(WARNING: prolonged exposure to corporate right-wing toxins can cause unfounded and unnatural fear and loathing of "others", decreases in income and productivity, increased wheezing due to unregulated industrial waste and a marked rise in purchases of Sansabelt Slacks®.)
The more the corporate right-wing tries to influence, cajole and otherwise force-feed its Gilded Age ideology down citizens' throats (and there will always be a malleable demographic willing to do just about anything a well-groomed authoritarian wielding id-laced rhetoric tells them) the more the body politic's natural instinct -- and it is surely a survival instinct -- rears and rejects the right's toxic message.
As is already being reported, buyer's remorse for all the crap-encrusted candidacies the corporate right-wing machine had incubated, hatched and set loose is starting to find purchase in our already dross-saturated politics/news/entertainment culture. Republicans voters are torn between two loafers in Mitt and Newt, each more irresponsible, uncaring, denuded and detestable than the other.
Still, true to form right-wing loyalists throw their bulk behind whomever the anointed one is for the moment, hence the hilarious GOP presidential candidate whack-a-mole over the past months. The machinations of the right-wing machine have been exposed through its own lack of restraint, intoxicated by years of talk-radio dominance and unparalleled reach into the heartland of American gullibility.
It's an attempt to sway the masses by using incendiary rhetoric that still, despite its pathetic hyperbole, evinces a knee-jerk response: be disgusted by the poor, be afraid of the brown, be uncaring for the old, be pitiless to the sick, be hateful of the liberal. They simply rearrange their hackneyed and historically refuted ideas the way a child rearranges its vegetables to make it look like they've actually been eaten.
Dividing in order to conquer is a standard GOP tactic and one that's clearly effective; witness the rank and file lower and middle classes who have bought into the GOP game plan, even though it will benefit them the least, if at all; so delirious from hunger after years of starving under insidious right-wing messaging that they will happily scoff down pie in the sky.
But it should be apparent by now that in a modern society, trying to control behavior by legislating morality -- morality which is in many cases utterly subjective -- is a mistake. Just erect enough regulatory road signs that are positive in nature and execution, road signs that keep people from hurting and exploiting others. In fact, it should be a legislative imperative to create and enact laws which responsibly utilize diversity, embracing the vast swath of opinions and personalities making up these United States, rather than codifying, demonizing and disenfranchising them.
By acknowledging the nation's diversity and governing to that reality (instead of the myriad fictional ones concocted by Republican word doctors and think tanks), America will have finally matured, its true potential -- so much of which has already been realized -- accessible to future generations.
It's a message that needs to be repeated, if only to counter the incessant backwards-marching drum that beats on right-wing radio and Fox News all day, every day. Steadily, people are realizing that the promised benefits of the right's fear-based ideology are hollow and cruel, that their masters are out of touch with real people's needs and wishes, that the hope of the nation lay in its diversity, not its division.
So next time you ingest some hate-laced bromide peddled by the right-wing corporate liars, remain calm, get the facts and let truth be your Ipecac®.
Follow Steven Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheStevenWeber
I may never "twitter" or "tweet," Steven, but I do love reading gems like this one (and so many others) from your twitter account, posted here on your blog site. Hilarious, my friend! :-)
Good riddance was the word I heard most often at the time.
Of course some natural disaster hit the state at the height of all that "secession" posturing, and the Governor had to go begging for Federal dollars as usual.
By the way. Are you having trouble with your profile page? For the last couple of days when I go to mine, the page comes up but none of my post's appear. I've been wondering if I'm the only one, or is this a glitch in the entire system?
As I watched the likely Repub nominee, Mitt Romney, cozy up to Trump last week, it was obvious the O in GOP stands for "Out-Of-Touch." I hope folks here don't mind if I re-post one of my replies from another blog. It says what I feel about the level the Pub's have fallen to.
The Repubs (who tend to be characters out of a Dickens Novel at their best), have reduced themselves to cartoon levels. Snidely Whiplash tying SS and Medicare to the railroad tracks. Lashing minimum wage and unemployment insurance, to the buzz saw at the old decrepit lumber mill they shut down when they shipped those jobs overseas.
All that's missing is the twirling of the curled mustache, which has now been replaced with whatever that is The Donald has nesting on his head.
The American voters don't always get all the wonkish political back-and-forth, but they get right and wrong. They understand when a party has sunk to the level of an Ebeneezer or a Snidely.
Thanks, Tea Party. You did what Dems have been trying to do for decades. You helped expose the TRUE agenda of the Republican Party.
Fear not, brave Nell! Help is on the way!
Obama 2012!
