It’s high time the GOP was confined to the dustbin of history

[Please note this is a slightly revised version of an article published originally on October 3, 2004. It is now part of our Virtual University section.]
THIS IS A REPOST

Publisher's Log—
By Patrice Greanville
PREFATORY NOTE: Since I first wrote this article, 20 years ago, although I have never supported the Democrats, I still thought that, by stingy millimeters, they were less depraved and toxic than the GOP, and that, given the size of the country, and the enormous consequences of US policies and legislation, such miserly distinction had to be weighed in when assigning blame and choosing oppositional priorities. I was damn wrong, of course. That was the remnants of a liberaloid delusion that had little to do with facts. The Democrats today (and then) were as evil as the GOP, only far more adept at hiding their sociopathy. In the last decade the masks have fallen off, and the Dems can be seen for what they are, a tool of Wall Street and the Deep State, today America's War Party and main instrument for US imperialism, and via their vile censorship and judicial rot, the spearhead in the dismantling of the last vestiges of what passed for democracy in the US. They are, therefore, not the lesser evil, as so many liberals continue to believe, but the "more effective evil," as my late colleague Glen Ford accurately defined them. Read, therefore, what I say below, as applying fully to both parties. 

As 

Far from an example of civic probity, the GOP is the party that has staged two—count'em, two—coups d'etat during the last 35 years. One under Nixon and one under Reagan—both in the service of the unreconstructed imperialist plutocracy, the main driving force of the bipartisan duopoly. (So don't run to the Democrats, who, in many ways, being the experts in hypocrisy, are often far worse).

Ronnie, we really never knew'ya. One of the biggest phonies of all time, given his "snake-oil charm."  Chosen by the corporate powers to sell an agenda of rightwing extremism. Until Obama, another accomplished charlatan, he was the unsinkable "teflon" president.

SHOW ME A GOP SUPPORTER AND I'LL SHOW YOU A COLD-HEARTED CYNIC OR A DELUDED CITIZEN.

For many years I have argued that the GOP is a party representing the worst values in American society, the vilest impulses in a human being, and that it exists, indeed it thrives in this country, solely because of the dilapidated state of political knowledge possessed by so many of our fellow citizens. This is a party that, far from thriving and winning elections, should be a footnote in the political debate in the US, or simply extinct. I say this with full understanding that its "alternative"--the Democrats--are no prize either. But, at least the Democrats pretend to have a more decent agenda, some of which they are compelled to honor on occasion (albeit without too much enthusiasm), just to remain in business. And, in all fairness, most of the Dems' rank and file are genuinely decent, well-meaning folk if badly crippled by an utterly dishonest leadership. (The party's base also suffers from a generalized malady some political taxonomists have now accurately diagnosed as "electoral superstition," stemming from a rather incurable extremism of the center, but that's another story.) The point is, fellow citizens of this new Rome, I didn't come here to damn the Democrats with faint praise, but to talk about the uncanny ability of the GOP to survive and prosper against all rational odds, today's GOP, not the GOP of Lincoln days. How does it get away with it?

Perhaps one of the things that is most illuminating about the GOP and its triumphs, which speaks volumes about the overall balance of social propaganda in the US, a gross inbalance, actually, and one jealously guarded by the bipartisan ruling circles, is that even with frequent front-page exposes in leading newspapers, the American public still can't make up its mind to get rid of this certifiable pestilence. Just consider the introductory paragraph of this piece filed with the New York Times (10.5.04) on the effort by the usual suspects to protect tax shelters, which obviously the overwhelming majority of real, working-class Americans would oppose. I quote:

BY EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Despite widespread agreement that abusive tax shelters are costing the federal government billions of dollars a year, House Republicans are working to eliminate or dilute provisions in a new corporate tax bill aimed at cracking down on illegal shelters. The provisions, opposed by a range of business lobbyists and tax lawyers, are part of a larger battle in Congress over how hard to attack the rapidly expanding use of complex transactions that turn real-world profits into tax-world losses. The issue is coming to a boil in a House-Senate conference committee that Monday night resumed considering a corporate tax bill that would provide up to $170 billion in tax breaks.

[etc., etc.]

