Forget the conventional media analyses of the current Right Wing/Corporate political machine's behavior, analyses which presume the presence of a conventional system of moral and ethical beliefs.
Forget it.
Because the current Right Wing/Corporate political machine's behavior defies presumptions of a conventional system of beliefs by which democratically inclined institutions and those entrusted with the administration of such are presumed to behave.
Why, for instance, would the Right Wing/Corporate political machine actually consider preemptive military action in Iran after the spectacle/debacle of Iraq? Why would the Right Wing/Corporate political machine have any desire to reinstate economic policies that were solely responsible for the current economic cataclysm? Why would the Right Wing/Corporate political machine seek to dismantle the safety nets which protect the nation's elderly and infirm? Do away with public education? Perpetuate a military industry at the expense of its peacetime one?
Why would the Right Wing/Corporate political machine pursue a pattern of legislative action which would curtail the effectiveness of -- if not eliminate outright -- access to health care, human and civil rights, care for returning veterans, repair the nation's crumbling infrastructure, responsible regulation of industries which pollute, proactive approaches to the world's shifting climate and otherwise honor our American system of government in a way that uplifts, inspires and encourages every citizen's participation in the electoral process?
Because it's like this: they're not operating under a conventional belief system, a belief system that analysts and average Joes and Josephines assume they're operating by.
They're just not.
The proof? Why, the Right Wing/Corporate political machine's actions, of course!
After a while, it becomes clear to even the densest of hope-filled dunces that the onslaught of misleads, misdeeds and misbegotten miscarriages performed by the Right Wing/Republican/Corporate political machine has little to do with the nation's interests or those who live and die under the delusion that they do.
Each gesture, however couched in Orwellian doublespeak assertions about their policy initiatives -- Clear Skies, No Child Left Behind, Shock and Awe -- only apply to their own lives. Only the Right Wing/Corporate political machine and their acolytes strive to have a clear sky over their own heads while allowing the skies to darken over everyone else's, leave none of their children behind while allowing the rest of the nation's children to crowd into public school classrooms to be taught an underfunded and compromised curricula, and express shock and awe at all the wealth they've managed to accumulate at the expense of an almost totally wrung-out middle and lower class.
But to hear it said on the Right Wing/Corporate political machine's television/radio propaganda delivery systems, systems using an already in-place and trusted infrastructure, it's not their fault. Hell, they don't even exist as far as they're concerned. Why, it's your fault! It's that Black Guy's fault! It's the gays' fault! It's protesters' fault! It's regulations' fault! It's Franklin Roosevelt's fault!
And on and on and on and blah blah blah.
Forget any presumption that they give a shit about any of the presumed moral and ethical rules at all that seemed to bind generations past and bring us closer to a more faithful rendering of American potential.
Remember, rather, the last time they had the White House.
And finally... when did this all happen? When did men decide to discard decency and instead wage war against the better angels who dared raise them from the certain doom of tribal thuggishness? When did they embrace the very things that would prove so leaden upon the nation's soul and all but guarantee its descent into ignominy?
I'll tell you when: when they got lazy. It's much easier to destroy than to build. We're lobsters in a pot and they're slowing turning up the boil.
And somehow, they've managed to build an industry predicated on lazy, destructive, divisiveness. The very opposite of what defines America.
Forget it. And remember.