The Republican Convention of 2012 shows us that conventional Republicans scarcely exist, anymore, but have been sucked backwards into the barest skeleton of their GOP traditional outlook. The mendacious unreality spoken by so many people at the podium highlights the fact that these unbright “too-far-right-ists” care more about winning than about truth. Fact is much less important than oft-repeated factoid and glittering pseudo-statement. Seldom can one see in one place at one time so many screwed-up heads separated from hearts as in this national Republican gathering, though they be wearing hearts on sleeves. Powerful emotion ranks higher than reality in that huge hall. This convention demonstrates (1) that the United States is on trial to determine which is more powerful: Property or Mentality. Money or Reason. Corporations or The People, and (2) whether rightists actually believe that if they say a thing often enough, repeat it via many voices loudly enough in enough venues, then the perception it generates whether true or false, will create its own reality and become the truth. This is the psychology of The Big Lie propounded and practiced in the Third Reich and largely accepted by the Soviet regime. Should we not suppose today’s Republicanism must fail and vanish along with those two, politically and humanly oppressive travesties?
“Glad-handed” Mitt Romney and “Koch-headed” Paul Ryan are an incredible pair. It’s not hard for me to like Romney through the lens of his knock-out wife, Ann. But, to me, Paul is something else. He strikes me as a blue-eyed, male ingenue with small blue eyes so piercing he is not attractive to look at. I would not care to hear his voice for the next four years, much less endure his bad policy-impact on the nation during the relatively short while that I, past 80, have left to live. Clearly, Ryan’s Ayn-Randian philosophy of finance and personal advancement is contrary to his professed Catholicism. I feel I’ve endured more than enough Republican administrations. They’ve gotten much worse since Hoover and Eisenhower. I’ve endured enough of people’s mind-gutting religiosity however warm and fuzzy it makes them feel in self-justified assurance of righteousness.
In Tampa, Republicans trumpeted with a big sign, “We believe in America.” But, the United States that I *know*, and therefore don’t need to “believe in,” really exists. Their America is a kind of reverse utopia that never did actually exist even in Britain, though 18th Century England came close. For people with plenty of money and solid property the world has always been a good place. It has mattered more to have gained wealth than how one got it, so long as one had not been caught out in public commiting crimes against someone or a group. Secretly, crimes have always paid. In public, criminals pay. Pay, that is, unless they grow too big to fail or be brought to account for wrong-doing! The Republican Party has too much to account for ever to be brought to justice for its complicity in the Bush/Cheney mal-administration. That infestation of American government, together with networked associates of People for The New American Century, account for too broad a swath of the population ever to defend themselves in a U. S. court room. They are, sadly, too much a part of the country not to participate in whatever national or popular downfall their machinations will finally bring on us all. Romney/Ryan will make things worse. Obama/Biden may do better, eventually. More Democrats in Congress will certainly help overcome resistance and “greedlock.”
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