer the insufferable with John McCain and people like Newt Gingruch have been exiled for minor sins. Condoleeza Rice and Rudy Giuliani can't even get a fair hearing because they are (or might be in the case of Rice, I don't know for certain) pro-choice and separate from "the base" on a number of other social issues. "The Base" incidentally, is the problem; candidates have to be tailored to their particular pet peeves or they stay home, which gives us candidates which are politically-reliable (until the candidate can safely get away with being politically-unrliable, see the last six years), but also makes them unimaginative technocrats who managed to manipulate the party machinery, but who otherwise couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag, even if you gave them a chainsaw.
It's time for new blood and new ideas, but I'm afraid we'll get none of either in the next two years. The Right-wingers of the Buchanan stripe (the God, Guns and Gays coalition, as I call them, the American Taliban is apt, as well) will prevent it, and if they can't, they'll do what they always do: stay home or find a Ross Perot type to waste a vote on. Perhaps now is a good time for the Republican party to cut them loose. It will be painful, it might lead to electoral disaster again, but in the long run, purging the party of the lunatic fringe and the Social-Conservative-Litmus-testers,migth pay dividend by making REPUBLICANISM more attractive. This future republicanism can still draw lessons and bullet points form Conservatism (fiscal responsibility, national defense, law and order, end rampant illegal immigration, etc). Conservatism, it seems to me, was and still is a great philosophy, but it's attracting the entirely wrong sort. The problem is the proponents, not the philosophy.
Anyway, I won;t hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
In the meantime, Democrats now have two years to fix what they say they will. I have no confidence that they actually will accomplish anythign of consequence because they are, at heart, vicious little school-yard bullies and mental retards, to whom comon sense is something to be avoided like typhus. There are many who are just as small-minded and convinced of the tuth of their idiocy as the most staunch conservative. In the final analysis, both parties are being ruined by their extremes. But anyhow, it should be entertaining TV for the next two years, if nothing else, until the cut-and-run-apologize-to-Hamas-tax-everything-within-an-inch-of-it's-life party drops the ball and a few thousand Americans get killed in a horrifying terrorist attack. I don't wish for it, but I can see it happening.
Perhaps only then will the American people stop this nonsense of electing and paying heed to the extremists in both partys and start thinking about being AMERICANS first and members of a political party, second. But gioven the track record, if 9/11 only equated to a 51-49 race between Bush and Kerry, you have to wonder whether a second attack will do much more in changing minds.
To sum up: republicans lost because they deserved to. They fell asleep at the wheel, and when they weren't sleeping, they were feathering thier own nests and acting like drunken sailors on shore leave. Teh democrats now have an opportunity to prove they can be serious and grwon up, too, but will fall far short of this seemingly easy goal.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
A More Dangerous World...
Given the obvious nuclear aspirations of Iran and North Lorea, the spread of a radical Islamic fascism, the disregard for human life shown in a million places from the enforced mass starvation of Darfur, to the killing fields of American schoolrooms, one has to wonder just what kind of future the world faces.
I grew up during the height of the Cold War, where the two major superpowers pointed nuclear holhocaust at each other 24/7/365 , and where the threat of extinction hovered over every human activity you could think of. The destructive force at the command of both the American President and the Soviet Premier was held in check by a very slender set of hair-triggers, that at any moment, could fail and let loose the dogs of war. Terror maintained a balance of force on planet Earth. Neither side (although there were individuals that actively sought such a thing) was going to fry the other unless there was a good reason to do so. Reason, even in something as unreasonable as a nuclear weapon, was still in force.
Nowadays, we have some new players on the stage; Pakistan, India, China, and now North Korea and Iran. Pretty soon we'll be probably be seeing nuclear Brazil and Japan. Thatis the nature of the forcs unleashed by Messers. Einstein and Oppenheimer; once the genie is out of the bottle, and so on and so forth. And the world seems so much more unsafe now in 2006 than it did in 1976.
