Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Republicans Are Mean

I have a love/hate relationship with Oklahoma.  I especially hated it when it was between where I lived in Texas and where I wanted to be in Missouri back in the '80s and '90s.  I kind of hate it now when I want to get down to Dallas to see friends or to Austin for work.  Other than that, it is a great state with a lot of fine, wonderful people including members of my wife's family and one Charles Hill of dustbury.com.  I am a fan of Mr. Hill, who is not a Republican but more, I think, of a traditional, conservative Democrat.  Party affiliation aside, I read rarely read anything on dustbury with which I disagree, apart from remarks in the comments section. 

Last week, Mr. Hill gave his quote of the week designation to our friend and Dear Leader, Gagdad Bob, explaining the composition of the Democrat party: 

But here's a timely aphorism by Dávila: "The worst demagogues are not recruited from the envious poor, but from among the embarrassed wealthy."
This fully explains the high-low composition of the Democratic party, with super-wealthy elites at one end and lofo and lower IQ hordes at the other. You could say that the difference between the two is that the elites are bankrupt in every way except financially.
This little formula explains why the wealthiest counties in the nation trend Democrat, just as do places like Ferguson. The two are locked in a deathly parasitic embrace, for liberals destroy and have destroyed the very people they most rely upon to support them at the polls, and the underclass can be relied upon to support the very people and polices that ensure its own continued ruin. The resultant civilizational collapse is what they call "progress."

In response to this, a commenter objected to the meanness of the GOP:

But the party seemed to metastasize in to something – I don’t know – MEANER. And self-contradictory. Freedom…for corporations. Freedom for guns but not for voting.

I objected to the idea that requiring a photo ID for voting disenfranchises people, but I passed by the larger point.  If you look at most of what drives the discussions about political parties it often revolves around whether or not politicians care.  Bill Clinton was elected because he could feel our pain, not to mention feeling up our interns.  George Bush campaigned as a compassionate conservative and suffered because he was supposedly uncaring with regard to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Obama has taken a hit recently because he was yucking it up on the golf course with his celebrity partners moments after a press conference in which he expressed outrage and grief over the beheading of journalist James Foley. 

Democrats and Republicans, all successful politicians are good at pretending to care about the concerns of their constituencies.  The truth is that most of them really only care about themselves, their own financial and professional success, and the pursuit of power.   Most are lawyers.  Lawyers are people who make a living by pretending to be a friend speaking for whomever is paying them.

My Congressman gets elected, for example, by talking about lower taxes, balancing the federal budget, decreasing the burden of government, being pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, pro-free market, etc. -- oh, yes, and bringing back goodies and money from Washington.  There are stupid, contradictory statements made by most every politician.  They tell you what you want to hear.  Sensible people understand this and pick the candidates who are likely to do the least damage.  Idiots like Obama who promise ludicrously grandiose results are inevitably going to mess up more things.

Bush did the same thing with regard to deficit spending and lower taxes.  No nation can afford to keep doing that.  If we thought it was necessary to prosecute the terror war on multiple fronts, we should have asked people to sacrifice for the cost of military operations in the form of higher taxes or a reduction in other (useless) government services.  Politicians lacked the principles and courage to call for keeping the federal budget in balance, and we have hamstrung the economy as a result.  Instead of correcting the problem, Obama and the Democrats have exacerbated it with stimulus programs that didn't stimulate anything except the profit margins of the very corporations against which they claim to be fighting.

In my opinion, until someone in Washington gets the nerve and motivation to reduce actual government size, scope and spending, no one, not Republicans, Democrats, Independents or Libertarians are mean enough.  All the talk about "reductions" is just about reductions in the amount of increase.  I don't think a federal department's budget has actually been cut since the early or mid-1980s.  I do know the Department of Labor took a hit under Reagan because I knew some people who were laid off for a while.  A few years later, though, they were all back at work in the same departments -- doing more or less nothing, and certainly nothing productive. 

We have more and more people in this country who think that good intentions and comforting words are going to change reality and rules of arithmetic.  It is not being mean to say that two and two are four.  It is not being mean to say that state laws grant a sort of personhood to corporations.  It is not being mean to say that people ought to have the right, the power, and the tools to defend themselves against those who would deny them their God-given rights -- whether those doing the vile deeds are criminals and thugs or agents of a tyrannical, out-of-control government. 

We are not voting for student body president here.  It does not matter who is nice and pretty and popular.  Politicians do not have some special insight or understanding of how the world works.  They cannot turn lead into gold.  They tell us that they do, and, if we are naive enough to believe them, we deserve everything we get. 

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