True Lies (Qualifications)

I was planning to write today about the malodorous scent reeking from the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in much more detail (and having absolutely no fun doing it) when I decided to skip over for a few moments and check out Driftglass' (whom I hold for very good reason in highest regard) pièce de résistance. Here's a bit of it to whet your appetite for what is undoubtedly one of the best essays written this political season (perhaps ever) on the sickness unto death that has afflicted the Republican Party (and tarry a while longer, if you like, to enjoy even more of the forbidden fruit found there).

I couldn’t help but think how simultaneously important it is to work carefully and persistently to demolish the lies the Right promulgates, and how ultimately "necessary but insufficient" that exercise is. Because underpinning the effort is the idea that somehow, some way, if you just give them enough of the right facts in overwhelming numbers, some statistically significant number of Republicans will see the error of their ways and come some number of inches towards the light. But if the last 30 years (and especially the last seven) have proven anything, it is that this proposition is ridiculous. No reform will fix them and no remediation is possible, except of ourselves. We must stop beginning sentences or thoughts with "They must be made to understand...", "When the people finally see..." or "When Americans wake up and realize..." No such thing will ever happen, because there really is no monolithic entity called "America" to wake up. Instead you have around 45% of the voting public who are either well-informed, or at least interested in issues and policies. They are anxious to fix the mess the GOP has created and will be voting Democratic in the Fall. Then you have another 45% who are basically our own, homegrown Stalinists. Loyal, mentally-flatlining, cult-of-personality Bush-worshipping lemmings. These are the people who have been calling you "traitor" for 30 years. Who gird the GOP with a solid ring of diamond-hard stupid. A week ago they had no fucking idea who Sarah Palin was. A week later she is their Joan of Arc, and they stand ready to slit their own economic throats at her say-so and perish in ignorance, cursing some mythical "Liberals" who are somehow to blame. It doesn't matter to them whether or not the "Bridge to Nowhere" turns out to be horseshit. How many of their rationalizations for going to war in Iraq turned out to be horseshit? Their rationalizations for torture? Their rationalizations for suspending the rule of law in America? For domestic spying? For global warming? For the re-election of George W. Bush? If you want a real education, take a pen and paper back to the 2003-2004 debates and note how many different times Bush, Cheney and the Republican machine flat-out lied to the American people. What took our breath away in 2004 was not that the Democrats had lost an election. You win some; you lose some, and such is life. No, what absolutely stopped us cold in our tracks was the "Why" Why millions upon millions of Americans gleefully voted a simpering sadist and war criminal right back into office? Why did they brag about it? Why? Because it was a fucking game to them. They set the Constitution on fire, pissed on the ashes and sold their children’s futures to monsters for no other reason than Rush told them it would piss Liberals off. They are barbarians, and in 2004 we finally had to confront the terrible, irrefutable fact that what is wrong with America is not the fault of a handful of DeLays and Bushes and Roves, but millions of our fellow citizens, who are soul-sick in a way that can never be cured because their tiny, angry, lizard brains simply do not work like ours. They are not simply uninformed, but proudly, hatefully ignorant, and no matter what you or I say, no matter how many mountains of facts are laid out in front of them, they will go right back to the polls again this Fall, vote to sink another shiv into democracy's back, and go home thinking they've done God's work. And in order to have any chance at winning, John McCain needed every last one of them. Needed them lit up with crazyfire and ready to put one more hollow point through Lady Liberty’s chest. And so he gave them a WalMart soft-core porn sugar high. So what? This is a Party that will impeach for blowjobs if you’re a Democrat and turn 180 degrees in a heartbeat to cheer itself hoarse for dry drunk traitors and illegal wars when they’re sold under Brand Republican.

Please read the whole essay (and see the fun videos!) at Driftglass' place. You will get a very large treat. And although you (nor I) really need them, here are waaaaay too many stories on the true qualifications of Sarah Palin, erstwhile Vice President of the United States of America (if Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have anything to do with it). I dare you to read the whole essay without gagging. Suzan