Of course, if you're a leftist, the reason for this is the conervative policies of the Western nations, and in particular, the United States. If you sit on the opposite side of the spectrum, the reason for this insecurity is the complete collapse of the collective security arrangements of the 20th century that ensured peace through mutual terror. This is an argument that will never be solved, if you ask me, although both sides seem to have merit in their position. The problem is not politics and policy, economics and dogma, it is human nature, a force which cannot be constrained by governments and collective organizations.
Human nature, not the policy of any nation or alliance, created Usama Bin Laden. Human nature encourages poor people who otherwise feel powerless to strive for what they construe as the measure of true power; nuclear weapons. Human nature dictates that when restraints on uncivilized behavior are removed, uncivilized behavior will result. And human nature also ensures that when minor incidents of uncivilzed behavior fail to have the intended effect (to frighten, to call attention to something, to affect the actions of others) then the scale and barbarity of such actions escalate. Hence, we go from hijacking to using airliners as weapons, from kidnapping to kidnapping/beheading on the internet. We go from postulating tenets of human rights and freedoms to sucking fetuses out of a womb via vaccuum cleaner. We advance from stupidity to stupidity, platitude to platitutde, inanity to inanity, horror to horror, and we can never, ever seem to figure out either the source or the engine.
WE are the source. WE are the engine. But to admit it is slightly embarassing. To do anything about it is even more horrible to contemplate: action is beyond the scope of most people, too self-interested as they are. Instead,they scream for "the government" to do "something" about this, that or the other crisis; so long as they can watch "Dancing with the Stars" and get gasoline at a reasonable price, why should they care if there's some Arab dude with a set of TNT boxer shorts? So long as they have the "right" to abrogate their responsibilities and surf internet porn without anyone looking over their shoulder, why should they care about philosophies and ideologies that are poisonous? So long as they can drink all the Bud Light and watch the Super Bowl, why does anyone care that there are people starving, dying of preventable diseases, who don't have freedom, who can't read, who own nothing, who have nothing and will never amount to anything, and who WILL take it out on us, given the opportunity?
Think about it. Then think about the great, unwashed masses, starving in Pyongyang, brainwashed in Tehran, struggling for decency in Baghdad, fighting to survive in Darfur, or ignorant and frustrated in Chicago.
The Cold War has ended, and in it's place a Pandora's box of hatred, stupidity, militancy, intolerance, ideology, hatred --- the entire, disgusting regime of inhumanity on display makes one gag ---- has been opened. In retrospect, it now appears that the Cold War wasn't such a bad thing, after all.
Given the obvious nuclear aspirations of Iran and North Lorea, the spread of a radical Islamic fascism, the disregard for human life shown in a million places from the enforced mass starvation of Darfur, to the killing fields of American schoolrooms, one has to wonder just what kind of future the world faces.
I grew up during the height of the Cold War, where the two major superpowers pointed nuclear holhocaust at each other 24/7/365 , and where the threat of extinction hovered over every human activity you could think of. The destructive force at the command of both the American President and the Soviet Premier was held in check by a very slender set of hair-triggers, that at any moment, could fail and let loose the dogs of war. Terror maintained a balance of force on planet Earth. Neither side (although there were individuals that actively sought such a thing) was going to fry the other unless there was a good reason to do so. Reason, even in something as unreasonable as a nuclear weapon, was still in force.
Nowadays, we have some new players on the stage; Pakistan, India, China, and now North Korea and Iran. Pretty soon we'll be probably be seeing nuclear Brazil and Japan. Thatis the nature of the forcs unleashed by Messers. Einstein and Oppenheimer; once the genie is out of the bottle, and so on and so forth. And the world seems so much more unsafe now in 2006 than it did in 1976.
