Election Thoughts

If you could bring yourself to scan the Republican strategies for victory on the Op-ed page of the New York Times Sunday, you would have noticed that those strategies did not include suppressing the vote, stealing elections, and terrorizing the citizenry, and so it constituted hypocritical pap, and wasn't worth reading. The Republicans have nothing. When Condoleezza Rice went on her little trip this last week, she offered no ideas. She has no ideas. She is at the mercy of those she would like to control (or at least influence). The Congress has done nothing in this session except rubberstamp the administration's effort to gut and destroy the Constitution. The administration, of course, has nothing--no ideas for governing, no strategies for fixing everything they have broken, no plans, apparently, for anything (such as North Korea) but remaining in power. You might ask what they want to remain in power FOR, but that, at least, is evident--the goal of the Republicans is simple and straight forward--to loot the treasury and hand whatever they can over to the corporate lobbyists. As the months go by, the purely mercenary goals of the Republicans become ever more open--money, power, corruption, no matter what the cost.

There are times I hope they win.

Sometime last week--I think it was right when Condi admitted that she couldn't remember being explicitly warned that Al Qaeda was about to attack inside the US and then it turned out that she WAS explicitly warned--I made up my mind that more than anything on earth I hope that the Republican party is destroyed beyond resurrection or recognition, that the political career of every Republican, from the "president" down through every consultant (especially them) all the way to your local selectman, is smashed to sub-atomic particles, and that in the future every Republican would shrink from ever disclosing that he or she had once been a Republican. And because they have no ideas and, apparently, no emotions apart from fear and greed, I know for sure that retaining a majority in the Congress is the surest way for the Republicans to get right where I want them to be.

Of course there is a reasonable likelihood that they would destroy the rest of us in the bargain. I am of two minds about that.

Republicans like to say that they, not those who disagree with them, are the true Americans, so let's look at that idea. If Republicans are "true Americans", then what "true Americans" do is ignore tangible threats if they don't care for the persons who are reporting the threat, and then "true Americans" don't prepare for the eventuality of the threat and are astonished when the threat turns into tragedy. "True Americans" go to war just because they want to, and they lie to get the war started, but they don't bother to prepare for the war or the aftermath of the war, and then when bad things happen, they declare that that's just the way it is and they don't bother fixing anything. "True Americans" promise to ease tensions between Israel and the other nations in the Middle East, but they prefer to make things worse by providing the Israelis with cluster bombs, the "killer that keeps on killing". Sounds like a war crime to me, but it's, guess what, "truly American". "True Americans" are warned ahead of time that a major American city is going to be destroyed, but they don't ask any questions about it, and then when it is destroyed, they are surprised. After that disaster, they promise rebuilding, but don't bother ro follow through on the promise. If we take Republicans as our standard of "true Americans", then true Americans make sure that the rich get richer and the poor have no services. And, lest we forget, "true Americans" would rather be living in a theocracy, so they trash the separation of church and state as much as they can while secretly eavesdropping on their enemies. "True Americans" also hold out for themselves the right to torture people from other nations and people they don't like. "True Americans" prefer that people they don't like, guilty and innocent, be thrown into jail without recourse, maybe until they die, who knows? who cares? And speaking of Mark Foley, "True Americans" make use of gay people for their own purposes, but when the idea of supporting the rights of gay citizens comes up, they run the other direction. If being Republican is truly what America is all about, then my guess is that we will not be missed.

I know lots of people who are American citizens and voters who do not share these values. We would like our administration to live according to our laws and international laws. We would like to retain an actual middle class, with good schools and healthcare and decent wages. We would like not to be destroying our army in an endless, thankless, pointless war among a people who hate us more and more everyday. We would like to conserve gas and shift more quickly into a post-petroleum world. We would like to preserve some of our natural heritage and not witness the break-up of the world's icesheets in our lifetimes. We would like our children to have good lives, not dangerous ones. We don't care if people are gay or not, and we support equal rights for all citizens and taxpayers. I understand from the Republicans, though, that our values are suspect and not respectably American. So be it. Better get it over with, then. Better elect those Republicans and encourage them to do what they are good at, which is screwing up, for themselves and for us. And then making us pay for it.