The last, worst fear of the Ruling Class; Mitt gives a speech for the new American Century

Watching  the refrigerator-white circus that is the republican convention this week and listening to the various speeches I’ve been struck by one underlying theme; I’ll call it “other-ness”.   Much of the rhetoric of the party is based on this notion of “the other”, whether in fear or revulsion or contempt.  For that matter, the modern republican party – and it’s mentally dull cousin, the tea party – have little else to offer of any substance.

Have either Paul Ryan or Romney offered a detailed version of their budget plans?  For all his wonder-boy veneer, Ryan has left gaping holes in his plan in terms of the loathsome and grim details of spending cuts and tax reform.  The dullards in the party care only that his budget cuts out “those other people”, with whom they share no particular affinity; who, as a matter of practical policy reality, they deem to be less American than they themselves and who therefore deserve to get nothing and like it.  They’re isolated, frightened, cornered by events so far beyond their control as to be incomprehensible and they’re not feeling particularly generous.

These feelings play right into the republican mythology – the things the party used to stand for -  of self reliance, hard work for a day’s pay and – lest we forget – a legacy of divisive racial exploitation, bigotry and the white man’s manifest destiny.   To the simple minded, the personification of 50 years of coddling “the others” has been made manifest in Barack Obama, a black man with a Muslim name.  And the ruthlessness with which the old-money power brokers of a minority party have wielded this abject fear has been breathtaking to behold.

Take a step back for a moment and examine the republican bogeyman of the last 18 months; the deficit.  As a practical matter, it’s something of very little consequence to most average American voters – too esoteric, really, for it to be tangible.   The party’s pinning Obama with this make-believe crisis gives them a perfect justification for the cuts to the social safety net they’ve long sought and which their ignorant tribe is all too willing to see them undertake.   But the beauty of this strategy is that, to the extent that there is a crisis, it’s one primarily the result of the policies of eight chaotic years of republicans running wild; a drastic explosion of the cost of two wars accompanied by a tax cut for the ruling class collided with a once-in-a-generation financial storm that blew over the house of cards economy created by 25 years of republican de-regulation and laissez faire capitalism.   Presto! One hell of a deficit in eight short years and a shitstorm to deal with as George the Dim retreated to the relative safety of his pseudo-ranch in Crawford.  

To clean up this unprecedented mess Obama had no choice but to throw money at the economy.  His success has been muted by the sheer size of Bush’s fuck-up and the traitorous behavior of the petulant republicans after having their party ruined by an upstart leading an enormously popular revolt.   His attempt to keep the economy afloat has been magically transformed by the opposition into a careless and ill-conceived give away to the undeserving – to “them”.  Not to real Americans - to illegal immigrants and the poor and – ironically – to working class, blue collar union workers in the form of the auto industry bail out for which he is inexplicably chastised even today. 

Somehow the republicans have succeeded in making the country more polarized than I remember, even in the madness of 1968. 

Condi Rice – token woman, African-American and West Coast elitist intellectual – gave a speech brandishing her Reagan legacy and credentials and it was just another sad attempt to demonize “the other”.   Those people who would…I don’t know exactly – do things we don’t like?  The nebulous enemy we are endlessly fighting, the forces in the world that won’t acquiesce to our wishes to have our way – even in a noble cause – because they have things they want too. 

In what passed for a foreign policy speech this summer, Romney said, "I am an unapologetic believer in the greatness of this country.  I’m not ashamed of American power.”  Well, Mitt, maybe you should – if not be ashamed – perhaps give some thought to alternative ways of settling vexing issues around the world by some means other than parking the 7^th fleet offshore and scaring the hell out of everyone, US citizens included.  Your foreign policy advisers include almost 20 of the same knucklehead chicken hawks responsible for what is widely considered to be an historically tragic period of American foreign policy, presided over by the reptilian Dick Cheney, a man’s man who is so full of shit he’s already been discarded and ignored as surely as Sarah Palin, and Donald Rumsfeld, who’s exalted sense of righteousness led him to plan for an Iraqi campaign lasting months, where we would be welcomed as heroes. 

Chris Christie, a man who’s foreign policy experience is limited to ordering large quantities of Chinese take-out once a week, also puffed his considerable chest out this week, yearning for Romney’s election and the start of “a new American century”, apparently unaware of how idiotic that sounds to the rest of the world. 

Even the republican embrace of the religious right and the evangelical community can easily be seen for the cynical manipulation that it is; how easy it is for angry and scared people of religious faith to be turned into a hateful rabble who cling to their faith but forget the basic principles that should have drawn them to faith in the first place – contempt for the poor, people of color, different religions, gays and lesbians and anyone not planning for the second coming.   The powerful  guys smoking the good cigars and drinking the expensive scotch don’t give a shit about John 3:14 – they want to be in charge and as long as stoking the worst in their addled minions accomplishes that, they happily play along. 

The country is coming apart at the seams, separating into tribes like some god damn science fiction novel.  Or as Paul Ryan would put it, “the useless class” and the triumphant, self made class, like himself – never a job outside of government - and Mitt, the turkey vulture of the East.  The election may be the last gasp of the barricaded-in-their-homes-scared-shitless goaded into extreme intolerance by modern robber barons, hedge fund whores, oil companies seeing their demise in every Prius on the road and the last dying remnants of the Ruling Class.  The good news is, the “others” will eventually win.  As hard as slimy little vermin like Karl Rove pray alone at night for a republican century, he is far too evil for whoever he’s praying to to listen. 

 But don’t kid yourselves; if Romney wins it’s going to be a grim and frightening time for all of us who aren’t rich or drugged.   It will be as if we didn’t learn a damned thing since 2000 or, if we did, we can’t bring ourselves to uncover our eyes long enough to wake up and make the nightmare stop.   At the end of the day, those who are curled into a ball with the blanket over their heads will only be hiding from the inevitable – we might as well spend the next three months making sure that doesn’t happen.