Confederacy of Dunces

I have a premise. I’ve spent months working on it while riveted to the television and internet, watching the 2012 Presidential campaign develop like an origami snake - one pointed crease and sharp fold at a time.

I’m certainly not the first person to ask themselves what vicious trick Fortuna is playing on us now. It can’t just be me who watches these GOP debates and thinks that scraping the bottom of the Republican barrel doesn’t even come close to describing what we are witnessing as a Nation.

I cringe when I imagine what the world at large thinks of the line-up of Unusual Suspects vying to be President of the United States. It’s that same feeling I had every time George W. Bush came out to the podium to speak during his two terms in office. I wasn’t sure what gaffe he would commit next, how many times in one conversation he’d mispronounce the word ‘nuclear’ and on which foreign land he’d declare war next. I just knew that anything was possible and I spent eight years popping Tums.

He seemed, to me, a shelter puppy who'd suddenly found himself in a new home with lots of carpet to pee on; wide-eyed, shocked to be there, and ready to rip into a juicy bone. Good thing for him he had multiple puppet-masters like Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney - who clearly played the part of middle finger.

I’ve had to break out the chewable antacid pills again as I ponder the current crop of GOP contenders and consider the possibility that one of them could eventually become President of the United States.

Consider Rick Perry: from his disturbing and seemingly drunken, rambling speech in New Hampshire, to his debate performance in Michigan where he drew a blank while trying to name the third federal agency he would abolish if elected president. It was painful to watch. I felt sorry for the guy, but I’m sure pity isn’t the emotion he was going for. Just trying to imagine this guy in talks with foreign officials gives me heart palpitations.

Then there’s Herman Cain; the King of the ridiculous 9-9-9 plan that would assure the top 1% will continue to benefit while the rest of us 99%’ers would be pushed further to the bottom of the pile. Now the former pizza magnate and motivational speaker - who is backed by the strong arm of the Koch brothers and their Americans for Prosperity - is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal. But despite the drip, drip, drip of accusers, Herman continues to operate from atop a pedestal of righteous indignation.

I’m going to skip right over Ron Paul and Rick Santorum because while Ron has that crazy Grandpappy vibe and I sort of enjoy him, Rick is so far to the right he’s almost invisible at this point. There’s no way in Hades either of these guys will get anywhere close to being the nominee and they both know it. It seems they’re just there for the free food in the many media green room pit-stops. Or perhaps they both enjoy hearing themselves speak.

I can think of no other reasonable explanation for them continuing to travel the country, flushing contributor dollars down the toilet by the fist-full. My suggestion to both of them is to throw in the towel and donate the rest of the cash in their coffers to their favorite charities. It would do far more good in the grand scheme of things.

Michelle Bachmann continually rails against entitlements and big government, but she and her family have benefited greatly from land subsidies and federal monies for her business. That is disingenuous at best... insidious at worst. And consider this statement: “Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

I wonder what she’d say to one of her constituents who relies on food stamps as the only thing standing between him and starvation because he was laid off a year ago and cannot find a job in this economy. Ditto the other 13.9 million people like him, all trying to scoop water off the bow of the Titanic with soup spoons.

I further wonder why nobody has the cahones to publicly call her on this statement. At not one of these debates do the moderators seem intent on actually holding these debaters feet to the fire. Repeatedly, the GOP contenders are asked a question and repeatedly they do not answer that question, but circle around to their talking point of the day, which invariably begins with them waxing poetic about feeling our collective pain regarding the economic disaster and massive job loss, and ending with Obama’s failed policies being the cause of it all. No mention, of course, of how that pile of guano ended up on the President’s desk in the first place. Nor have any of them suggested that the GOP stranglehold via their Congressional amigos might have something to do with our inability to rectify the jobs situation.

Why are these debate moderators and media pundits not asking direct questions and demanding they get a direct answers? At this point the word debate has become a joke, along with most of the media coverage - and all one has to do to see that is spend a little time on Twitter, Facebook, and any number of social networking sites and blogs.

The general consensus: there is no debate going on. It’s a recurring sideshow-esque reality show featuring actors with virtually no accountability - and in some cases, no conscience.

