Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt ‘Family Values’ Republican Leadership
Some columns are easier to write than others.
This is one of them.
Providing all of my research were the “family values” Republicans.
This week, second term Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for six days, leaving the state without a chief executive who could make decisions in an emergency. His Republican lieutenant governor didn’t know where he was, and had not been given any authority to make decisions in his absence. The state police said they had not been informed. His wife told the Associated Press she didn’t know where he was, wasn’t worried about him, and thought he was “writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids” over the Father’s Day weekend. His senior aides said he was walking along the Appalachian Trail to “clear his head.”
But it wasn’t his head that he was clearing. When he returned, after first lying to a reporter for the Columbia State who caught up with him on his return to the Atlanta airport, he finally admitted he went to Argentina to meet with a long-time lover. His wife, who was not by his side when he held an early afternoon press conference, later said she and the governor had separated two weeks earlier. The State later produced e-mail love letters it had been keeping since December.
The rising young star of the Republican party who was seen as a presidential contender in 2012, the man who was head of the Republican Governors Association until the day after he acknowledged his extramarital affair, the man who had wanted to deprive his state of $700 million in federal stimulus funds as a political message to President Obama, the man who had established himself as a beacon for the sanctity of marriage and the values of the oh-so-pure Religious right, was not only an adulterer, but for at least the second time had left his state at risk since there were no contingency plans of how to reach him in an emergency.
Alas, Gov. Sanford isn’t the only “family values” philanderer. Slightly more than a week earlier, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) admitted he had a nine month extramarital affair with one of his campaign staff. Ensign, who was contemplating a run for president in 2012, had been chair of the Republican Policy Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Like Gov. Sanford, Sen. Ensign only admitted to the affair after information had been leaked to the media.
This is the same John Ensign who, as a congressman, had curled his lips in revulsion at Bill Clinton’s affair, and demanded he either resign or be impeached. “He has no credibility,” Ensign told the Las Vegas Review–Journal in 1998. Six years later, now a senator, Ensign supported a federal ban on same sex marriages by declaring, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded . . . . [M]arriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.” Ironically, Ensign is active in Promise Keepers, an evangelical group.
Also vigorously calling for President Clinton’s impeachment, while having had their own extramarital affairs and covering them up or lying about them, were:
● Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chair of the House judiciary committee and the “house manager” for the impeachment, who lied about his own four-year affair with a married woman and then when a newspaper published details in 1998 called the affair in the 40s nothing more than a “youthful indiscretion.” He retired in 2007 after 17 terms in the House.
●Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who was the first legislator in Congress to call for Clinton’s resignation and then became one of the leaders of the impeachment movement. Barr’s background, however, wasn’t family values pure. He never denied committing adultery with his second wife, and later, while married to his third wife, was photographed at what passed as a charity event licking whipped cream off the breasts of two women. Barr left office in 2003, after four terms.
● Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho), who was one of the first to call for Clinton’s resignation, told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that God had pardoned her sins for her six-year extra-marital affair. Chenoweth left office in January 2001 after keeping her promise not to serve more than three terms.
● Fourteen term Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind), chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who not only had a long-time affair with a state employee but had fathered a son from that affair. His website once screamed, “Above all, Dan Burton believes the people have a right to principled leadership and that character does matter.”
● Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who told Tim Russert on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” in 1999 that “The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy—a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” However, Craig himself was a “bad boy.” In September 2007 he pleaded guilty, and then tried to withdraw his conviction on charges that he solicited a man in the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport. Several gay men later told the Idaho Statesman that Craig, who was married since 1983, had previously tried to solicit them or had sexual relations with them. Craig resigned in September 2007, and then reversed himself, staying in office through 2008. He did not run for re-election.
● Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), House speaker from 1995 to 1999, who may have had an affair while his first wife was in the hospital recovering from cancer. Gingrich later cheated on his second wife with the woman who became his third wife during the time he was pushing for Clinton’s resignation.
● Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who was Gingrich’s designated successor until he admitted his own infidelities and eventually resigned from the House.
● Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who was elected to Livingston’s House seat and served three terms before being identified in a prostitution scandal in Louisiana. In 2004, he was elected to the Senate, three years before Hustler magazine linked him as a client of a prostitution service in Washington, D.C.
● Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa), who had a five year affair with a woman 35 years his junior. She later charged that Sherwood had assaulted her several times. He eventually settled for what AP reported was about $500,000. Among those who supported Sherwood during his primary re-election were Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), one of the leaders of the conservative coalition who in November 2005 said that “Compassionate Conservatism relies on healthy families,” and President George W. Bush who went to northeastern Pennsylvania to help raise funds for Sherwood. However, in the general election of November 2006, Sherwood was defeated for a fifth term.
Add to the list of morally bankrupt Republicans:
● Five term Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) who resigned in September 1995, three years before the Clinton impeachment, after the bipartisan Ethics Committee unanimously recommended his expulsion following charges of sexual abuse and assault by 10 women, most of them either former staffers or lobbyists.
● Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), a six-term congressman, and co-chair of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, who had sent sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to a 16 year-old male Congressional page. Foley resigned in September 2006, two months before the general election, long after the Republican leadership had failed to discipline him, and only after a blog (stopsexpredators.blogspot.com) and ABC-TV news exposed his hoped-for affairs may have included other staff dating back at least a decade.
● Rep. Robert E. Bauman (R-Md.), publicly homophobic founder of Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union, who admitted he had solicited sex with a 16 year old male. Bauman lost the general election in 1980 and later declared himself to be gay.
● Rep. Donald Lukens (R-Ohio), who was convicted in 1989 of a misdemeanor for having sex with a 16-year-old girl. The “affair” may have begun three years earlier. Lukens finally resigned in October 1990, after having lost the Republican primary several months earlier.
Republican leaders aren’t the only ones who commit adultery, nor are conservatives or members of the Religious Right, including preachers, solely the ones to have violated the seventh and tenth Commandments. But, it is the “family values” Republican leaders, who have led the party of right wing moral indignation; it is the Religious Right that has overtaken the party and wears the now-tarnished shield of righteousness to protect itself against anyone who doesn’t share their own views of the world, including moderate and liberal Republicans, and anyone belonging to another political party.
The hypocrisy and moral turpitude of the leaders is just one reason why only 21 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans.
[Walter M. Brasch is a university professor of journalism, social issues columnist, and the author of 17 books. His current book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, available from amazon.com, bn.com, and other stores. You may contact him through his website, www.walterbrasch.com]
Gov Sanford Explains Disappearance and Admits Affair
Why am I not at all surprised by the news that Governor Mark Sanford, whose strange dissapearance for a few days was the talk of the press and the blogosphere, is (or was?) having an affair.
Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina said Wednesday that he had been having an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina for the last year, ending the mystery surrounding his disappearance over Father’s Day weekend and considerably dampening his prospects for a national political career.
Duh! Sanford’s wife supposedly had no clue where he was — of course she was trying to save face because evidently she knew about the steamy affair.
Chalk up another hypocritical conservative to the long list of those who have fallen from their high horses.
I’m with Kerry… Too bad Sarah Palin didn’t go missing.
A Poem for Neda Agha Soltan (1982-2009)
Neda Agha Soltan died Saturday in Iran. She was an Iranian student who was shot by a single bullet amid the protests following the Iranian election. Her last moments were captured on a video that has gone beyong viral to global.
Via the NY Times and The Writing Life II:
A Poem for Neda Agha Soltan (1982-2009)
Written by Mandana
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Stay, Neda—
The twittering birds,
Green-garbed forests,
Scented blossoms… all sing
of spring’s arrival
Don’t go, Neda…
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Stay, Neda—
Sing with your people in the streets
Say, Long live life!
Down with death!
Tell the sun to shine,
the cold to depart
Don’t go, Neda…
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Stay, Neda—
Look at this city
At the shaken foundations of palaces,
The height of Tehran’s maple trees,
They call us “dust,” and if so
Let us sully the air for the oppressor
Don’t go, Neda
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Don’t be afraid
It is the sound of fireworks, not bullets The offspring-sparks of a great flame We are aflame, Fueled by baton-cracks and gunshots We are ablaze Don’t go Neda…
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Oh Neda, Neda!
Breathe
Rise
Shatter the cage
Break through the bars
Don’t go, Neda
-
Don’t go, Neda—
Wait—
Look beyond the clouds
Lady sun is breaking through
She is just like you
Don’t go Neda
Oh God, don’t go…
Will Bunch has more on Neda… and please read Roger Cohen in the NY Times: Life and Death in Tehran.
Gas Price Relief On the Way
AP News reports today there should be some relief at the pumps once again after “rising nearly every day for the past two months and climbing 67 percent so far this year.”
