Republicans: A Fairy Tale
Gather 'round the fireplace, children, and hear a tale of a time gone by. And like all good tales of times gone by, it begins with "Once upon a time..."
Once upon a time, there was a time in America when Republicans just loved America. I don't mean like love between a man and a woman, or the way some people love pizza, no, I mean absolutely unabashed, adoring, open-your-heart-and-pour-out-joy love. They loved America so much that the only thing in the world they hated was people who didn't love America. (Such people were called "Hippies," but of course they weren't all Hippies, but that was an easy description to put everything you didn't like in a box, and easy descriptions are ideal in a world where you love everything.)
This was the time, you see, during the Vietnam War, which was very contentious and controversial, except for all those Republicans and conservatives who just loved America. There was nothing controversial about America it at all to them. They even had their very own, nifty slogan. "America, Love It or Leave It."
It didn't matter to them if the war was right or wrong. This was America. It was Our Country. And you love your country, period, right or wrong. And if you couldn't handle that simple concept, get lost. Hit the road, Jack. Adios.
America, Love It or Leave It.
If you took to the streets and protested; if you marched on Washington and protested; if you organized and protested; if you simply had long hair and looked like you might possibly protest at some time in the future before you had time to get a haircut - you were a Hippie Commie subversive radical pinko Anti-American Socialist revolutionary dissident.
If you were against the war and said so, you were unpatriotic. Because America, Love It or Leave It.
If you were against racial prejudice and fought for Civil Rights laws, you were disloyal. Because America, Love It or Leave It.
If you were against inequality against women and fought for Women's Rights, you were Un-American. Because America, Love It or Leave It.
Because America didn't have problems. America Was All Good. And if any problems might have slipped through the cracks because we were busy praising all the good things, shut your trap because This Is America, and America Is All Good and if you can't see that, if you're unhappy about anything in America...then get out of here. We don't want you.
Because America, Love It or Leave It.
If you believed there were problems in America and thought you should point them out so that they could be corrected and perhaps make a better America - y'know, like filling in a pot hole before the next car blows a tire - you were a leftie, a traitor, you should be jailed, or beaten, or sometimes even shot. Or lynched. Because it didn't matter what problems you thought existed. This was America.
And America, Love It or Leave It.
Once upon a time.
But as that scraggly, protesting Bob Dylan once wrote - the times they are a-changing.
Sometimes Life is just too bizarre for its own good. Sometimes Life has a sense of humor so ethereal and unbelievable that it's like a perpetual pie-in-the-face and seltzer down the pants.
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it," the historian George Santayana wrote. And since we've discovered that so many conservatives don't believe in the reality-based world, but prefer to create their own reality - where they don't believe in the laws of evolution, or pretty much any science at all - it should not come as a huge shock to learn that these Republicans and conservatives who didn't learn from history are repeating it.
It's just that, in their non-reality-based world, they've ended up repeating someone else's history!
And so, there we get conservatives in the streets protesting, with tea bags. We get conservatives marching into Washington, to protest for 9/12 Day. We get conservatives organizing to protest at town hall meetings against health care for all. We get Republicans protesting against Supreme Court appointments, protesting against presidential speeches to schoolchildren, protesting that they hope the president fails, protesting that the president wants to kill old people, protesting that the president isn't even president, protesting against every single thing the President of the United States wants to do. And cheering when America lost getting the Olympics and the jobs and revenue it would bring, cheered because the president supported it - as did 84% of all Americans.
And through it all, they turn to the TV cameras in weeping tears, asking what has happened to the America they knew?!! Crying that this isn't the America they knew!!
Well, no, it isn't. For starters, in the America they knew, you didn't protest against the president and America. You called those people Hippie Commie subversive radical pinko Anti-American Socialist revolutionary dissidents.
However, like all good fairy tales, this one has a happy ending.
All these Republicans and conservatives who so deeply hated anyone who said anything was remotely wrong with America and dared to protest in order to make things right now see the light of day. See the error of their ways. See that it's actually okay to protest when you see something wrong. And see that it's a Good Thing to try to correct those problems and make America better.
And looking at how they're acting today, it's clear they're on their way to becoming Liberals.
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On both my mother's and father's side, although I grew up in TN, my family were Illinois Republicans, going back to Lincoln on my father's side -- a relative rode circuit with Honest Abe and our family has had a cult about him ever since. My mother's parents supported McCarthy at first because they were worried about communists, and they loved Nixon deeply.
Fortunately, none of them have had to watch the self-destruction of the party they loved and the self-mutilation of the party's past principles. They would have been horrified that anyone dare shout at the President at a joint session of Congress, disgusted that supposed patriots celebrated Chicago not getting the Olympics, and ashamed of the ghastly, unpatriotic diatribes at our President when he wins a Nobel peace prize.
I miss my grandparents and wish they were still alive, but I'm very happy they didn't have to see this.
The slave owners didn't love America, so they went one step beyond leaving it: the formed their own country. Let's let the south secede again so that the non-reality-based can move there.
Yeah, glad the republicans were able to set the dems straight on the slavery issue.
And did pretty much nothing else about it since. Jim Crow was fine by them, wasn't it?
