Once upon a kinder time, there was a Republican Party.
Where I came from, they were a mysterious lot because
they were wealthy, Northeastern conservatives who wore suits.
Out in the part of the Pacific Northwest where I came from,
suits were uncomfortable requirements for graduations,
weddings, and your own funeral. Some Republicans were
small-town Methodists, but we didn't know them, either.
Then the Republican Party got religion: not the kind of
civil religion we use on the Fourth of July and inaugurations,
but real religion! Or maybe the Religious fundamentalists
just became Republicans; not the kind of Republicans
who wore suits and paid cash, but I-have-been-talking-
to-God-and-you-better-listen-to-the-Bible Republicans!
Suspenders-wearing Republicans started wearing Bible Belts.
In recent years, while anthropologists and archeologists
have been looking for hidden pockets of the Grand
in the Grand Old Party, the Party has found conviction
and passion in those parts of the nation that nurture
anti-intellectual religious opinions and indelibile racism.
Their latest rough prophet, from South Carolina,
who shouted, "You lie!" to the President in a Joint Session
of Congress, is not an abberation. His resume is the
cornerstone on which Republicans have built their base.
Every day, the news is filled with smokescreen issues,
such as whether Obama is an American, whether it was
necessary for public money to prop up our collapsing
economy, whether a President should encourage
kids to work hard in school and not give up, and now,
whether our health care delivery system is defensible.
We join in and take the questions seriously, and
produce a birth certificate, and it does not matter.
We ask what the alternatives to a great depression are,
and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that our schools
are second-class compared to our world competitors.
We talk about health care, and that what we are doing
is patently unworkable, and grossly expensive, with
inadequate coverage, and it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because those are not the issues.
The issue is that we have a Black President,
and he is smart, and handsome, and articulate.
Those other issues don't matter because Barack Obama
represents the breakdown of a Grand Old Society
that is threatened, and that society is anti-intellectual,
committed to simple-minded fundamentalist religion,
and most of all, is frightened to death of the end
of the fantasy of an all-White, monolithically Christian
nation that never existed, anywhere, ever!
These misplaced debates are all about fundamentalist
religion, and a multi-cultural society, or the loss of
the delusion of an all-White society.
The Republican Party has gone south, and how
are they going to preserve cultural respectability
and a national voice if all they represent is anti-
intellectual thought and indefensible racism?
The Republicans have moved to South Carolina.
South Carolina, Kathleen Parker wrote this week,
"is the state once famously described as too small
to be a nation, too large to be an insane asylum."
As she also said, "What in tarnation?"
Where I came from, they were a mysterious lot because
they were wealthy, Northeastern conservatives who wore suits.
Out in the part of the Pacific Northwest where I came from,
suits were uncomfortable requirements for graduations,
weddings, and your own funeral. Some Republicans were
small-town Methodists, but we didn't know them, either.
Then the Republican Party got religion: not the kind of
civil religion we use on the Fourth of July and inaugurations,
but real religion! Or maybe the Religious fundamentalists
just became Republicans; not the kind of Republicans
who wore suits and paid cash, but I-have-been-talking-
to-God-and-you-better-listen-to-the-Bible Republicans!
Suspenders-wearing Republicans started wearing Bible Belts.
In recent years, while anthropologists and archeologists
have been looking for hidden pockets of the Grand
in the Grand Old Party, the Party has found conviction
and passion in those parts of the nation that nurture
anti-intellectual religious opinions and indelibile racism.
Their latest rough prophet, from South Carolina,
who shouted, "You lie!" to the President in a Joint Session
of Congress, is not an abberation. His resume is the
cornerstone on which Republicans have built their base.
Every day, the news is filled with smokescreen issues,
such as whether Obama is an American, whether it was
necessary for public money to prop up our collapsing
economy, whether a President should encourage
kids to work hard in school and not give up, and now,
whether our health care delivery system is defensible.
We join in and take the questions seriously, and
produce a birth certificate, and it does not matter.
We ask what the alternatives to a great depression are,
and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that our schools
are second-class compared to our world competitors.
We talk about health care, and that what we are doing
is patently unworkable, and grossly expensive, with
inadequate coverage, and it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because those are not the issues.
The issue is that we have a Black President,
and he is smart, and handsome, and articulate.
Those other issues don't matter because Barack Obama
represents the breakdown of a Grand Old Society
that is threatened, and that society is anti-intellectual,
committed to simple-minded fundamentalist religion,
and most of all, is frightened to death of the end
of the fantasy of an all-White, monolithically Christian
nation that never existed, anywhere, ever!
These misplaced debates are all about fundamentalist
religion, and a multi-cultural society, or the loss of
the delusion of an all-White society.
The Republican Party has gone south, and how
are they going to preserve cultural respectability
and a national voice if all they represent is anti-
intellectual thought and indefensible racism?
The Republicans have moved to South Carolina.
South Carolina, Kathleen Parker wrote this week,
"is the state once famously described as too small
to be a nation, too large to be an insane asylum."
As she also said, "What in tarnation?"
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