An Editorial
Republicans don’t like poor people. Or women. Or gays. Or immigrants. Or Muslims. Or minorities of any kind really. Let me clarify. By Republican, I mean Republican strategist or power broker or decider or Presidential candidate – not your rank and file Republicans. Because, shockingly, there are plenty of women and poor people and minorities and gays who check Republican on their ballots.
Why don’t Republican elites like all of these groups? Well, it’s not so much that they don’t like them. It’s that they don’t care.
Let me repeat that because it’s an important point: Republicans don’t care about women, or immigrants, or non-Christians, or minorities, or poor people, or gays. Even if you are one and vote for them.
What the Republican elite love is money and power and holding on to both of those. The problem is that there aren’t a lot of rich white men left in this country. We can all see that rich white men are the primary group of Republican power brokers. And according to the 2010 census, their numbers are shrinking. So what Republicans have to do is keep the minorities and poor people busy with campaigns against gay marriage (It will ruin traditional marriage!), against unions (They are job killers!), against Planned Parenthood (They are baby killers!), against women (They have vaginas!). In fact, let’s all say it out loud: vagina. Vagina. VAGINA. Look around. Did your walls crumble? See the four horsemen? Locust plague on its way? I didn’t think so. But it’s ok to talk about the unborn – just not the passageway from which they emerge. Maybe if we referred to vaginas as if they were an up and coming neighborhood about to gentrify: "Unborn Adjacent," they would be more palatable. But I digress. The reason the nation talked about vaginas, or Republicans’ inability to talk about them, after the Michigan legislature silencing: it distracted us from the economy.
Republican strategists work silently and behind closed doors to ensure that this country and this world exist for one purpose: to increase shareholder value and fatten the pockets of themselves and their cronies. It’s what’s taught in every business school across the country. Everything else is a red herring for what Republicans really care about.
Do you vote Republican because they claim to be pro-life? Guess what. Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital invested in a company that profited off of disposal of fetuses after abortions. And I know plenty of women who work at Planned Parenthood and will tell you they have seen the same women who protest outside of an abortion clinic waltz right in for an abortion at some point in their lives. One in three women gets an abortion by age 45, and they simply cannot all be Democrats.
Do you vote Republican because they claim gays will kill traditional marriage? Well, the divorce rate among those who vote Republican is much higher than that of Democrats. Maybe it’s getting married too young and not having enough money that are the root causes of why marriages fail or not having anyone tell you that some partners can be controlling or rage-aholics - not that Rick and Steve got hitched on Cape Cod. Gay marriage is already happening and there’s been no discernible link to the failure rate of traditional marriages. Or maybe Kim Kardashian’s marriage failure is due to gays getting married. I could be wrong.
Do you think you hate Obamacare? I hate to break it to you, but eventually we all rely on nationalized health care – it may have paid for vaccines you got as a baby, or those STD tests and treatment you got as a teen and didn’t want mom and dad to know about, or those 20 years of medical and nursing home care gramma got after granpa passed away. We’ve all seen the ridiculous protest sign: “Get your government hands off my Medicare!” The mind fairly boggles at the idiocy of such a statement. We spend the most money of any nation on health care and yet there are at least 30-odd nations whose health is better than ours. And the government runs the health care systems in almost ALL of those nations.
Do you rail against the idea that Obama said, “You didn’t build that” to small business owners? Well, if you read anything factual, you know that comment was taken out of context and has been exploded into a propaganda firestorm. But let’s consider a small restaurant owner. She needs to be sure her kitchen meets building code so the building doesn’t burn down (govt), she needs to pass inspection so her customers don’t get sick (govt), she needs to apply for loans so she can make all her purchases (govt backed banks), she needs to pay social security and taxes so that she can retire (govt), she needs the roads that lead to her restaurant so her customers can get to her place of business (govt). The list goes on. So sure, she may have built the restaurant, but without ANY of the government’s help, it probably wouldn’t have been possible.