Well unfortunately, today's republicans are pretty far removed from the party of Abraham Lincoln.
It is true that the southern democrats were largely the politicians against civil rights-that is why so many of them switched over to the Republican party after President Johnson supported and promoted the 1964 Civil Rights act. Thereafter, the republican party courted the right wing racists and gave them a new home-all for short term political gain (Nixon and Reagan's southern strategy)-- and now they are stuck with this group-but as Dylan says the times are changing..
Which all changed in 1964.
Boy, you sure aren't a historian, are you? Slavery was nationwide, bucko.
Well, apparently, neither are you. By 1860, when SC was the first state to attempt secession, the northern states had pretty much outlawed slavery.
But, at one time or another, most - not all - states had slavery. Remember, that the NW Ordinance, passed under the Articles of Confederation, prohibited slavery in what was then the NW Territory.
Even my home state of Nebraska had slaves, sadly enough.
Hold the phone, Bubba! Both NC and Florida finally turned blue this last election (and because I live in NC) no way do I want to be thrown out with the "non-reality-based" bathwater. Given time, the rest of the South will catch up to speed. Well, maybe not SC.
Thanks and congratulations! The good news is our younger citizens are taking in all of the RNC madness - they can clearly see the insanity that the right-wing zealots represent - The more insane the right gets, the better chance the youth of our country can open their "hardcore" religious eyes to the madness that is being trust on us all.
It was heartening to hear a conservative on Morning Joe say, "my kids are more conservative than I am, but they think the Republican's have left the farm (paraphrasing). The more Frank Luntz continues his "word games for Faux Newz and Murdoch and the further off the farm Beck goes, and Bachman and Hannity and Coultre - kids aren't dumb - they're catching on to the "old ways" of the GOP and the Teabaggers and the fringe Krazies they represent. For that, I thank God! PS - My daughter helped turned Ohio Blue - after all - it's their future we are fighting for!
Brilliant! (in a heavy, Scottish accent, natch)
Amen.
Well, reality has a liberal bias. I said in the 70s that it was no part of a patriots duty to ignore real problems which harmed our country. I say it now. But there are better and worse ways of fighting for improvement, and cons-who are agin' ever'thin'-are chosing the worse.
Single payer health care plan is right for America.
To accept a public option plan is a really hard compromise to make, so Congress don't ask us to accept less. We must have adequate health care provided for all our people, it must be afforded to each live in our nation. It must be done this year, this month, it should have been done a century ago.
Congress hear your people, we will not tolerate you to remain in your position if you do not deliver on this issue. You can not expect a nation to support you if you will not support the nation.
Vote against meaningful health care reform at the risk of losing your job.
First, 'Conservatives go for the Bronze' (they are kind of Bronze Age, aren't they) and now this!?
Epic. Pure epic.
When the righties start quoting from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," we will truly know that we have somehow slipped into Bizarro Universe.
Have you forgotten history? Nixon ran a campaign to leave Vietnam (although he didn't, much like Obama now). So much for those pro-Vietnam non-protesting Republicans of the 60's. And second, to say that the Republicans had a monopoly on using the Communist word is totally misleading. JFK was probably the one of the most anticommunist Presidents we have seen, and don't forget that RFK was one of McCarthy's right hand men.
And one more thing. You wrote: "where they don't believe in the laws of evolution.
You are still in their non-reality based world.
Actually they're BOTH wrong: neither is a "law." Both are theories.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the student to look up the SCIENTIFIC definition of that word and what it really means.
I don't believe in gravity.
"And one more thing. You wrote: `where they don't believe in the laws of evolution.
As opposed to "the theory of Creationism"? I'm still waiting for Christofascist ignoramuses to prove, even a little bit, that Creationism (or Intelligent Design) might be true. *crickets*
But heck, you guys are still denying that Obama won the election, so how does it mean anything that you don't believe in evolution?
Gravity, like electromargnetism, cannot be proven only observed. Proof is a legal and mathematical concept and should not be extrapolated to reality. Reality is a fluid vehicle for a reason : Who, other than a republican, would want everything to stay exactly the same. Who I ask?
Excellent !
According to Jon Stewart, they're already liberals.
I have been saying this for months. You can check my comments..
Robert J. Elisberg hits a home run here. I wish the repubs and their ilks set aside their prejudices and get informed. The train has left the station... the modern world would soon overtake their ill-conceived ideas/ways.
How the times have changed. Now, if you support the US government or the President, you are a Hippie Commie subversive radical pinko Anti-American Socialist revolutionary.
America, Love it? Then Leave it!
and vice versa. The progressives used to hate government and now they can't get enough of it.
Hi, Geoffreys!
Let me ask you a question. How can you not be a subversive radical pinko Anti-American Socialist revolutionary? By not shopping at a store that does not produce goods/products which are not produced by the biggest communist country in the whole world, correct? Now you go out to your nearest shopping center and find a nice pair of shoes that was not made in the world's biggest communist country. Go find an electronics store that manufacturers products made in the good
ole' U.SA. You cannot! Unless maybe you go to www.madein
Peace!
lol
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