I am at my ripe old age a liberal and I guess will always be, despite a famous quote erroneously attributed to Churchill that one must be conservative at thirty-five. I am also a democrat. There was a time, long gone, that I could have entertained voting for a republican. I should add that I have entertained but never voted republican. Back in 1968, I was so angry at Hubert Humphrey’s refusal to oppose the Vietnam war because of his fear of Lyndon Johnson, I had every intention of voting for Nixon. That was the sixties equivalent of voting for Trump, although is retrospect it can’t even compare to Trump. I went into the voting booth and when I reached for the Nixon lever, my hand started to shake violently like Dr. Strangelove’s arm and pull me to the Humphrey lever like a ouija. But today, voting republican is not even a consideration.
The republican praxis if to fuck the voting public while simultaneously convincing them that they are helping them. This coupled with the blatant stupidity of a large portion of the American electorate that believes the rhetoric and votes against its own self-interest, gives the republicans close to half the votes in every election. The term working-class republicans should be an oxymoron. That it is not, is an American disgrace.
There are millions of republicans who vote thus because they always have, or their parents and/or neighbors have. They are lazy because they don’t think before they vote. And if not lazy, they are ignorant and have no fucking idea what they are voting for. I hear the comment often from republican voters “I am a conservative.” When I inquire socratically what that means, they usually haven’t got the slightest idea. Some know a little, and reply they are fiscally conservative and some even concede that they are socially liberal. They don’t know what that means either. Some know the propaganda buzzwords or talking points like the “deficit is too large.” They have no clue what implications that has and how it affects them. The republican phony concern about the deficit reminds me of the man with the horse that costs too much for his upkeep. He decides to teach the horse to eat less. Each day, he feeds the horse less and less until the horse drops dead. The man’s reaction is “just when I get the horse to cost me nothing, the horse dies on me.” Republicans would cut government spending until the government dies and provides no services. They say that’s good, that is, until they need help for themselves or their constituents. Then they scream about the failure of government. But under normal circumstances there’s no money for roads, communications, public transportation, bridges, disease control, help for natural disasters etc. etc. The republicans did find the money and manage to get us into a disastrous war in Iraq which cost us trillions, off the budget. But fix a pothole? No fucking way. I’ve also found that even the politicians promoting reduced government spending don’t have the slightest idea why they are doing it. Most have no background in economics and are sold on these talking points by lobbyists of industries contributing to their election campaigns. Reduced government is code for eliminating regulations. A very large mass of American voters don’t ask which party will help them and vote for it. They belong to their party first, thenlet themselves be convinced that the party’s platform is what they should believe, and then spend the rest of their time spitting out talking points that they don’t understand, like a catechism.
Categories