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"Part mwah, part shh, part *ponder*" by Sarah G on flickr
From Truthout. A former GOP operative lays out what the republican strategy actually is. As if we could not have already guessed.
Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might – the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was “bring it on!”
It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
I would go as far to say a tyrannical, totalitarian cult. One that is only interested in absolute control of the country.
9 Comments
“As if we could not have already guessed . . .”
I believe the Republicans are slitting their own throats, but they aren’t stupid and they would not engage in this self-destructive behavior unless they were assured that Obama, the Democrats, and the MSM would legitimize what they are doing rather than exposing and vilifying them.
Obama wants to play this game because it provides him with cover to do what he wants to do and he bitterly resents and hates us because we keep calling him on it.
Fewer and fewer people out here on Main Street are fooled by all of this bullshit. Revolution is in the air and before long the unthinkable will be on everyone’s mind.
Recommended.
You maybe right, Masoninblue. But I can’t help thinking of a certain Andy Griffith episode.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMDDM0yqM7w
Modified ya just a little bit:
“Democrats want to play this game because it provides them with cover to do what they want to do and they bitterly resent and hate us because we keep calling them on it.”
That would explain the cold shoulder in DeeCee, as well as the White House.
The Constitution gave We The People our very own lobbyists. They called it Congress. Shoulda known greedy white men would immediately fuck it up.
A soiciopath without empathy for others, A bunch of double high authoritarians.
Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean
“Bush and Cheney are Double High authoritarians, far above Nixon’s league.”–John Dean
Let’s play a game. I’ll describe a well-known American politician, the description being unceremoniously lifted from John Dean’s book, Conservatives Without Conscience. See if you can figure out who it is, and whether you can make a diagnosis of his personality, doctor.
“X” became a born-again Christian when he was first elected to Congress. He brought a strong drive for power with him to Washington, and he steadily worked his way to the top of the Republican caucus. Colleagues have described him as amoral. “If it wasn’t illegal to do it, even if it was clearly wrong and unethical, (he did it). And in some cases if it was illegal. I think he still did it” said another Republican Congressman. “X” is opposed to equality, and Newsweek commented that he has never been subtle about his uses of the power of Love and Fear. He kept marble tablets of the Ten Commandments and a half-dozen bull-whips in his office when the was the party whip. He earned the nicknames, “the Hammer,” “the Exterminator,” and the ”Meanest Man in Congress.”
When “X” became House majority leader (talk about a big hint!) he imposed a virtual dictatorship on the House of Representatives.
http://www.whale.to/b/double_highs.html
Milton Rokeach’s dogmatism scale was an early attempt to measure pure authoritarianism, whether left or right. The scale was carefully designed to measure “closed mindedness” without regard to ideology. Nevertheless, researchers found that it correlated with British political conservativism.[13] In a similar line of research, Philip Tetlock found that right wing beliefs are associated with less integrative complexity than left wing beliefs. People with moderate liberal attitudes had the highest integrative complexity in their cognitions.[14]
There have been a number of other attempts to identify “left-wing authoritarians” in the United States and Canada. These would be people who submit to leftist authorities, are highly conventional to liberal viewpoints, and are aggressive to people who oppose left-wing ideology. These attempts have failed because measures of authoritarianism always correlate at least slightly with the right. There are certainly extremists across the political spectrum, but most psychologists now believe that authoritarianism is a predominantly right-wing phenomenon.[15]
According to research by Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations.[2] Nevertheless, there is no connection between authoritarianism and either low or high intelligence. Measured against the five factor model of personality, authoritarians generally score lower on openness to experience and slightly higher on conscientiousness.[17]
Authoritarians are generally more favorable to punishment and control than personal freedom and diversity. For example, they are more willing to suspend constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights. They are more likely to advocate strict, punitive sentences for criminals,[18] and they report that they obtain personal satisfaction from punishing such people. They tend to be ethnocentric and prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities,[19] and homosexuals.[20]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
They Desire first and make up reasons to justify their desires later. Confront them with facts they ignore you or change their reasoning. Practical considerations are not taken into account. They are magical thinkers who believe in trickle down economics, they beleve tax cuts for the rich create jobs, for profit schools, prisons, health insurance, mercs and intelligence gathering is better and cheaper than government control never mind the higher costs worse outcomes.
hey lets –
“greedy white men” – that is as racist a comment as I have seen here in a while.
Well now. Those two comments pretty much sums it up.
Thanks its good to know your enemy.