Uncivil War

I'm old enough to remember when there were sensible Republicans - defined as ones who didn't wish the south had won the war.  I even voted for some of them.  That's hard for me to imagine now.  That was before the two parties flipped their roles, back when GOP politicians were often more progressive and the party more inclusive than Democrats. That was so long ago it wasn't even back in the day, it was more like back in the day before the day. It was before the terms conservative and Republican were synonymous.

Now I hate Republicans for what they believe, for what they represent, for what they are.  That's not literally true - I know some individual Republicans I don't hate.  I don't like them, but I don't actively hate them. But as a group, I do hate them for what they are doing to this country.  They seem determined to destroy it along with any hint of fairness, tolerance, compassion, charity, inclusion, and create a new country in their own image.  A new country dedicated to fear, intolerance, bigotry, selfishness, and ignorance.

Republicans and their political leaders don't even seem to consider themselves Americans.  Don't believe me?  Ask them if Obama is their president.  They are citizens of conservative world, with its own rules of governance, its own principles, and even its own reality that have little in common with the United States and its place in the world as the rest of us know it.  The way they describe it, the U.S is a weak, poor, dangerous country, governed by an ineligible president not respected by the rest of the world. In conservative world, George W. Bush kept us safe and Barack Obama hasn't. In the reality the rest of us live in, the opposite of all those statements is true

I live in the middle of conservative world, at least geographically, so I'm familiar with this alternate reality. I see it on television, I hear it on the radio and in conversations.  I get angry at the racism and determined ignorance of the Republicans that surround me, but I get even angrier at their leaders who mostly know how they are damaging our country, but can't force themselves to risk their elected offices by challenging their constituents.

I wonder if any of the leaders of the south in the years leading up to the civil war tried to talk their fellow citizens out of  tearing the country apart.  If so, I haven't read about any of them.  But I'm no historian, so there could have been some.  Are there any today? I'm more confident in my answer to this one.  There aren't any. Not one who will stand up and take the side of America over the interests of conservative world.  And as usual they create their own reality in which they are the patriots.  Not in this universe.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Election time

I'm going to vote for Hillary, even though as a liberal I like Bernie's policies better.  I like his policies, but don't like him very much, and it's vital for the survival of our country that a Democrat be elected in November, and I think Hillary is more electable than he is. And when I say the survival of our country is at stake, I'm not being melodramatic.  The Republicans have gotten so bad, that to elect one as President could actually mean the United States as we know it will cease to exist.

I feel an affinity to her that I don't feel towards him.  I'm about the same age as her, and I feel as if we've been through the wars together.  I've worked in the public sector for many years developing housing for low-income people with disabilities, and I followed the budget wars Bill waged with Republicans in the House and Senate as they fought to zero out the housing and other programs that were the only hope for a decent life for millions of the neediest Americans.  I remember the relief I felt when the final budget numbers came out and he had managed to restore enough funding to keep these programs alive.  I knew that Hillary was his partner in these efforts, and I was one of the many thousands who wrote to her encouraging her efforts to extend health insurance to the millions who had none. And later, it was good to know she was there, encouraging President Obama as he fought the Republicans on the same issues.

And now comes Bernie, looking down from on high, declaring that nothing that has been accomplished by Democrats is good enough. Nothing measures up to his standards. Everything is inferior, lacking in the purity and integrity that he demands.  There's something irritatingly patrician in his manner, like a Roman Senator holding forth on the Senate portico, not willing to come down and mix with the mob.  Closer to home for me, he reminds me of the many politically-appointed administrators in the agencies I've worked for and with in every sector of government. The ones who were unwilling and unable to do the actual work of the agencies, but who were more than willing to criticize the work everyone else was doing.

Do I wish that Hillary weren't so close to Wall Street?  Yes, absolutely.  But Wall Street wasn't always the cesspool of avarice and corruption that it became under Bush.  I have to believe that when it comes time to lance the boil that it has become, Hillary will, as she has always done and Republicans are incapable of doing, put the well-being of all of us above that of the richest and most privileged of us.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

2016

I don't pretend to be a modern-day Nostradamus, but sometimes the future is so obvious that one can't help but know it.  This is one of those times, unfortunately.  Besides, old Nostro was a fake, couching his predictions in such obscure language that no definitive judgement can be made about their accuracy.  But this prediction is crystal clear:

Sometime in 2016 there will be a mass killing at a mosque in the United States.  And after it happens, Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican political leaders, along with Fox news and the right-wing radio crowd, will mock and insult anyone who dares to suggest their hate-filled rhetoric against Muslims had anything to do with it; instead, they will blame it on Democrats for somehow not identifying and treating the delusional individual who is responsible, and hours after it occurs, the NRA will issue a press release stating that the high-powered, high capacity rifle the shooter used can't be blamed and the only way to have a safer society is to make more of them available.

I really hope I'm wrong about this, but I bet I'm not.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Mass Killings

Thinking about the massacres that are taking place in our country, it occurred to me:  If one were so inclined, what strategy could be created that would maximize their number, and the casualties resulting from each.   It’s actually an easy task, since all the work has been done by Republicans.  Just follow their plan.

1.      Cut public funding for the mental health services that might forestall unbalanced, delusional individuals from committing the attacks.

2.      Make sure that powerful weapons with high-capacity magazines are readily available to these individuals.

3.      Give them ideas for targets by demonizing reproductive health organizations, people of other nationalities, other color, other religion, other sexual orientation, other politics.

