As Donald Trump shows his strange obsession with Mika Brzezinski, William Rivers Pitt asks the $64,000 question: Why is the Republican Party still here? After all,
the Republicans nominated and then elected a farcical caricature of a buffoon, a vulgarian oaf, a serial liar of Brobdingnagian proportions, a confessed misogynist and serial assaulter of women, a fact-free ignoramus too ego-blinded to recognize how much he doesn't know, to the highest office in the land. To the surprise of virtually no one, he has bollixed up the job so comprehensively that his approval rating currently hovers somewhere below pig offal, and in five short months he has become the most despised world leader since Caligula.
Trump can sign executive orders, but he and the Republicans can't pass legislation. Their signature piece of legislation is going down the tubes:
[Mitch] McConnell has blown his own caucus to shreds and tatters. Hard-line Republicans like Rand Paul revolted because the proposed bill looks too much like the Affordable Care Act, while more moderate senators like Dean Heller of Nevada balked because of the massive attack on Medicaid the bill represents. In other words, McConnell managed to piss off pretty much everyone, and no one seemed eager to charge to the bill's defense. In fact, a whole slew of fence-sitting Republican senators came out against it in a true profile in courage after McConnell yanked it from consideration on Tuesday.
The answer to Pitt's question isn't hard to find. In fact, Pitt readily answers his own question:
Oh, right. Citizens United. Brutally racist voter suppression across a variety of vital states, combined with outright election theft in a number of instances. Partisan gerrymandering. Decades of right-wing domination of the media. A Democratic Party "opposition" beholden to most of the same corporate interests as the Republicans. A system so deeply mired in wildly discredited economic mythologies that it refuses to recognize its own imminent collapse. A population so thoroughly disgusted and dispirited by it all that only half of them bother to show up at the polls on a good day.
I get it.
Yet, in spite of it all, The Republican Party is still here. Some social diseases refuse to die.
Image: slideshare.net
6 comments:
Although it is hardly a good way to evaluate one's own country, Owen, I can't help but appreciate Canada even more when juxtaposed with the madness that seems to define our neighbours to the south.
I agree, Lorne. We have our problems. But, with each passing day, I'm grateful we live on the northern shores of Lake Ontario.
.. that's scathing ..
but hey.. the GOP - and up here, the related neoliberal ReformoTories
are all immune to criticism.. Coherence ? Even a shred? Surely one jests..
Get thee to Alberta.. eh !
Its the litany & dogma of the ignorant, twisted, or stunted sadly..
berserker gonzo great unravelled ...
A great group / grope at the sterile gonads of democracy (uh politics) (uh, elections)
Yes Americans embraced the GOP & Donald Trump & his entire family / posse
Its better than the Kardashians.. trust me ..
ts
I suppose it's not surprising that a nation fascinated by the Kardashians should wind up with Donald Trump as its president, salamander.
They're not even looking for the pressure relief valve, Owen. Affront compounds affront. They're making Chris Hedges' case for outright revolt. 20th century America, its zenith, is now a ghost. I try not to dwell on where the U.S. once was, what it could have been but what it instead chose to become. The hard decisions, the choices that matter to the people of America, the bought and paid for Congress will not address. The government has transformed into an administrative arm of oligarchy only still clinging to the increasingly threadbare trappings of democracy.
Benjamin Franklin claimed that his fellow builders had built a republic, if Americans could keep it, Mound. He knew how quickly it could be destroyed. We are watching that destruction in real time.
Post a Comment