If alcoholism is a disease, so too is being a member of the renowned Republican Base of the 21st Century.
It starts off being fun; something to do with friends and help you feel more comfortable… but then it starts to rule your life… make you paranoid and throws logic and rational thought out the window.
Most alcoholics who eventually stop hitting the sauce have to hit rock bottom before they find the determination to quit the insanity John Stewart, for one, keeps begging the country: “Please tell me this is rock bottom.” When republicans in the Senate vote against disability treaties out of fear of the UN, to the minority leader in the Senate filibustering his own damn bill in a matter of 30 seconds of introducing it… the comedian has a valid point: there MUST be a rock bottom the Republican Party can hit so that they’ll start coming back to reality. In the last few weeks Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have even started to blurt out somewhat reasonable political postulations… when Glenn Beck says things that are more reasonable that the tea party republicans in Congress… we GOTTA be close to hitting rock bottom.
So here the Republican base stands: on the cliff (more than just the politically-created “fiscal cliff”… also created by extreme positions and refusal to budge alcoholic behavior of republicans)…. they’re standing on the cliff –wavering with each gust of wind – and they are left with a decision: turn around and face that all of the fears they have fabricated might not be real, or maintain the part that fear of something is more powerful that the challenge of opportunity and equality and jump off the damn cliff.
The republican base – all extreme parts of ANY political party base – are cliff hangers. It’s what they do. It’s how they think. It’s what motivates the insanity: when you’re on the edge of a building, you’re too damn scare of falling to move in ANY direction – even if it’s back into safety. People get paralyzed when they stand on a cliff, and the Republican Condition has brought the extreme base to that point (or at least very close to it).
The Republican Condition is part story, part industry, and part personality. One might be able to truncate the first two and say that “being a republican” started as a story OF industry in the United States. The philosophy was simple: less government intrusion to free up businesses as much as possible to make money. The republican (MODERN republican) party is entirely based on the acquisition of wealth. 100% of their policy is based on money, and the theory then extends that by trying to foster the individual (or corporations who are people too) to make more money, then that will help solve other problems of society: poverty, health, infrastructure, education, etc. The major problem with that is one thing: it relies entirely on human nature, which tends towards greed more than it does charity. Greed results in accumulation like chipmunks accumulate chestnuts (or is it acorns?) and some animals even eat themselves to death if given the opportunity.
Therein lies the fundamental flaw in Republican Philosophy as a way to operate a large nation: it relies on the selflessness of individuals. The debates during the Republican Primaries 2011/2012 demonstrated how selfish overrules selfless in the average human being. Just look at the CEOs of coal mines and too-greasy pizza chains who are firing (or threatening to fire) their workers rather than offer them health insurance – rely on the charift and good heartedness of the wealthy? Over and over and over again humans have proved one thing: we’re selfish and we’ll even start wars for the sole purpose of accumulating more treasure.
As such, a modern republican idealism approach, where we just let people get rich and cut all services simply does not, has not, and wil never work – people are inherently too greedy. It goes back to gathering food in our caves when we spoke in grunts and by stomping our feet on the ground.
Human fear – the emotion and what it physically does to the body – is a result of the instinct to surve: to value oneself being alive over oneself being dead. Fear motivates us to stay alive, run away from danger, hide, protect, and be hyper-alert to any “future danger”.
That’s why it exists. The problem is the story of industry… the story of using an emotion designed to keep us alive to make money and profit. Advertising either exploits sex or fear to get consumers to buy products. The republican establishment does both: exploit sex as being bad, and exploit fear as being everywhere. The problem they have now is that the more and more fear they try to create, the closer and closer to the edge of the reality cliff they have pushed their base… there’s not much room left. We have home schoolers terrified that men in blue hats and black helicopters will take their children away. We have republicans in Washington shaking Bob Dole’s hand, walking past his wheelchair then voting against a disabilities treaty. We have the NRA motiving a hoarding of weapons beyond any and all justification of ownership OTHER than being afraid. We have people in the streets shouting “Get government out of my Medicare.”
We have lost all reason, all logic, and charity – it’s all about the self, all about indulgence, hypocrisy and exploiting fear to make money.
When the Republican Base hits rock bottom (and it will) they will have a choice: live in a log cabin, or change your outlook on the world by starting with acceptance rather than resistance. We all have certain foundations from which we make decisions. The Republican Party has created a foundation of distrust and fear of “the other” and through decades of media and politicians and lobbyists pushing and prodding that message… people bought it. They sign up and donate money and buy emergency food stashes and pull their kids out of school. Fear is foundation, criteria, and paradigm.
The irony is that while the republican part shouts about providing opportunity to people… they’re far from it, because truly providing opportunity means the potential of losing some of accumulated wealth to someone else. Why in the world would someone who values treasure over all else create policy that would potentially reduce their treasure chest by giving other people a chance to earn it as well? Republican selling of freedom and opportunity is the exact opposite. They don’t want the average citizen to have a chance to get rich. All they want is to STAY rich, and they’re smart enough to know how to do it. They use fear and sex (or fear OF sex) to sell their product while not providing any real opportunity to anyone other them themselves. Scare people will follow any snake oil salesman who promises a cure.
While extremists start their thought processes in fear and anger, other people try to use trust as their foundation (or at the very least NOT have fear be the baseline) – ideally objectivity when its appropriate and facts when they exists. It’s your choice and a big part of who you are: do you start in fear and anger, or do you start in trust and facts. The latter makes a person a republican; every single time.
It’s a good industry that has made republican philosophy industrialists millions of dollars (say hello Newt and Mike Huckabee). The business plan: scare the crap out of people so they buy the product. The Republican Party is a product that has been oversold… so much so that the factual reality in which people exist is diverging onto different paths. Fear beyond basic survival is a totally irrational emotion. The more republicans push it to sell products and donations to superpacs the more and more “stuck” in the alternate reality of paranoia and fear that the Republican Industry has created.
But fear as a natural resource can only be sold for so long before people jump off the cliff and you lose all your clients.
Even Glenn Beck knows that.
Published: by | Updated: 07-02-2013 16:24:08
