I don't see how anyone can seriously think that one political party, made up of your fellow citizens, is actually to blame for all the ills of a nation. It seems so narrow-minded and...boring.
i'm sorry you feel that way.
i've never said "all" the ills of a nation lie at the feet of the GOP. but there's not much question that the mess we're in today is the fault of the Bush administration, the GOP controlled congress, and the Democrats who aided and abetted them as they started multiple wars on credit cards and handed out unfounded tax cuts to the wealthiest among us.
but there's really not much of a question that the GOP no longer functions as an actual political party, and they're willing to hold a nation hostage to appease a minority within a minority. they are willing to bring suffering on the American people simply because they don't want to follow the law.
it's preposterous, and absurd, and as i look at my furloughed friends, the closed museums and zoos, the tourists scratching their heads wondering what's so awful about giving poor people access to health care
like every other country in the developed world, and the children who can't go to Head Start while their hard working, low-income parents scramble to find child care so they won't be fired, i get angrier and angrier.
this all exists for the benefit of Ted Cruz, and it demonstrates how a group of mouth breathing idiot radicals -- the "tea party" -- have been taught to so loath people different from them that they'd hurt their neighbors for the political betterment of this vainglorious asshole.
to blame the entirety of Congress or think that the blame lies on both parties equally is to not understand the goals and mission of this radical wing of the Republican Party.
what the wealthy backers of the "tea party" believe is that our government is a hindrance to their goals of maximizing their own profits. their only motivation is to get government out of the way of their own businesses so that they can make more money. this is a strategic long-term campaign to delegitimize any organization, person, or structure that stands in that path.
they believe that government is bad and does not provide for individuals or businesses anything that the private sector could. they do not believe that sometimes individuals fail and should have a safety net or that when we come together collectively we can do things that we'd never be able to do on our own.
so they have set out to change perceptions in the general public and better align the values of America with their own. they work very hard and spend lots of money to make us even more competitive with each other and even more resentful of anyone that we thought might be getting something we were not getting -- and they use coded language ("food stamps=blacks" "amnesty=Mexicans" "anti-family=gays") as a weapon to stir up real fears about modernity. they then assign blame for that to the very structures that actually helped to build a middle class and stabilized our economy for the past 60 years.
they started with the poor. the perception of "welfare queens" and free-loaders is not supported anywhere by data, only anecdote and racist prejudice. the data does not support that food stamps are used incorrectly.
then they went after unions. weekends, overtime, protections against discrimination, medical care, and sick time (yet, no legally paid maternity leave!). this is because of unions. unions are far from perfect, but unions created the middle class. the middle class is, to people like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, a hinderance to more capital flowing upwards, so crush the unions.
they demonize public workers too. let's not praise the State Department or Transportation Department experts who have worked tirelessly for years to advance the goals of the US, let's lump them in with the one cranky person at the DMV, who really has a shit job when you think about it, and say that all government employees are lazy, or worthless, or should be furloughed.
the goal is to obliterate the system itself, and the best way to do that is to get the American public to say "Congress is evil and must go." and use the corporate-owned media, including "journalists" who provide the easy villain that every-day Americans are looking for to explain the mess their lives have sometimes become, or why it isn't as good as they thought it was going to be. tell people that a paradise of huge salaries lies after they have destroyed the institutions that created the middle and working classes themselves.
our institutions are not perfect. they need constant attention, refinement, and the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world. however, the must not be destroyed or denigrated to a point where they can no longer function for those that need them.
there is not blame to go around. it belongs squarely in one place.
McCain and Boehner and McConnell would agree with me.
