When is the GOP finally going to die, and where do we bury it?

"Climbing the eastern wall as it had come, the colossus went to and fro for many hours, no longer wreaking a hellish wrath and rancour, but searching, as people thought, for the various tombs and graves from which the hundreds of bodies that composed it had been so foully reft. From charnel to charnel, from cemetery to cemetery it went, through all the land; but there was no grave anywhere in which the dead colossus could lie down." --Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne," 1934.


Come on GOP, you know you want to take that gun and...you love that gun, oh yes you do, and you love to use it. So use it. The problem with you being gone is that then the Democrats will have a free hand to become even more corrupt than they already are, and boy are they, just like you. But they hide it better. In a short time, they would look exactly like you do, possibly worse. Granted, that's a short walk off a short pier, and God knows they want to stay in Afghanistan too and give us an Orwellian war without end, but they're a smidgen more realistic than you, GOP. Just not very much, and they like falling on their swords when it means a pro-business agenda will be secure.

And those dumbbells that come at you with assault rifles at presidential speeches--they're you're rednecks! I didn't make 'em, their stupid parents and a bad educational system did. The worst part of you--GOP--is the smell: it's there, all the signs of decay, of putrefaction, are present. You stink. Small wonder that the national elections are held in the first week of November, so close to All Saints Day, today, which is then followed by All Souls Day, for the departed. Everything about the Republican Party is death. What does the GOP have left but dead ideologies? The stiff's still walking around, going through the various stages of mourning; give it time to realize that it's dead, just let it die. Martyrs? There have been no martyrs in the Republican Party since Abraham Lincoln, so they might have to create a few, and they're willing to. What does the GOP have besides a bunch of free market extremists and racist psychopaths yelling their heads off until nobody listens?

Their disconnect from reality is both genuine and terrifying: just this week Rush Limbaugh claimed that former VP candidate Sarah Palin was somehow prepared to be president, that she's capable and educated enough in geopolitics, economics, world history, and so on, to serve adequately in the Oval Office. Never mind merit, I think she can win, so who cares? He sounds like Franz von Papen when he urged President Paul von Hindenburg "hire" Hitler and make him Chancellor (Hitler lost the election, look it up, Vonnegut was wrong), and at this point she doesn't have a chance unless the economy crashes even further without further government intervention and someone burns down the Reichstag again in a terrorist attack.

My guess is the Saudis are waiting for someone to rebuild the World Trade Center so they can blow it up again. They have a long wait. Oh yeah, and Dick Armey (unfortunate name) is William Jennings Bryan (in a sick way he really is) as William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey trial, not the one that defended Eugene Debs and other unionists. We just keep coming back to the 1920s-30s! What business elites (and Libertarians) want is to drag us back into the 19th century when there was no regulation of much of anything, the good old days that never were. It's not so hard to believe when you take into account that the rich in America never accepted the New Deal.

When are we going to cope with modernity? When are we going to finally accept that we cannot go back to some arboreal Eden, that there never was a golden age, and that we're stuck with technology? There's no sticking the Djin back in its bottle once it's gotten free. History doesn't work that way; it means moving forward, and we should do so cautiously. We must change. If we go forward as we have, favoring corporations, subsidizing fossil fuels and concentrated wealth, and continue to move away from democratic traditions, all is lost. The real threat is coming from misguided Populism, as it always has, because it can be used against the rest of us. That's right, lack in others is a threat to everyone. Pointing these dummies at hot button issues and progressive targets and letting them run amok works. When people already hold irrational beliefs and attitudes, it's not such a long walk off that short pier. Now, where are we going to bury the GOP? We might want two graves for both major parties. Anyone? A shovel?