Republicans want their sheeple to be afraid of terrorists, mad at socialists, and then blame Democrats for everything. They want to whip them up into a frenzy about gay marriage, the “global terror threat”, abortion providers, and gun rights because they don’t want their constituents to realize at the very same time they are being lulled into a Valium sleep about the loss of high paying jobs with decent health insurance, the loss of unemployment benefits, the loss of women’s rights to equal pay, the loss of opportunities for minorities to participate in government by strict voter ID laws, and the loss of government control over money-making ventures like parking and property for unnecessary stadiums.
Never in my life have I thought Democrats were perfect. They can be corrupt. They can be in the pocket of big business. They can vote for unnecessary wars and condone drone attacks on innocent people that result in more foreigners hating America rather than creating a safer America. They can create a health care law that allowed drug companies and insurance companies guaranteed profits rather than demanding that health care be provided for all at a price that all can afford. But at least they read the definition of what a government does, and they try to do it: govern.
Republicans have proven again and again that what they are interested in is the Flood. Like the Engineers in the movie Prometheus (spoiler alert!) they want to create a vicious monster to wipe out humanity – by humanity, I mean anything that is anti-business. Anything that stands in the way of holy profit. And rather than making hideous aliens with elongated heads and acid for blood, Republican elites use the weapon of propaganda against gays, women, minorities, unions, and Planned Parenthood to keep the rank and file busy with inconsequential projects and protests so that they can keep on sucking the blood out of our great nation. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine called Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” He was correct but sadly his metaphor was too narrow. The entire Republican power elite is a school of vampire squid that gets together in the depths of the ocean, plans their attacks in secret under cover of night, and then enlists the dumber species of fish to slowly destroy their own environment and themselves. And then the Republican squid jam their blood funnels into the dying corpses.
What do Republicans continually harp on? The debt. The US Treasury states that, as of August 2012, debt held by the public was approximately $11.19 trillion or about 72% of GDP. Intra-governmental debt was $4.79 trillion, giving a combined total public debt of $15.98 trillion. And a global, super-wealthy elite has exploited gaps in tax rules to hide an extraordinary $21 trillion of wealth offshore… according to research commissioned by the Tax Justice Network. Not all members of the global super-wealthy are Americans, but a large proportion are. In fact, according to Thom Hartman, “400 super-rich Americans control more wealth in the country than 150 million other Americans, and yet are effectively taxed at a rate of just over 16% while the rest of us pay up to 35% plus higher levels of sales, property, and other taxes. To put that in perspective these 400 rich oligarchs effective tax rate has dropped by more than 2/3 since Dwight Eisenhower's administration – while the rate for working people has nearly doubled. Rich people get a 2/3 tax cut over the last 50 years – working people get screwed with a 100% tax hike.” And this trend, this horrifying reality is what Republicans want to keep secret. It is why they want to keep the faithful busy with restricting abortion, preventing gays from marrying, and talking about family values and freedom and gun rights. Because if the Republican power elite were forcibly submitted to lie detector tests, I doubt that any answer about their core values would read truthful unless the question was, “Do you believe in money and power?”
It is our responsibility to educate those whose opinions differ from ours. Many liberals often ghettoize themselves in The Huffington Post and many conservatives ghettoize themselves in Fox News. I see a lot of liberal friends post things on Facebook to their own liberal friends. This is the choir to which they are preaching. I hope we can all reach out to those who claim a different political bent than us and those who claim not to care about politics at all. And I understand being frustrated with the leaders provided to us. The solution is to be the change you wish to see in others. Please vote. And encourage everyone you know to vote. Push them. Cajole them. Drive them to the polling station. Lend them a stamp. Just vote. Because I have to believe there are more thinking people in this nation than there are ignorant ones. If I am wrong, I will be heartbroken until 2016.