But the sideshow continues…

Newt Gingrich and Mitt “Flip Flop” Romney appear to be the least problematic of the bunch, politically speaking, though neither of these men meet with anything other than tepid reactions from possible voters, pundits, and their own GOP party members. Probably because they’ve both been around long enough for everyone to have decided they’re not anyone's first choice. Or even their second one... both in his own way like a document run through the photocopier one too many times; a tired image of what might have been… if only. And there are a lot of “if onlys” for both men.

Which brings me to my premise.

What I’ve outlined above is a collection of undesirable contenders no more able to successfully lead this nation than my albino frog, Humbert Humbert.

We must also take into account all of the forces behind the scenes: the Brothers Koch pulling the purse strings of Herman Cain as well as plunging their grubby paws into any political fight that serves them personally; Grover Norquist holding an entire governing body of lawmakers hostage due to a Tax Reform pledge penned and signed over a decade ago.

For heaven’s sake, Grover. I have a kid who’s gone from diapers to big boy undies and is almost out of elementary school in that amount time. Am I to assume that I shouldn’t adjust the particulars of his daily care and rearing based on the circumstances of today rather than ten years ago when he surfed out of my who-ha on a tidal wave of amniotic fluid and only required a clean nappy and a bottle milk to keep him content?

Cue the gaggle of Grand Ole’ Partiers like Mitch McConnell and his cronies, all bent on seeing our sitting president as a one-termer, and what we have is a recipe for a bilious stew of governmental gridlock; self-sustaining dysfunction with no end in sight.

But perhaps that’s the intent. At least from the perspective of the congressional GOP. Imagine, for a moment, if there was effectively no pesky POTUS to get in the way of the daily Senate and House shenanigans. Imagine a United States where the President was a puppet for Congress; a figurehead bought and paid for to do their bidding. A leader who was just ineffective enough to bow to every demand of whichever party held the most seats in Congress - a group of lawmakers who change the rules when it’s convenient for them; when it’s politically convenient and skirts around silly little issues like simple majority votes cast.

I don’t see anyone in the current line up of Republican contenders who, if President, would have the mettle to effectively do the job, or stones big enough to stand up to Congress when the need arose.

And I suspect that certain members of the House and Senate don’t either. Only to them, that’s a good thing.

Meanwhile, we, the American people are strapped to Fortuna’s wheel and can only hope she does not crush us beneath her spokes.

The Not-So-Great Debates: The Politics of Fear and Self-Loathing

Clearly the word "debate" doesn't mean anything anymore.

To actually debate something, it helps to have people who have vast differences of opinions be the ones asking the questions. Also, it helps if those questions are a bit more probing than "wall or no wall".

As it is, all we get from the current crop of GOP presidential "debates" is a look at which might be the lesser of 7 or 8 evils. We’re forced to peruse the political meat on the chopping block and decide which cut is furthest from its expiration date by the heady scent of disingenuous decay wafting through our TV screens. Unfortunately, their collective stench mingles into a festering potage; it’s impossible to determine where one stink ends and another begins.

I suppose I sound jaded; angry even. And I fully cop to being a liberal, but you know what? I would welcome some diversity - would love to see a Republican contender who was close enough to the middle - where I honestly think the majority of Americans hover, politically - to give the Democrats a run for their money. Why? Because a good candidate from each side going up against one another in a fair fight is what this country deserves.

I think we’ve earned it.

We deserve better than a candidate who had a racial epithet painted on a sign outside his family hunting camp.

We deserve better than a candidate who thinks “praying the gay away” is a viable option.

We deserve better than someone who belittles the marriage discussion by using a pathetically moronic metaphor involving a napkin and paper towel.

We deserve a candidate who doesn’t change his or her stance on any given topic with the regularity that they change their undergarments.

We deserve honesty.

We deserve to have a media that doesn’t follow faux candidates around and monitor their every word and self-promotional sound byte.

Instead we get a plate full of crazy with a couple of self-serving teasers à la carte.

As time goes by, it becomes more and more painful to watch these debates and whistle-stop stump speeches, particularly when you consider the reactions from the audience members - a throbbing mass of sign-toting hysteria permeated by fear and loathing.

