There’s something else going on here besides stupidity, opportunism, nonsense and waste. I know, I know, it’s a lot to cram in, but bear with me. They are actually trying to work something here and it’s kind of interesting to me, in the way that the digestive processes of the dung beetle are interesting to me.
Think about the basic, unifying principle of Republicans in government. It’s that government sucks. It’s that we are paying them to do something that they hate and don’t want to do all that well. It’s that we’re supposed to be angry and disappointed with government, mad at it all the time, appalled by its shortcomings, and if we are, then we need to elect more of them so that they can fuck government’s shit up on our behalf.They’re not the problem, government is, it’sthe system. We need to burn it all down.
All their other demonizations flow from this basic point. Sure, liberals are the enemy, but only because they want to take your money and use it … for government. Gays and Mexicans are the enemy, too, but only because liberals want to take your money and use it for government to give them “special” rights, like your job and a marriage license with your wife’s name on it. Islamofascists are the enemy, too, mostly because they allow easy demonization of liberals, who we hate anyway for the aforementioned reasons.
So along comes a candidate who, like John Kerry and John Edwards before him, says government is about fixing shit and making your life less sucktastic, and the system isn’t the problem, it’s the screwups running it, and remember back before you thought everything had to suck in order to be cool? Wasn’t it nice to actually want to do stuff instead of sitting around bitching about how nothing works and involvement is stupid? We can do that again. We can not suck, and go to the moon, and take care of your grandparents, and manage to do it all whilesmiling. Good Lord, is it any wonder crowds of people follow that around?
Naturally we can’t have the argument that Republicans are in fact okay at government. It’s patently absurd, and it undermines the basic tactic they have for staying in power, which is to make the very act of voting repulsive, naive and dumb, defensible only to save you from the utter destruction of a gay welfare marriage. We can’t have the argument that this is about how you govern, because they lose that argument, every time. So we have to have the argument that any praise of government, any chance at doing stuff that works, isfascism.
It’s desperate and pathetic, but it’s not an attempt to defend McCain or even tear down Obama. It’s an attempt to continue the same fight we’ve been having, approximately, since the 1930s: We think government sucks, and if you agree, elect us to run it!
A.