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Week of February 8, 2009 - February 14, 2009

The Republican Rape of America


BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

The Republican Rape of America

The Republican leadership and their corporate cronies have systematically brutalized and raped America. Now they're insisting that we give them a bonus instead of treating our wounds. Those are literally the facts, but why are so many Americans blind to the assault? In short, we've been brainwashed.

The Republican Party has demonstrated repeatedly that they are lousy at governance but there are none better when it comes to marketing their philosophy-and they should be, because they have but one philosophy-to divide and conquer. It would be inaccurate to call them racist, however, because they don't care any more about poor and middle class White people than they do minorities, but neither do they have any qualms about using racism and division to advance their interests.

Ironically, conservative Republicans have taken the Democratic Party's primary strength and used it against both the Democratic Party, and the American people as a whole. First they took the Democratic Party's penchant for being concerned with the plight of America and coin phrases like "bleeding heart liberals" and "tax and spend Democrats." Then they played on middle class frustration by tying civil rights, welfare, and crime into one neat bundle, and then attributed all of America's problems to the Democrat Party's tendency to be compassionate, or what they call, "bleeding heart liberals."

The genius of that strategy was by engaging it, the Republican Party not only managed to demonize minorities as welfare cheats and criminals who only want to avoid work and prey on the middle class, but it also allowed them to tie all of those negative images to the liberal agenda. Then by using people like Rush Limbaugh and other Republican propagandists, they repeatedly hammered that message home until they convinced many poor and middle class White people to vote against their own best interests. After all, they didn't want to be aligned with "liberals," welfare cheats, and criminals-they're loyal and "hard-working" Americans.

Thus, the Republican Party's entire agenda is about smoke, mirrors, and demonization in order to distract the American people. Take that ugly word "liberal" for example. The American Heritage Dictionary defines liberal as "Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry." What? An undereducated person wouldn't even recognize that definition. The way Rush Limbaugh spits it out you'd think liberal meant "one who stomps kittens and molests young children."

On the other hand, The American Heritage Dictionary defines conservative as, "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change." While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that definition-that is, unless you happen to be a woman, Black, gay, poor, or different in any way--the definition is just as significant in what it doesn't say as what it does. In the final phrase under "liberal" the definition says, "free of bigotry," while in the final phrase under conservative it says, "tending to oppose change."

That distinction is not insignificant since "traditional views and values" render each of the groups indicated above subservient-and by definition, conservatives oppose any change in that regard. In addition, the phrase "free of bigotry" is conspicuously absent in the dictionary definition. Thus, Republican talking points not withstanding, even the dictionary recognizes their underlining agenda.

But what Republicans are against is just as instructive as what they are for. During the recent bailout, Republicans responded to corporate fat-cats giving themselves huge bonuses with taxpayer bailout money with just a few whimpers and some scattered and perfunctory whining. But when President Obama proposed spending taxpayer money on schools, police and firemen, you could hear their wail across the land. What makes protecting our communities, and educating American children more wasteful than giving out huge bonuses, perks, and jets to corporate fat-cats? There are three answers to that question.

First, when we spend money on the American people, it takes away from their piece of the pie. They'd rather take that money and give even lager windfalls to their cronies--the very same fat-cats that they bought the jets for. While they claim the fat-cats are going to use that money to create jobs, we just saw exactly what they're actually going to do with it by the way they handled the bailout money--they're going to use it to wine, dine, and enrich themselves.

The second reason that every Republican member of the house, and all but three in the senate, voted against helping the American people is that they didn't want to risk undoing all the time and effort that they put into brainwashing us. It wasn't easy trying to teach the American people that thinking of themselves was selfish, morally repugnant, and a form of socialism. But you've got to hand it to the Republicans, when you consider the unrestrained greed of the corporate fat-cats that we just witnessed, it is truly unbelievable how they continue to keep Americans in the dark.

Which brings us to the third reason-education. After addressing the first two issues, it shouldn't be hard to understand why Republicans are against funding education-their very survival depends on an undereducated electorate. It's not easy to get people to vote against their own interests, and it would be next to impossible if the people were properly educated. The survival of Republican Party is totally dependent on a non-thinking electorate who will have a knee-jerk reaction to the fallacy of the "isms."

In spite of the fact that the only way that America can possibly survive is through a highly educated citizenry, the Republican Party simply cannot afford an educated electorate. How can they survive in an environment where you have citizens asking, "Now, how is giving these fat-cats my money going to get them to create jobs, if you don't leave me with enough money to purchase what they produce?" They simply cannot have that kind of independent thinking running rampant throughout the nation. They need a population that's so dumb that every time they holler "socialism" we'll hand over our piggy banks.

They need to keep us so ignorant that they can convince us that a government job is not really a job, it's just meaningless work, while at the same time, blind to the fact that they've been feeding from the public troff for the past thirty years.




