A wave of nausea is the best description I can give of my
feelings when I heard about the election results in Colorado. Colorado voters
recalled two democratic legislatures ostensibly for their Gun Control votes. Looking
under the ensuing black cloud of that vote, I fail to see any sunshine what so
ever. This morning as usual I tuned into +Morning Joe (MSNBC) for my regular
dose of right wing poison. One of the Scarborough regular sycophants, +Mike Barnicle,
made the statement, “They turned out and we
don’t”. The comment is his but the emphasis is mine. It is common on +Joe
Scarborough’s show to hear this kind of political flip. He used the pronoun “we”
specifically to mean that they are on the side of the people
This early morning coterie, surrounding Joe, claim to be
small government conservatives. They claim to hate radical element in the Republican
Party. They are against voter suppression. They abhor the idea that 95% of
American people wanted gun control but the U.S. Congress would not pass
legislation to that effect. They think it is unfair to talk about the 1% verses
the 99%. They claim not to be able to understand how it can be that big rich energy
companies receive oil subsidies. Issue, after issue they claim to be on the
side of the American People, which means they agree with Democrats, but they
vote for candidates who support all these bad things. It is a mind boggling “political
flip”.
The tragedy is the American people seem to believe them. Judging
by the way people vote they believed people like Joe Scarborough, they are the
good guys. Not to recall Scott Walker in Wisconsin was wrong, they believed that
Art Pope buying the election in North Carolina was a bad thing, and to support the
NRA in Colorado is next to evil. However, look at the tragic results in those
three places. The Citizen’s United ruling by a Republican Supreme Court allowing
money to corrupt campaigns is a bad thing; they condemn it publically but use
it to take advantage every day in every political contest. The careful planning
in Colorado is all wrong: to pay for signatures on petitions, to have an off-time
election, prevent mail-in voting, and to depend on radical gun owners vote. Joe
Scarborough and colleagues joins everyone else in the nation to say these are
bad things yet they happened.
Mike Barnicle said “we” don’t turn out but they do, meaning
the crazies turn out to vote but “we are the good guys” stay home. My response to Mike is this; you are not
the good guy. +George Lakoff explains it best; their morality is not our morality.
Republicans see an elected government as a violation of what they see as “moral
order”. A Republican has to be the head of the government or it is immoral; it
violates their sense of natural order. To explain this attitude, they see government
based on a family model; there is a father, obedient wife, and children. No one
elects or gives a father authority but he has it because it is natural order. It
is morally right to punish a disobedient wife or child. If they don’t respond respond,
use more punishment, if that doesn’t work, the child is rejected from the
family. People who cannot function because of crippling disease, low mentality,
birth defect, lack of a job, it is their fault; they are somehow disobedient. To
treat them with kindness they label as a “nanny government”. Simple black and white,
shoot from the hip justice but more importantly, this is how Joe and his
colleagues justify their position as morally correct authority figures. It is morally wrong that they are not in a
position of authority. Unfortunately,
democracy and selecting the best candidate with all that honest voting nonsense
by the 99% is getting in their way.
URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com
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