"...There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
--- William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
Last week I told you all about why the Left is a dangerous force in American politics, and promised I would get around to taking a swipe at the Right.
Here's your swipe:
If you're wondering why, with control of Congress and a (nominally-) republican President, nothing of import to the American people -- repealing ObamaCare, Tax reform, immigration reform, just to name the Big Three -- appears to be getting addressed, let alone done, I'm going to tell you why.
It's no secret as to why I think the Left is generally incompetent and ineffective; I attribute these qualities to the very nature of most Leftist ideologies (they are all shams, simple marketing programs for a system of centralized power over all human endeavor which are designed to crush liberty in the process), and to the very weak and fragile intellects of the typical Lefty (they're all mentally ill, to one degree or another, or just not very bright, or even both), and some of you on the Right who read this regularly and often praise me for my insight (such as it is) laugh a bit over it, feel a little smug and superior, will never analyze and critique your own side to ensure justification for those feelings.
It's enough for many that I've made a case that The Other Side is bad and Our Side is good, and that's as far as most people's thoughts will take them. It's all they need to know. It's all most WANT to know.
And yet, they can't believe their eyes and ears when Mitch McConnell says "wait, let's not be too hasty!" on repealing ObamaCare, or when "budget wonk" Paul Ryan argues for a raise in the debt ceiling, or that whatever this week's suggested priority is can't be done right this minute. Or when a small number of Senators, or even a single one - an obviously-brain-damaged John McCain, an obviously-dense Susan Collins, some dumbfuck representing something he calls "The Freedom Caucus" (spare me, fucktard!) can gum up the whole works.
The people who produced this Republican trifecta of Congressional Control and The White House get angry and confused: But...but, we elected republicans to do something? Why won't they do it?
And the obvious answer -- they don't want to do it -- goes unrecognized, and the reason WHY it goes unrecognized is because the very same angry voters have more fun calling each other RINO and preaching something on the order of fascism as a solution to realize that they are at fault.
Before I list the ways in which Joe GOP is directly responsible for his own ulcer, let's examine the composition and activities of the Modern Republican Party.
It is hardly worth noting that the GOP has been the junior, and least-successful in terms of policy of the two parties for a very long time. At least since FDR's New Deal. granted, there were successes in the presidencies of Eisenhower and Nixon, but one was somewhat forgotten in the post-death-JFK orgy of Cult of Personality and the Counter-Cultural Revolution, and the other soiled his legacy by becoming the Biggest Dick in The World. Democrats kept piling up electoral victories and policy victories (whether those policies were actually good for America is another debate; the fact that they passed into law is the telling point), and the GOP -- despite occasional flashes of brilliance, a Goldwater or two -- was firmly cemented in place as America's Number Two Political party.
Naturally, the GOP studied the successful ways of the democrats, and discovered the formula that wins elections. Without a lengthy dissertation on the theories of managerialism, I'll sum it up, thus: the democrats managed electoral victories by cobbling together coalitions of groups, tailored policies to appeal directly to these groups, and then stitched them together into a program for winning elections.
The democrat party has always been, first and foremost, the party of "groups". In the past, it has stood as champion of the Farmer, the Industrial Worker, the Female, the Poor, the Rural Folk, the Racial Minority, and more recently it has morphed into the Vanguard of the LGBTQQQWERTY (as Mark Steyn calls them), the Transgendered, the Elderly, the Sick, the Career Criminal, the College Student, and even more sub-divisions of the American electorate. It's program has been, more or less, "Free Stuff for Everyone Paid for By Someone Else", and this message resonates, even among people who have the intelligence to know better.
So long as it isn't the wallet of those who know better, then the dream is still mighty attractive.
Democrats have always spoken to the People as if they were categories, and not individuals. They have always talked about Feminists, African-Americans, Minorities, Union Labor, and so forth, as if these were all amorphous blobs that weren't constituted of flesh-and-blood human beings. If you were "African-American", then that was supposed to be good enough reason to support a policy directly aimed at "African-Americans" as a mass, and not, say, as Raekwon Davis, PhD in Classical History.
So, the democratic strategy has always been to appeal to as many groups as possible, promise as much to them as is humanly possible (and sometimes, impossible), and win elections and do shit.
Along came Ronald Reagan, and the first indication that the GOP had, finally, learned the lesson on how to win elections. Reagan was the first, modern managerialist GOP President. When we speak (some speak too fondly and too dreamily of it) of "The Reagan Coalition", the propensity to describe it's components is always made in sweeping generalizations of category: "Evangelicals", "Reagan Democrats", "Gun Owners", "Cold Warriors", and so forth.
The GOP had morphed from a party of the individual to the party of an alternate set of Categorized Human Beings.