Eric L. Wattree

wattree.blogspot.com

A moderate is one who embraces truth over ideology, and reason over conflict.

The Republican Party-a Threat to America


BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

The Republican Party-a Threat to America

One of the Republican Party's most enduring talking points is that the Bush administration has kept America safe since 9-11, but what evidence do we have of that? America's two primary entry points are all but short of a welcome sign. Even as the Bush administration bragged about their security efforts, they left both our front and back doors wide open.

In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on September 27, 2007, Greg Kutz of the Government Accountability Office testified that GAO investigators were able to cross into the United States from Canada with a duffle bag filled with contents resembling radioactive material on three different occasions during the fall of 2006. He went on to testify that they did so without encountering even one law enforcement official. And as everyone knows, our Southern border is an absolute sieve. If Jose Garcia can simply walk across the Mexican border into the United States, what's to prevent Osama Abdul from doing exactly the same?

So the Republican claim that they've kept America safe is clearly a myth. It's much more likely that America has not been attacked since 9-11 because Osama Bin Laden rationalized, why waste perfectly good terrorists to destroy America when Bush, Cheney, and the Republican Party were doing the job for him.

America is much more than a piece of real estate. The heart of America is the American ideal. Even George Bush somehow recognized that, but even as he claimed that terrorists hated America because they hated our freedom, he was actively assaulting those very same freedoms. So if Bush's claim was indeed true, both he, and Dick Cheney, were Osama's most valuable allies.

The problem is, the Republican leadership suffers from a sense of entitlement. They feel they have a moral right to control the power and resources of America, for the enhancement their own personal benefit and greed. Thus, the American people are nothing more than pawns to them. We represent inconvenient but necessary nuisances to help them further their imperialistic goals. After all, without us, who's going to fight their wars? Their strain of thinking was clear even as this nation was being established.

Alexander Hamilton, one of the fathers of the conservative movement stated the following:

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive an advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government."
Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).

So Mr. Hamilton took the condescending attitude that unless you were rich, or as he put it, "wellborn," you didn't have any sense, so your right to even participate in government should be limited at best. The "wellborn," on the other hand, should be given a "distinct and permanent" share in government.

 

We see that very same kind of condescension toward the American people in the Republican leadership today. That accounts for why the neo-cons--in spite of the fact that almost to a man, they all avoided military service--saw no contradiction in sending the children of the poor and middle class Americans to fight and die in the desert for lack of proper equipment. That's why they also had no problem with making these same Americans pay for their own meals as they laid in the hospital fighting for their lives from wounds sustained "in defense" of this country, while at the same time, these neo-cons were indulging in a greedfest, and throwing billions of dollars away so recklessly that it can't even be accounted for. It also explains why Dick Cheney's Halliburton saw nothing wrong with grossly overcharging the American taxpayer to provide our troops with contaminated water.

And this isn't the first time that Republicans showed a reckless disregard for the American people. After the stock market crashed during Herbert Hoover's administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property. Hoover's Republican administration tossed these brave veterans to the side like they were dealing with soiled toilet paper.

That brings us to our current situation. As I pointed out in a previous article, there should be no doubt in our minds that the Republican leadership has a vested interest in doing everything they can to work against America. As they see it, the only way that they can regain control of this government is for Americans to suffer like they've never suffered before-and they're doing everything in their power to see to it that is exactly what happens. So America needs to keep its eyes open, because the harder President Obama fights to cure America's ills, the harder the Republican Party is going to fight against him.

Clear evidence of that is their elevation of Michael Steele to Chairman of the Republican National Committee-the very first Black man to that position in its 153-year history. Coincident? Republican enlightenment? I don't think so. They simply figured that they needed another Black man to get down-and-dirty with President Obama--because it certainly couldn't be because of Steele's brilliance. His very first pronouncement was to try to convince a hungry America that the jobs program that President Obama created to meet their needs is an illusion"it's not a real job, it's just work." But somebody needs to inform Mr. Steele that whatever he chooses to call it, rather it be "job" or "work," it serves to feed children and save homes.

Further evidence is that Rush Limbaugh was dumb enough to admit that he hopes Obama fails. Put plainly, what he was actually saying was he hopes that America suffers, because that's exactly what's going to happen if the president doesn't succeed. And finally, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that the GOP should look to the Taliban for guidance on how the Republicans should go about disrupting President Obama's rescue program. And that's exactly how the American people should look upon the Republican Party, just like we do the Taliban-as a fierce threat to the American people.


Eric L. Wattree

wattree.blogspot.com

A moderate is one who embraces truth over ideology, and reason over conflict.
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Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles. He’s a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel and The Black Star News. He’s also the author of A Message From the Hood, and a contributing writer to Your Black World, and The Huffington Post.

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