A.K.A. “Your daily dose of Paglia,” wherein she does a fine job of explaining why, exactly, I am in danger of yelling “A pox on both your houses!” and setting fire to something. I’m not sure yet what I’ll be setting on fire, but I’m open to suggestions…
Here’s why the democrats are problematic:
Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.
There’s also some stuff about all those drugs everyone did during the ’60s, but hopefully those have worn off by now…
And now, lest you think the Republicans are blameless:
What a backbiting mess the GOP is! It lacks even one credible voice of traditional moral values on the national stage and is addicted to sonorous pieties of pharisaical emptiness. Republican politicians sermonize about the sanctity of marriage while racking up divorces and sexual escapades by the truckload. They assail government overreach and yet support interference in women’s control of their own bodies. Advanced whack-a-mole is clearly needed for that yammering smarty-pants Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought. The still inexplicably revered George W. Bush ballooned our national deficits like a drunken sailor and clumsily exacerbated the illegal immigration debate. And bizarrely, the hallucinatory Dick Cheney, a fake-testosterone addict who spooked Bush into a pointless war, continues to be lauded as presidential material.
Yeah, it’s the usual laundry list of evil from the democratic side of the aisle, which is fair, but I’m also looking at you, Governor Sanford, you ginormous, Argentina-addled, oversharing toolbag. Holy cats.
So. Since both parties seem completely infested with sanctimonious asses and invested in ignoring reality–specifically, that the reality we’re living in now is one in which WE CANNOT AFFORD all their nifty new government-backed proposals which won’t work the way they’re advertised and all the super shiny neato-keen freedom-limiting bureacracy that will come with it–what’s next?
Besides fire, I mean.
September 10, 2009 at 1:16 am
I wish I had an answer for you. It is getting very scary. Last year, I changed my party affiliation to Independent because I could not stand the idea of being associated with either party. I’ve heard some talk of a new party (the TEA party), though I’m not holding my breath. I wish I knew the answers because I am truly afraid for the debt that my sons’ generation will have to pay. On the other hand, I still can’t think of another country in which I would rather live or raise them.
September 11, 2009 at 11:26 am
“Republican politicians sermonize about the sanctity of marriage while racking up divorces and sexual escapades by the truckload.”
Trying to establish standards of behavior (Republicans) and then from time to time having the human failing of being unable to live up to them contrasts pretty well with proclaiming that there are NO standards of behavior (Democrats) so anything goes.
I’m sure we can match tit-for-tat every Republican failure to behave with an matching Democrat failure to behave. The difference is most Republicans are ashamed of themselves when they fail. Bill “I did not have sex with that woman” Clinton’s escapades pretty much immunized any politician from having to resign over such matters.
“Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought.”
Except for the Contract with America which, along with Reagan’s coattails, got the Congress into the hands of the real Republicans (not the RINOs of today). Congress holds the purse strings; they balanced the budget during the Clinton administration.
“George W. Bush ballooned our national deficits like a drunken sailor…”
Congress holds the purse strings. That deficit would be action of the Congressional RINOs who did that by trying to stay in office by acting like Democrats. Plenty of fiscal conservatives (me) were extremely unhappy. That being said, in the last four years of the RINO-controlled Congress, there was steady progress in balancing the budget.
The Democrats got control of Congress in 2006 with promises of fiscal responsibility. As if. Now that we have actual Democrats completely in charge, the first-year deficit ($1.8 trillion) is about the same as the TOTAL accumulated deficit for all six years the Republicans controlled Congress during the Bush administration. Obama and the Democrats are promising us the same level of deficit every year for the next ten years. Once they obligate the government to massive new entitlements, they will claim they “have no choice” but to raise taxes to confiscatory levels.
Welcome back Carter. I remember the 70s. They sucked.
September 11, 2009 at 12:59 pm
It would probably help if we were to see hordes of college students waving their fists and chanting “No WAY! We won’t PAY!” If nothing else, it would make it damned hard for the Congress to borrow us into the poorhouse… at least, more than they already have.