Of course, if you're a leftist, the reason for this is the conervative policies of the Western nations, and in particular, the United States. If you sit on the opposite side of the spectrum, the reason for this insecurity is the complete collapse of the collective security arrangements of the 20th century that ensured peace through mutual terror. This is an argument that will never be solved, if you ask me, although both sides seem to have merit in their position. The problem is not politics and policy, economics and dogma, it is human nature, a force which cannot be constrained by governments and collective organizations.
Human nature, not the policy of any nation or alliance, created Usama Bin Laden. Human nature encourages poor people who otherwise feel powerless to strive for what they construe as the measure of true power; nuclear weapons. Human nature dictates that when restraints on uncivilized behavior are removed, uncivilized behavior will result. And human nature also ensures that when minor incidents of uncivilzed behavior fail to have the intended effect (to frighten, to call attention to something, to affect the actions of others) then the scale and barbarity of such actions escalate. Hence, we go from hijacking to using airliners as weapons, from kidnapping to kidnapping/beheading on the internet. We go from postulating tenets of human rights and freedoms to sucking fetuses out of a womb via vaccuum cleaner. We advance from stupidity to stupidity, platitude to platitutde, inanity to inanity, horror to horror, and we can never, ever seem to figure out either the source or the engine.
WE are the source. WE are the engine. But to admit it is slightly embarassing. To do anything about it is even more horrible to contemplate: action is beyond the scope of most people, too self-interested as they are. Instead,they scream for "the government" to do "something" about this, that or the other crisis; so long as they can watch "Dancing with the Stars" and get gasoline at a reasonable price, why should they care if there's some Arab dude with a set of TNT boxer shorts? So long as they have the "right" to abrogate their responsibilities and surf internet porn without anyone looking over their shoulder, why should they care about philosophies and ideologies that are poisonous? So long as they can drink all the Bud Light and watch the Super Bowl, why does anyone care that there are people starving, dying of preventable diseases, who don't have freedom, who can't read, who own nothing, who have nothing and will never amount to anything, and who WILL take it out on us, given the opportunity?
Think about it. Then think about the great, unwashed masses, starving in Pyongyang, brainwashed in Tehran, struggling for decency in Baghdad, fighting to survive in Darfur, or ignorant and frustrated in Chicago.
The Cold War has ended, and in it's place a Pandora's box of hatred, stupidity, militancy, intolerance, ideology, hatred --- the entire, disgusting regime of inhumanity on display makes one gag ---- has been opened. In retrospect, it now appears that the Cold War wasn't such a bad thing, after all.
Paeschendale...
For those who have never heard of it, the Battle of Paeschendale was one of the worst incidents of mass-slaughter on the Western Front in the First World War. I recall it for no particular reason other than it seems to have a political counterpart in the upcoming mid-term elections.
Prior to the Battle of Paeschendale, British generals were convinced that the solution to the bloody stalemate of the Western Front was simple obstinancy; all they had to do was to persevere, act with a little dash and verve, and the German defenses would crack, and in would flow the British Army, like a swarm of ants. The War would be over, the British would be victorious, God Save the King! Of course, it didn't work out that way.
Paeschendale was a mass slaughter. One of the worst in the annals of warfare.
I bring this up for a simple reason; the "generals" in charge of what nowadays passes for the Republican party are of similar mindset to the Generals at Paeschendale; They can brazen this one out. All they have to do is hang tough and the democratic lines will crack, and the advancing Republican hoarde will swarm in like ants, the war will be over, God be Praised! Toughen it out is a common theme running through Republican rhetoric these days; we must "stay the course" on Iraq. We must continue to maintain the status-quo in most areas of American life -- against terrorists on the one hand, in favor of tax cuts, on the other.
