Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Republican Dream


 Loren Adams, 3 August 2011
In the 30s Republicans dreamed of destroying Franklin Delano Roosevelt while dismantling all social, banking and labor programs that were helping the country recover from Republican-born Depression.
Eighty-years later, Republicans dream of destroying Barack Obama while dismantling all social, banking and labor programs implemented by Democrats over 80 years that prevented the country from again falling into Republican-born depressions like the 30s.
Republicans have always despised “safety-nets” because they believe only free-loaders and parasites partake. The unemployed stay in that condition only when granted support, they claim, and their favorite slur for a food-stamp recipient is “welfare queen.”
Everyone should know by now – Republicanism is an illness, not a cure.
Enough rant; it has long been determined the root cause of this century’s pending Great Depression – the final product of Republican politic. But what’s it like living the Republican dream (as opposed to the American)? It is now time to understand how to survive; past time to analyze why – as if no one knows except media bent on establishing false equivalency.
Let’s take ourselves into the near future to maybe get assimilated.
Republican America is one of declining wealth, dwindling resources, poor to no services, and dead or nearly dead industries resembling salvage yards. High interest rates are charged to the few approved. It’s a nation of freeways deteriorating to gravel pocketed by privatized toll booths, of collapsed bridges, and flights reserved only for the very rich. It’s a country of urban blight, one-third homeless, rusting factories, and boulevards boasting tattoo parlors, casinos, and check-cashing scams. Businesses are boarded on Main Street, skyscrapers crumble, while millions of homeless live on streets lined with empty houses.
Survivors in Republican America are forced to compete for vanishing commodities, resulting in riots, looting, theft, and murder. It’s simply the natural progression anyone could have predicted. With only scarce supplies and no mechanism to enforce rations, what other aftermath could result? Rightwing America is a very unsafe, unstable, and violent place where even the upstanding must compromise principle to survive and put food on the table. It deteriorates to the classic primitive contest – survival of the fittest where only the most brutal bring home the bacon.
Republican America flaunts unpaid, non-credentialed teachers, run-down schools, vacant colleges, and volunteer firemen and police. There are no unions; they’ve been decertified and busted. There are no student loans. Only a fraction seek higher education – and then only from wealthy families.
Textbooks are written and published by Christian right organizations. Subjects discarded are evolution, labor history, climate change, and sex education. Inserted are Judeo-Christian heritage and how devoted the founders were to Christ and church. Ronald Reagan is deified more than the framers, and “American exceptionalism” is the daily lecture.
Republican America, like Walker’s Wisconsin, restricts voting to citizens with government-issued photo IDs and “active” bank accounts, but makes certain these are almost impossible to obtain, especially in Africa-American and Latino districts.
Only white, evangelical precincts are favored. (One can catch a glimpse of future voting by observing Republican legislation in states captured by the Tea Party in ’10.)
In Republican America, fundamentalist Christian “morals” are legislated while crime skyrockets to historic levels. The more rightwing laws, the more crime. Gun violence runs rampant; still gun owners are protected. In fact, every citizen is encouraged to carry a weapon, and the right to carry concealed firearms is ensured federally across state lines.
Gay marriage is banned; all former marriages and state laws legalizing same-sex contracts are annulled. Indeed, gay sex is criminalized [like it was in the good ol’ days]. Thus, gays are again routinely victims of violence and unpunished murder. (The ultimate transgression is “justifiable” in the name of Jesus to eradicate evildoers, they assert.)
Abortion is banned. Roe v. Wade is overturned. (Meanwhile, wealthy Republicans send daughters, wives and lovers to Europe, Asia and South America for the “procedure.”)
Republican America is a police state. Except the “police” are no longer local, but poorly-paid federal troops. Major violence erupts first in urban centers, then spreads across the country. The Republican government feels compelled to suppress the outbreaks, then eventually suspends all civil liberties and elections.
Republican America, in the literal, is Third World.
Republican America paves the road to revolution, for which true libertarian Tea Partiers achingly lust so they can try out their precious weapons on “undesirables.”
The religious right will never believe Republicans brought America to its knees. Neither will characters like Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Frank Luntz. But, of course, they are all major contributors to the fall.
Question is – How are we going to genuinely survive? Really?

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