Saturday, September 6, 2008
Overheard At The RNC
5 a.m.
The only people around the RNC headquarters now are security personnel. Cops of all stripes circulate around the hotel, nodding to one another as they pass, keeping watch mostly on their fellow watchmen. Every once in a while, Charlie's voice crackles over the radio, "Wake up!" and my fellow officers oblige by telling lewd jokes over the line to stay awake. The agony of my ill-fitting cop slacks has given way to a mellow numbness.
I am now posted behind the RNC headquarters, at the back exit, which is an outdoor ledge overlooking a park. It's a lonely perch and the night has turned chilly. Fall is definitely in the air. A man in his mid-60s -- who, to my exhausted eyes, looks a bit like John McCain -- suddenly materializes nearby. Given that I'm dead bored and my eyes have begun playing tricks on me, and that I'm manning a post in the dead of night, I can't help thinking of the ghost of King Hamlet, disturbing the night watch just like this gentleman, with "a countenance more in sorrow than in anger."
All the hotels in the area are dark. Thousands of Republicans stir in their beds, dreaming thousands of dreams about Sarah Palin. But Charles Hunter, an environmentalist delegate from New Hampshire and a veteran of Republican conventions going back to the 1980 coronation of Ronald Reagan at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena, can't sleep at all.
"This is my last convention," he tells me, lighting a cigarette.
"Why?"
"I'm a real McCain guy. I served. But I liked the old McCain -- when he was a true hero, before he signed on with the yahoos. I actually believe in 'country first.'"
"Not a fan of Palin?"
"If I were McCain I'd probably bring her onto my ticket, too. That's exactly the problem. I guess I tricked myself into thinking that McCain, even after he watered himself down for the election, could somehow restore sanity. The Democrats tried to paint him as a twin of Bush. Not true. But Palin ... she does remind me of Bush. McCain has made a devil's pact and sealed this party's fate."
Even though he's older, he smokes his cigarette like a young man, with earnest haste, before he flicks it off into the dark.
"That's it," he said, "we're through. Even if we win, we've lost."
Emphasis added
The Republican Party has become a totally rightist phenomenon in American politics. they are no longer a "normal" left-center-right Liberal Democratic party....... their fascism takes the form of government default to corporate plutocracy..... government has no function in their mind, other than funneling public tax monies into corporate profit margins, because laissez faire market economies bring "all good", and if the market doesn't address a problem, it is not a problem that requires solution.
In many ways their alliance with the so called "religious right", essentially authoritarian fundamentalist theocrats, is a marriage of convenience. they cage that voting sector on single-topic wedge issues like abortion, and let them run amok on legislation and regulation of "bed room" issues and all matters of human reproduction and death because it is a fine distraction, does not translate into regulation of corporate business activities, and by and large does not effect the rich because they can ultimately do whatever they want because they have the money.
it is actually quite a sickening brew representing a general, gradual erosion of truly American values such as secular governance and individual rights...... face it, a total ban on abortion really means that the State, not the individual, is in charge of what is happening inside a woman's womb...... how do all these "libertarians" resolve that conflict in their mind?
Americans will either take back America from the corporations and "religious right", or America itself will be lost.
America, in its preoccupation with Communism, ultimately lost track of the fact that America is far more vulnerable to evolution toward Fascism than it ever was toward Communism..... the Republicans, the standard bearers for "movement conservativism", found the formula to subtly and steadly move the American psyche ever to the right, to the point that many think of the term "Liberalism" as a dirty word.
the truth is, the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are quintessential monuments to Liberalism..... America is a Liberal Nation, and Progressives are simply attuned to the promises contained in these seminal documents.
by the way, there is some stuff out there on the internet that is radical liberatarian anarchism. they are essentially saying that the government is fascist because it requires income tax..... that is nonsense, and that is not what i'm talking about. the Republicans also capture that vote because if that Party's "small government" and "government is the problem" rhetoric..... the Republicans are about no such thing. they are about neutralization of the government of and by the people, making it subservient to the big Corporations.
my opinion is more like this: link 2
here's link 1....... why I say America's propensity is toward fascism versus communism......
September 6, 2008 7:21 PM
here's some more good stuff......
September 6, 2008 7:25 PM