There is an epidemic of narcissism, anger and rage in America.
Look at tea party gatherings, look at discontent at work, look at irate drivers on your congested streets, and look at the discord of television news. Democrats are slow to react to this phenomena, but Republicans know how use this force
Thus the Republicans plan is to exploit badly informed and narcissistic Americans by perpetrating a continual stream of lies and hypocrisy.
This roundhouse of partisan lies, deception and rancor has been playing for over two decades now, leading up to a Republican Congress relentlessly attacking the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton, and finally leaving us woozy from the eight-year roundhouse plutocratic punches of the corrupt Bush regime.
From Ronald Reagan saying that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom, to Gingrich shutting down the government in 1995 for massive Medicare cuts, to more recent efforts to dismantle the whole program, the Republicans are heartless and hypocritical.
The hypocrisy continues only because the people can be duped while a compromised media sustains duplicity, this while the Republicans collect monetary support from big business, which thrives under Republican control.
In these austere times, ill-use of money is all around us. Look, especially, at campaign spending and the Republican master plan.
It takes millions of corporate dollars to elect a member of Congress whose only function is to attack his opposition, vote no on all progress, take credit for the progress his opponents manage to make over his obstruction, and take taxpayer money to pay for the staff, the media and the travel required to deceive voters, attack opponents, and reject all legislative progress.
This is the life of almost all Republicans, considering that only one in their unified, party-whipped, ranks voted for health care reform – citing this one issue as an example.
They would tell you that they have legislative proposals but none are serious attempts for compromise. They are smokescreens meant to obstruct and delay.
The pity is that the voters perceive little progress and angrily react to the mostly Republican backbiting, thrashing at incumbents to show their displeasure, that is, if voters even go to the polls. The situation of the past several decades assures that voters will stay ignorant about proto-fascist Republican tactics, thus encouraging the anti-government, jingoistic, pro-business, pro-division policies of Republicans and assure the next dire crisis caused by Republican policy.
Recent history supports this prediction. The savings and loan debacle of Reagan Republicans in the 1980s cost taxpayers over $100 billion. The current crisis may be into the trillions.
You might say that the continued ignorance, alienation, and anger of voters is a vital ingredient for the continued demagoguery of Republicans.
What is the current evidence before us?
There are so many instances of lies, deception and hypocrisy among Republicans that we will have time to only mention a few of the most callous, not hard to do.
Anyway, take the almost $800 billion Obama stimulus package. Much of the pork and many of the tax breaks – not good stimulus policy – came from courting the Republicans. The spending for shovel-ready projects, unemployment needs, health insurance coverage for children, and such were from the Democrats.
In spite of Democrat’s attempts to compromise and even with the dire state of the economy – remember this was just one month after Obama was sworn in -- all Republicans voted against the stimulus package, acting like the partisan misanthropes that they have proven to be.
Voters didn’t seem to notice.
Republicans criticism of the bill flowed like waste, discharged from the broken infrastructure of sewage lines. The worst partisan manipulators had names like Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Jim DeMint, and Joe Wilson, the “You lie” guy. They are all Republican leaders or want-a-be leaders, certainly men who would only stop short of jailing their mothers for self aggrandizement.
These same crows of derisive attacks against Obama were prominent in their local news stations, many handing out “giant” checks, like the stimulus funds were their own to give. Their hypocrisy matched the size of the imaginary checks.
Do their constituents bother to learn the hypocrisy of their actions? It is quite doubtful that many voters even knew the money came from stimulus funds (many of the misanthropes wouldn’t tell them) let alone connecting the dots that their obstructionist representative voted against constituent interests, in spite of the potential damage to our economy.
These voters use other criteria to judge their leaders.
For too many voters, candidates are judged by their perceived camaraderie, by audience-centered conspiratorial snarky statements or by a portrayed populism. They are not judged for their underhandedness or by unseen or thinly-veiled, anti-people voting. The content of their actions is not mined, only their style and the cleverness of their words.
Generally people vote for celebrity personalities – those bigger than life but perceived to be like themselves. It takes less research.
That is why voters are fooled time and again.
Know that if the Republicans get a majority again it’s back to tax cuts for the rich, privatizing social security and cutting Medicare coverage. That is the extent of Republican policy. Their track record proves it.
We must learn to vote by issues and for people of principle, and not be guided by fear, rancor and sleight of hand.
Failure to do so will only assure a continuing round of government by the corporation, the continued presence of partisan Republican leadership, and finally another economic crisis caused by the overreach of the Republican-brand casino capitalism.
The next time -- we may not recover from the mess plutocrats leave behind, and in the chaos that follows, a more prudent country’s leadership will become dominant.
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