For the love of all that’s good and reasonable, can we stop pretending the GOP has any guiding principles beyond “might makes right” and “the ends justify the means?” Republican legislators want only to seize and hold power. They will say and do anything to accomplish this goal. Slogans like “small government,” “fiscal responsibility,” “family values,” and so on are demonstrably nothing more than convenient public lies for them.
In fact, the unhesitating tendency to lie, cheat, steal, and murder is the primary fact that distinguishes modern Republicans from modern Democrats. Please note carefully that the difference is not in the lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering, but rather in the lack of hesitance. Democratic politicians are sponsored by the same oligarchic entities (some are actual wealthy oligarchs, some are corporate) as the Republicans, and so both sides commit the same bribery-inspired behaviors of first maintaining the status quo and then giving an edge to their donors. The difference is that the oligarchs choose strong (i.e. unhesitant) Republicans and weak (i.e. vacillating) Democrats.
It’s amusingly hypocritical (though not really, because of course consistency isn’t part of the Republicans’ infinitely flexible play book) that A.G. Barr pretends police forces might in any way be motivated to “protect and serve” their communities. The police get their marching orders from politicians, and politicians serve those who pay them. As such, police are designed and intended only to protect the property of the wealthy entities in their community. Kill a homeless person – who cares? Throw a brick through the front window of Whole Foods – you’ll be lucky if you’re not shot dead on the spot.
Beyond that, the police are strictly amateur hour when it comes to “enforcing the law.” They love activities where they can issue tickets or seize valuable property, both being activities useful in funding their organizations. Everything else is a byproduct and an irritation. When you call the police, you’re just annoying them. If you remind them of their ultimate masters (you own land and you’re white), you’ll probably just be on the receiving end of some attitude. If you’re anyone else, you’re lucky to escape without being beaten, tortured, and/or murdered.
No Republican ever did. It was always government small enough to fit in a woman’s womb, in the bedrooms of couples, and in their wallets.
“Small government” is simply a euphemism for buying one’s way out of responsibility to the public. Government not beholden to those governed or working towards their interests.
They used to be the progressive party that championed civil rights for women and people of color but they certainly have gone all out over the last two generations to put all that behind them.
The irony of American “rugged individualism" is that, especially as espoused by the GOP, it is 100% about leveraging the power of government to jealously defend affluent, generally white Americans’ illusion that they are entirely self-made, as if they’d each individually invented western civilization from first principles. No expense (in raw capital or to less-favored Americans) is too great to keep that myth alive. Thus, for those protected wealthy people, America has become an intricately-imagineered Disney version of itself, all dedicated to making sure they can’t see the rigging.
HBO’s Watchmen series, which has been killing it in terms of social commentary about American institutional racism (including a possible reference to Fred Trump’s KKK activities), had a white supremacist character try to justify it thusly:
We’re not racists. We’re about restoring balance in those times when our country forgets the principles upon which it was founded. Because the scales have tipped way too far. And it is extremely difficult to be a white man in America right now.
I can easily imagine one of Il Douche’s supporters saying exactly those same words.
It would not surprise me one bit if that quote was not actually taken from life. Because that SO sounds like something somebody outside a MAGA rally would have said, even if the headliners are smart enough to not say it out loud.
Haven’t thought about it this way before, but I imagine in the back rooms the oligarchs’ arguments boil down to
Democrat: We’ve got to throw our slaves a few crumbs once in a while, lest they rebel and ruin the whole thing! Republican: No, they’ll do as they’re told, get nothing, and like it!
The threshold of who’s right I guess is in line with our collective intelligence / willingness to organize.
The GOP blatantly ignores EVERY principle they’ve ever espoused. They were the party of Lincoln, FFS, but the Southern Strategy put the last nail in that particular coffin, apparently for all time.
I’m not terribly fond of the Democrats, frankly, but they also don’t make me seriously contemplate actual revolution.
