In Minnesota, as in other states, the Republican party is making their final push for votes. Normally there would be nothing unusual about that, but this has been a particularly grueling election season, and the 11th hour pleas from the Republican party are reeking of flop sweat and desperation.
As a registered Democrat, this is the first time I have been targeted by the right-wing campaign machine. In my mail today there were nine political ads — six from the Republican Party of Minnesota, two from the Republican-supporting “Associated Builders and Contractors Free Enterprise Alliance”, and one from a Republican state representative running for re-election.
I remember reading the novel Clockwork Orange as a teenager, and being bewildered by the “Nadstat” language Stanley Kubrick created for his characters. The 2008 campaign literature of the Republican party is much like Kubrick’s experiment, except in this case the words are recognizable, but make entirely no sense given the reality of the situation. It’s the same kind of language that was recently employed by both Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens. Palin, upon reading a report that clearly stated she abused her power, insisted that the investigation found “no abuse of power there at all”. Stevens, after being convicted last Monday on fraud charges, stated on Thursday that he had not yet been convicted.
Denial in the face of reality would seem to be a poor strategy, particularly in politics, but even stranger than the alternative realities proffered by Palin and Stevens are the gaslighting slogans being offered up by the Republican party, seemingly designed to make rational people feel crazy .
Who can fix our economy? Only one party will fix the damage and prevent another crisis. Vote Republican.
Jobs lost. Spending up. Economy down. Energy prices Up. Vote (Republican) to end America’s economic crisis.
Vote Republican & Restore Balance to Our Economy.
Republicans will eliminate wasteful spending, balance the budget and regain the trust of the American taxpayer. [Emphasis added].
In these uncertain times, Americans have many questions….Republicans have real answers.
Help Republicans revive our economy.
Today’s financial crisis requires more than just a band aid. Vote Republican. Help fix a broken Washington and an ailing economy.
The Republican Plan: End wasteful spending for special interest projects not in our national interests and regain the trust of taxpayers. [Emphasis added].
There’s more, but you get the drift. Somehow, the crises wrought by eight years of a Republican administration is not the fault of Republicans, or of right-wing ideology. Somehow, even though our economy crashed while under the control of Bush and company, and the public’s trust was shattered, only more Republicans, sharing the same philosophies, can fix the damage. Only Republicans know, as Dick Cheney surely did when he decided to fill Halliburton’s coffers, which “special interest projects” are worthy of wasteful spending in the name of our national interests.
By way of some magical thinking, McCain didn’t support Bush with 90% of his votes, and the ultra right-wing Palin has no stake in the pro-war, corporate-pandering, pro-deregulation ideas that got us into this mess. As for all those Republican governors, representatives, and senators who refused to criticize their puppeteer, and instead spent the last four to eight years pulling strings and punches to ensure Bush’s will was done? Well, either those years never happened, or those politicians have been reborn, with only a scant memory of their lives before reincarnation.
It’s really a zammechat raskazz that the Republicans have vareeted, but my rassoodock just doesn’t buy it. And if that makes absolutely no sense to you, then I am surely worthy of your consideration — at least according to Republican logic.
Fortunately, I think most voters are not that stupid this time around, and are not buying that insane logic in those political fliers.
I hope and pray that the voters aren’t that gullible but that was my hope and prayer in ’04. I know various people that I “assumed” were intelligent and rational people who are ardent McCain supporters. One even told me not to waste my keystrokes about the campaign.
I’m still scared. My mom used to tell me how many meals they made of peanut butter and honey mixed together and spread on homemade bread because that was all that was in the house outside of a little coffee or tea. I’m one of the few of my generation who have never gotten through a PB&J sandwich. I dislike PB intensely. I don’t want to have to gum my way through life the next 20 years. Although it would result in significant weight loss.
And I’m still very scared and the above is whistling in the dark.
I share your fear!
I’d like to believe that MOST voters have really looked at the facts, but through my conversations and readings lately I’ve learned, sadly, that’s not true, at least not in my ‘burb. I have had three McCain supporters try to convince me that Obama is a middle-Eastern plant. One told me he is the anti-Christ.
I hope my next WTF Friday is a joyful one.
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
George Owell, 1984.
I’ve about given up believing that there might actually be a majority of rational thinkers out there Jane. I find myself walking around holding my breath—– literally waiting to exhale!
I’d like to think that Americans are too smart to swallow whole the lies and half-truths they’ve been spoon-fed for almost a decade, but I have to agree with Bill Maher, who, at a recent live show, remarked emphatically from the stage, “NO, THEY’RE NOT”!
I don’t want to have to jump into a rowboat and spend the next three months rowing to Costa Rica, but if it’s that or spend the rest of my natural life in a religio-fascist regime (or in a Kellogg, Brown & Root concentration camp), then pass me the oars!
Lest I be taken for just another nattering nabob of negativism, while I basically agree with the late George Carlin (“Fuck hope!”), I’m secretly looking forward to seeing the look on John McCain’s ghoulish face when he concedes!
Where is the hope that was bubbling forth a week ago, y’all?
According to my friend in AZ, (a life-long Republican, who’s sending ME pro-Obama links, btw) McCain has missed over 80% of all the roll call votes in the Senate in his tenure. So, I guess his 90% voting support of Bush’s policies would mean that, in the Republican manner of thinking, that since McCain hasn’t voted 90% of the time, he cannot have voted 90% of the time for Dubya’s policies.
See? I GET it!! I GET Republican thinking! Finally!! (I sure am glad I voted yesterday and not today. I was thinking rationally yesterday.)
Hey, Pirate Queen–I, for one, am still feeling hopeful!
My own sanity requires it
I have to have hope, cautious though it may be, to help me balance the conversations I keep having with, not just uneducated folks, but with a lot of otherwise usually grounded and intelligent people who keep telling me things like Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen and that he’s a Palestinian/ Muslim/ socialist/ communist/ fill-in-the-blank-with-nonsense terrorist “plant” or tell me things like Palin was “absolved” in Troopergate and, and, and…. people who WANT so badly to BELIEVE this stuff, they’ve shut down their brains and doggedly refuse to be swayed by pesky little things like facts… (I’m still waiting to hear that Obama is from an alien species! Maybe they’re saving that one for tomorrow…)
I have to hope there are still enough rational people left out there who have flat-out had it with reality being stood on its head by these people (with the complicity of huge portions of the media) and who are ready to stand together and say, “Enough!”
You know how the book “Clockwork Orange” had a different ending than the movie? That always freaked me out.
What were we talking about again?
There were 12,500 of us at Obama’s rally in Sarasota last Thursday and Obama’s message of hope was palpable, substantial and true. I was elated!
Every time I see a McCain/Palin sign in someone’s yard my heart sinks a little but I still believe the rational/compassionate party will prevail.
I, too, am boggled by the fact that so many buy the FOX et al-pandered half-truths and convoluted tales spinning out of the RNC.
It IS frightening to realize that a large percentage of our citizenry has lost the ability to listen attentively, think critically, and act responsibly.
And yet I have hope…