As a hardcore philosopher, I have no option but to be a hardcore independent in today's political scene. I can't stand either the Republicans or the Democrats. Today, however, I would like to comment on the GOP.
Ever since the disaster known as the Bush Presidency, and ever since the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President in 2008, the GOP has absolutely jackshit for credibility as a major political party.
As a hardcore philosopher, I am also a hardcore liberal in the original, true sense. (Today the concept is associated with the term "libertarian.") It means that I have at least as much animus towards state power as many in the GOP claim to have. When it comes to state power, however, the GOP has absolutely shat away its credibility.
Supposedly, according to the thoroughly dishonest narrative foisted on us by the Republican Establishment (read: Roger Ailes's propaganda outlet, FOX News), the American People are fed up with government and, therefore, fed up with Barack Obama and his big-government ways. The solution, goes the narrative, is to hand the reigns of power right back over to the very same sonsabitches who gave us George W. Bush, Dick W. Cheney, and Sarah W. Palin.
If the GOP gave the slightest two shits about out-of-control federal power, they would have been calling for remedies to the war crimes of the Cheney/Bush era. But they haven't, for the simple reason that they have no principles whatsoever. The war crimes were committed by Their Side, so that's okay.
And let's not kid ourselves here: the GOP - just as with the Democrats - is all about serving the interests of an Establishment Elite, a corporatist oligarchy that is always looking for new ways to screw over the American People. That is how we got the fucking farce of a War on Terror that pours trillions of taxpayer dollars into the tried-and-true Military Industrial Complex with the taxpayers' fear-manufactured acquiescence. To sum up the 9-year-and-counting War on Terror: Osama bin Laden is still alive and sending out messages. That fact alone ought to be fucking mind-blowing to the American People.
But, alas, the American People have very short memories. That's the way of the sham that is human politics. Remember the GOP/FOX/Ailes/Palin-fomented paranoia as little as a year ago that was the Birther nonsense? All part of a strategy to discredit Obama and stoke fear in the American People. There is little doubt that it worked to a considerable extent. The very same GOP-voting crowd that believes in 2,000-year-old Resurrections, also disbelieves the evidence that Obama is an American-born citizen. This is the same crowd that turns a blind eye to America-conducted war crimes, mind you, despite all the overwhelming evidence. This is the same crowd - loosely aligned with the so-called Tea Party - that now professes to want to go back to America's roots. I guess that means shitting all over the pro-reason (read: anti-bullshit), pro-freedom philosopher, Thomas Jefferson, in the process.
This is what makes the whole Tea Party thing a sham. First off, the Tea Party phenomenon succeeds in conflating original American liberalism with ignorance, anti-intellectualism and paranoia. The American People - 50 percent of whom deny the reality of evolution in spite of the overwhelming evidence - supposedly want freedom from federal tyranny, too. The true voices of reason and freedom - i.e., people like Ayn Rand - get drowned out in all this. The GOP really doesn't give a shit about them. They will use them up and then spit them out after the election returns are in, so that they can go back to fucking us a la Bush, Cheney, Rove, Ailes, and Palin. In short, the Tea Party is just another cause for cynical opportunism by the GOP so that they might take back some power from the Democrats. Period.
The Tea Party, on its face, is a positive thing, reminiscent of founding American ideals. Distrust of government power. Advocacy of freedom from things like lawless torture and surveillance and people-killing wars of convenience. This also does not reflect maintream American opinion today. Mainstream American opinion is full of all kinds of falsehoods, lies, evasions, equivocations, cowardice, intellectual laziness, gullibility, inconsistency, politician-trusting, media-trusting, church-trusting, and any number of other intellectual vices. (For evidence: look at the completely stupid, unwarranted, and illiberal prohibition on marijuana, still supported by a majority that simply does not know any better.) This is what the GOP Establishment feeds off of, for one primary purpose: political power. The power to illegally kill, torture, and spy, and to enrich corporate sponsors at the expense of the people. And when it comes to totally credibility-destroying things like war crimes and the '08 Palin VP nod, the Establishment is full of nothing but fucking cowards who won't call it like it is for fear of alienating the voters/corporations that might get them elected.
Just remember this as we approach Nov. 2 and are told, once again, how we need Change in Washington.