Like the Generals at Paeschendale, the Republicans also have a recent history of failure; there has not been a single, republican/conservative ideal advanced or adhered to in the last six years, of any consequence. And just like those British Generals, our republican leaders will continue to advance blindly, stubbornly, unable to learn form the past, unwilling to think of the future, determined to spin out an endless "NOW" --- and the slaughter will be great, because the British could not find an adequate solution to the problems of trench warfare and os repeated the same old tried-and-failed tactics, because there was no viable alternative to hand or within their imaginations. And that is exactly what Republicans are asking for at the polls this fall; an endless present, in which they maintain control of the visible mechanisms of government simply for the lack of a viable alternative. The fact that they have a history of failure behind them (Katrina, spending cap busting, Budget busting, lack of entitlement reform despite control of both houses of Congress, just to start), does not cause them to question their tactics; they simply continue them, like the Generals, for lack of a viable alternative or imagination.
At this point, the only real reason to vote republican is because the alternative makes one too sick to contemplate. And if that's all we have to vote for, them why bother? I'm not concerned about the specter of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, or Harry Reid as Senate Majority leader, because neither one of them actually matters; such concerns about who does what job or advances what agenda mean nothing to the man in the street --- they only mean something to political junkies and ideologues. What I'm concerned with is having a reason to get off my behind in a week and pull the lever for somebody. Give me something other than "more of the same" or "the other side is worse".
The truth of the matter is that neither Pelosi or Reid could hardly do a worse job than their republican counterparts, Hastert and Frist. Considering just how bad the current crop of politicos has been, the bar has been set comically low in terms of success. Both of them (Frist/Hastert) can point to an unblemished record of delay, plunder, surrender, ineptitude, alleged criminality amongst their caucus, and shameless pandering. The twin-headed monster of Reid/Pelosi, frankly, hardly frightens me at all, because at heart I know that they couldn't even be as competent in being incompetent as the Hastert/Frist combination has been. They (Reid/Pelosi) certainly couldn't be any better and they most definitely couldn't be any worse. Given the fact that the democratic party has splintered to an even greater extent than the republican party, I can safely predict that even with democratic control of both Houses of Congress, even less will get done. There are simply too many competing voices for the democrats to hammer out a coherent policy on anything, let alone concerted action.
Even with the bar set so low, Pelosi/Reid will, with as much certainty as one can muster with regards to this kind of prediction, more than likely accomplish far less than the Frist/Hastert monstrosity. A congress which does nothing of consequence is typically good for the American public.
But, true to form, our republican generals will trot out the old, tried-and-true tactics in a desperate effort to stave off defeat; a vote for a democrat is a vote for terrorists, for drug dealers, for abortionists, for illegal aliens, for surrender in Iraq, and sets the stage of a president Hillary Clinton (who scares me even less than the Pelosi/Reid Beast). Like the Generals at Paeschendale, they continue to believe that one last, bull-headed push will break the lines and bring victory; resorting to this kind of strategy is the same as sending young men "over the top" into the teeth of machine gun fire and artillery, unprotected.
Fear and maintaining the status-quo are not reasons to vote for anyone. As republicans, we must resign ourselves to the fact that we will probably get creamed in a week's time and that we have a long laundry list of failures to point to in order to figure out why. The republican party will lose not because of Iraq, or the Patriot Act, or Gay Marriage, or any of the other distraction issues either party advances in order to obscure the real going's-on; it will have failed because it promised to reign in federal spending and instead plundered the treasury. It promised to reform runaway entitlement programs and not only caved on Social Security, but added another $100 billion program to Medicare to pay for prescription drugs for people who can already afford them. It's failed because it stands on principles and then consorts with Jack Abramoff and his ilk and defends Tom DeLay. It deserves to lose because it cannot muster enough gumption to do anything that would advance republican/conservative ideals, but somehow can muster enough to pass a joint resolution in the middle of the night on behalf of a brain-dead woman in Florida, trampling all over the ccncept of marital rights and privleges along the way (how Conservative of them was that?).
Let the slaughter begin.
