I’m not sure if I have a Congressman, anymore. My district either is or was represented by a classic business suit Republican named Tim Murphy. If you’ve been following the story, I’m sure you understand my doubts.
If you haven’t, the sordid summary is as follows: Congressman Murphy unexpectedly announced he would be “retiring” after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obtained text messages he had allegedly written, allegedly instructing his alleged mistress to abort his alleged baby while he was co-sponsoring legislation which sought to prevent other women from doing the same thing.
In its report, the Post-Gazette also reported Murphy’s response to his alleged mistress angry reaction to his suggestion in which he asserted his staff wrote his anti-abortion press releases and that he “winced” when he read them. But somehow, all that wincing didn’t inspire him to leave the “Pro-Life Caucus”.
For decades, it has been an accepted truism of both parties that a Pennsylvania candidate running for anything – except those in the City of Philadelphia – cannot win an election unless he is anti-choice and pro-gun. (I used to wonder why Philadelphia never deserted the Commonwealth to become part of New Jersey. Then I figured out that the emissary sent to make the offer probably couldn’t get across Christie’s bridge.) We on the Left often wonder how our career politicians manage to balance those concepts, which sound to us a lot like, “Let’s make this woman carry this baby to term so someone can shoot it.” Apparently, it is much easier to balance contradictory concepts if you don’t actually believe them.
https://twitter.com/SurvJourno/status/824342114280624130
So, who actually does believe the primary purpose of the government should be to protect the rights of gun owners and fetuses? No one but the uneducated masses whose numbers are growing each day as conservative politicians further reduce funding for education in order to enhance and enlarge their power base.
Educated people don’t vote Republican so let’s stop educating them.
The plan, while highly effective as a tool for a minority party to obtain and retain political power, has created two versions of “Republican” in Pennsylvania. About the only thing they have in common is all the flags they wave. The aforementioned “business suit” variety (we’ll call them the BS Republicans) pretends to think like the electorate in order to manipulate it but has only one fundamental, honest belief: Rich people should pay for as little as possible. Their de facto political victims are self-styled “patriots” – many fresh off the farm or working for minimum wage in the service industry – who have no appreciation for the impact of the bullshit they are spewing. Most will never see “rich” anywhere but reality television. Yet here they are, voting Republican and waiting for their trickle-down.
If you ask a BS Republican who tells you he is for “God and Country” to pick one – because the national interest is not always the same as the Christian interest (believe it or not) and the voters have a right to know to which he will give priority when they conflict – he will have a member of his staff draft a response he can later disavow.
If you ask a Pennsylvania “Patriot” to pick one, he will look temporarily confused before he shoots you.
Both groups are dealing with the same unavoidable contradiction. No one, you see, can be completely and unflinching loyal to both their God and their nation, just as they cannot be loyal to American Democracy and Free Market Economics. Sooner or later, the interests collide and you have to choose your master.
Having breathed the same air as them for over fifty years, I can assure you: The Patriot will always pick God and the Suit will always choose to worship Milton Friedman. For each group, the national interest will always be secondary.
https://twitter.com/SurvJourno/status/918172328630128640
In comparison, it is relatively easy being both a Socialist and a patriot. You only have to show your primary concern is for the majority of the citizens of the United States of America, millions of organisms who spent millions of years evolving so they could use their intelligence to act in the best interest of the planet. If you are a conservative, your concern is not for those citizens, but for the institutions created to enslave them by other rich people like you. And if you are a right-wing politician, your only reasonable approach, if you want to keep your job, is pretending that’s not the case.
American political dishonesty didn’t begin, nor will it end, with the NeoCons of the Reagan era. But the enemies of the democratic process have refined the art over the course of the last forty years to ensure their minority party remained in power much like Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And their electorate has fallen in line because they’ve somehow managed to convince them that being a conservative and being a patriot are the same thing.
https://www.facebook.com/SurvJourno/posts/1870898946514522
Meanwhile, conservatives once again rob the nation blind until their economic house of cards falls apart and progressives are left to clean up the mess while their power base becomes so jaded by the political and economic dishonesty of Reagan and Friedman, they are perfectly comfortable voting for a compulsive liar to be the leader of the once-free world. And they are too uneducated to realize that’s why they’re doing it.
I will one day have a Congressman, again – just as America will once again have a President superior to Donald Trump. (Is Dick Cheney still plugged in to the charger?) But if we do not get rid of the manipulative, self-serving bull-shit Politician from both parties whose primary loyalty is to those parties, rather than the nation, we won’t have learned much from the unpleasant experience.
With a progressive national agenda, we can properly educate our citizens. But no action we can take will turn a manipulative, self-serving politician into a dedicated public servant.
[Featured image by AK Rockefeller via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0]