Sowing The Wind, Bitching About The Whirlwind

The short history of modern American politics is as follows:

Conservatives poison the public well with paranoia, bigotry and plain bugfuck insanity while sabotaging the government on purpose to gain political and economic advantage.

Liberals point out that poisoning the public well and sabotaging the government are, y'know. bad things.

Centrists clutch their pearls until their palms bleed, and then blame their stigmata on both sides being equally unreasonable and mean.

All of this was on lurid display in this fascinating article in Esquire -- "Help, We're in a Living Hell and Don't Know How to Get Out" -- in which the author talks to 90 members of Congress and concludes that our the legislative branch is, well, this:



If you fastfood the article, the impression you would probably come away with is, Jebus, what a bunch of dysfunctional whinyass tittybabies.  Fuck 'em all.

In other words, the GOP long-range plan to sow ruin and despair is working flawlessly.

Oh, and apparently everyone hates Ted Cruz.   Hates him.  And yet, somehow, mysteriously, he gets elected and is cheered by adoring crowds for reasons that the anonymous Republican whose angry parable opens the piece knows perfectly well:

The man is very angry, about the way his life is going, about Washington, about some things he has found himself saying that he wishes he could take back—he got carried away, total herd mentality, just so juvenile. People in public life should take stuff back more often, apologize more, and correct course more—now that would be making a real statement, maybe even be a breath of fresh air for the public. But he would just be screwing himself, he goes on, because those guys at Heritage Action or Club for Growth or Americans for Prosperity or some other goddamn group with an Orwellian name that thrives off of division and exists to create conflict might primary him, drop $3 million on his head, and he would be dead. And the way his district is drawn, you can't ever be conservative enough. He could get up at one of his town halls and say that the president is a transvestite Muslim from Mars and get a standing ovation. He wants to do the right thing and make a public stand for greater decency and civility in public life. But he can't...

Well of course he can.  He could do it tomorrow.  He could stand up and grab the nearest microphone and announce that the reason our politics is for shit is because his fucking party made it that way on purpose.

He could name names.  Point fingers.  Declaim eloquently in whatever venue he was offered.  He could switch parties and urge others to do so.

But he will not do these things because he is a coward.  Because he would rather do a deal with the devil than stand up and be a man.

Which is why, if you don't fastfood the article but instead read it with your special driftglasses on, what jumps out at you in clear, sharp relief is the fraudulence and the stink privilege and gutlessness of Republicans as they stumble around in the radioactive rubble of their own making -- a toxic wasteland which is spawning mutants like Louis Gohmert and Ted Cruz like Dr. Moreau's own whelping box:

Take for example confirmed bachelor and snappy dresser, Republican Representative Aaron Schock from just down the way a little bit, who (like every other Republicans cited in this article) may hate the system but clearly hates the thought of taking some fucking responsibility ever so much more, which why they always keep  a bucket of Fake Both Siderism on hand to splash around like cheap perfume to mask the reek of their own disaster (emphasis added):

"Because what has happened over the decades is he who controls the mapmaking process, you know, creates hyperpartisan districts. And you get more and more members who come out here and say, 'Gee, I know that I want to accomplish something on this issue. I want to take action on this issue, but the base of my district is so far to the right or to the left it makes it difficult for us to negotiate to the center.' But whether you're the most conservative member or you're the most liberal member, if you have half a brain, you recognize you're not going to get everything, and that any successful legislation requires the art of negotiation."

Sure, give me a magic wand and I'll redistrict the hell out of this country too, but Aaron, the problem is not primarily one of geography and political boundaries.  The problem is that one of our two major political parties has lost its fucking mind, and every sane person knows it, but no one in a position of power in the GOP or in the media dares to say it.

Which is why, on the Right, we end up electing and rewarding a mob of smirking vandals like the one described here by Derek Kilmer (emphasis added):

"Our Venn diagram," says Derek Kilmer, Democrat of Washington State, "is two circles, miles apart. Just after we got here, a group of us, Democrats and Republicans, were at a burger joint talking, and after about forty-five minutes, I said, 'We have to be able to get our act together and figure some of these things out. And across the table, one of my colleagues said, 'Derek, I like you, but you have to understand that I won my seat by defeating a Republican incumbent in my primary, and I campaigned against him for not being conservative enough. The first vote I cast when I got here was against John Boehner for Speaker, and I put out a press release that I had voted against him because he was too compromising. I like you, but I have zero interest in compromising with you or anybody else. My constituents didn't send me here to work with you; they sent me here to stop you.' I left there and called my wife and said, 'Oh, my God!' "

On the one hand, it is blindingly, self-evidently clear that this is what's fucked-in-the-head about our politics.  On the other hand, for Republicans in this article -- just like our Mainstream Media or your Crazy Uncle Liberty or any junkie or alcoholic still in denial -- admitting the simply truth that they are the fucking problem is an impossibility.

And so, over and over again, Republican disaster-by-design gets chalked up as institutional failure. 

Get's blamed on...Both Sides.

Sure, everyone knows Fox News and Conservative Hate Radio are the ones whose business model is lobbing cinder-blocks into traffic, but since you're not allowed to say that, "conflict media" becomes the generic, Both Side culprit.