Gas prices were up for a 54th straight day Sunday, by 0.1 cents, to a new national average of $2.693 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service.
The recent run-up exceeds anything that oil analysts say they have seen since the 1970s. But the streak should end Monday or Tuesday, Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst for OPIS, said Sunday.
According to the expected Energy Information Administration gas stockpiles increased “last week by 3.4 million barrels, or 1.7 percent, much more than the 650,000 barrels that analysts had reported.” The increased supply has caused a drop in wholesale prices should pass on to consumers.
We still need to get through July 4 which is usually a peak price period, however after the 4th prices typically ”decline about 10 percent — 25 or 30 cents a gallon.”
That’s good news for consumers who are once again feeling the pinch at the pumps in the midst of this recession.
Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town
The Schuylkill County, Pa., justice system managed to do something that insurance actuaries do with mixed results—it has determined not only the penalty for threats to a human life, but also the value of a human life.
● Norman E. Nickle, 54, who lived in Pottsville, the county seat, was convicted of killing two teenagers, and sentenced in April to two life terms, without possibility of parole. Nickle’s only defense was that he was high on drugs and alcohol at the time of the murders.
● Jarrid Finneran, of Shenandoah, was sentenced to 2-1/2 to five years in prison after a jury convicted him in December 2007 of pushing his girlfriend in front of a car. Finneran said that the incident was the result of an accident, was not deliberate, and that he and the victim continued their relationship after the incident. The jury, however, convicted him of aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, and disorderly conduct.
● Kyle J. Bluge, 23, of Frackville, admitted he shook a baby in April 2008 to try to stop the boy from crying. A pediatrician testified that the physical abuse resulted in significant brain injuries. Bluge, who will be sentenced Aug. 5, could face 10 to 20 years in prison for aggravated assault.
● Mark P. Wilner, 40, of Mahanoy City, in June was found guilty of simple assault after a bar fight that led to injuries to the victim who, according to court testimony, had begun the fight by punching a woman. Wilner could be sentenced, June 29, to one to two years in state prison.
● However, the life of Luis Eduardo Ramirez-Zavalo, 25, a Mexican who lived and worked in Shenandoah before dying, in June 2008 after a beating by a gang of about a half-dozen drunken Shenandoah High School football players, is worth no more than 23 months in a county jail.
Judge William E. Baldwin sentenced Brandon J. Piekarsky, 17, to six to 23 months, and Derrick M. Donchak, 19, to six to 20 months, June 17, after an all-White jury convicted them only of simple assault, a second degree misdemeanor. Baldwin also sentenced Donchak to one year probation for three counts of corruption of minors, a first degree misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of two to five years in state prison; Donchak was also sentenced to three months in prison on each of three counts of furnishing alcohol to minors; the sentences would be served concurrently. His total sentence is seven to 23 months in county jail.
The jury about six weeks earlier refused to convict Piekarsky of criminal homicide, although witnesses said that it was Piekarsky who kicked Ramirez in the head after he had already been on the ground; Ramirez died two days later from the beatings, with medical evidence suggesting the kick was the fatal blow. The jury also found both Piekarsky and Donchak not guilty of aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, criminal solicitation/hindering apprehension or prosecution, and ethnic intimidation, although witnesses said they distinctly heard racial slurs and obscene language during the beating.
In sentencing the two teenagers, Judge Baldwin, confined by the jury’s verdict, said neither defendant showed remorse—Donchak had even worn a “Border Patrol” T-shirt to a party four months after the beating. Contrary to defense claims, the judge ruled that the beating was not “a street fight gone bad [but] a group of young athletes ganging up on one person.” Because of the jury’s verdicts, the death of Ramirez could not be considered in sentencing. Baldwin said that if the attack “wasn’t motivated by ethnic intimidation, it was plain meanness. You don’t kick a man when he’s down.” Even with the relatively light sentences, both defense attorneys said they were contemplating appeals.
Two of the gang were not charged, and two are likely to spend more time in confinement than Piekarsky and Donchak, who are believed to be the more aggressive of the gang. Brian Scully, 18, CITYYwas previously ordered to spend 90 days in a treatment facility before sentencing, expected at the end of Summer. He could spend as much as three years in juvenile detention. Colin J. Walsh, 18, Shenandoah Heights, whose state charges were withdrawn after he pleaded guilty to a civil rights violation in federal court, cooperated with state and federal authorities and testified against Piekarsky and Donchak, was sentenced in federal court to up to nine years, but could be released in four years because of his cooperation.
