a party underwater
As the Republican party finally sinks into that vast ocean of ill-will it has generated over the past 8 years, it’s worth remembering that the elections of 2008 were simply the latest battle in a broader political and cultural war with historical roots reaching back many decades.
While the modern Republican party is apparently looking for a way to escape the toxicity they so adroitly and perhaps permanently attached to their brand, voters would be wise to remember the precedents in Republican governance that led us to this point and be cautious of any re-invention that does not specifically address the historical positions of the party with regards to these particular events:
McCarthyism and the Red Scare, Watergate and Nixon’s use and understanding of executive power, the Vietnam-era anti-war movement, the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act of 1964, the Church Committee and intelligence operations conducted by the government upon its own people, the Iran Contra affair and Reagan’s use and understanding of executive power; and George W. Bush’s use and understanding of executive power and the so-called “Bush doctrine” in consideration of the “Downing Street Memos,” the pre-emptive war doctrine, international law and the Geneva conventions, extraordinary rendition, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, warrantless illegal spying, FISA and the granting of retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who knowingly violated the law.
zombie karl marx
The real irony of Karl Marx, of course, is the extent to which he’s been embraced by the right and used as a sort of political bludgeon applied routinely to the eyes, ears and skulls of a constituent base that couldn’t pick the guy out of a lineup.
The next time I satirize the Republican party’s ridiculous obsession with Marx, I’ll depict a decrepit elephant swinging a zombie horse through hordes of short-sighted children.
young republicans
Trying to imagine what my response to a munchkin McCain or a pint-sized Palin might possibly be if I were to come face to face (or more likely face to about knee) with one during the course of tonight’s annual candy harvest… I had a hard time coming up with anything positive to say. As it went, I decided not to say anything at all… and do something at least marginally more productive to commemorate the recent intersection of politics and paganism.
prologue
I’d never been much into politics. When I was a kid, it all seemed pretty mundane: A bunch of identical looking guys and their identical looking haircuts running on about bombing and/or saving far off lands, spending and/or saving billions of dollars, and jawing words like “freedom” and “democracy” as if their utterance would somehow make them more credible. I didn’t care for their haircuts, and I didn’t understand why these two words were so important to the political class. For two opposing teams, they always seemed to look and sound mostly the same.
Politics was always a little too close to a team sport for my taste. I’d never really seen the point of declaring favorites in contests between those who I didn’t know, who didn’t know me, and in which I had no personal stake. I had no great love for the Red team, and the Blue team wouldn’t return my calls. This perhaps explains my aversion to politics for much of my life. I was an independent brought up in a system designed to smother independence.
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