GOP Resorts To Public Poop Throwing

There’s a point in many relationships – bad ones that never should have been entered into – when things go from bad to ugly. The GOP was bad during the campaign, tossing off lies and innuendos and relentlessly attacking with falsehoods. It backfired. It backfired to such an extent that many of the people who had been doing it distanced themselves from themselves. John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee – even Newt Gingrich! – and anyone else with aspirations beyond public disdain are working hard to get away from a national party that had gone ugly early and lost resoundingly. 

Most people when they reach a point when their tactics spectacularly backfire, change course. Not the RNC. Now, as they seek to taint the President-elect with the Blogo scandal, releasing a video in which they connect the two with no evidence at all, other than a tape recording in which the scandal-plagued governor refers to Obama as a motherfucker – hardly a term of endearment that – have publicly lost their shit. They’ve snapped. They’re the guy who shows up to work wearing a diaper eating a dead squirrel and laughing. No longer lacking any sense of a moral compass, they have tacked sharply towards the insane. Publicly despised, they seek immortal infamy. In four years if they nominated the world’s largest tomato, it would not surprise. Rather than seek a way to return to public discourse they’ve chosen to be the guy who shows up to the office party covered in their own feces. It’s sad. But it’s not deserving of sympathy. Or news coverage.

A Red State With Subsumed Rage

I just got back from Florida. (They always pick a winner; even if they have to cheat.) There is something in the air when you visit a state that saw their man win. The air is easier to breathe. The people are more approachable. The beers are cheaper. And laughter is louder and more genuine.

Contrast that with Georgia, where, for reasons unclear, I call home. Georgia has a long and mixed history. It was founded by crooks. And it’s the very center of Dixie. Rebel flags. Moonshine. Shotguns. Hate. Meth. And kudzu. It’s the home of Deliverance. Which was a complete understatement of a book and movie.

On the other hand there’s Atlanta. Where a reverend with a dream changed the world and the course of our country forever.

Slavery and freedom; Civil War and Civil Rights; MLK and KKK; Saxby Chambliss and Ludacris. But for all of that history and all of that progress, underneath there is plenty of the loser’s resentment. The south lost the Civil War – but it was Georgia that Sherman burned to the ground. It was well over a hundred years ago, but there are plenty on both sides who feel it happened yesterday. Civil rights may have started it’s march in Atlanta, but it was never really taken to heart here. Black and white are largely still separated to this day. And racism’s effects show a remarkable disparity between the two…

What the hell am I talking about?

That’s a good question, and had you not asked it I might never have given you an answer. But there is a point. In Florida, turning from red to blue wasn’t all that hard. The red guy was an obvious fool and the economy was in the shitter. And the blue guy was clearly smart. In Georgia they just saw black. And they voted for or against it. They worked off an older ideology. And the majority of them lost. Some like it; many don’t. People go about their days and smile and do all the crap they do to keep the city and their lives moving forward. But there’s an underlying tension. They smile less. They eat more. Their laughs are harsher and less care free. Their eyes are a mix of fear, hostility, and emptiness. Southern Hospitality if it ever existed, didn’t find it’s home in Georgia. The New York of the south would never stand for its inclusiveness. Tomorrow many will cast a vote for a man clearly courting the openly racist. 

The pundits on television may speak of a post-racial era. But while we may have taken a large step forward, there are still plenty of people who never even put on their shoes.

His Brother’s Lame Duck Body Still Warm, Brother Jeb Seeks His Oval Office

Jeb Bush. You know, they like to tell us, he is the smart one. As if that was a hard thing to be. He was the governor of Florida before the guy they secretly think is gay was. The Florida governor is a basically ceremonial post unless one’s dumb mean older brother is running for President and your family dynamic has instilled in you to lie, cheat and steal in pursuit of family interests. Well, with Obama already further to the center than the left would like, Jeb feels the right is already being undermined. So he is suggesting they set up their own government separate from well, the real one. This is, after all a center right nation, as they now like to say. Right now, in the current GOP administration, the government is so far to the right it tipped the scale years ago. The center-right is so far to the left they can’t even see it. Their sense of balance is so awry that the outlawing of torture seems like an intolerably liberal concept. Good old Jeb seems to know his brother has forever ruined his chances for being the next Decider. So he is suggesting setting up a different government. One in which he could rule. You know. Sort of like secession. The last time we had two governments we had a thing called a Civil War. Now, I don’t think Jeb really even thinks that’s a good idea. I don’t even think he’s that smart. I think his brother is so dumb and stubborn we see his brother as smart because we never hear or see him. I think that what we’re seeing is the result of the ever growing power of the current state of news. These days you can’t just hold a press conference and get on the news. You have to say or do something outrageous. If you act reasonably nobody will notice. If you say you are running for office and want to make the news, you have to take out a flaming torch and set fire to a cauldron of screaming monkeys. You have to announce your plans to run for office and then actually run for miles on end. You have to take off all your clothes and tow a barge with your junk.

So now we have Newt Gingrich accusing the nation of becoming “violently fascist” for voting against an ever more demented old man and a Mean Girl. And you have Jeb Bush saying he wants to start his own country. In order to get noticed you have to say things that would send normal people to the nut house. If normal people said what GOP politicians are always spouting off, at the very least, they would be put on a secret unknown and unprovable government watch list. Their phones would be tapped; their bank accounts would freeze; their pets would have microphones implanted in their fur; their neighbors would wear suits and sunglasses and talk into their sleeves; their mail would be suspiciously mangled; and they’d never be able to get or keep a job. In the GOP though, you become a shiny beacon of bullshit on a hill of lies and they compare you to Reagan.