And both parties continue to engage in politics in this way. They have become addicted to this process; the dems, as I've said, simply created more categories to pander to (and then double down on stupid and intransigence in support of them), and the GOP followed suit, so that now we hear references to, for example, "Our Military" or "First-Responders", "Tea Party Voter", "Patriots", words and phrases that would not have been very common back in the 1970's, or earlier, and which only make sense within a narrow political context. In fact the GOP went one better than merely creating new categories of it's own to pander to, it went so far as to make these new categories the favored pets of the GOP.
What the democrats did for "Minorities" the GOP has now done for "Veterans"; turned them into a new dependent class that will cleave unto them to maintain it's special privileges and political power in America. If the African-American Vote leans heavily democrat, well, then, by-God, we'll pay to make sure the veteran's vote goes our way!
As always happens (I've noted this before) in such an arrangement, eventually, there is going to be competition, internally, between the factions for favored status, position, and privileges. This is most visible on the Left, where the extreme left wing and the old guard Civil Rights crowd has almost made it impossible to be "a moderate" and survive politically. A similar process is occurring on the right.
The mechanics of American politics has been systematized to such a degree that unless something comes along along that mollifies every competing GOP group within the coalition, nothing gets done. Unless something comes along that allows a politician to have his cake and eat it too with regards to his particular herd of Categorized-Americans (you know who you are, Rand Paul!), nothing will get done.
(It should be noted the left does not have this problem because it simply promises it's competing groups more of someone else's money, whether the promise can be kept or not. The Left does not fear a charge of hypocrisy like the Right does because it doesn't care about consistency or morals, and because the Left is perfectly willing to abandon a position at the drop of a hat, if doing so becomes expedient See: The Apologists for Communism now screaming about Russian interference in the last election).
"Perfect" becomes the enemy of "Just Good Enough" because there is no longer any possibility of compromise in the name of common cause, or for the common good. There is only the possibility of minimal advance for a slender, cobbled-together, and largely-temporary majority. The Left has obviously fragmented, with the more moderate elements that haven't plunked for Trump being hounded out of the party in favor of fire-and-brimstone activism. The Right has fragmented, too, it's just that the fervor and vitriolic nature of the internal struggle hasn't made it's way to the general public....yet.
Which brings us to the second problem with the GOP.
That fervor and vitriol is almost never -- in right wing circles -- discussed in the context of policy or ideology, but in terms of individuals.
This one's a RINO; that one's not a "True Conservative"; this other one is a Traitor, that one cowering in the corner is a Cuckservative, the one in the blue shirt is definitely a Rockefeller Republican, and that piece of shit is an Establishment Whore.
The politics are aimed at groups; the invective is aimed at individuals.
And the simultaneously comic and tragically sad fact is that most of the people who behave in this way have little to no idea what, exactly, they're talking about, and wouldn't know a "Conservative" from a "Libertarian"from a "Free Trader" from a bad rash, except that they are reacting in a tribal fashion to their own (often self-) categorization.That guy isn't part of my tribe (he's not afflicted by the same personal itch), therefore, he's not one of us.
Most of this is driven by complete fucktards who spend their time listening to other complete fucktards on the radio, or sharing conspiracy theory stories from third-grade-reading-level websites online, who seem to have missed an important point:
That guy may very well be a jackass, but you've voted for him like 50 times. How do you think Senator Dumbfuck and Congressman Dingleberry got to be "Establishment", after all?
Do you think John McCain just fell out of the sky (no pun intended)? Are you under the mistaken impression that Mitch McConnell just sprouted inside the Senate like a weed? The rank-and-file GOP nosepicker with a vote is complicit in his own sense of discontent, he repeats the very same action -- and votes for some douche (the SAME douche) on the basis of his stance on a single issue, or maybe two, over and over again -- becomes rabidly dissatisfied, starts the finger-pointing and blame, demands the douche start toeing the line, and then repeats the process despite failure.
True to form, when it doesn't work the solution is mysteriously not to be found in a close examination and re-evaluation of the process and the voting habits of the average GOP mouthbreather, but to demand a stricter brand of orthodoxy ("we would have gotten our way if only there were real conservatives in Washington"), and ever-more-stringent litmus tests for authenticity and doctrinal purity.
Like what the democrats are doing right now. Like what the Muslims do every time they lose, too. The dems call it "moving to the left" and the Muslims call it "fundamentalism". Republicans call it "Draining the Swamp". In effect, it's a Stalin-esque attempt to purge the "hoarders and wreckers" out of the party. Which is a doomed effort since the average GOP dickhead keeps voting for the same Swamp Creature.
People may hate Congress, after all, but they all seem to have a deep and abiding love affair with their Congressman.
