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Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead
You're correct and there's no denying the reality of all politics/no statesmanship. From an ego preserving standpoint it easy to appreciate why so many among the mass of GOP and Democratic Party voters still find it hard to make an honest critique of their politics, ideologies and the catastrophic failures they've manifested across 40 years.
I expect such introspection can only come after crisis and collapse, but I think people on the right remain in deep denial about the decay and rot at the core of their party and their collective surrender to the id. And it's no false equivalence to recognize a Democratic Party made equally grotesque by incompetence, cronyism, and corruption, all perfectly embodied by the Clintons.
But where the rise of Sanders and the ongoing collapse of Hillary serves as a temporal marker of an emerging shift in Democratic politics, the GOP seems ever further from reform and redemption. Nothing quite matches today's GOP in terms of careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks.
They think nothing of holding the country hostage until their demands are met, most recently exemplified by their proposals regarding the Scalia replacement. Recall also the willingness to trigger a fiscal crisis during debt ceiling negotiations, the continuing threats of another government shutdown, and various instances of perfidy going all the way back to Bush v Gore, the impeachment trial of 1999, Iran-Contra and Watergate.
Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has metastasized from a loyal and principled opposition into an insurrectionist radical party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens chaos when it is the minority.
That said, it is a mistake to think we've reached the present crisis due to the feckless cynicism of the GOP alone, even as we recognize the peculiar distastefulness and repugnance of their actual and titular leadership. Here I think recognition for the grandest failure and betrayal must go undoubtedly to the Democratic Party and elite media tag team for reasons outlined in detail elsewhere and whose counterreaction we see in the remarkable success of the Sanders campaign.
The GOP set out to delegitimize government in the minds of the American people. Their antics and obstructionism are simultaneously a manifestation of a political sickness and an effective tool of insurgency. For each time the mass of low information citizens see the inaction of government in the face of partisan rancor their opinion and trust in their government diminishes further, as does their confidence in democracy itself.
The rain may fall on the good and bad alike, but to maintain the "pox on both houses" attitude of false equivalency requires one to willingly ignore the reality of who precipitates needless crisis after crisis and those who despair of it. It takes a concerted effort of will to remain oblivious that a sizable faction of the GOP has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of government, sacrificing the long term needs of the country so as to achieve political and ideological objectives.
And we know what their political and ideological objectives are because they have articulated them rather clearly over the decades, if less than transparent by their rhetoric, than with certain clarity by their actions: plutocracy, militarism and theocracy, all wrapped in a red white and blue blanket of American exceptionalism.
What does one say about a political party that has taken on the appearance of a cult run on behalf of plutocrats furiously working to materialize a new Gilded Age capitalized by financial malfeasance, war profiteering, and technological panopticism?
How do we approach a party operated by theocrats eager to manifest the American Dominion by supplementing the USC with biblical law? What is the response to a bipartisan consensus whose product is global chaos and domestic misery? And what does one think about a people who stubbornly refuse to confront this reality?
I agree with jk that changing minds and hearts seem beyond our abilities. And in keeping to my hugs and kisses promise to Shiny!, I'm making a personal effort to keep a detached mindfulness with regard to the silly season. But facts are facts even as we rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of developing strategies in response to what is and to the exclusion of what should be.
Originally posted by vt
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I expect such introspection can only come after crisis and collapse, but I think people on the right remain in deep denial about the decay and rot at the core of their party and their collective surrender to the id. And it's no false equivalence to recognize a Democratic Party made equally grotesque by incompetence, cronyism, and corruption, all perfectly embodied by the Clintons.
But where the rise of Sanders and the ongoing collapse of Hillary serves as a temporal marker of an emerging shift in Democratic politics, the GOP seems ever further from reform and redemption. Nothing quite matches today's GOP in terms of careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks.
They think nothing of holding the country hostage until their demands are met, most recently exemplified by their proposals regarding the Scalia replacement. Recall also the willingness to trigger a fiscal crisis during debt ceiling negotiations, the continuing threats of another government shutdown, and various instances of perfidy going all the way back to Bush v Gore, the impeachment trial of 1999, Iran-Contra and Watergate.
Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has metastasized from a loyal and principled opposition into an insurrectionist radical party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens chaos when it is the minority.
That said, it is a mistake to think we've reached the present crisis due to the feckless cynicism of the GOP alone, even as we recognize the peculiar distastefulness and repugnance of their actual and titular leadership. Here I think recognition for the grandest failure and betrayal must go undoubtedly to the Democratic Party and elite media tag team for reasons outlined in detail elsewhere and whose counterreaction we see in the remarkable success of the Sanders campaign.
The GOP set out to delegitimize government in the minds of the American people. Their antics and obstructionism are simultaneously a manifestation of a political sickness and an effective tool of insurgency. For each time the mass of low information citizens see the inaction of government in the face of partisan rancor their opinion and trust in their government diminishes further, as does their confidence in democracy itself.
The rain may fall on the good and bad alike, but to maintain the "pox on both houses" attitude of false equivalency requires one to willingly ignore the reality of who precipitates needless crisis after crisis and those who despair of it. It takes a concerted effort of will to remain oblivious that a sizable faction of the GOP has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of government, sacrificing the long term needs of the country so as to achieve political and ideological objectives.
And we know what their political and ideological objectives are because they have articulated them rather clearly over the decades, if less than transparent by their rhetoric, than with certain clarity by their actions: plutocracy, militarism and theocracy, all wrapped in a red white and blue blanket of American exceptionalism.
What does one say about a political party that has taken on the appearance of a cult run on behalf of plutocrats furiously working to materialize a new Gilded Age capitalized by financial malfeasance, war profiteering, and technological panopticism?
How do we approach a party operated by theocrats eager to manifest the American Dominion by supplementing the USC with biblical law? What is the response to a bipartisan consensus whose product is global chaos and domestic misery? And what does one think about a people who stubbornly refuse to confront this reality?
I agree with jk that changing minds and hearts seem beyond our abilities. And in keeping to my hugs and kisses promise to Shiny!, I'm making a personal effort to keep a detached mindfulness with regard to the silly season. But facts are facts even as we rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of developing strategies in response to what is and to the exclusion of what should be.
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