You have the obvious shit like the GOP's sudden turn on fiscal conservativism. NOW debts are a problem? Where the fuck were these assholes during the Bush administration? They seemed to be in place for the last years of the Clinton one, y'know...when the country was generating surpluses for the first time in my life but for Bush? Let's see, you had tax cuts made during a(n undeclared) war - something has NEVER been done in the history of the world - to which another (undeclared) war would be added, huge increases to the military budget, a medicare drug benefit bill, among others...all paid for on borrowed money creating huge annual deficits. But that didn't matter because Vice President Cheney declared that "deficits don't matter."
The biggest hypocrisy is, in my opinion, the party's sheer lack of compassion. Look, I haven't read the Bible cover-to-cover so it's possible I've missed something. However, I'm fairly sure that Jesus was much more likely to support tending to the impoverished, the malnourished, and the sick than to be insuring that the wealthy pay the least amount of taxes possible and making sure that we project overwhelming military authority across the globe rather than overwhelming moral and ethical authority (If you've ever wondered how far we've fallen, check this out. Imagine that ever happening today). Yet the party which has somehow secured itself as the Party of God manages to do exactly none of the things that even an eighth-way decent Christian would do. And do the Democrats effectively call them out on their bullshit? No. And a resounding No at that.
Their anti-science stances are also legendary. Never mind that the power the United States was able to gain over the past century had EVERYTHING to do with education, especially science education; never mind all our advances in medical technology and improvements in the quality of life; never mind all our military advances too; none of it matters. Let our education and educational infrastructure crumble until we become a has-been on the world stage because you're afraid of evolution, unions, sex, and having your religion become marginalized.
But what has one of the many medical fronts we have "declared war on" been in the past fifty years or so? That would be cancer. There's been a "War on Cancer" for some time now. It's hardly won, but a cure has been recently found for cervical cancer and it comes in the form of a three-shot vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV). Thousands of women die from this cancer every year and a cure has been found, but Governor Rick Perry and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (and I would bet good money a large share of the Republican Party) are opposed to mandating this vaccine which, to be most effective, must be given to girls before they become sexually active. Any given girl has a 1 in 2 chance of contracting this virus over her sexual lifetime...that's not statistically insignificant...and the virus will ultimately kill about 4000 of those women annually. We've found a cure for a cancer and the GOP does not want you to have it.
It is fair to say that they are not advocating this vaccine (or others) go away, just that you shouldn't be "forced" to get them. Never mind the excellent safety records of ALL vaccines and the literally tens of millions of lives saved by them and that even 1-2% of the population being unvaccinated is enough to negate the benefits of vaccination overall. No, false information about them gets spread like they cause autism (disproven) or retardation or simply making vaccines sound conspiratorial by calling them "government injections." Aside from the fact that I have no idea how these assholes (and others like Jenny McCarthy) don't get sued for libel/slander by vaccine makers for spreading false claims and dangerous misinformation about their products, I can't help but wonder...where the fuck are the Democrats in all this? Whatever happened to fighting fire with fire?
I don't like Republican tactics. I don't like their Orwellian treatment of language and how it seems they're taking orders from unseen leaders (take the time to notice how quickly every Republican and their supporters - most notoriously Fox News and the Wall St. Journal will all be using the same words, phrases, and jingoisms whenever a new one emerges. It's like they got memos). Notice how there are no wealthy or rich people in this country anymore, they're "job creators." And they get to continue to be called "job creators" unchallenged because the Democratic party seemed pathologically incapable of pointing out how there are fewer jobs now than there were in 2001 (y'know, before the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy which were supposed to create jobs and how tax cuts now are supposed to be spurring the same thing, but clearly aren't). This goes back a while now considering that the word "liberal" is now a curseword in politics and conservativism is somehow a badge of honor. In a country founded on innovation, both scientific and entrepreneurial, being conservative (in the political sense of going back to the "good old days" and not the dictionary sense of preserving of the status quo and resistant to change) is like being proud of your ignorance rather than ashamed. Now that I think about it, the difference between conservativism (in the dictionary sense) and Republican conservativism seems exactly analogous to Chris Rock's famous "Black People versus Niggaz" bit from "Bring the Pain" back in 1996. (Nothing makes a Republican happier than not knowing the answer to your question... ;-) )
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| Actual U.S. half-disme pattern. Look at the legend: "Lib(erty) ∙ Par(ent) of Science & Industry" |
But what I'm getting at here is where are the attack ads? And by that I mean the attack ads of the caliber I've come to expect from the Republican Party. Y'know, the ones with blatant exaggerations and out-of-context quotations? The ones which make spurious connections that will cause anyone who's not used to thinking critically to accept unquestioningly? Where're the black&white ads with ominous music making claims (rather than cautiously insinuating) that Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann want to withhold a cure for cancer; that these people would rather your daughter die of cancer because preventing it offends them? It makes me want to rip what's left of my hair out. It's way too easy to attack these assholes and attack them viciously on any number of issues and yet...conspicuous silence. Even just the fact that like 99% of Republican voters are actually voting against their self-interests. Republican districts are overwhelmingly dependent on government assistance and yet are the same districts who rail against government in their lives. Those same districts benefit heavily from tax allocation (that is, they receive more money from the government than they pay in taxes) yet decry socialism. It's insane.
The party's supposed to be religious yet no one expects corporations to behave morally and ethically. Shouldn't a company where the officers rake in a shitload of money while simultaneously laying off workers or offshoring them to another country be shamed rather than praised? Shouldn't at least a tithing of the bonuses CEOs make be spread amongst the workers that made it possible? What about the lack of charity? The highest ranking members aren't expected to sacrifice in order to make sure their most vulnerable employees can keep their jobs? When did stockholders become more important than the people in the company? (Oh, right...) But still, the Party of Jesus remains silent on what should be a very big issue.
Ugh... I'm done for now. Too annoyed to go on...
ADDENDUM: Here's an example of how Democrats should fight. They may not win right away using this kind of strategy, but if they keep up with this drumbeat, they will shine...
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