The Party of Death
The Republican Party is the Party of Death.
There, I said it.
They promised us a culture of life, of course. Remember that? It turns out they don't talk about life except in code. "Life," wink wink, means anti-abortion. "Life," nudge nudge, means anti-evolution, anti-birth control, anti-music, anti-movies, anti-games, except games of death, of course. "Life" means pro-death penalty. But how can you build a culture of life when you so doggedly chase all forms of death? How can you build a culture of life when you don't take the most obvious steps to forestall death? Like avoiding war instead of marketing it. Like regulating polluters instead of giving them tax breaks. Like paying for levees and medicine and flak jackets.
But it turns out "culture of life" is just the password to the hideout where the GOP's deathly benefactors wait grimly to reap their rewards. Life, in its messy, everyday manifestations, makes them uncomfortable. Unlike death, which defines them. Death raining on the Middle East. Death washing away the city of New Orleans. Death in Guantanamo and countless hidden chambers around the world. Death in the ocean, death in the ground water, death in the air, death at the ice caps. Death by crumbling infrastructure. Death by budgetary fiat. A death of a thousand cuts nicking away at the Constitution. And always, above all else, secrecy - the death that dare not speak its name.
(When I heard the NSA was listening to Americans' phone calls, I took it as a hopeful sign. I didn't think they ever listened to anyone.)
A daily, deathly diet of dire predictions, premonitions and prevarications. Like when Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, barely containing his spit-polished indignation, tendered a preemptive apologia for all the NSA's grapplings in the dark. "You really don't have any civil liberties," he intoned, "if you're dead."
I heard those words and I honestly asked myself: Is Jeff Sessions dead?
Is he nothing more than a perambulating corpse, subsisting only on the meager fumes of vanity and power? Though his mind and conscience have ceased to function, does he trudge on, ever deferring to his ghoulish superiors, out of some vestigial reflex?
Then it hit me: They're all dead. The GOP is dead inside, and is about death and is of death, with a crispy death coating and a creamy death filling.
At times the rot has been so pestiferous that it has even resisted the efforts of the cable-news perfumerie. The stench of corruption, of a fetid disregard for public life, private life, prolonged life, curls around every corner of modern America.
Let's not kid ourselves: The decomposition will not end when George W. Bush ambles out of his Pennsylvania Avenue bunker in early 2009 (assuming he surrenders the place voluntarily). Look at the Republican leadership - yes, I know it's an oxymoron - and what you see is El Día de los muertos without the sombreros and candy. Death's party.
But wait, I hear you say. There are moderate Republicans. Indeed, and they are the moderate members of the death party. They are occasionally permitted to vote in a manner that isn't an affront to all living things. But they are part of the majority that lets the party of death trample the landscape on its skeleton horses.
Hold on, you reply, the Democrats aren't so great either. Again we agree. But whatever they are, the Dems are not the party of death. There's only one. Accept no imitations. The last five years have been, for all practical purposes, Democrat-free, and look around. Here's what unfettered, unobstructed Republican control of Congress, the Executive, the courts - plus a highly rated cable station acting as their Pravda - gets you. Like it? Neither does anyone else. And you don't have to be on "CSI" to know what it smells like.
The whole GOP, its entire foggy, grasping, lizard-brain ideology, is death warmed over. It calls itself Conservative but it conserves nothing. It claims to trumpet family but it sends military kids into a meat grinder and assassinates the character of their mothers if they dare ask why. It brays about religion but uses God only as a cudgel to wallop its foes. It warbles of freedom while threatening journalists and compiling lists of our phone calls. It burbles incessantly about values, but it values only death.
They took true control when mass death, in one dreadful, confusing September morning, crashed into our bubble. And they swore they would protect us if we would but trust that they knew best. So we did, in our panic, and they betrayed us. Their War on Terror turned out to be a war on us, a campaign to terrorize the population with Apocalyptic hints and color-coded charts and yet more secrecy, and with us suitably distracted they robbed us blind. They squandered our legacy and pissed on our future. Because that's what they do. They are wasters of other people's lives, other people's money, other people's pensions, other people's neighborhoods. They are a culture of death and a party of death.
If we want a real culture of life, or even a culture of being alive, let alone of living, they must be buried.