This kind of vitriol only comes from one of two places: fear and/or ignorance. I choose to believe these people are not all stupid. That wouldn’t be fair. So one can only assume that the candidates, as well as their “followers” are filled with a fear that is so absolute, so ingrained, they can’t see how truly self-centered it is to assume that everyone should think the way they do - that diversity is a bad thing, a blight upon the American existence, rather than what the Founding Fathers actually intended the American melting pot experience be.

Based on some of the things these candidates have said (with a microphone present) it’s not hard to imagine what their inner monologue sounds like:

Those gays want to drag American morality to hell in a frilly hand basket with all that marriage talk and… stuff they do to each other. Insert collective GOP shudder here. What about those horrible, scary, jihadist Muslims - evil, all of them, bent on our imminent destruction. And don’t even get us started on those filthy Mexican immigrants stealing all our jobs. Gays, immigrants, non-Christians, terrorists, liberals, women seeking to decide what they do with their own bodies, union workers, a middle class who insists on fair and balanced taxation - it seems the majority of America is the enemy of the GOP.

The sad truth is, the grubby little not-so-secret psychology from which the wellspring of the New Right Wing originates is an omnipresent blanket of fear that envelops their entire agenda. Consumed with paranoia, intolerance and gluttonous self-indulgence - everything from the Muslim down the street who threatens the very fiber of their way of life, to their fellow (wrong-thinking) American who dares fight for their own nugget of the American dream - every imagined “enemy” endangers their inalienable rights given to them by God; their God.

Any other God need not apply.

It is a group simmering in a belief system that stems from Old Testament rage. One can’t be sure whether we should pity this new breed of Republican or declare the lot of them enemies of the state. It would be easy to feel sorry for them, and even easier to ignore them entirely, if it weren’t so dangerous to do so.

So America is held hostage, rapt attention diverted toward debates that are a cross between a deranged carnival and a fifteen car pile-up where the audience rubbernecks its way past the collective mayhem.

Where are the GOP members who would say, “Sorry, I’m not buying into this nonsense. That’s not what we’re about. That’s not what we stand for.”

That’s the Republican I want running against Obama. I’m just not sure there are any out there anymore.

I find myself thinking about that eternal line from Anne Frank, and the context within which is was written:

It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end, and that peace & tranquility will return once again.

I am loathe to compare the politics of any party to an ideology that ended, historically, with the deaths of millions of people, but there is something to be said here for the comparison if it is used metaphorically and applied to what we are seeing played out, daily.

If we can all agree on one thing, I would hope that it would be that the politics of fear and loathing have no place in America.

I wonder, though, if we can even agree on that, anymore.

Rick Perry is the Devil

For those who are happy to espouse the blatantly untrue rhetoric that Rick Perry is “The Job-Creation Miracle Worker” perhaps they should dig a little deeper into what kind of supposed “jobs” he’s creating.

Texas leads the nation in minimum wage workers. Thirty-seven percent of the 211,000 jobs Texas added (by Perry) in 2010 were minimum wage or BELOW.

Couple that with the fact that the Texas unemployment rate has steadily increased (from 7.7 to 8.2 percent) during this supposed job creation time, and what you have are lots of jobs for undocumented workers. Approximately 550,000 workers made $7.25 an hour or lower—and that’s more than double the number of Texans making those wages in 2008.

But the bitter irony is that with 100,000 jobs due to be slashed because of his mismanagement of the state budget, we’re now witnessing a candidate whose entire Presidential Premise is false.

Boy howdy, them Texans are enjoying some serious f*cking prosperity, aren’t they?

Yes, Mr. Perry. You’ve shown sublime perspicacity in fucking your state over. At best, you’re disingenuous; at worst—chock full of self-serving malevolence. You may be the king of the Lone Star State, but the majority of your subjects are barely surviving your tenure.

If this Texan takes the White House, Americans should promptly assume the position; bend over your kitchen tables, let the back-door pillaging commence—President Perry (shudder) would happily deliver Americans a collective fisting.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist.” ~ The Usual Suspects