Republicans don’t like poor people. Or women. Or gays. Or immigrants. Or Muslims. Or minorities of any kind really. Let me clarify. By Republican, I mean Republican strategist or power broker or decider or Presidential candidate – not your rank and file Republicans. Because, shockingly, there are plenty of women and poor people and minorities and gays who check Republican on their ballots.
Why don’t Republican elites like all of these groups? Well, it’s not so much that they don’t like them. It’s that they don’t care.
Let me repeat that because it’s an important point: Republicans don’t care about women, or immigrants, or non-Christians, or minorities, or poor people, or gays. Even if you are one and vote for them.
What the Republican elite love is money and power and holding on to both of those. The problem is that there aren’t a lot of rich white men left in this country. We can all see that rich white men are the primary group of Republican power brokers. And according to the 2010 census, their numbers are shrinking. So what Republicans have to do is keep the minorities and poor people busy with campaigns against gay marriage (It will ruin traditional marriage!), against unions (They are job killers!), against Planned Parenthood (They are baby killers!), against women (They have vaginas!). In fact, let’s all say it out loud: vagina. Vagina. VAGINA. Look around. Did your walls crumble? See the four horsemen? Locust plague on its way? I didn’t think so. But it’s ok to talk about the unborn – just not the passageway from which they emerge. Maybe if we referred to vaginas as if they were an up and coming neighborhood about to gentrify: "Unborn Adjacent," they would be more palatable. But I digress. The reason the nation talked about vaginas, or Republicans’ inability to talk about them, after the Michigan legislature silencing: it distracted us from the economy.
Republican strategists work silently and behind closed doors to ensure that this country and this world exist for one purpose: to increase shareholder value and fatten the pockets of themselves and their cronies. It’s what’s taught in every business school across the country. Everything else is a red herring for what Republicans really care about.
Do you vote Republican because they claim to be pro-life? Guess what. Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital invested in a company that profited off of disposal of fetuses after abortions. And I know plenty of women who work at Planned Parenthood and will tell you they have seen the same women who protest outside of an abortion clinic waltz right in for an abortion at some point in their lives. One in three women gets an abortion by age 45, and they simply cannot all be Democrats.
Do you vote Republican because they claim gays will kill traditional marriage? Well, the divorce rate among those who vote Republican is much higher than that of Democrats. Maybe it’s getting married too young and not having enough money that are the root causes of why marriages fail or not having anyone tell you that some partners can be controlling or rage-aholics - not that Rick and Steve got hitched on Cape Cod. Gay marriage is already happening and there’s been no discernible link to the failure rate of traditional marriages. Or maybe Kim Kardashian’s marriage failure is due to gays getting married. I could be wrong.
Do you think you hate Obamacare? I hate to break it to you, but eventually we all rely on nationalized health care – it may have paid for vaccines you got as a baby, or those STD tests and treatment you got as a teen and didn’t want mom and dad to know about, or those 20 years of medical and nursing home care gramma got after granpa passed away. We’ve all seen the ridiculous protest sign: “Get your government hands off my Medicare!” The mind fairly boggles at the idiocy of such a statement. We spend the most money of any nation on health care and yet there are at least 30-odd nations whose health is better than ours. And the government runs the health care systems in almost ALL of those nations.
Do you rail against the idea that Obama said, “You didn’t build that” to small business owners? Well, if you read anything factual, you know that comment was taken out of context and has been exploded into a propaganda firestorm. But let’s consider a small restaurant owner. She needs to be sure her kitchen meets building code so the building doesn’t burn down (govt), she needs to pass inspection so her customers don’t get sick (govt), she needs to apply for loans so she can make all her purchases (govt backed banks), she needs to pay social security and taxes so that she can retire (govt), she needs the roads that lead to her restaurant so her customers can get to her place of business (govt). The list goes on. So sure, she may have built the restaurant, but without ANY of the government’s help, it probably wouldn’t have been possible.