Paeschendale, however, did have a silver lining. It was one of those events that makes human beings scratch their heads and ask "why?". In the years after Paeschendale, generals and military theorists and strategists studied, dissected and investigated every aspect of the Battle of Paeschendale and the lessons learned can be said to have saved lives in the Second Wrold War, as perverse as that sounds. New tactics and new weapons evolved to prevent or mitigate the effects of modern weapons on the battlefield. New leaders emerged determined not to repeat the idocy of the past. The republican party must do the same.; it must find new leaders, evolve new tactics and produce new weapons, if it is to save itself from bloody slaughter.
That is exactly what the republican party must do now in the aftermath of it's own potential Paeschendale.
For those who have never heard of it, the Battle of Paeschendale was one of the worst incidents of mass-slaughter on the Western Front in the First World War. I recall it for no particular reason other than it seems to have a political counterpart in the upcoming mid-term elections.
Prior to the Battle of Paeschendale, British generals were convinced that the solution to the bloody stalemate of the Western Front was simple obstinancy; all they had to do was to persevere, act with a little dash and verve, and the German defenses would crack, and in would flow the British Army, like a swarm of ants. The War would be over, the British would be victorious, God Save the King! Of course, it didn't work out that way.
Paeschendale was a mass slaughter. One of the worst in the annals of warfare.
I bring this up for a simple reason; the "generals" in charge of what nowadays passes for the Republican party are of similar mindset to the Generals at Paeschendale; They can brazen this one out. All they have to do is hang tough and the democratic lines will crack, and the advancing Republican hoarde will swarm in like ants, the war will be over, God be Praised! Toughen it out is a common theme running through Republican rhetoric these days; we must "stay the course" on Iraq. We must continue to maintain the status-quo in most areas of American life -- against terrorists on the one hand, in favor of tax cuts, on the other.
Like the Generals at Paeschendale, the Republicans also have a recent history of failure; there has not been a single, republican/conservative ideal advanced or adhered to in the last six years, of any consequence. And just like those British Generals, our republican leaders will continue to advance blindly, stubbornly, unable to learn form the past, unwilling to think of the future, determined to spin out an endless "NOW" --- and the slaughter will be great, because the British could not find an adequate solution to the problems of trench warfare and os repeated the same old tried-and-failed tactics, because there was no viable alternative to hand or within their imaginations. And that is exactly what Republicans are asking for at the polls this fall; an endless present, in which they maintain control of the visible mechanisms of government simply for the lack of a viable alternative. The fact that they have a history of failure behind them (Katrina, spending cap busting, Budget busting, lack of entitlement reform despite control of both houses of Congress, just to start), does not cause them to question their tactics; they simply continue them, like the Generals, for lack of a viable alternative or imagination.
At this point, the only real reason to vote republican is because the alternative makes one too sick to contemplate. And if that's all we have to vote for, them why bother? I'm not concerned about the specter of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, or Harry Reid as Senate Majority leader, because neither one of them actually matters; such concerns about who does what job or advances what agenda mean nothing to the man in the street --- they only mean something to political junkies and ideologues. What I'm concerned with is having a reason to get off my behind in a week and pull the lever for somebody. Give me something other than "more of the same" or "the other side is worse".
The truth of the matter is that neither Pelosi or Reid could hardly do a worse job than their republican counterparts, Hastert and Frist. Considering just how bad the current crop of politicos has been, the bar has been set comically low in terms of success. Both of them (Frist/Hastert) can point to an unblemished record of delay, plunder, surrender, ineptitude, alleged criminality amongst their caucus, and shameless pandering. The twin-headed monster of Reid/Pelosi, frankly, hardly frightens me at all, because at heart I know that they couldn't even be as competent in being incompetent as the Hastert/Frist combination has been. They (Reid/Pelosi) certainly couldn't be any better and they most definitely couldn't be any worse. Given the fact that the democratic party has splintered to an even greater extent than the republican party, I can safely predict that even with democratic control of both Houses of Congress, even less will get done. There are simply too many competing voices for the democrats to hammer out a coherent policy on anything, let alone concerted action.
