There are two major phenomena that I am really worried about in this election cycle: The first is the readily apparent bloodthirst or barbarism of the Republican base, evident in the previous two debates, when the audience applauded Rick Perry's record number of executions (234), despite the fact that a few of them--one definite--may have been innocent, a fact that they--and Perry himself--are perfectly willing to ignore. In the second debate, the audience cheered, "Let him die!!" when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul what should be done with a young man who falls into a coma without health insurance. Regardless of what one believes about the size or role of government, throwing a man's life away is not something about which we should be so nonchalant. Suffice to say, on this point, I am more terrified of our electorate than the people we may be electing.
It is true that Obama has not been a very effective President; there are two main things that he is not doing: 1) He is not fighting hard enough for what he wants, and 2) He attempts to accommodate a political party that is not interested in anything less than his own ruin and their ascension to absolute power. But these two points presuppose that we cannot afford to replace him with anything other than a possible Third-Party progressive or another Democrat; these points presuppose that the incapacity and potential tyranny of a Republican candidate is a given. It isn't "Anyone but Obama!"; rather it is "Please someone who can fight harder against the Tea Party than Obama is!"
Today, my parents were watching Fox News (just to see what they were saying), and they were misinterpreting liberals' dissatisfaction with Obama in order to support the notion that the Republicans should win, that Obama wasn't doing the country any good, etc. But this is not at all the case, as I have demonstrated concretely above; no Obama supporter in his or her right mind could possibly want any of the Republican candidates to replace him.
A few weeks ago, I came across an article about a recently-retired Republican staffer who brought up an incredibly terrifying potential reality, that extends in part from everything I said during the 2010 campaigns about Fox News and media saturation: "If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power"1. Imagine the kind of apparatuses that would be required to convince voters that the disappearance of their Social Security checks and health insurance is beneficial. Logic would tell us that the 2010 election strategy should have been a one-shot deal: Get them just crazy enough to put the Tea Party into office, but those freshmen could expect to be voted out again when the voters see the reality of their agenda. But what if it were possible to fool them not once, but repeatedly, even as the more catastrophic, possibly permanent damage starts to manifest itself?
And if it doesn't succeed immediately, it does not take long for the Republican party to recover its abused legion of voters: The many scandals of the 80s and 90s should have been the death knell for the Christian conservative bloc, but during the 2000s, in which many more scandals occurred (such as that of Ted Haggard, Scott Roeder, and George Rekers), that bloc only reemerged in an even more radicalized form called the Tea Party2. The truth is that what that article claimed has already come to pass: The GOP is so successful that it can absorb a near-constant stream of scandals directly caused by its ideology, unleash the most irresponsible policies, and still manage to get elected, merely by changing its facade. It is the Hydra.
1) http://truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779
2) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Rudy Giuliani's Favorite Day of the Year
Between this year and last year, the way I see 9/11 has changed forever with the failure of our legislature to pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, the act of Congress that would provide healthcare to 9/11 first responders, who have been exposed to immeasurable toxins in the wasteland of the WTC in the course of duty.
The Zadroga Act and its failure exemplifies what America generally and especially the Republican party really thinks about 9/11. It is ironic to me that for a decade the GOP has used 9/11 to justify nearly everything it has done, and then when the time came to pay for its use, they turned around and filibustered what would be a demonstration of sincerity toward 9/11.
I find this particularly abhorrent because of the wanton frequency with which they used 9/11 as a cattle prod to goad the American people into accepting unpopular and dangerous legislation (Shock Doctrine): Rudy Giuliani himself used 9/11 as the entire substance of his presidential campaign in 2008, and the GOP has used it to justify everything from the two military quagmires in which we are currently ensnared to this day to the PATRIOT Act. Mind you, the seats in the legislature have not changed much between 2001 and 2011, so those same people who goaded us into Iraq and Afghanistan and who heaped upon us the PATRIOT Act in the name of September 11th are the very same people who blocked the Zadroga Act.
Look at the failure of the Zadroga Act: This is what we really think of 9/11. In fact, 9/11 is as existentially important to us as Jesus: We talk a lot about them, we make big shows and speeches about them, and then we pursue our everyday lives come Monday morning. But when it comes time to pay up, to demonstrate truly what we believe, we shrink away and ultimately fail to do the right thing.
The Zadroga Act did eventually pass, but only after Jon Stewart made a huge deal about it. It should have passed without question or debate.