Republicans want their sheeple to be afraid of terrorists, mad at socialists, and then blame Democrats for everything. They want to whip them up into a frenzy about gay marriage, the “global terror threat”, abortion providers, and gun rights because they don’t want their constituents to realize at the very same time they are being lulled into a Valium sleep about the loss of high paying jobs with decent health insurance, the loss of unemployment benefits, the loss of women’s rights to equal pay, the loss of opportunities for minorities to participate in government by strict voter ID laws, and the loss of government control over money-making ventures like parking and property for unnecessary stadiums.
Never in my life have I thought Democrats were perfect. They can be corrupt. They can be in the pocket of big business. They can vote for unnecessary wars and condone drone attacks on innocent people that result in more foreigners hating America rather than creating a safer America. They can create a health care law that allowed drug companies and insurance companies guaranteed profits rather than demanding that health care be provided for all at a price that all can afford. But at least they read the definition of what a government does, and they try to do it: govern.
Republicans have proven again and again that what they are interested in is the Flood. Like the Engineers in the movie Prometheus (spoiler alert!) they want to create a vicious monster to wipe out humanity – by humanity, I mean anything that is anti-business. Anything that stands in the way of holy profit. And rather than making hideous aliens with elongated heads and acid for blood, Republican elites use the weapon of propaganda against gays, women, minorities, unions, and Planned Parenthood to keep the rank and file busy with inconsequential projects and protests so that they can keep on sucking the blood out of our great nation. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine called Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” He was correct but sadly his metaphor was too narrow. The entire Republican power elite is a school of vampire squid that gets together in the depths of the ocean, plans their attacks in secret under cover of night, and then enlists the dumber species of fish to slowly destroy their own environment and themselves. And then the Republican squid jam their blood funnels into the dying corpses.
What do Republicans continually harp on? The debt. The US Treasury states that, as of August 2012, debt held by the public was approximately $11.19 trillion or about 72% of GDP. Intra-governmental debt was $4.79 trillion, giving a combined total public debt of $15.98 trillion. And a global, super-wealthy elite has exploited gaps in tax rules to hide an extraordinary $21 trillion of wealth offshore… according to research commissioned by the Tax Justice Network. Not all members of the global super-wealthy are Americans, but a large proportion are. In fact, according to Thom Hartman, “400 super-rich Americans control more wealth in the country than 150 million other Americans, and yet are effectively taxed at a rate of just over 16% while the rest of us pay up to 35% plus higher levels of sales, property, and other taxes. To put that in perspective these 400 rich oligarchs effective tax rate has dropped by more than 2/3 since Dwight Eisenhower's administration – while the rate for working people has nearly doubled. Rich people get a 2/3 tax cut over the last 50 years – working people get screwed with a 100% tax hike.” And this trend, this horrifying reality is what Republicans want to keep secret. It is why they want to keep the faithful busy with restricting abortion, preventing gays from marrying, and talking about family values and freedom and gun rights. Because if the Republican power elite were forcibly submitted to lie detector tests, I doubt that any answer about their core values would read truthful unless the question was, “Do you believe in money and power?”
It is our responsibility to educate those whose opinions differ from ours. Many liberals often ghettoize themselves in The Huffington Post and many conservatives ghettoize themselves in Fox News. I see a lot of liberal friends post things on Facebook to their own liberal friends. This is the choir to which they are preaching. I hope we can all reach out to those who claim a different political bent than us and those who claim not to care about politics at all. And I understand being frustrated with the leaders provided to us. The solution is to be the change you wish to see in others. Please vote. And encourage everyone you know to vote. Push them. Cajole them. Drive them to the polling station. Lend them a stamp. Just vote. Because I have to believe there are more thinking people in this nation than there are ignorant ones. If I am wrong, I will be heartbroken until 2016.
1 comment:
Great post. I actually got to your site because I was looking for Saparote Kuan recipes...something that appears not to exist on the interwebs. I have asked around in Thailand and they either tell me that the store down the road sells the cookies or you just take saparote and then you kuan. So totally Thai. Your cross roads of politics and Thai stories is delightful and I thought I would tell you so.
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