Even with the bar set so low, Pelosi/Reid will, with as much certainty as one can muster with regards to this kind of prediction, more than likely accomplish far less than the Frist/Hastert monstrosity. A congress which does nothing of consequence is typically good for the American public.
But, true to form, our republican generals will trot out the old, tried-and-true tactics in a desperate effort to stave off defeat; a vote for a democrat is a vote for terrorists, for drug dealers, for abortionists, for illegal aliens, for surrender in Iraq, and sets the stage of a president Hillary Clinton (who scares me even less than the Pelosi/Reid Beast). Like the Generals at Paeschendale, they continue to believe that one last, bull-headed push will break the lines and bring victory; resorting to this kind of strategy is the same as sending young men "over the top" into the teeth of machine gun fire and artillery, unprotected.
Fear and maintaining the status-quo are not reasons to vote for anyone. As republicans, we must resign ourselves to the fact that we will probably get creamed in a week's time and that we have a long laundry list of failures to point to in order to figure out why. The republican party will lose not because of Iraq, or the Patriot Act, or Gay Marriage, or any of the other distraction issues either party advances in order to obscure the real going's-on; it will have failed because it promised to reign in federal spending and instead plundered the treasury. It promised to reform runaway entitlement programs and not only caved on Social Security, but added another $100 billion program to Medicare to pay for prescription drugs for people who can already afford them. It's failed because it stands on principles and then consorts with Jack Abramoff and his ilk and defends Tom DeLay. It deserves to lose because it cannot muster enough gumption to do anything that would advance republican/conservative ideals, but somehow can muster enough to pass a joint resolution in the middle of the night on behalf of a brain-dead woman in Florida, trampling all over the ccncept of marital rights and privleges along the way (how Conservative of them was that?).
Let the slaughter begin.
Paeschendale, however, did have a silver lining. It was one of those events that makes human beings scratch their heads and ask "why?". In the years after Paeschendale, generals and military theorists and strategists studied, dissected and investigated every aspect of the Battle of Paeschendale and the lessons learned can be said to have saved lives in the Second Wrold War, as perverse as that sounds. New tactics and new weapons evolved to prevent or mitigate the effects of modern weapons on the battlefield. New leaders emerged determined not to repeat the idocy of the past. The republican party must do the same.; it must find new leaders, evolve new tactics and produce new weapons, if it is to save itself from bloody slaughter.
That is exactly what the republican party must do now in the aftermath of it's own potential Paeschendale.
Okay, I'm serious now...
I know, I know. I've been away for far too long. "Matt!", you might ask, "what the hell have you been doing all this time?" My response would probably not be all that edifying. It would run along the lines of something akin to "Wish to hell I knew!".
The Beast has taken hold again, folks. Depression. A very nasty word and an insidious foe. This bout seems to have lasted several months, but I think -- operative word, think -- I can deal with it this time.
So, bear with me please, it's a difficult time...
I know, I know. I've been away for far too long. "Matt!", you might ask, "what the hell have you been doing all this time?" My response would probably not be all that edifying. It would run along the lines of something akin to "Wish to hell I knew!".
The Beast has taken hold again, folks. Depression. A very nasty word and an insidious foe. This bout seems to have lasted several months, but I think -- operative word, think -- I can deal with it this time.
So, bear with me please, it's a difficult time...
Thursday, July 06, 2006
News From the Front...
Sorry for my extended absence, but there has been quite a lot happening these days and I've been up to my armpits in it. Most of it has nothing to do with the ebb and flow of events, the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the juggling of career and free time. It has more to do with my state of mind than anything else, and the occasional thought that, perhaps, I'm screaming into the teeth of an Atlantic gale here.
I originally started this screed because, for lack of a better term, I had no other forum in which the tortured ramblings of my (seemingly) diseased mind could be safely put to paper, so to speak, without hurting anyone. It's a safety valve, of sorts, intended to relieve the pressure we all manage to store up inside our skulls. Sometimes, you just have to scream or you'll just go mad.