4.      Assign sole responsibility to them after each incident.

5.      Also blame their victims for not carrying around the necessary firepower to protect themselves.

6.      Repeat steps 1 through 5 as many times as necessary.

I don’t really think Republican politicians are consciously following a strategy designed to kill Americans. Their aim is to get elected, and to do that they need the support of the NRA and other right-wing groups and individuals. The strategy of Republicans is actually designed to create fear and hatred of everything outside the boundaries of conservative world, and to make plenty of weapons and ammunition available for protection from it. At a nice profit of course.  Casualties from mass murders are an acceptable form of collateral damage. 

Remember, guns don’t kill people, people kill people – with guns.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Checklist

Let’s check in on how the candidates in the Republican primary are reacting to the tragedy in France.

ü  Using it to attack gun control measures anywhere in the world.
ü  Using it to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment everywhere in the world.
ü  Trying to convince us that all two billion or so Muslims in the world are our enemies.
ü  Blaming it on Obama.
ü  Blaming it on Hillary.
ü  Strongly implying that it will happen here if a Democrat is elected president.
ü  Advocating for war against somebody, anybody.
ü  Basically attempting to use it to their personal advantage instead of expressing any sincere regret and honest offers of support.

Business as usual for modern-day Republicans:  trying their best to convince us that the world is out to get us and only they can protect us from it.  It wasn’t always like this.  But the days when there were some moderate, sensible, rational Republicans are gone, and it appears they’re not coming back.

I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were generally reluctant to send American troops abroad. Now that’s hard to imagine. Now they love to threaten war.  They seem to think it makes them appear tough.  Kind of like the weird little guy in the neighborhood who owns a pit bull.

If Republican politicians actually had to fight wars themselves, I suspect their attitude might be different, but that’s not the case.  Since most of the boots on the ground will be on the feet of individuals from the lower economic ranks, it’s a win-win from their point of view. Fewer takers means more for the makers.

Never mind that a nation can only truly go to war with another nation, not with a collection of individuals living in different countries among civilian populations, and that to effectively fight ISIS (or ISIL if you prefer) will require a long-term strategy of international cooperation, intelligence gathering and analysis, and judicious and often covert use of military and quasi-military force. 

Much easier to go to war with somebody.  It’s the epitome of Republican public policy: ineffective, counter-productive, wasteful, expensive, they and their friends can make money from it, and they can get away with not paying for it.  

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Black Lives Matter

To me, it’s self evident: black lives matter.  I don’t have any trouble saying it, or writing it.  Black lives matter.  And I mean it: black lives matter.  I don’t understand why so many have a problem with those three words, because saying that black lives matter in no way means that other lives don’t, or they matter less than black lives. It isn’t putting relative values on lives. Black lives matter. White lives matter.  All lives matter.  These statements are all true. It isn’t either/or.

But you don’t really have to say that white lives matter, or that male lives matter, or that cop lives matter, or that rich lives matter.  All those are understood.  In American society they are truisms, so obvious that it’s odd to even write them down.  Black lives matter, though, for many people seems to be  something different entirely.

Here’s a test to see if you are a racist.  Can you say black lives matter.  Just that, with no qualifiers.  No “Black lives matter, but no more than white lives.”  No “Black lives matter, but all lives matter.”   If you can’t say black lives matter and stop there, then you don’t believe that it's true, and you are a racist, and almost definitely a conservative, and probably a Republican.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.

Deceivers and the Deceived

I recently received a very disappointing phone call from a woman with an adult son with special needs who lives at home with her.   Because of her advocacy for her son over the years, she has become involved with numerous statewide committees and advisory groups dealing with funding programs for housing and services for people with mental and physical disabilities.  And since I work in that field, our conversation turned to the cuts to those programs that have occurred over the past several years, and that continue to occur. 

She asked me several times who was responsible for the cuts and since I couldn’t help but assume that  she knew as well as I the group that was responsible, I responded generically that it was the fault of politicians.   Then she said something that made me understand where she was coming from.  She asked me if I knew Nancy Pelois’s salary as speaker of the house, and before I could respond she told me it was $250,000 I believe she said.  She went on to say that perhaps Ms. Pelosi should consider donating this amount to the programs benefiting people with disabilities that had been cut so extensively in recent years.    Now I’m not sure about the salary of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, but the figure she mentioned sounded plausible, but I am sure that the Speaker is no longer Nancy Pelosi, so I commented that perhaps John Boehner might consider the same thing.   She mumbled something about his salary not being that much. 

So then I got it.  Like so many other people I’ve talked to in recent years, she was determined to blame Democrats for cuts in government programs and assistance that negatively affected her and her loved ones.  Evidently she has decided to be a Republican, and is prepared to ignore reality in order to justify the decision to herself. 

Cognitive dissonance this condition is called, and it appears in surprising places.  My own mother, who is not in good health and relies on Medicare and Social Security to survive, seems to be firmly convinced that President Obama is determined to do away with both programs and only the Republicans stand in his way.  She’ll say with great sincerity,  “I just pray they don’t let him get away with it.”  With “they” referring to the Republicans he battles on a daily basis to save these and other public programs on which the poor, the elderly, and the disabled depend for their very lives.   I sometimes point out to her that she was a Democrat until recent years, and she used to know that that this was the party that created and defended these programs from the Republicans.  But my comments make no difference, her mind has become locked into a permanent state of dissonance.  Like my friend with the disabled child, my mother believes what she wants to believe, and nothing I can say will change that. 

And the reason for this?  Part of it is surely the ability and willingness of Republicans to lie convincingly about their motives and actions, along with their substantial financial resources that they are more than willing to expend in the effort.  But to succeed, lies require a gullible and often willing audience, and if racism is introduced into the mix, then the capacity for seeing reality not as it is, but as they want it to be, is increased exponentially.   It’s an unfortunate partnership of deceivers and those that want  to be deceived, and the price is being paid by the ones least able to afford it.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.