The beating and subsequent trial divided the region, and brought national news media to the coal mine region of northeast Pennsylvania. Thousands rallied against what they believed were lax immigration enforcement, and argued that Ramirez would still be alive if he had not been an illegal immigrant. Others argued that the area’s bigotry and racism was the cause for the tension before the beating and continues to divide the people. The Pottsville Republican-Herald, the county’s only daily newspaper, reports that more than 4,400 comments were submitted to its website the first three days of the five-day trial, but that many were not posted because of vulgarity. The newspaper also reports that during the trial the website recorded 72,000 unique users just for the trial coverage.
The case left a lot of questions, in addition to what many saw as “jury nullification” of a murder. The Shenandoah police upon arriving at the scene checked Latino witnesses for weapons rather than pursue the White attackers, and then didn’t file charges for two weeks. Based upon previous testimony, Judge Baldwin noted, “the boys were ushered around and given counsel about getting their stories straight because it didn’t look good for Mr. Ramirez.” Testimony had also revealed that one of the officers was not only in a personal relationship with Piekarsky’s mother, but that he was living with both of them. “There is a federal investigation ongoing,” the Schuylkill County district attorney told the Republican-Herald. Further, the prosecution, which said it was pleased with the sentence, refused to say why it didn’t put on the stand a retired Philadelphia police officer who witnessed the beating and had called 911.
Most residents, those who believe that even a simple assault charge was too much for what they still maintain is a “street brawl,” and those who believe that the random gang got away with murder, seem to just want the spotlight to shine on other towns, other issues. But, that isn’t likely for at least a few more months.
Piekarsky and Donchak could still face significant prison time. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, the Anti-Defamation League, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and other organizations have asked the Department of Justice to pursue hate crime charges against Piekarsky and Donchak. Under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations during the 1960s, the Department of Justice was vigorous in bringing to trial and conviction, especially in Southern jurisdictions, persons who either were not charged or had received light sentences for attacks upon civil rights workers, Blacks, and their businesses and churches.
Shenandoah is a community of about 5,600, located in the anthracite coal region, about100 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The 2000 census revealed that 97.4 percent of the population is White, with about 20 percent of the population living below the poverty line. During the early and mid-19th century, the population was primarily English, Welsh, Irish and German immigrants, all of whom faced discrimination from large numbers of second- and third-generation Americans who objected to the influx of immigrants. Conflicts between the lower-class miners and the supervisors and management of coal companies led to the rise of the Molly Maguires, whose original purpose was to promote unionized labor and serve as a protection for the immigrants. Cultural and ethnic conflict led to violence against the Mollies and the Mollies, in turn, becoming violent, especially as other immigrants from southern and eastern Europe moved into the area, sometimes taking jobs the northern Europeans thought belonged to them. By 1920, the population peaked about 25,000, falling after World War II when it no longer became profitable for the robber barons to continue to strip the land of anthracite coal.
It is many of the descendants of immigrants who now support stronger immigration enforcement, and whose children and grandchildren carry the prejudices that have formed the patina of the place once known as the “city of churches”; it is the descendants of immigrants who have shown the prejudice against a rising Hispanic population and whose attitudes may have fueled the violence that led to the death of a Mexican immigrant who just wanted to work and help raise his three children.
[Assisting on this story were Rosemary R. Brasch, Brandi Mankiewicz, the office of the clerk of courts of Schuylkill County, several Schuylkill County residents, and the Pottsville Republican-Herald. Dr. Brasch is author of 17 books, a syndicated columnist, and professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University and recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award. You may contact him through his website, www.walterbrasch.com]
Lieberman promised universal health care in 2006 campaign
We know that Joe Lieberman won his 2006 Senate race as an independent by dishonestly claiming that no one wanted to see the troops home from Iraq more than him, all the while leading the neocon charge for their permanent presence in that country.
Well, that wasn’t his only bald-faced lie. We already saw that Lieberman now opposes the public option, joining Republicans and insurance-industry shills in the Democratic side in opposition to real health care reform. But look at what Lieberman said at a debate during the 2006 race:
what I’m saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for you and your families to get something done to make health care affordable, to get universal health insurance, to make America energy independent, to save your jobs and create new ones. That’s what the Democratic Party is all about.