Also, you say "CUSTOMERS" like they didn't get anything out of their patronage.. no one forced them to be customers... it's obvious that they did it for what THEY would get. I don't get your point.
They get what they want AND they aid in creating more jobs. And also, your point about .. "let our neighborhoods... etc".. ALL have the same opportunity to be a part of that.. where is the implied discrimination??
We work their fields. Choke in their mines. Shorten our lives in their chemical plants, protect their lives and riches both at home and abroad etc...
And yes, we buy their products. And all we ask is a fair wage and a chance to finally retire with dignity one day. A wage that allows us enough money left over after the bills, to buy their widgets.
And yes, universal health care, so that no one need fear getting medical attention or bankruptcy from a medical emergency. Just as they have in every other industrialized nation in the world.
But nooooooooo! They ship our jobs to countries that have sweat-box wages and no regulations. It is the corporations that want something for nothing. Slave labor.
But funny how humans are the same everywhere. China's workers now want a living wage. They actually dare to want clean air to breath, and clean water to drink. Oops! Time for our good ol' USA corporations to start coming home again.
It's just not fair, now is it. They were just sure those "peasants" would LOVE working for a pittance in their clunky ol' pollution mills. Is nothing sacred?
Another point I like to make when I hear that Republican talking point, "Nobody every got a job from a poor guy," is to remind any person so smugly saying it that it takes millions of votes from poor people to put a person in office. MILLIONS!
Then I simply ask: Now, what were you saying about no one ever getting a job from a poor person?
I agree with the first sentence Steven, but the next sentence is advocating regulation of morality. "hurting and exploiting others" is the very basis of contention between the two sides. It's opinion.. it's subjective. You stated that the GOP policies will not help the lower and middle classes but many (the Right) disagree. Are decreases in unemployment numbers a help to those classes or a hindrance? Of course, you/ the Left disagree that those policies will increase job numbers.. so this issue is subjective. GOP policies advocate less regulation because many are unnecessary and are implemented for the sole purpose of regulating "morality".. supposedly preventing hurt and exploitation of others, while in reality, they are a hindrance to production and therefore job creation as one major example. Yes, it's "hurtful" when employees are not paid reasonable wages (again though, "reasonable" is extremely subjective) but, it's even MORE hurtful if those regulations designed to help employees actually force the company out of business because then instead of an "unfair" wage.. there is NO wage at all. cont..
And yet the "GOP/Republican ideals" you speak of, do just that in a very harmful way.
Every Republican Governor elected in 2010, is now actively destroying union bargaining rights. Preventing workers from having any voice in their workplaces. And it's not just about wages and benefits, Kams, although why shouldn't those workers be able to negotiate those things?
The Dems in those districts say they need those workers inputs, in order to address workplace issues. From overcrowding in classrooms to needed protection for police officers and firefighters, etc.
This Republican assault on workers being allowed a voice in the needs of their workplace and futures, flies in the face of all your comments.
You admit:
"it's "hurtful" when employees are not paid reasonable wages (again though, "reasonable" is extremely subjective)."
But you support the Party that is taking away the voice of one half of the debate. Leaving the "subjective" nature of what a fair wage is up to the corporations.
We already know what corporations believe a fair wage is. THAT'S why they go overseas, Kams. To pay sweat-box wages, and to pollute without regulations.
The Chinese people are waking up. Oops!
Where do the corporations go now? Perhaps the natives in South American jungles will work for beads. You can bet the globe is on the table today, in corporate conferences across the nation.
I don't understand.. you mean an employee can't go to their boss or even the company president or ceo and say, I don't like these conditions, I don't think you are paying me enough.. can you give me a raise? They can't do this? And if their boss etc refuses.. can't they leave and go to another company who will agree to pay what they believe they are worth? And, here's the thing.. if they can't find another company to pay what they believe their work is worth, maybe it NOT what their work is worth. And worth is not determined by what that person decides.. can you imagine how any company could stay in the black if that's how wages were determined?? Worth is decided by what the economy pays. If the govt. tries to determine worth, as with individual employees.. it will upset the mechanism that keeps it all going.. and that's what unions do.. they force companies to pay what they are not able to pay.. that's why Europe is having the austerity problems that they are now having.. that's why the USPS is losing so much money now.. they promised more than they could deliver because the unions strong armed them.. FORCED them..
I spent all last week here in sunny Floriduh snatching the (Newt, Mitt, Santorum) signs that littered our streets and highways and dumped them in the garbage were they belong.
I think the Republicans are heading for an epic disaster in November, and they don't see it coming. It's vaudeville, not politics now...and they're playing to a shrinking audience.
Ahh, Steven, the art of words! A thing 'o beauty!