Ryan, Cantor, Koch, and Chaos

While reading a book on the decline of violence in the world I came across something that sounded eerily like current events. The author was writing about various forms of genocides. He dubbed the annihilation of a political party as Politicide. This brought to mind Karl Rove’s call for a permanent majority in the George W. days.  By using the term “permanent majority”, he was keeping within the bounds of democratic decency even if he used democratic processes to try to establish a dictatorial government; a reminder that the only way a functional democracy can become a dictatorship is to elect one.

Conservative chaos that developed from the shock of McCain’s beating offered an opportunity, as Naomi Klein so beautifully explained in her book Shock Doctrine, for radical party faithful to take advantage in terms of control of the Republican Party. Instead of the conservative agenda becoming more compromising as normal people would expect, the extreme right-wing element of the Republican Party coalesced under the patriotic sounding Tea Party name. Within that context, an even more right-wing subset grabbed for power and got it not because of righteousness of their beliefs but because of circumstance. This subset consists of several young people who followed the same playbook. The “Young Guns”, which is a macho way to call attention to their success in the 2010 election. With election of Rep. Boeahner as Speaker of the House, the Young Guns positioned themselves as ideological leaders of a new movement hanging menacingly over his head because without them the rational conservative’s minority could do nothing. The Young Guns have co-opted the Republican Party thus compromised democracy. 

For those who care, the basic philosophy of the young guns comes from Ayn Rand the author of the book The Virtues of Selfishness. Her philosophy, based on social Darwinism, is as cruel as it is simple—greed pays. If you are rich and successful you deserve to survive, if not, you are on your own; they simply do not care about you one way or the other. For the doubters, refer to the legislative agenda promoted by this pseudo majority. Everything for the top 1%, the rest don’t count; undo funding food stamps, aid for dependent children, planned parenthood, tax cuts for the wealth, etc. With the altruist gone, the Democratic Party would be gone. If that happens, the Young Guns would have successfully committed politicide. 

The "young guns" admitted in several formats that he adores Ayn Rand because of her philosophy. Which bring up the point that very few politicians admit such a thing because the “philosophy of greed” is not popular—no one teaches their children to be greedy. Unlike altruism, greed is socially reflexive; I want to be nice to other people and have other people be nice to me but if I am greedy I need other people to not be greedy.

The Tea Party structure, with Reince Prebius at its head, supports the election of radical republican candidates in state government elections: they have succeeded in electing a number of State Governors: Scott Walker, John Kasich, Rick Snyder along with some other governors and state government legislators. Once in office, these people  have very low popularity ratings, which suggest voters elected them without knowing their agenda. They use their office to prevent election of their competition with all forms of voter suppression. The Tea Party accomplishes this by funding candidates, especially in primary challenges against those who do not support their positions; they opposed Republicans as well as Democrats.  With control of the governor's office and  state legislatures, they change the voting rules at the state level to favor conservatives under the guise of preventing voter fraud, which by the way does not exist; and pass very unpopular laws aimed at destroying labor unions, the ones that normally support Democratic Candidates. Their funding is there because the Roberts’ court is the way it is because of the funding; a clever and rewarding circularity for them. 

The subject of the Federal Court brings up the subject of “deep government”; the appointment of radically partisan people to civil service positions at all levels, especially judges. Their political party influence peddling does not stop with the government. They target educational institutes. Charles Koch offered Florida State University, Department of Economic a $1,500,000 grant (Miami Bay Times, May 10, 2011). They attached a large number of strings; in addition to controlling whom FSU hired to teach, professors had to require students read Ayn Rand novel Atlas. The greed of a few public" university administrators caused them to accept, and in doing so, gave up an important measure of their freedom: greed feeding on greed.

Greediness is an innate primitive biological trait. Because of self-centeredness, the Young Guns fail to see the accumulating public wrath.  What they fail to realize is that unlike them, people have senses, feelings, and emotions, which instills altruism in our being, a sense of caring for others and not just their narrow moral group. Without altruism, we would have anarchy.