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membership Culture > August 26, 2004 We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigidman, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?
Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned--and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor. In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. "Bipartisanship is another term of date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy. The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous. Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. Our beloved land has been fogged with fear--fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich. It isn't the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. It wasn't the "end of innocence," or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn't prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time. Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term. This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we're not getting any younger. Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.
Posted by Dave Phillips on August 26, 2004 at 10:34 AM Funniest, truest description of recent history to date. Posted by judybee on August 26, 2004 at 11:56 AM What a great call to arms. Posted by Sally McCoy on August 26, 2004 at 12:06 PM Right On! Posted by Laura on August 26, 2004 at 12:14 PM Keillor is dead on here. Posted by PusBoy on August 26, 2004 at 12:15 PM A nicely articulated sad but true story. We must do our best to see that the current White House resident has moved to other quarters on or before January 20, 2005. Those who can afford it should make political contributions; those who can afford the time should help with the registration of voters. On November 3 (barring a 2000 type fiasco)we will know if its future is intact. Posted by Jacob K Goldhaber on August 26, 2004 at 12:47 PM So,don't hold back, Garrison,tell us what's REALLY on your mind! You're so right to speak out in spite of the pinch-nosed pundits who would deny creative, entertaining folk the right to express their views! Posted by Jackie Giles on August 26, 2004 at 12:49 PM So true but so sad. Lets work and pray for a change in spite of the computerized-no-paper-trail voting machines. Posted by Leon Singer on August 26, 2004 at 2:20 PM We are in the grip of fanatics, who will not let go without a real battle. Posted by jules timerman on August 26, 2004 at 3:43 PM Let's all please wake up and VOTE. Posted by Bill Harding on August 26, 2004 at 8:14 PM An American telling it like it is on 9/11. Coming from Arizona I can say with confidence that even Barry Goldwater wouldn't recognize the current ilk of Republicans, even though he bears some responsibility of helping make it the preferred home for lovers of the Confederacy amd worse. America needs for them to not only lose in November, but get slapped hard - losing the White House and both branches of Congress. Posted by Bob Hetrick on August 26, 2004 at 9:18 PM It is time to stand and be proud to be a democrat - and foil the politics...
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