Wednesday, February 29, 2012

What They Are: by Steven Weber

Denuded of their deception as they have never been, the GOP clearly demonstrates its unique fixation for crafting reality in its own image, creating a justification for its Dark Age vision for the world, whether by building a mythical afterlife to stave off the terror of eternal nothingness or a fictional president who is the embodiment of all populist social ills.

They've been, as Twain's Puddin'head Wilson might have said, "boiled down to the small". They are reduced to their basic essences: warring, biting, sniping. That's what they've always done best. And with their potency at an all time low, their tricks spent, their gilt peeling and flaking they are, thankfully, almost over.

Take this Santorum fella: as extreme and cartoonish and intellectually at sea as any public figure has ever been, a craven demagogue who would gladly squeeze the nation into a one-size-fits-all chastity belt of an ideology, a mad throwback to a time when barbers drilled holes in skulls to release foul humors and church elders shackled non-believers in the town square.

Empowered by a lone billionaire, held aloft by the fathomless faith of the superstitious and embracing a pathological Right Wing need to win at all costs, this Santorum person is only the most current spokesperson for current GOP core values. Every balless utterance, every callous flip-flop, every declaration from him and his ilk that erupts from their slits is an attack on Democracy, an attack on sense. He is but one of a cadre of treacherous firebrands professing to care but acting carelessly and all will bring the Republican party ever closer to its demise as a meaningful exponent of the democratic process, doomed by its own desperation.

But the time for such thoughts and deeds in the American story is over. They have proven finally to be an impediment to the very thing the quasi-conservatives fear most but can never stop: evolution. They fear it precisely because they know in their marrow that their days are numbered, that they are obsolete, that their own bad, bad behavior is resulting in their being bred out.

That we let these clowns anywhere near our beloved traditions and institutions is proof alone that the guards of Democracy had been bribed or eliminated entirely: the Tea Party-backed boobs who swept into governor's mansions and who will just as surely be swept back out; the media, so corrupted, so raped by corporations to the point where they barely mete out their basic responsibility -- to inform the masses -- but which has instead assumed the role of immoral/moralizing carny barker, churning out falsehoods and fetishes, reflections of its own shame and inadequacy; the religious leaders who mock the teachings of Christ every time they attack the meek and side against the disenfranchised, who shame the millions who took comfort in messages of love only to have those messages betrayed by pretenders shielded by collars and robes and money; the bloated bullies who shouted down citizens who righteously dared confront their bald power-grabs; the unholy tryst with the military industrial complex which bloats our budget and damns our soldiers to being pawns in an oil baron's game.

Regularly, some sample of Right Wing corporate corrosion makes its presence felt, derailing discourse and otherwise fucking up everyone's day. They've turned the spigot on and let the toxins flow. And it all comes to a head in November.

Hang on.

Follow Steven Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheStevenWeber

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