By Gene Clark
This week, the Daily Show sent its faux “correspondents” out among the Republican delegates in Minneapolis to get their reactions to postponing the first night of their convention because it looked like New Orleans might get Katrinaized by Hurricane Gustav.
One delegate said, “I don’t see why we had to postpone our convention because some people got rained on.”
That is the Republican State of Mind.
I can make my house payment.
I can afford the gas to run my car.
I don’t have a loved one in the armed forces.
I have health care.
I have a job.
I can afford to send my kids to college.
I don’t have abortions.
It all comes down to, “If it’s not happening to me, I don’t see the problem.”
I am prejudiced against Republicans; I have no problem admitting it. I am not fair and balanced. I have a liberal bias. Republicans aren’t like Ike any more. Hell, they aren’t even like Ronald Reagan anymore.
Republicans seem to believe that bad things happen to bad people or to people that somehow bring misfortune down upon themselves.
Richard Pryor once said a drug epidemic isn’t an epidemic until white kids start doing drugs. In much the same way, no problem actually needs anything done about it until it starts happening to Republicans.
The sub-prime mortgage crisis became a crisis when stock holders saw their money swirling down their golden toilet bowls. There were bail outs only when the white people started losing money.
Sorry, there were bail outs only when RICH people started losing money. Poor white people have become brown in the eyes of the Republican Party while Brown people with tons of money have become several shades lighter.
Of course, poor people are poor because they refuse to “pull themselves up by their boot straps.” They refuse to “participate in the American Dream.” They enjoy being poor and humiliated because they aren’t terribly bright; come on, if they had any brains, they’d have started their own businesses.
Republicans say, “Life is hard for everyone. We worked for what we got.”
For many people in America life isn’t just hard, it’s damn near impossible. Republicans won’t acknowledge that. To do so would be admitting that the playing field isn’t even. To admit that would leave them unable to blame the victims, and they need to blame the victims because it allows them the illusion of superiority.
Have I mentioned that I am prejudiced against Republicans? You can tell I’m prejudiced because I lump all Republicans together and speak of them as if they all think exactly alike. That really isn’t fair, is it?
Who cares? Fair is where you get funnel cakes.
As far as I can tell, Republicans all think alike. In the last 7 years, I’ve seen Republicans twist and turn and contort themselves to defend Dubya and Vice President Dick no matter what they or their government did.
Invade a sovereign nation so your cronies can stuff hundreds of billions of dollars of war profits into their pockets …that’s fine, who cares…9/11.
Torture and humiliate prisoners while holding them without charges and denying them legal counsel…got no problem with that…9/11.
Sharply curtail protections afforded Americans by the Bill of Rights…got to break some eggs to make an omelet…9/11.
Borrow money from the Chinese to buy oil from people that hates us…that’s the way it goes…9/11.
Support the troops, all except the ones that are still living…nothing wrong with that…9/11.
God wants us to tell you what to do…shut up, sinner…9/11.
All I can figure is that somehow Republicans lost their minds when Bill Clinton beat George H. W. Bush and then Bob Dole with the help of Ross Perot.
OR…Republican leadership decided never to let the right-wing loonies ever beat them again. They figured that they could secure the right-wing loony vote while retaining all but the most moderate Republicans if they could stir up a bit of a war and kick a few asses.
Either way, two Bill Clinton terms made the Republican Party what it is today.
If the Republican Party can’t find a way to shake off the loonies, it will eventually fall to pieces because it takes way too much cynicism to make the Republican tent big enough for a party whose right and left wings are so far apart.
Republican leadership spends a great deal of energy cynically telling its rank and file that everything the other side says is false and everything it says is true. Oscar Wilde once said, “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
By the way, Wilde was a famous queer, so you Republicans don’t have to pay any attention to what he said, anyhow.