Yeah, that’s what the Democratic Party is supposed to be about, which makes it particularly satisfying that he got his ass booted from it. Remember, he promised universal health care, now he’s working to stymie it. In other words, it was just another convenient lie for the benefit of his reelection campaign. No wonder the people of Connecticut have given up on him.
But remember, all the serious people — including Harry Reid — told us he was with Democrats on “everything but the war” while Lieberman continues, on a consistent basis, to make them look like fools, suffering from battered spouse syndrome.
Lieberman Is A "No" On Public Option. Shocking, We Know…
Hmm…well, just knock me over with a feather:
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman has a bipartisan group of senators ready to help pass health care reform — minus a government-run insurance plan.
During a New Haven stop to support overall reform, Connecticut’s independent fourth-term senator gave his strongest statement to date opposing Democrats’ and President Obama’s call for a “public option” health care plan.
Ah, the last by-god bipartisan Senator in captivity working his magic again. Here is just one question–why is it, Senator, that whenever you start weaving your bipartisan webs, it is always to do PRECISELY what the Republican Party wants to be done?
Is there some glitch in your magical powers of bipartisanship that prevent you from bringing REPUBLICANS over to the merits of DEMOCRATIC initiatives?
Check this quote out from the Prince of Piety himself:
“If we create a public option, the public is going to end up paying for it,” Lieberman said following an hour-long confab with public-health experts at the Ashmun Street community center of the Monterey Homes public housing complex. “That’s a cost we can’t take on.”
Leave aside, for the moment, the fact that we’d have a few extra hundred billion for the cause of health care if we had elected NOT to pursue the war that Senator Lieberman dutifully was the head cheerleader for.
Is he REALLY saying that, at present, the public ISN’T paying any cost in maintaining the status quo?
Just another example why, according the folks at Progressive Punch, Senator Lieberman ranks 52nd on staying with progressives on what they characterize as “crucial votes.”
Every person beneath him on the list (with the possible exception of newly minted Colorado Senator Michael Bennet) has a fairly decent geographic or electoral argument to make for their occasional to common apostasy.
Lieberman has no such excuse. He never has. But he knows he is immune from any consequences for his disloyalty. Hell, when you can campaign for the other party against a sitting senator in your caucus in a presidential race, and still be welcomed back with open arms?
No one should be even mildly surprised that Joe Lieberman feels no twinges of fear when he consistently belittles Democratic policies and positions.
And that remains one of the great failings of the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate.
FL-Sen: Another potential Republican defection
On March 4, then on March 10, and a week later in The Hill, I noted Arlen Specter’s precarious position within his own party, and suggested his best ploy for survival was a party switch.
On April 28, Specter switched. It really was his only rational course.
Much the same dynamic will soon be playing out in the Florida Senate race between former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist. Currently, the polls show that Crist’s greater name recognition gives him a fairly dominant lead. But the primary is 14 months away, and grassroots conservatives are moving over to Rubio en masse. He will have enough money to compete (Club for Growth, among others, are behind him), he’s got big names like Mike Huckabee gathering behind him, and the right-wing noise machine loves him — and not just Florida wingnut radio, but national outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board. And with pictures like this in their arsenal, conservatives will have all the ammo they need to bring down Crist:
It won’t take 14 months for that alliance to drag Crist through the mud and trash his name with Republicans in a state with a closed primary. All those Dems and Independents who love Crist won’t have a say in the matter in the Republican contest. And I predict that by the end of the year (or end of Q1 2010 at the latest), the polls in that Republican primary will be tied.
So the question will then be — at what point will Crist realize that he’s in deep shit? It took collapsing poll numbers for Specter to hit the “panic!” button and switch parties. That’s probably what it’ll take for Crist to realize his problems, and when he does, he’ll have a tough call to make: go down with his party, or pull a Specter and ditch it for better electoral prospects on a different line. That could mean a switch to the Democratic Party where he’d likely be no worse than the other senator from Florida, Bill Nelson — a marginally good Democrat, a step up from Landrieu, Nebraska’s Nelson, and the Wal Mart Twins (and no better). Or it could mean an independent run, where he might be able to pull a Lieberman (complete with a Joementum fundraising campaign visit) and work to attract independents, mainstream Republicans, and Democrats disaffected by their poor field and try to win a split three-way field.
