From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon Sep 06 2004 - 02:26:22 BST
mel and all:
mel said:
Part of the dynamic is that you get to see the general
Classical Liberalism in part hijacked by those who
practice Christerism. (not Christianity)
Christerism is a highly non-Christian philosophy
that masquerades as religious based belief, but
pushes its own agenda of hateful, intollerance,
ignorance, Social Control, prohibition writ large and
finds imaginary scriptural support to justify it.
The first rule of practical politics is to find support
however you can. You bend over and spread'em
for anyone with a significant voting block if you
want to truly get your candidate IN POWER. So,
it is a marriage of convenience.
In historical terms it will be short term...but it's
here now.
dmb says:
By taking the long view, you are changing the subject or at least shifting
the ground of the debate. That would be ok if you'd taken my specific
arguements to task first, but I hardly see that. A few of your comments,
reproduced above, seem to come close, but mostly you've dismissed it again.
And even if we do take the long view, which I also apprecitate, I still
disagree with you're dismissive attitude. As a matter of fact, the
know-nothing nativists and bigots have been a powerful part of American
politics since the very beginning. Not only was there hundreds of years of
race-based slavery and near genocide against the natives, there are also
lesser known examples. The KKK pretty much ran the country during the 20's
and there was a strong fascist movement in the thirties. But now these
regressive forces have taken over the Republican party, which has control of
all three branches of government and is supported by a well-oiled media
machine as well. I sincerely wonder if the Republic will survive much more.
Again, I can't help but wonder if your grotesque even-handedness, where
those who are intolerant of intolerance are also considered bigots, grows
out of an unspoken sympathy. I wonder how it is you don't see a monstorous
thing, just a marriage of conveniece. (That's what the German industrialist
said about Hitler, by the way.) That's what my silly little poem asks. I
wonder if you're really so above it all, or secretly in league and was
asking you to come clean.
By co-incidence, a friend just sent me an article by Garrison Keillor. It
pretty well expresses the horror I see in all this. It starts out talking
about REAL Republicans, nice, decent Republicans like Ike, but then
describes the reactionaries that are calling the shots now. Enjoy.
In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward
down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public
service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the
Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and
fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed
flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in
World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon
moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry
white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. "Bipartisanship is
another term of date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the
GOP. "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the
size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The
boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of
hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists,
fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance
racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats,
nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons,
hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who
believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little
honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their
Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of
information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of
badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the
rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.
Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine
crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a
massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation
to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds
in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and
behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth
as the sure sign of Divine Grace.
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