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The Party’s Over


Republican Party

The hard core of Trump’s support is white, ill-educated, machismo-fantasist, racist, homophobic and misogynist men.

In their bizarre world – which reflects their sexual insecurities more than anything else – anyone man who opposes Trump is a ‘cuck’ … meaning cuckold, a ‘sissy’ man whose wife/girlfriend/partner is taken sexually and willingly by a more ‘alpha male’.

In their world, women are seen mainly as mere sexual objects to be ogled, groped at will, degraded, demeaned and worse.

In their world, guns and violence are glorified … as are ‘strong men’ like the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

In their world paranoia, conspiracy theories and extreme gullibility run riot. The dangers of Hurricane Mathew are cast as a conspiracy-hyped threat to scare people into believing in global warming and climate change. If Trump loses the election, this result is already being framed as a rigged vote. And the dwindling support for their brand of idiocy is explained by things like:

“Men aren’t men anymore. Testosterone levels have been dropping, and men are getting weaker every generation. Some people will tell you it’s just because they’re pussies, but the truth is the water is polluted. Look into xenoestrogens.”

And let’s be clear: we’re not talking about a small number of nutcases here. No, we’re talking about millions of US citizens, albeit mostly of the stupid male variety. We’re talking about large, rag-bag collection of bible-thumping religious zealots, tea-party hard-cores, white supremacists, xenophobes, gun fanatics, “southern good ol’ boys”, conspiracy freaks, ‘survivalists’, anti-abortion crusaders, biker gangs, machismo fantasists, homophobes … the list goes on.

The tragedy for the Republican Party is that, bit by bit, it has allowed this motley, insular crew to take over large chunks of their organisation. Even worse, it didn’t even need to pander to these idiots because their votes have nowhere else to go except the box marked ‘abstain’ … and most of these people are too driven to go there.

And by its unreasoning, unbending and extreme hostility to pretty much everything that Obama has tried to do, the Republican Party – through its control of the Senate and the House of Representatives – has created a virtual paralysis of government in the USA for the last eight years and created an atmosphere of bile, division and vitriol that has only further encouraged the extremists out of the woodwork and into the world of Trumpism.

And so came the bitter fruits of their labours: the most unelectable, most unfit-for-President candidate in many, many decades, perhaps ever. This swaggering blow-hard, the puffed-up con artist, the narcissist, the crude, mean-minded man of small wit and large insult … the man who actually brags about his ability to sexually molest women and get away with it.

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Trumperites


The supporters of Donald Trump are venting their anger at a Republican party “establishment” which they feel has consistently let them down and betrayed them. But in supporting Trump they show no understanding that the Republican leadership has mostly been forced to “betray” them because the causes that they espouse find little echo amongst the wider electorate and are thus heavy political liabilities when it comes to electing a president.

Yet Trumperites live in denial, persisting with the delusion that they are the “silent majority”.

But hey, here’s some breaking news for such folk: in reality you are nothing but a loud, aggressive and unpleasant minority. And in truth the American people will never elect Trump – or anyone like him – to the office of President … because they know that such bigoted blowhards are quite simply not fit for office.

So go ahead, support the ignorance, bluster and deliberate outrageousness of Trump. Cheer his racist comments. Clap heartily as he continues to hurl insults left, right and centre. Stamp your feet in approval as Trump makes ridiculous, ill-informed, abusive comments and proposes absurd and impossible policies – building a wall along the entire Mexican border being just one of the less outlandish.

And enjoy your fifteen minutes of exultation as you effectively destroy the Republican Party from within … because you’ll have another 4 long years in the wilderness to reflect on your blinkered stupidity when Hillary Clinton is sworn into office roughly a year from now.

One day, Republican supporters will come to understand that bible-thumping doesn’t cut it, that homophobia isn’t popular, that focusing narrowly on anti-abortion campaigns simply alienates most women, and that bashing Muslims and Hispanics merely loses them most of the Muslim and Hispanic vote.

One day Republican supporters will come to understand that the politics of hate, bigotry and division don’t win presidential elections in the 21st century.

One day ….

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Current Affairs and Politics, Uncategorized

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Do Republicans threaten US democracy?


Gun

There’s no doubt that the Republican party is becoming more and more extreme in its views. Is it perhaps even getting dangerously close to threatening US democracy itself?

It’s not just that the majority of Republicans in Congress have, during the entire Obama administration, focused almost exclusively on trying to damage and block the President rather than seeking what’s in the best interests of governing the country. Much worse, some leading Republicans are now seeking to place their version of ‘Christian beliefs’ in opposition to democracy itself.

