Todays State of the Union

We have two countries IMO, and always have. And they are existing together only for reasons of shared wealth and defense, or potential for shared wealth. They are ideologically disparate and geographically divided which makes overt rebellion more possible.

I do believe the majority are 1st world citizens, but it is not a large majority, and there are enough who can be swayed by bullshit in any given election. It’s just a sense on my part, but I get the feeling that the bond to generate shared wealth is dissolving into concentrated ideology. I hope I’‘m wrong, but right now, doing away with the filibuster would go far in breaking the bond completely. Aggravating as it is.

And I think the founders knew this about the American condition from day one, and why they made the government we have, with shared powers, and means for the minority to participate in the debate and have some favors of their own, by codifying the debate as extended.

It is also why we only change when in genuine crisis, whatever the issue is that’s causing the emergency. No way to run a country, but it’s what we have.

The Color of Wingnut

Talking about racial stuff is uncomfortable. And when I do it I feel like I am doing something wrong, and using it as a political weapon blithely. I figured there would be some of it bubbling up from some quarters on the right, but pieces like this Mccain dude and all the birther shit and behaviour at the teabagging parties has surprised this early on.

And now with the speech to students, it seems like whatever coding for it is being rapidly rinsed away and it soon will be more overt than we’ve seen since the 60’s. Even the talking heads like Mathews et al are citing it as fueling the over the top emotion coming from the right. There are legitimate ideological differences present, but the blanket rage and irrational myths being propagated and apparently believed by a large faction on the right can’t be explained away from just political disagreement.

And Obama is not doing anything that wasn’t declared by him during the campaign, and sometimes I wonder if his recent timidity isn’t just a kneejerk reaction to not fan the flames any more than they are. It is going to get uglier and uglier. The subliminal messaging from the right is do what we want or else, It wreaks of entitlement in the extreme, combined with mob hysteria and a complete lack of intellectual engagement toward reasonable compromise.

The GOP State of Play

What the GOP is doing is nothing less than what they tried to do with Lincoln before the Civil War. To zero in on the most primal core of human fear, or that what is most different and unknown to the prevailing pale skin public.

The cartoons and fearmongering about lending equality to black skinned peoples from exotic lands far away was the only real weapon they had against a man who had bonded with so many. Even in the north, that was basically against slavery, racism of the kind lending to full equality was exploitable by southerners and their sympathizers before

Abe was finally elected and then re-elected, so it didn’t really work, but caused much more unnecessary divisiveness beyond Lincoln’s sole promise to end slavery by whatever means necessary.

Lincoln was never about granting full equality to blacks, just to end the practice of slavery. Notwithstanding efforts of his enemies to portray full equality as what he was secretly after. Sorta the same with Obama on about anything he’s for, it is warped into something false.

Now these same nativist whites who fear a loss of power are playing the same cards of rank skullduggery and loud and persistent fearmongering lies to reach that core of insecurity the majority white folks naturally have. Someone different that they, a person representing at once a chance for many to be free from overt bigotry that they have scratched and clawed out of not all that long ago, but also opening the possibility of sliding back into the paranoid grips of racial anxiety.

This second thing is what the wingnuts are banking on, though disguised with labels of commie, muslim, Nazi. or whatever. It is about race, added onto at least semi-legitimate political ideological disagreements. And what is surprising and what makes it so dangerous, is the Right Wing brain trust actively and passively promoting it, in some desperate hope it will win them back in favor and power from a country that has shown them the door without courtesy, for epic failures of governance.

Allahpundit and The Boss (Malkin)

Allahpundit used to have a functioning brain cell or two, for a winger. He has gone full raving tea bagging fool lately. His latest cause is torture apologist and all the winging wraiths he calls commenters make me wonder if the Death Panel thing might worthy of actual debate.

He and Ed and the rest of Chickenhawk Brigades hide behind layers of wetsuit protected registration blog boards, where no one can question their dedication to turning America into Idi Amin’s wet dream of screaming cell blocks manned by squads of patriotic fingernail pullers. Meanwhile, the The Monster Queen lays egg after egg of hate filled wanking wingnuttery to kept the Mighty Wurlitzer turning.

Fuck em with abandon. They are not my countrymen, regardless of technicalities.

Wingnut Saturday - TK Funeral Edition

Jaysus Christ on a pogo stick. JUst was reading the braintrust over at Protein Wisdom. Jaw dropping concern for the integrity of Teddy’s funeral service and all that, shameless libtards. In between screes of “hope Ted Kennedy burns in hell”. someone mentioned Sarah pimping Trig on anti-abortion politicking and of course that was different. Also.

Then there’s Bush filling the east room with “Snow Flake” babies to justify his culture of life numbnuttery on Embyo Stem Cells. The ones in in-vitro clinics waiting for the dumpster.

All this on a day the WAPO goes all in for the neo-con torture project. And BTW, though I don’t often read Sullivan because he really is a republican on most issues, he is spot on today in rebuttal to the WAPO nonsense. A must read.

The idiocracy never rests, not for a single damn day.

Wingnut Saturday

They are completely insane. Even some of the ones who made an effort to not be, or at least sound that way. They are digging through ancient files of past wingnuttery, and bigotry (see NRO wistfully recollecting it’s segregationist past for a little modern day spit and polish) in efforts to find a new and improved narrative that will pass muster with the intractably crackered core of the GOP. It will take of lot dolling up the facts for prime time, but it’s all a long war anyways. Unless it jumps to the real thing of politics by other means./

What Was Old Is New Again

When you think about it, what route to electoral success does the RW have left. Their economic theories have run the country into a fiscal ditch/ And as older whites die off, the old wedge social issues of gay marriage etc,,,,, are dieing off with them as younger voters take their place with more acceptance,

They have completely screwed themselves with HIspanic’s ,with all the Xenophobic wingnuttery, and blacks have long since slammed the door in their faces, despite the RW intelligentia efforts to make the GOP a more welcoming place for them, only to be undercut by the anti-affirmative action crowd hollering about white mans angst.

Might as well go all in for white power to save their raggitty asses from a permanent minority. I look for more and more desperate devolution to past racial and ethnic roots, and maybe even sectarian anxieties of the white populace. Especially in the south, in an attempt at electoral evening out since white anglo saxons are still the majority in this country.

They will succeed only in paring down the remaining faithful to an even more distilled wingnut, but they will be loud and increasingly more seditious. There is really no other course other than to split the GOP into two separate parties which would further isolate them in a static minority, at least in the short term. They cannot ever coerce the screaming teabaggers into moderation because they currently have the numbers to beat back any effort to do so.

Rock and a hard place for the right, and a damaging course for the country as a whole to have one third of it’s citizens afflicted with the rage virus.