...From having a hole put through it in frustration?
In an online forum I sometimes peruse someone who characterized themselves as a “moderate Republican” asked some other members of the forum why, when asked to “debate” issues ranging from the instability in Iraq to the delay before Cheney himself talked to police about the hunting accident when he shot a fellow hunter, the replies from those further to the orthodox Right range from “Clinton did it first!” and “Ted Kennedy did it first!”
My personal supposition is that those Orthodox Right True Believers are "doing it" because to actually face what is going on would be to have to admit that their defend-to-the-death pseudo-conservatives are being shown, day by day to be:
- misusing the public trust on a scale not seen since Teapot Dome,
- prosecuting a "war on terror" that seems to have the same legitimacy as the War With Oceania,
- prosecuting another war that is being mismanaged as badly as the Viet Nam war was, and is having a worse effect on the nation’s perception of our officer corps and the world’s perception of the nation as a whole
- scheming to put bills through the U.S. Congress to hide and nullify what looks like enormous fraud and outright theft from the Indian Lands Trust Funds
- channeling billions of dollars being to the "Department of Defense" while essential services to the nation’s poor and needy are being savagely cut,
- defending tax cuts to the nation’s wealthiest citizens and corporations while inflation has forced more and more of the middle-class into being hit with the AMT
- forcing citizens who profess one faith to *directly* support, with their tax dollars, another faith's efforts as those dollars are being channeled directly to “faith-based initiatives” to perform activities that, when they are performed in the publicly-funded arena, should be performed without sectarian bias or trappings, activities ranging from drug rehab to running prisons,
- An executive branch that has *publicly* admitted and endorsed the use of torture as “needed.”
- An executive branch that has *publicly* admitted that they are breaking the law of the nation because they find it inconvenient to bother to abide by the law and even seek a retroactive court order from a court that has been shown to be extraordinarily compliant with the requests of both GOP and Democrat administrations for decades
- a member of the executive branch that feels himself so above the rule of law that he used an instrumentality of the United Stated government, the Secret Service, to block access to the scene of a potential crime involving a shooting,
- a leader of the GOP in the Senate has been shown to lie to the public about his access to, and control over, “investments” that are directly affected by legislation he has voted on, and is under investigation by the SEC,
- a leader of the GOP in the House of Representatives has been shown to have improperly used an instrumentality of the U.S. federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, to prosecute political ambitions in the state of Texas and is also under indictment for what is, in essence, money laundering
- a President who, when faced with the responsibility of appointing individuals to posts of responsibility over the public welfare, seemingly forgoes questions of ability and competence and instead makes loyalty to party and to his person the paramount concerns
- an administration that condones, and rewards, the direct destruction of the domestic economies by moving jobs overseas, and leaving enormous numbers of U.S. citizens unemployed
- an administration that condones, and rewards, the indirect destruction of domestic workforces by allowing for the importation of foreign workers that, supposedly, are to supplement the domestic workforce, and turn a blind eye when the visa workers are used, instead, to displace domestic workers.
Amazing as it is, the list above is not at all exhaustive, even if the implications of what is going on is exausting to contemplate.
Yes, some of the same abuses occurred during Democratic administrations, but at least the “lefties” were willing to admit that such things were happening and try to work towards changing the conditions, and not to be so fearful that the leaders of the philosophy they follow may have feet of clay.
But by heaven, if I hear “Clinton did it!” one more time I swear I’ll put my forehead through this wall.
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