In this regard, the cyberspace revolution has been a godsend for most of us. You now have a place where you can spew your most vile mental lava with (almost-) complete anonymity, and without the stigma that automatically follows the expression of some unpopular position in....ahem...polite society. I always thought that perhaps the rest of the world was crazy and that I was a minority of one; an island of sanity in an insane world. Perhaps that's arrogant, perhaps it's even nuts, but with every passing day it becomes ever more true. The battles being fought here are every bit as vicious, every bit as deadly, as those being fought in Iraq.
The most recent battlefield has been in the murky depths of political chatboards and blogs. I don't claim to be an expert on either, nor can I admit to knowing all the principle players in the whole cyber-reporting regime. All I can do is contrast and compare, and use my intelligence (such as it is) to sift the cyber wheat from the chaff. Once again, I have been delving into the "conservative" forums and pleading for moderation from some of the more ardent Nazis...errr...conservatives out there.
I say moderation for a reason --- because there's very little to be found. Anywhere.
Every issue these days is founded upon an extreme position, and this goes for both sides of the political spectrum. On the Left, the foundation is always some form of base politics or childish, shallow affectation that passes for intellectuality. Whatever the issue --- high gas prices, the War on Terror, Nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, illegal immigration, entitlement reform, etc --- the Left's basic position is always underpinned by two unarguable, incontrovertible pillars: George W. Bush is evil incarnate, a mere puppet of Big Oil and in thrall to the Christian Taliban in the United States, and, only democrats (small "d" intentional) can be trusted to get anything right. There is never any intellectual proof put forward to support these two premises; they are supposed to be self-evident and require nothing in the way of reason and logic to prop them up. We're supposed to swallow them whole and just believe in them as a matter of faith, unquestionable, undeniable. This is the closest thing to a Leftist Ten Commandments as we're every likely to come.
Eventually, the intellectual gives way to the emotional and when that happens, there is no way to counter anything, no means by which ideas based upon intellectual premises can be put forward. The Leftist, especially the American Left, which holds religion in such contempt, has found it's own religion (Bush Hating) and uses it as an excuse for a Scorched-Earth campaign of reflexive anti-Bushism, and ultimately, anti-Americanism, of the sort that our Airliner-hijacking-pizzeria-exploding-rocket-launching-into-daycare-center Middle eastern brothers would recognize easily. The Left has become that which it fears most ; fascist. And not just fascist, but fanatically so, with a passion that is usually reserved for religion.
On the Right, a similar dynamic is in play.
Check out any "conservative" website these days and there are, basically, only five themes on display: anti-Leftism, anti-Immigrant, anti-Arab, self-immolation, and the Conservative Trifecta of God, Guns and Gays (I lump them together because they always seem to go hand-in-hand). You cannot discuss any of these things with someone who believes themselves to be conservative (usually because the voted for Reagan at least once, but who have no idea of what that actually means) without the argument coming back, eventually, to God, Guns and Gays.
The Right is become that which it fears most; the Soviet Union. Thought control, uniformity of ideological outlook, a religious faith in the destiny of the United States as God's chosen agent for good on earth, are all on display. Dispute any of these basic premises and be prepared to get slimed by the usual epithets: Lefty-lover, Fag-lover, Rockefeller Republican, RINO. The list goes on. Disagree with someone who believes that the ability to recite Bible verse word for word makes you politically conservative and watch how quickly they descend upon you, like the villagers in Frankenstein, torch in one hand, pitchfork in the other.
I now know for certain what I hadn't realized before, or at least was afraid to admit to myself: I'm not crazy, everyone else is.
Sorry for my extended absence, but there has been quite a lot happening these days and I've been up to my armpits in it. Most of it has nothing to do with the ebb and flow of events, the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the juggling of career and free time. It has more to do with my state of mind than anything else, and the occasional thought that, perhaps, I'm screaming into the teeth of an Atlantic gale here.