A few examples:

  • Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee describes the laws legalising gay marriage as “judicial tyranny”, vows to “fight to defend religious liberty at all costs” and says “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

He has also endorsed comments from the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, namely that “… the Supreme Court is not the final authority … the Bible is God’s final authority … and on this book we stand.”

  • Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum: “This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies [Satan] has his sights on ….. the United States of America.”
  • A statement on the official Republican Party 2012 platform said “The Founders of the American Republic universally agree that democracy presupposes a moral people (my emphasis) …”

The same official website highlighted George Washington’s notion that “the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” It went on to proclaim that “… our rights come from God.”

When you put such inflammatory statements together with the Republicans’ huge emphasis on ‘gun rights’ –  especially gun rights in relation to their supposed role in preventing any government tyranny – then you have a potentially explosive mixture.

In this mixture you have gun-toting “Christians” being egged on to regard their version of morality as above the law, above democracy and – since “rights come from God” – above constitutional rights as decided by mere humans.

Whether this Republican drift towards extremism will win them the next presidential election seems doubtful. And despite losing the last two presidential contests, many Republicans still don’t seem to twig the fact that the majority of Americans just don’t support – and likely will never support – a bible-thumping, homophobic and quasi-misogynist agenda.

So if the Republican party loses yet again – and this time to not only to a woman, but a woman called Hillary Clinton – then might we see their anti-democratic rhetoric transformed into something more sinister?

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Current Affairs and Politics, USA

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Republicans = Big Government


Republican Party

Have you ever noticed how many of those who most loudly claim to be against “big government” are actually the most in favour of enforcing social conformity and restricting individual freedoms?

Consider the Republican Party and its religious-right supporters in the USA, who want to (for example):

  • Exert central government control over the physical body of each and every individual woman when it comes to abortion and a woman’s right to choose.
  • Restrict individual freedom by denying the right of marriage to gays and lesbians … even though such marriage does not affect the rights of heterosexuals in any way.
  • Ban the provision for teenagers of information about contraception, replacing it with the teaching of sexual abstinence until marriage as the “responsible and respected standard of behavior”.

In other words, such folk are gung-ho for big government when it comes to enforcing conformity with their own beliefs and many prejudices.

And in many Republican minds, these belief and prejudices become translated to “morality” … which of course means that something is deemed to be “moral” if they agree with it, but “immoral” if they don’t.

What’s profoundly disturbing in this context is that, in the words of the official Republican Party 2012 platform: “The Founders of the American Republic universally agree that democracy presupposes a moral people (my emphasis) …”

To put this another way, if the Republican Party and its supporters deem the views and behaviour of some people to be ‘immoral’, then those people can be cast as being at odds with democracy itself. Thus democracy can become equated with conformity to Republican moral values … and those who don’t conform can be seen as the enemies of democracy who can thus be rightfully subject to the repression and intrusion of big government.

The theme of supporting big government continues further with the Republicans, who want to:

  • Generally increase the funding and powers of American security and intelligence agencies.
  • Increase military spending – and hence further boost the power of the American military-industrial complex – despite the fact the USA already has by far the largest military budget in the world.

And it’s Republicans who are the most keen on blurring the boundaries between the different branches of government – and redefining the federal government in overtly religious terms (their official policy documents are littered with frequent references to God and Christianity). For example:

  • Proclaiming that “… our rights come from God” (as distinct, we suppose, from being inherent by virtue of being sentient human beings).
  • Supporting the appointment of judges who “respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life”.
  • Supporting “the public display of the Ten Commandments as a reflection of our history and of our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage.”
  • Highlighting George Washington’s notion that “the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”

Eternal rules of order and right …. hmmm. From which religion do these eternal rules stem, we might ask? All the more so since there is no reference to Christianity or Judeo-Christianity (nor even ‘God’) in the American Constitution. And, indeed, the Constitution’s 1st Amendment explicitly says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …”

But speaking of “order and right”, it’s ironic that the individual right which Republicans seem most keen to promote is that of gun ownership (“gun ownership is responsible citizenship”) … supposedly in the cause of defending against a potential tyranny of big government.

The irony here, of course, is that if any federal government in America were to incline towards tyranny – a tyranny in God’s name no doubt – it would almost certainly be one run by the Republican Party … and almost certainly egged on and supported by a wide variety of gun-crazed, bible-bashing, misogynist nutcases.

Thence “One Nation Under God” might be better read as One Social and Moral Conformity Under the Republican Party. So much for small government …

[Note: all quotes in this blog-post, with the exception of one taken from the American Constitution, are from the official Republican Party platform website of 2012.]

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