Don't get me started on the Messiah Complex inherent in GOP politics (probably a relic of deep religious stupidity) in which someone must "save" the GOP from imminent disaster, and a new Savior is appointed every five minutes by the likes of Hannity, Coulter, and Levin (the Holy Trinity of Consistently-Wrong Shitheads). In my lifetime, the GOP has afforded this Messiah Worship to the following individuals, who all turned out to be disappointments for one reason or another: Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, Scott Walker, Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney, Mitch Daniels, Michelle Bachmann, Ted Cruz, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, Sam Brownback, Paul Ryan, and for the life of me, I'm sure there's 20 others who's names elude me for the moment.
I get sick and tired of being told that Flavor-of-the-News-Cycle republican is alternately a "savior" or the second coming of Ronald Reagan. Get over Reagan; he's gone, and his like is never to be seen again, and if he were alive and able to run today, he'd lose...badly.
The people who make these repeated judgments, however, never seem to suffer any loss of credibility or income for being wrong. Funny how that happens.
So, if you wonder why your Republican Congress in league with a Republican President can't do a goddamned thing, here it is:
The Modern Republican Politician is a very strange creature. He lives in a world of constant hazards, the first of which is a terror of his own making -- the need to pander to groups for votes and support, rather than making an argument for free individuals to compromise with one another in the name of consensus. This is really an ideal from the Classically-Liberal foundation of the GOP, but it seems to have gone right out of fashion. His continued existence depends upon being able to walk political tightropes and straddle ideological fences with the equivalent of a gale-force wind of radio-generated hot air in his face, and the ever-shifting weight of alliances of convenience strapped to his back.
His second danger is the rank stupidity of the individuals who make up these groups, for their support is often not dictated by a sweeping ideological affinity (or a very deep understanding of ideology), but rather is based upon a position on a particular subject, or small cluster of issues -- abortion, gun rights, religious affinity, immigration, taxes, the excessive regulatory regime, just to name a few -- that very often cannot possibly be reconciled all of the time. The Politico walks a minefield the second he gets to work in the morning and has to take a phone call from one guy who needs cheap labor to keep his small business afloat, and then responds to an e-mail from another dude who wants the Mexicans and Muslims deported last week.
And both guys are reliable check writers.
His third danger is that he is subject, at any time, to a bewildering array of vicious personal attacks from all directions, at all times. If he so much as suggests a policy (regardless of target or intent), the democrats and the press attack it as an act of Hitlerian genocide before the ink is dry on the Press Release. Some of his own side attack him because the suggested policy either goes too far (making him a fucking RINO piece of shit Big Government lover), or it doesn't go far enough (making him an Establishment Cocksucker who conspired with the Commies and gave the dems what they wanted).
The suggestion or policy will be relentlessly picked apart by radio and cable news who have enormous amounts of expensive airtime to fill, and battalions of expensive "experts" to parade across the airwaves.
And you wonder why the guy does nothing? He's damned if he does, and damned if doesn't. But in the meantime, he has a means of successfully maintaining his position, often largely aided by the fact that while he might be a fucking slug, at least he's a slug who has managed 4, 8, 10 electoral victories made possible by the same people who criticize his republican and conservative credentials, and The Other Guy is worse.
(Incidentally, I would like to make the case that there are no more Conservatives, in any legitimate sense. Maybe next time).
And just to make things infinitely worse, the same dickheads who scream about more Conservatism, more ideological purity, more constitutionalism, fewer professional politicians, the degraded culture, went ahead and elevated to the Presidency someone who wouldn't know a Conservative if one kicked him in the ass, who has no apparent ideological compass, who has probably never read the Constitution (don't worry, neither did Obama), and who very often seems to be at the mercy of a political system and means of government, the workings of which he seems not to understand, so that he can be stymied by some anonymous bureaucrat in the bowels of the Department of Redundant Paperwork, submarined by career "Justice Department" officials breaking laws left and right, and at a total loss as to how to navigate the even-more-degraded culture of Washington, DC.
But that's okay, because this billionaire who went bankrupt four times running casinos, well, "he's one of us".
The problem, as I see it, is not the GOP itself, but the people who make it up. We don't need so much smarter or more-dedicated politicians (smarter and more-dedicated politicians tend to be an even greater danger than naive, undirected ones) as we do smarter and more-dedicated VOTERS who are capable of seeing a bigger picture beyond their often petty, single-issue fixations, who are willing and able to compromise where progress is possible, rather than to just dig in and turn the process into an operation in trench warfare.
It would seem the Left has no monopoly on either crazy or stupid.
UPDATE: Corrected an incorrect link at top.
A Majority of One is a weekly diatribe about things most people are probably thinking, but afraid to say out loud.
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