There, I said it.
They promised us a culture of life, of course. Remember that? It turns out they don't talk about life except in code. "Life," wink wink, means anti-abortion. "Life," nudge nudge, means anti-evolution, anti-birth control, anti-music, anti-movies, anti-games, except games of death, of course. "Life" means pro-death penalty. But how can you build a culture of life when you so doggedly chase all forms of death? How can you build a culture of life when you don't take the most obvious steps to forestall death? Like avoiding war instead of marketing it. Like regulating polluters instead of giving them tax breaks. Like paying for levees and medicine and flak jackets.
But it turns out "culture of life" is just the password to the hideout where the GOP's deathly benefactors wait grimly to reap their rewards. Life, in its messy, everyday manifestations, makes them uncomfortable. Unlike death, which defines them. Death raining on the Middle East. Death washing away the city of New Orleans. Death in Guantanamo and countless hidden chambers around the world. Death in the ocean, death in the ground water, death in the air, death at the ice caps. Death by crumbling infrastructure. Death by budgetary fiat. A death of a thousand cuts nicking away at the Constitution. And always, above all else, secrecy - the death that dare not speak its name.
(When I heard the NSA was listening to Americans' phone calls, I took it as a hopeful sign. I didn't think they ever listened to anyone.)
A daily, deathly diet of dire predictions, premonitions and prevarications. Like when Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, barely containing his spit-polished indignation, tendered a preemptive apologia for all the NSA's grapplings in the dark. "You really don't have any civil liberties," he intoned, "if you're dead."
I heard those words and I honestly asked myself: Is Jeff Sessions dead?
Is he nothing more than a perambulating corpse, subsisting only on the meager fumes of vanity and power? Though his mind and conscience have ceased to function, does he trudge on, ever deferring to his ghoulish superiors, out of some vestigial reflex?
Then it hit me: They're all dead. The GOP is dead inside, and is about death and is of death, with a crispy death coating and a creamy death filling.
At times the rot has been so pestiferous that it has even resisted the efforts of the cable-news perfumerie. The stench of corruption, of a fetid disregard for public life, private life, prolonged life, curls around every corner of modern America.
Let's not kid ourselves: The decomposition will not end when George W. Bush ambles out of his Pennsylvania Avenue bunker in early 2009 (assuming he surrenders the place voluntarily). Look at the Republican leadership - yes, I know it's an oxymoron - and what you see is El Día de los muertos without the sombreros and candy. Death's party.
But wait, I hear you say. There are moderate Republicans. Indeed, and they are the moderate members of the death party. They are occasionally permitted to vote in a manner that isn't an affront to all living things. But they are part of the majority that lets the party of death trample the landscape on its skeleton horses.
Hold on, you reply, the Democrats aren't so great either. Again we agree. But whatever they are, the Dems are not the party of death. There's only one. Accept no imitations. The last five years have been, for all practical purposes, Democrat-free, and look around. Here's what unfettered, unobstructed Republican control of Congress, the Executive, the courts - plus a highly rated cable station acting as their Pravda - gets you. Like it? Neither does anyone else. And you don't have to be on "CSI" to know what it smells like.
The whole GOP, its entire foggy, grasping, lizard-brain ideology, is death warmed over. It calls itself Conservative but it conserves nothing. It claims to trumpet family but it sends military kids into a meat grinder and assassinates the character of their mothers if they dare ask why. It brays about religion but uses God only as a cudgel to wallop its foes. It warbles of freedom while threatening journalists and compiling lists of our phone calls. It burbles incessantly about values, but it values only death.
They took true control when mass death, in one dreadful, confusing September morning, crashed into our bubble. And they swore they would protect us if we would but trust that they knew best. So we did, in our panic, and they betrayed us. Their War on Terror turned out to be a war on us, a campaign to terrorize the population with Apocalyptic hints and color-coded charts and yet more secrecy, and with us suitably distracted they robbed us blind. They squandered our legacy and pissed on our future. Because that's what they do. They are wasters of other people's lives, other people's money, other people's pensions, other people's neighborhoods. They are a culture of death and a party of death.
If we want a real culture of life, or even a culture of being alive, let alone of living, they must be buried.
posted by Simon Glickman at 2:00 PM
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