Sure everyone knows that bottomless wingnut welfare slop troughs like Club for Growth and Heritage Action and FreedomWorks fund Conservative seditionists and nihilist and saboteurs, but in order to keep his job, Republican Adam Kinzinger (R- Just down the road a piece) is required to pretend that Democrats have crackpot Socialist billionaires who fund our crazy, Commie schemes too!

Strangely, Republican Adam Kinzinger (R-just down the road a piece) can't seem to identify even one of our shadowy, all-powerful, base-enforcing Liberal goon squads by name, or cite a single issue on which President Barack Obama hasn't practically begged for the chance to compromise away some of my dearly-held Liberal principles (emphasis added):

"There's an entire industry in Washington that makes money on conflict," says Republican Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. "Some of these outside groups—you know, your Club for Growth types, and your Heritage Action, and your FreedomWorks—they go out and they fundraise by saying that Republicans aren't sufficiently conservative. Or they pick an issue to go to war on because they can stir the base and raise money on it and pay their big salaries. And what that does in the long run is it takes what would be a solid Republican agenda and causes chaos. And they do the same thing on the Democrat side, you know? If Democrats want to reach out and work with Republicans, you have these groups that will stir the base...

And such is the self-evident Koch-like power of "these groups" on the Left that we now live is a country with single-payer health care, a massively re-regulated financial industry, a ban on the use of fossil fuels, chronic prison overcrowding caused by the thousands of Wall Street banksters we have stacked up in there like cord-wood, and where "Tuesday" has now been officially renamed "Weekly UN Gun Seizure Day".

No, Adam Kinzinger.  No, Aaron Schock.   All of this has come from a fundamental, psychotic break right at the heart of a Conservatism which, for 30 years, has openly embraced a rule-or-ruin style of governance where political opponents are no longer the loyal opposition, but enemies to be demonized, marginalized and destroyed...a Conservatism in which lying and slander and magical thinking and loony anti-science gibberish are now the lingua franca...a Conservatism whose polices have failed spectacularly, one after another after another...and a Conservatism which categorically will not admit that any of this is actually happening.

All of which which is eagerly aided and abetted every mile along this road to Hell by a Mainstream Media which categorically refuses to ask Conservatives any basic questions about any of these things.

But could slap any one of these poor, sensitive Conservatives souls around all afternoon with incontrovertible evidence that the GOP plan all along has been calculated, lockstep sabotage and obstruction from the day Barack Obama was elected and all they would do is whine about Harry Reid You drown them in a vat of Koch Brothers filthy money and with their last breathe they would squeak out "But Liberals do it tooooo!"

Sorry Adam.  Sorry, Aaron,  But this is the monster you built.

On purpose.

And it is doing exactly what it was designed to do with all the terrifying efficiency Koch money can buy.

So while I personally cannot stop your Golem from pulling my country down around our ears, I will not be denied the small, compensatory pleasure of watching you being eaten alive by the whirlwind you so eagerly unleashed.

And so I will leave you with a repeat performance of something I wrote almost ten years ago which seems to be, once again, sadly in order:

Whatever will we tell the children?

One day we will have to explain to the children what happened when Thurston Howell III lost his right mind and decided that for the sake of some tax cuts to make him incrementally more comfortable, his very bestest buddies in the whole, wide world were the Ultra Right Wing Gorgons down in Jesusland.

May I suggest the following?

The Story of Little Red State Fundy

Little Red State Fundy found a grain of hate.

"Who will help me plant the hate?" she asked.

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she buried the hate in the bloody ground of the Old Confederacy. After a while it grew up paranoid and ignorant and violent.

"The hate is ripe now," said Little Red State Fundy. "Who will do the mass mailings and preach bigotry from the Pulpit?"

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she licked envelopes until her bill was cracked and dry and stood up into the House of God and crowed to her flocks in their millions that God Loved Them for hating and killing creatures who were not like them.

Then she asked, "Who will help me focus this hatred politically?"

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she made databases and phone banks, and walked door-to-door with petitions that talked of Gods Great Hatred of Gays, and Gods Great Hatred of Judges that did not worship the Hate God in exactly the way the Little Red State Fundy told them to.

Then she carried the hate to steps of the Congress and the White House.

"Who will make a mandate from this hate?" she asked.

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she got on the phone with her very good friend Karl Rove and with his help organized carpools to the polls, and get-out-the-vote drives, anti-gay marriage amendments and smear campaigns. For Jesus.

And Little Red State Fundy delivered the margin of victory and was featured in many, many magazines: without Little Red State Fundy, the Republican Party could never, ever, ever win anything.

And now everybody knew it.

Then she said, "Now who shall help me Rule the Earth."

"We will!" said Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.

"I am quite sure you would," said Little Red State Fundy, "but see, now you are all my bitches."

Then she called Randall Terry and Tom DeLay and Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson, and they and the rest of the Shining Path Republicans used what was left of the Constitution as ass-floss.
And judges were terrorized into silence.
And those deemed ungodly were beaten in the streets.
And they invaded whoever the fuck they felt like, for whatever fucking reason they chose.
And the very idea of a Free and Fair press died.

And to people who had been very clear all along that they genuinely believed in a Theocratic Nanny State and thought that precipitating Armageddon and triggering the Second Coming should be the highest calling of any worldly government, were handed over the police, courts, government, treasury and nuclear weapons stockpiles of the United States of America.

And in the end -- just as they had been warned for the past twenty years -- there was nothing whatsoever left at all for Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.