Pam picked up on a Freeper post supporting the president in the wake of Katrina. The poster taunts us liberals who think that this moment may finally be the one where average Americans finally wake up to the disaster that is Bush Republicanism:
Come the elections in 2006 and 2008, we are going to beat you like you stole- oops, I mean, looted something. We are going to hand you your asses in a bucket. The quiet masses of free-thinking, church-going, masses are going to send you back to your Liberal enclaves to cry in your soy-milk over more and more defeats. Your agenda is going to be defeated, your anger is going to go unheard, and your actions are going to be noted, cataloged and used against you to insure that you rat-bastards never get back into power.
The simple truth is that America will never again let the whiners, losers, beggars and thieves control the direction the country. The Internet has given Americans long memories. We can look up what you did when you were in charge, we can watch you 24/7 as you work to bring down the greatest nation in the history of the world. We know where you are, who you are, what you do, and what you say in your non-stop America-bashing ways. You are not going to win anymore, and there is nothing you can do about it.
The sad thing is that I think he may be right. Understand, I come from deep in the 2nd-reddest state in America (Idaho) and this is exactly what many of these people think.
I listened to a caller on Randi Rhodes yesterday. He was a 20-year-old man. He went off on how much he hated Bush and how corrupt the maladministration is, how stupid the Iraq war was, and so on. And then he said, “but I’m still a Republican and I hope my party gets back to its roots”.
Randi interviewed him for a while on his views on various issues, and almost to a tee, the young man was a progressive. But he just couldn’t bear to call himself “Democrat”. He could not realize that the Republican Party of his grandfathers doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s not about policy and values and vision for most. For most, it’s like a team sport. These people want to be “winners”. And after thirty years of successful branding, “Republican” is seen as “good ol fashioned baseball apple pie love your mom go to church protect America traditional values USA! USA! USA!” and “Democrat” is seen as “faggy whining pathetic loser tax-and-spend handouts-for-darkies let-the-wetbacks-in destroy the military drug-using French-lovers”. What young man wants to be seen aligning with that? (I didn’t; I was a Reagan Republican in my early twenties.)
You could move me to Chicago today and drop me in the middle of a sports bar full of Bears fans, an I would proudly wear my Cheesehead. I identify as a Packers fan no matter who’s in the uniform, no matter how lousy their record is. It’s about loyalty and honor and standing up for your side no matter what the odds.
But that’s just grown men in plastic armor and bright colored clothing running into each other as they pursue an oblate spheroid. I can understand that, for loyalty to Bears or Packers really doesn’t affect anyone else, and its a fun way to spend a Sunday.
This blind loyalty to Republicans, though, affects us all. The party of the rich has successfully converted many working-class people to their side by a combination of fearmongering (scaring them of married gays and thuggish darkies and illegal aliens “comin’ to take our jobs!”) and the false allure of an American Fantasy (you too will be rich like us someday!) that is increasingly unrealistic as they continue to loot the treasury and grow the gap between rich and poor.
I’m afraid it is going to have to get much worse before it gets any better. Nobody considers the fact that we can’t all be rich; everyone naturally thinks only of themselves and how they will beat the odds and become rich. And while we claw and scratch and fight among each other for the scraps falling from the Republican elite table (they call it “trickle down”, I call it “trickle on”), they feast on foie gras and caviar.
No, not until we see Depression-like conditions (which are coming) will America wake up and realize the robber barons have come to power once again. Not until it is painfully obvious that we are the poor and they couldn’t give a damn will Americans start to ask the obvious questions, like:
Given that there will always be poor, just how poor should we allow “poor” to be?
Given that most people will be middle/working-class, what sort of standard of living should hard work earn?
Given that no man becomes rich without the support of the poor and the middle-class and the society that provides infrastructure, commerce, protection, research, labor, education, clean water, clean air, courts, and more, how much does the rich man owe that society?
The re-branding of Republicans starts now.