The Florida candidate filing deadline is May 10, 2010 (the primary isn’t until August). So there’s plenty of time for this scenario to unfold. Now to be clear — this isn’t something I’m rooting for, just an observation based on political realities, but it sure would be hilarious to see Sen. John Cornyn see another of his highly touted Senate candidates defect to the Democratic Party. That alone might make it all worth it.
The ugliness of the GOP’s empathy gap
I’ve clearly been a bit obsessed with the political value of empathy, and the central role it has played in the current troubles of the GOP (here, here, and here).
[Progressive values of] community, opportunity, and investing in people stem in large part from “empathy”. They are the antithesis of selfishness and looking out only for oneself. Empathy means putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, and being progressive means acting on that empathy. So we do what we can to level the playing field so children who aren’t born into privilege can still have many of the opportunities enjoyed by trust fund babies. It means understanding the pernicious effects of discrimination and working to mitigate and eliminate them. It means realizing that the law should be applied to all Americans, and that none should be denied equal protection because of majoritarian intolerance.
As I systematically lay out in those three posts linked above, the GOP’s empathy gap is a large reason for its troubles with the young millennial generation, women, and ethnic and racial minorities. Furthermore, the conservative base now blames “compassionate conservatism” in large (if not total) part for George Bush’s failures as president. And what was “compassionate conservatism”? Karl Rove’s attempt to negate the GOP’s empathy gap with swing and independent voters in 2000. “Compassion” is a synonym for “empathy”.
I thought of all that when reading this by Ta-Nehisi Coates:
Think about this statement which Steve Benen flagged from Liz Cheney:
We’ve now seen several different occasions when he’s been on the international trips, where he’s not willing to say, flat out, ‘I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, America is the best nation that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today.‘ Instead we’ve seen him do what we saw him do in the speech in Cairo, which is sort of, ‘on one hand this, on the other hand that,’ and then attempt to put himself sort of above it all. I think that troubles people.The best nation that ever existed in history. No conservative skepticism. No Niebuhrian humility [...]
What you have [...] is a hustle, a bait and switch, in which one claims to be hawking patriotism, but in fact, is selling jingoism. If patriotism is love of country, then much of the unquestioning GOP rhetoric fails on the rudiments. Is love of kin, love of siblings, love of spouse, telling your beloved, that they are the best person that’s ever existed in history? Or is that sycophancy, fast talk proffered by loose friends, who in your darkest hours, appeal to your worst self.
The religious right isn’t what’s wrong with the GOP. It’s the pervasive, unthinking, unreflective nationalism. It’s the arrogance of thrice-divorced adulterers reaching for the banner of traditional families, and it’s the arrogance of men who prosecuted a poorly planned war, on weak intelligence, presuming to lecture us on national security.
Or, you can distill that all down to “lack of empathy”. Liz Cheney honestly thinks it would be in America’s interest for its president to swagger around the world telling people they aren’t as good as America because we are the best EVER, so fuck you! The slightest shred of empathy would help you understand how counterproductive and potentially destructive such an approach would be, and Obama was elected, in large part, on the promise of a more humble and understanding foreign policy. People got tired of an administration that couldn’t understand why torturing and indiscriminately starting wars was destroying our global reputation. We’re the best fucking country ever! America, fuck yeah!
I’m proud to be Latino, but I don’t think Latinos are the best ethnic group in world history. I adore my kids, but … yeah, you’re shit out of luck there. I got the best ever. But aside from those two bundles of perfection, there’s the obvious realization that I love my dearest family members and friends not because they are the best that have ever existed, but because they are wonderful people in their own rights. There is no need for me to create a hierarchy and judge people against each other.
But conservatives obviously do, whether it’s their nationalistic jingoism, or their creepy Ronald Reagan obsession, they create artificial ideals and worship at their altars. There is always someone who is “the best”, which is why Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a racist affirmative action nominee who isn’t as good as “the best man for the job”. That pathological lack of empathy further extends from the hypocritical moralizing (failing to accept that we are all imperfect and capable of moral failings), to the vicious homophobia.
It’s ugly, and as long as the Republican Party maintains an allegiance to this pathology, its electoral path will be difficult at best.
Update: mjshep in the comments:
What if somepone you knew said, “I believe in my exceptionalism. I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, I am the best person that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today. Although I can make rules for you, and tell you what you can and can not do, I do not have to abide by those rules. Whatever I do is right, because I am doing it and I am exceptional. And, if you don’t like it, I will beat the crap out of you.”
You would clearly think they are both dangerous and crazy. Either that, or a Republican. And you’d be right.
