In the old days when Republicanism stood for business but not for the reactionary dissolution of the American state–as I say, in the old days if you were a liberal or a progressive or even a person from Mars, yes, in the old days one knew where one stood. The GOP (at least for most of the 20th century) was the party of main street values which meant at worst that it stood for business solely for the sake of business but at best it represented a deep respect for American values–particularly local values like good public libraries, freedom of speech, freedom of privacy, freedom of religion, and respect for our best ideals. These days one hears a good deal about the tilt of the Republicans toward the “hard right” or a new rightward extremism. No one on the talking heads television programs wants to use the word “fascism” but the advent of the Tea Party “cresco” (spirit of growth) signals something more than a fierce attachment to low taxes and a dizzying faith in big business, it represents faithlessness.
It’s taken me a long time to understand the nature of this brand of disbelief for I grew up in an age of mainstream Republicans and while I didn’t always like their ideas I respected their love of our nation. One of the few things I liked about Richard Nixon when he ran for the presidency in 1968 was that he spoke about lawlessness and while his agenda was darker than we may have first supposed, he was speaking to the traditional American ideal of civil engagement instead of riots, arson, bomb throwing and the like. We are a great nation because we defend our diversity and our right to disagree and we resist anarchy and violence in that very defense.
As I say, it took me a long time to see that today’s hijacked GOP is more frightening and cynical than the unwashed anti Viet-Nam war crowd. Why this should be so has everything to do with their largely impoverished reading of Revelations. The new GOP has replaced the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution with a fractious wish for apocalypse. Enter Sarah Palin whose church in Wassila embraces a sense that the end of days is imminent. Enter the central idea of revelation that human truth is to be burned up in the everlasting bonfire. Revelation is not merely symbolism, its an enactment among its followers that this world must be overcome. And that overcoming is the abolition of everything in the reality principle: government, societies, flesh and blood, all the transitory things of the world.
If this is what you believe than truth is expendable. Civics. Health care. Cities and towns.
Finally, if this is what you believe, you don’t even care about the market place. This is why centrist Republicans, or quasi-centrist ones, cannot negotiate or conference.
The world of discourse is just another thing that will vanish in the bonfire of bonfires don’t you know?
It’s taken me a long time to understand the birthers, the tea party types, the secessionists, for I thought they had the same underlying optimism about America that I’ve always had. Of course I don’t believe in the end of the world.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
hi i like to say the vid on Tara was very very well done and the music compliments it so well.
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