Well, there it is. It couldn't be clearer. The article points without obfuscation to the culprits. It says that some GOP representatives were openly engaged in what was essentially not only immoral but illegal as well: they were trying to defend not just any shelter, but illegal shelters. In a true, exemplary working democracy, as America is invariably depicted by its professional boosters, revelations of this sort should lead directly to swift removal and retaliation. There should be hell to pay—at least politically. We might sensibly expect calls for immediate remedial action, a storm of irate letters to the editor, a rejection at the polls at the earliest possible date, and certainly (from any self-respecting party), swift disciplinary action in the form of expulsion.

Actually, let's do away with the whole stinking duopoly.

The actual reaction to this case of deliberate intervention against the public interest met none of these reasonable expectations. Politically morose America decided that doing NOTHING was the most appropriate response. Except from audible yawns in some jaded quarters, the polity as a whole simply shrugged the whole thing off and the spat over the improper tax allowances soon blew over. This despite the fact that the Times was not the only paper to run the story. As a result—or non-result, rather—nothing stirred to disturb the "comfort zone" of the inside players, and no punitive lessons were recorded. Why you may ask? The answer doesn't require rocket science to figure, even if its implementation remains difficult. The real reason for this astounding passivity, this hyperbovine tolerance to political affront, lies in the central fact underscoring the bankruptcy of American politics: the lack of a vehicle, dare I say it, party, to carry essential questions such as the elimination of political corruption, the attainment of universal health insurance, an honest and truly ethical foreign policy, the problem of unemployment, the vanishing environment, and a clear and progressive tax system, to the front of the nation's agenda, where they belong. Hard to believe it, but in 2005, and despite the posturings by both parties, all these issues remain orphans in the political sphere, while, thanks to the wily maneuvers of Republican strategists (aided by the willful if silent complicity of the ever treacherous Democrats), we continue to be mired in unending, often fanatical, debates over the fate of fetuses and the marital status of gay citizens, both of which should be settled matters under the Constitution. Thus, if only because the GOP has no qualms in exploiting the most backward passions in our population, we're poised to reenact in our 21st century the colossal imbecility embodied in the so-called "Wars of Religion" that tore Europe asunder almost five hundred years ago.

An unusual case, you say

GOP apologists explain occurrences of the sort mentioned above as bizarre deviations from an otherwise sound system and a vigorous party with an honorable platform. Toss the few rotten apples, they say, and you save the barrel. But the article by Andrews documenting the betrayal of public trust in the highest spheres of government by the GOP is no isolated case. It's just one instance among thousands furnished down the years by the GOP (and much too frequently by the Democrats, too) afflicting all sectors of public policy—from tax legislation to matters of health, employment, war and peace, and the environment. Sadly, far from being a deviation from the norm, such behavior is the norm. They reflect the GOP's modus operandi; its unwritten, hypocritical and mean-spirited upper-class agenda, and its single-minded pursuit of advantage for the privileged (whose interests, by the way, are now global) at every suitable turn.

Ronald Reagan, of course, did more for the fortunes of the GOP, quite literally, than any other charlatan to occupy the Corporate White House in decades. His presidency, one of the most astonishing instances of political fraudulence in history [since not only equaled but surpassed by subsequent administrations] brought conservatism back into the mainstream, and helped to establish the current advanced model of rule by manipulated consent, by public relations, a rule that requires deliberate deceit at the highest levels of government, and the necessity to develop a parallel hidden government tasked with implementing the real agenda of the class in power. Such a model is in effect a sort of slow-motion self-inflicted coup d'etat, a coup with a presidential facade that deliberately eviscerates the public will from within, leaving behind only a facsimile of the real thing to insure public pacification. Liberals are still neurotically obsessed with Nixon, thinking him the gravest peril that the Republic has faced since the Civil War, but their aim is way off the mark. When it comes to coupmeisters of this sort, no one can hold a candle to Ronald Reagan and his team—no one, of course, except George W. Bush.