There is one other nagging question I have about 9/11: Why do they care so much? Why do the GOP and the Tea Party care so much about 9/11? On the morning after 9/11, Jerry Falwell remarked to Pat Robertson that America itself is responsible for the WTC attacks. This is the same attitude that these kinds of people (like Michele Bachmann) always take when something bad happens. But what changed? The people working in the WTC on that day were probably more liberal, college educated, less religious, and more affluent than they are (not to mention, some were possibly homosexual!); shouldn't they have maintained Jerry Falwell's initial attitude given these possibilities? What changed and why?
Before I unleash my boundless cynicism, it could be that the United States was attacked not only by foreigners, but by a religion viewed by the GOP as alien and satanic. This may have something to do with their bizarre solidarity with a city almost as liberal as New Orleans. But the other reason (cynicism in five...four...three...two...one...) is that it had provided a miraculous justification for everything at that time the GOP wanted to accomplish, which would otherwise be incredibly unpopular. This is easy! All we have to say when people disagree with us is that they are Unamerican and that they support terrorism! Of course, this happened before (McCarthy and the HUAC in the 50s), so it wasn't a game that anyone had forgotten how to play.
The tragedy is that that is all 9/11 ever really is: We really don't honor it, not in any way that really matters, we just like using it to expediently justify reckless actions. Most Americans, it seems, are simply satisfied with this insincerity. We get an idea, whether it is a religion, or a political ideology, or some maxim, and while we like it, we don't do anything with it. Ideas require work and dedication. If you really believe something, you had better do the work. I wonder whether anyone in this country believes anything at all...
The Zadroga Act and its failure exemplifies what America generally and especially the Republican party really thinks about 9/11. It is ironic to me that for a decade the GOP has used 9/11 to justify nearly everything it has done, and then when the time came to pay for its use, they turned around and filibustered what would be a demonstration of sincerity toward 9/11.
I find this particularly abhorrent because of the wanton frequency with which they used 9/11 as a cattle prod to goad the American people into accepting unpopular and dangerous legislation (Shock Doctrine): Rudy Giuliani himself used 9/11 as the entire substance of his presidential campaign in 2008, and the GOP has used it to justify everything from the two military quagmires in which we are currently ensnared to this day to the PATRIOT Act. Mind you, the seats in the legislature have not changed much between 2001 and 2011, so those same people who goaded us into Iraq and Afghanistan and who heaped upon us the PATRIOT Act in the name of September 11th are the very same people who blocked the Zadroga Act.
Look at the failure of the Zadroga Act: This is what we really think of 9/11. In fact, 9/11 is as existentially important to us as Jesus: We talk a lot about them, we make big shows and speeches about them, and then we pursue our everyday lives come Monday morning. But when it comes time to pay up, to demonstrate truly what we believe, we shrink away and ultimately fail to do the right thing.
The Zadroga Act did eventually pass, but only after Jon Stewart made a huge deal about it. It should have passed without question or debate.
There is one other nagging question I have about 9/11: Why do they care so much? Why do the GOP and the Tea Party care so much about 9/11? On the morning after 9/11, Jerry Falwell remarked to Pat Robertson that America itself is responsible for the WTC attacks. This is the same attitude that these kinds of people (like Michele Bachmann) always take when something bad happens. But what changed? The people working in the WTC on that day were probably more liberal, college educated, less religious, and more affluent than they are (not to mention, some were possibly homosexual!); shouldn't they have maintained Jerry Falwell's initial attitude given these possibilities? What changed and why?
Before I unleash my boundless cynicism, it could be that the United States was attacked not only by foreigners, but by a religion viewed by the GOP as alien and satanic. This may have something to do with their bizarre solidarity with a city almost as liberal as New Orleans. But the other reason (cynicism in five...four...three...two...one...) is that it had provided a miraculous justification for everything at that time the GOP wanted to accomplish, which would otherwise be incredibly unpopular. This is easy! All we have to say when people disagree with us is that they are Unamerican and that they support terrorism! Of course, this happened before (McCarthy and the HUAC in the 50s), so it wasn't a game that anyone had forgotten how to play.
The tragedy is that that is all 9/11 ever really is: We really don't honor it, not in any way that really matters, we just like using it to expediently justify reckless actions. Most Americans, it seems, are simply satisfied with this insincerity. We get an idea, whether it is a religion, or a political ideology, or some maxim, and while we like it, we don't do anything with it. Ideas require work and dedication. If you really believe something, you had better do the work. I wonder whether anyone in this country believes anything at all...
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