Beyond that, all I can say is “vote the incumbents out,” even if it means getting rid of a Congresscritter you think worthy: The bathwater-to-baby ratio is that high.
Our problem isn’t the Republicans or the Democrats, it’s the whole boiling of them. Even if their replacements are drawn from the same tribe of Bandar-log, at least they’ll have been reminded that Kaa is around.
September 14, 2009 at 3:52 am
proclaiming that there are NO standards of behavior (Democrats) so anything goes.
That’s an absurd statement. Disgusting, actually.
September 14, 2009 at 5:14 pm
“fake-testosterone addict”? WTF? I wonder if they’ll be selling Dick Cheney masks for Halloween, or will that be deemed even too scary for today’s trick-or-treater?
Paglia’s okay, but I tend not to listen to her when she goes off on her political rants, because she still thinks Obama is the bee’s knees and there’s a not-so-faint air of the same patronizing “why can’t all these bad people leave Obama alone” mollycoddling wafting off her pronouncements. Obama’s a grown-up man, but his admirers seem to want to treat him like the rarest of orchids. He’s neither sugar nor salt, he won’t melt if subjected to the heat of criticism.
“That’s an absurd statement. Disgusting, actually.”
Well tough shit. No one seems to notice that while people are only too glad to accuse Repubs of having feet of clay, when a Dem strays we’re often enjoined to not be “so prudish” because other nations — well, France, anyway — are so much more grownup about minor peccadilloes like infidelity. (Cough Bill Clinton cough.)And yes, that’s one thing I can agree with Paglia about: someone needs to drop Gingrich down a dark, social hole, and not just because he served his sick wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital so he could marry his mistress. He’s just an insufferable nonentity, with a personality that is the equivalent of nails on a blackboard. Thanks for the “Contract For America” (which he was not solely responsible for), now go away.
September 15, 2009 at 11:27 am
Michael have you really not heard Democrats mocking Republican “family values” when a Republican strays? Yet when Clinton was getting fluffed by Monica in the Oval Office, the excuse was “it’s only sex” and “it’s a private matter”. I’d say it’s a double standard but for that to be the case the Democrats would have to have one.
Andrea, Gingrich’s name is featured prominently at the top of any Contract with America article you could care to find and he’s certainly the architect of using it to gain a majority in the elections. Bill Clinton’s budget was balanced by the fiscal discipline of the Republicans elected in 1994 as led by Gingrich in the House. After vetoing any number of the fiscal-disciple measures, Clinton took the credit, of course. According to the Democrat “standard” established by Clinton, whatever went on between Gingrich and his wife was a private matter and irrelevant to his political career.
We need someone like him to rally the fiscal conservatives and stop the insane spending. BAW’s new one is not even here yet and is already up to his/her eyeballs in debt. So’s “the boy”.
Gingrich recently said, “I am very sad that a number of Republicans do not understand that this country is sick of earmarks. They are sick of politicians taking care of themselves. They are sick of their money being spent in a way that is absolutely indefensible … I think you’re going to see a steady increase in the number of incumbents who have opponents because the American taxpayers are increasingly fed up.”
You gotta’ problem with that?
September 15, 2009 at 4:01 pm
… when a Dem strays we’re often enjoined to not be “so prudish” because other nations — well, France, anyway — are so much more grownup about minor peccadilloes like infidelity. (Cough Bill Clinton cough).
That wasn’t all that good a defense, anyway: I suspect even the ’sexually sophisticated’ French were a little amused by Our Boy Bill’s confusion about which end of the lady is the cigar end.
September 15, 2009 at 4:23 pm
“Our Boy Bill’s confusion about which end of the lady is the cigar end.”
OK, that’s classic right there.
September 22, 2009 at 2:46 pm
This is totally unrelated to the subject, however, I wanted to request that you have Whiny Schoolboy update quickly after the Blessed Event takes place. It won’t be much longer now (although if I remember correctly and I might not), but it will still seem like a while.