Lately, I’ve been writing disparaging things about Senator Hillary Clinton, heir-apparant and victimized candidate for the nation’s highest public office, and I fear that in doing so I’ve badly neglected an entire segment of America’s citizenry and its leaders. I speak of the easily-manipulated, the simple or superficial of mind, and the pure crazies, and of the billionaire criminals who run the country’s great plantation.
It’s one thing to fire away at Clinton. She and the rest of her public family are annoying beyond words and there are even signs of mental slippage, with which Americans have become too familiar already through seven years of Bush and the Cheney Syndicate. But in any comparison with the Republican Party and its next nominee, Clinton looks like F.D.R., or at least Tom Dewey.
This has been brought home to me recently quite by accident. As I’ve mentioned before, I am one of about a hundred million special enough to receive a “2008 Presidential Campaign Survey” from the Democratic Party, containing official-looking “Survey Tabulation Codes” and encouraged to answer a few questions.
Of course, the purpose of these “surveys” is to raise money. The dozen or so policy questions are designed to motivate you to answer the last one “yes”, which is whether you care enough to write them a check.
The Republicans use the same “survey” idea to get at people’s checkbooks. I am looking at one of these documents right now, a gift from a friend who, through no fault of her own, according to her, found her party registration “switched”. She rectified this bizarre occurrence some time back, but the Republican Party has evidently not learned of her departure. And thus was a loyal American inadvertently asked by the G.O.P. to answer the questions on their “Census Document” – prior to the money hit – and “return it for distribution to Party Leaders.”
Right away, you can see a difference. The Democrats believe their members will best respond to being treated as poll respondents. The Republicans believe their members will best respond if they think it’s an official government document. What this suggests I can safely leave to your imagination, but the term ‘mail fraud’ comes to mind.
The “poll” questions themselves illustrate something which seems to me highly significant. The Republicans appeal to people based on ignorance and fear; nearly all of their questions are pure flaming rhetoric along the lines of “Should Republicans do everything they can to prevent liberal Democrats from repealing the USA Patriot Act and other important laws that help our intelligence agencies protect America?” That’s the first one asked. They get worse.
Reminds me of the great Bill Hicks’ description of a typical poll question back in 1991: “Do you believe that George Bush, a good, Christian, white man, should send troops to the middle east to prevent Arab terrorists from coming over here and raping our white women?”
The propaganda is indistinguishable from the question. The underlying idea is to shut off thought. There are two sides here, the G.O.P. is saying. One is the side of America. The other is the side of its enemies.
More questions from the party of John McCain:
“Do you support the use of force against any country that offers safe harbor or aid to individuals or organizations committed to further attacks on America?”
“Should we do everything we can to stop Democrats from weakening border security?”
“Should we make our fight against the Democrats’ massive tax hikes a central part of the 2008 campaign?”
“Should we continue working for serious tort reform to protect individuals and small businesses from predatory lawsuits?”
“Do you support President Bush’s initiatives to allow private religious and charitable groups to do more to help those in need?”
“Do you agree that sowing the seeds of democracy and freedom in the Middle East is a worthy goal?”
Briefly translated, recipients are being asked whether they support military assaults against any other country we feel like blowing up, whether corporate criminals should be afforded legal protection against being held accountable for their crimes, whether tax money should be funneled to quasi-religious groups for “anti-poverty” efforts rather than spent on real programs run by the government. As we also know, the Democrats’ “massive tax hikes” consist of repealing the multi-billion-dollar giveaway to the wealthy and ending the tax breaks afforded the aforementioned corporate criminals. As for “sowing the seeds”of “freedom” by blowing the shit out of innocent people, well, you can’t make a cheese omelet without hitting a cow with a hammer.
This is the party of John “The Maverick” McCain. It would require some nose-pinching to vote for Clinton over McCain, but let’s be clear that pinching it would be preferable to snipping it off entirely.
