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| I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill | ||||
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So yes, what the fuck is happening with American politics. This is a question that has been bedeviling the people of my generation for, well, ever since we've been eligible to vote. (A quick aside, I was born in Boston have lived in New York for the better part of a decade, went to a north east liberal arts college and use words like 'bedeviled;, nuff said). It seems that ever since the Clinton era, America political figures have been going out of their way to become Looney Tune style caricatures out of themselves and their office and then proudly crooning about it to their constituencies. The Republicans have become mob baiting ideologues while the Democrats have turned into incompetent bumblers despite having nigh on airtight majorities (which they are now sure to lose). What the fuck happened? How did the party of Lincoln become dominated by proud to be ignant, race-baiting gun nuts? What happened to the party that willingly alienated all their southern members during the Civil Liberties movement? Then just yesterday, I figured it out.
The parties switched positions, and they don't have a clue how to act.
I am serious about this. The Clinton administration was an earth shattering moment for both parties. The Republicans, where well seasoned, moderate power brokers. Used to be in power, they new how to use the system to the utmost efficiency, how to best engage the outside world for the betterment of the Unites States and their party. Men like George Bush Sr. and Colin Powell (whom I call the Last of the True Republicans) were the best representation of that bygone party. The Democrats were the party of the ideals. having spent so much time in opposition, dedicated to stand against the injustices of the party in power that had at times forgotten about the people in its eagerness to secure power. With the election of Clinton it all went upside down. The idealists were in charge and the pragmatists were out on their ear. It didn't take long for the Republicans to warm up to their new position as idealist, tapping the power of outrage. Calling themselves representatives of the "Moral Majority" and touting a "Contract with America" they rode back into office after two years. After that nothing went right for them.
New Gingrich legitimately thought that America was going to kick Clinton out on his ass for getting a blow job from a women that was not his wife. Never mind that the words 'philandering politicians' belong together the same way the words 'banana' and 'split'. Never mind his own infidelities. The Moral Majority would see this president for the corrupt and inept clown that he was and the world would right itself. Except that didn't happen. The kangaroo court went ahead and no one cared. The economy was booming, America wasn't involved in any major wars or caught red handed funding terrorists/freedom fighters with iffy ops records. People were happy and they gave Slick Willy the benefit of that. Course people loathed how the man could be slippery like and eel, with his huge shit eating grin and Arkansas twang. But he had become a moderate once he stepped into the Oval Office, neatly wrapping up all the fitful screaming about socialist utopia coming from the opposition and throwing it in a fire. He ran a tight ship and people loved him for it.
The lessons the Republicans drew from this however were the wrong ones. The fall of their most powerful figures in the battle against Slick Willy led them to the conclusion that they had not been moral enough, that they had not been touting the correct ideals. They moved further to the right on the political scale and started using truly ingenious electoral methods: fear mongering, self-righteous proselytizing, modern media, embracing the radical Christians along with voter district and Election Day Manipulations. Much credit for this goes to Karl Rove and his ilk, who recognized these untapped wells (of crazy) and exploited them for all their worth, while never seeming to truly believe in them. In the 2000 election it was once more the idealists vs the pragmatist, and under controversial circumstances, the idealist won. I won't go into the results of that election, the after effects more than justify the outrage that was created. This time things were different though, the idealists did not move to the center. if anything, they moved even further away.
A man of strong convictions and poor vocabulary, George W. Bush maintained the idealist line and drove it home like a spike into a vampires heart. The Democrats, finding themselves in the opposition, took up the mantle of idealists once more, but were wary of moving too far too the left, not wanting to make themselves too much of a target for the Republican media machine they could not match. For 8 years, idealism was countered with idealism and not to put too fine a point on it: chaos reigned. Fear mongering became tactic de jour of the party in power, hysterical contradictions the modus operendi of the opposition. Wars were declared out of conviction rather than reason, large companies with close government ties collapsed under the weight of their own corruption, natural disasters struck and the reaction of the government was glacial at best. The Republican government had failed to become pragmatic and seemed to bungle from one disaster into the next. (Yes I am aware this is unfair to blame it all these things on the Bush government as they neither controlled nor instigated these events. I am more making a reference to the reactions of said administration, which were often fueled by idealistic rather than pragmatic impulses and had the tendency to make a bad situation worse. - Flip)
In 2008 the idealist president was leaving office with abysmal approval ratings, shouting at the top of his lungs that history would vindicate him. On the horizon a young, Democratic idealist was taking the world by storm, overthrowing his more pragmatic elders to take role of heir apparent. He used new rhetoric, inflaming passion while avoiding being inflammatory and using new medias to deftly expand his influence. On the other side, an elderly pragmatist, well respected on almost all sides was looking for his chance. However, within his own party he was regarded with suspicion, having always opposed the more radical, ideals driven approach they had taken. He had been crucified be that wing of his party in the 200 election. He made the unfortunate choice of trying to win them over in 2008. The general public had already had enough of the ideals that the Republican party had been representing, they had seen what havoc those ideals could cause when placed in office. Coming from a man who had never supported them and actively opposed them caused widespread revulsion amongst voters. He did not help his cause by bringing on a candidate for VP who made the sitting president look like a scholarly voice of moderation.
Which brings us to the current day. The Democrats, gifted with almost ironclad majorities, dithered them away. It seemed that after the battles of the past 8 years, Democrats had completely forgotten how to be pragmatic and opportunistic, unwilling to go in for the kill while their opponents were on the ropes. The Republicans meanwhile, dug even deeper into their ideals and added hefty flavoring of racism to their rhetoric. The new president was disparaged for his youthfulness and then accused of trying turn the United States into a socialist utopia and numerous other preposterous imputations. The president seems to be caught in a bind as the idealists in his own party refuse to allow him to move to the center and become a pragmatist and the opposition paints him as a villainous, illegal-immigrant son of Stalin and Hitler.
Strap in folks. This is going to get rough.
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