I originally started this screed because, for lack of a better term, I had no other forum in which the tortured ramblings of my (seemingly) diseased mind could be safely put to paper, so to speak, without hurting anyone. It's a safety valve, of sorts, intended to relieve the pressure we all manage to store up inside our skulls. Sometimes, you just have to scream or you'll just go mad.
In this regard, the cyberspace revolution has been a godsend for most of us. You now have a place where you can spew your most vile mental lava with (almost-) complete anonymity, and without the stigma that automatically follows the expression of some unpopular position in....ahem...polite society. I always thought that perhaps the rest of the world was crazy and that I was a minority of one; an island of sanity in an insane world. Perhaps that's arrogant, perhaps it's even nuts, but with every passing day it becomes ever more true. The battles being fought here are every bit as vicious, every bit as deadly, as those being fought in Iraq.
The most recent battlefield has been in the murky depths of political chatboards and blogs. I don't claim to be an expert on either, nor can I admit to knowing all the principle players in the whole cyber-reporting regime. All I can do is contrast and compare, and use my intelligence (such as it is) to sift the cyber wheat from the chaff. Once again, I have been delving into the "conservative" forums and pleading for moderation from some of the more ardent Nazis...errr...conservatives out there.
I say moderation for a reason --- because there's very little to be found. Anywhere.
Every issue these days is founded upon an extreme position, and this goes for both sides of the political spectrum. On the Left, the foundation is always some form of base politics or childish, shallow affectation that passes for intellectuality. Whatever the issue --- high gas prices, the War on Terror, Nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, illegal immigration, entitlement reform, etc --- the Left's basic position is always underpinned by two unarguable, incontrovertible pillars: George W. Bush is evil incarnate, a mere puppet of Big Oil and in thrall to the Christian Taliban in the United States, and, only democrats (small "d" intentional) can be trusted to get anything right. There is never any intellectual proof put forward to support these two premises; they are supposed to be self-evident and require nothing in the way of reason and logic to prop them up. We're supposed to swallow them whole and just believe in them as a matter of faith, unquestionable, undeniable. This is the closest thing to a Leftist Ten Commandments as we're every likely to come.
Eventually, the intellectual gives way to the emotional and when that happens, there is no way to counter anything, no means by which ideas based upon intellectual premises can be put forward. The Leftist, especially the American Left, which holds religion in such contempt, has found it's own religion (Bush Hating) and uses it as an excuse for a Scorched-Earth campaign of reflexive anti-Bushism, and ultimately, anti-Americanism, of the sort that our Airliner-hijacking-pizzeria-exploding-rocket-launching-into-daycare-center Middle eastern brothers would recognize easily. The Left has become that which it fears most ; fascist. And not just fascist, but fanatically so, with a passion that is usually reserved for religion.
On the Right, a similar dynamic is in play.
Check out any "conservative" website these days and there are, basically, only five themes on display: anti-Leftism, anti-Immigrant, anti-Arab, self-immolation, and the Conservative Trifecta of God, Guns and Gays (I lump them together because they always seem to go hand-in-hand). You cannot discuss any of these things with someone who believes themselves to be conservative (usually because the voted for Reagan at least once, but who have no idea of what that actually means) without the argument coming back, eventually, to God, Guns and Gays.
The Right is become that which it fears most; the Soviet Union. Thought control, uniformity of ideological outlook, a religious faith in the destiny of the United States as God's chosen agent for good on earth, are all on display. Dispute any of these basic premises and be prepared to get slimed by the usual epithets: Lefty-lover, Fag-lover, Rockefeller Republican, RINO. The list goes on. Disagree with someone who believes that the ability to recite Bible verse word for word makes you politically conservative and watch how quickly they descend upon you, like the villagers in Frankenstein, torch in one hand, pitchfork in the other.
I now know for certain what I hadn't realized before, or at least was afraid to admit to myself: I'm not crazy, everyone else is.
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