It's not surprising, then, that in the subsequent reigns of Clinton and the two Bushes, with Bush II cheerfully rehabilitating the criminal Reagan cabal, the steady trickle of executive and legal malfeasance and outright lying has become a torrent. In fact, the Reagan regime, recently suitably rewrapped and resold to the American public via hagiographic effusions upon Ronnie's passing, and supposedly the object of enthusiastic admiration by our establishment courtiers and pundits, was also an administration that broke records for general lawbreaking: more than 100 Reaganauts were indicted, forced to resign, or served jail terms for various offenses, while Irangate showed those who could see that the Republicans find the remaining strictures of democracy a mere formality not worthy of serious consideration when "serious" matters like carrying out class-driven agendas are at hand. As for the current reign of George W. Bush, the disgraceful record is already eloquent: wars under false pretexts; horrible mismanagement of a national disaster [Katrina], complete disregard for the preservation of our environment, generous giveaways to his natural base, the plutocracy that spawned him, on and on ad nauseam—in short, all the symptoms of an aggressive form of crony capitalism, except that in this case we're not talking about a Third World nation, but of today's only superpower.

Where's the backlash?

In the fantasy land that we call American democracy we all hope for the Hollywood happy ending: the crooks and villains get their comeuppance. In other words, Mr. Smith—Mr. Everybody—as visualized by Frank Capra, not only goes to Washington but he triumphs. But in the real-life movie scripts circulated in Washington and in every single seat of traditional class power in America, from Chicago's mercantile and meatpacking fortunes to Texas oilfields and New York's financial centers, the outcomes are different. Here the villains prosper. They get rich. They win elections (or buy them, which is even better). In time, like mafia dons who have become elder statesmen, they gain social respect, even gravitas. They give rise to crime families with elaborate national and international connections. The media applaud their achievements. Soon enough they get to fool half of the country all of the time, or all of the country, too much of the time. At the pinnacle, they can sit back and enjoy the fact that in this most forgiving of nations, they have succeeded in laundering their ascent to power by less than admirable means. This is the true American way. Mario Puzo's claim to fame via The Godfather saga rests precisely on this: Don Vito Corleone's ruthless ascent is a great metaphor for the rise and rise (they're still rising) of the great American power clans. Puzo's fiction had ample base in reality, in American history. His narrative issued as much from humble but ambitious Italian immigrants as from the story of the Mellons, the Bushes, the Pews, the Fricks, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, etc. It's just that these gents don't have vowels in their last names, and generations of apologists have efficiently whitewashed their long-buried misdeeds.

The foul support base

By tacit agreement regarding their "division of labor" the duopolist parties distribute the national audience in ways that supposedly represent just about every visible facet of mainstream opinion. Thus, while the Democrats, at least since the 1930s,  have long specialised in serving the "liberal" constituencies, from labor to blacks to gays to women and other groups and segments of the population defined as disenfranchised or disempowered (something that, in typical co-optation, would eventually give rise to bourgeois feminism, tokenism and identity politics), the Republicans have planted the flag, almost literally, on the holy soil of vociferous American exceptionalism, nativism, "coded" white supremacism and Christian fundamentalism—four definitely foul ideological streams naturally feeding the infrastructure for today's drift to Christofascism. ⁽¹⁾

Let no one assume from the above that the Democrats are just innocent bystanders in this ugly process. Or that they do not subscribe to these very same principles. They do. It's just that their service to the ruling class, addressing not out and out yahoos and reactionaries but a different political temperament, those who see themselves as progressives, requires an approach that pushes a different set of buttons.

So where do we stand? In the absence of authentic democratic processes, this cynical farandula can go on indefinitely and it will. Class systems, no matter how corrupt and decrepit, don't collapse of their own accord like biological entities, and neither do parties entrusted with their defense. You wish they did. It follows that, in the democratic vacuum we inhabit, the poisonous weeds of a completely decadent bourgeois democracy (the technical name for this farce) will go on replicating themselves throughout the nation's body as if impelled by some malignant DNA, weakening or defeating every single social policy conceived to help humans, beasts, or the environment, within or beyond our borders, for as long as we can see...until checked by a countervailing force. As for the "insider" types, these fellows denounced in the press who literally embody a noxious establishment, well, they'll simply keep enjoying the fruits of their labors. They'll go on accepting their junkets around the world, enjoying more vacations that you can pack in any calendar year, their yachts and Mercedeses, and their opulent Macmansions in the lily-white suburbs, while their accomplices in malefaction and partners in class, the GOP congressguys (backed by the requisite sellout Democrats) will continue performing a well-rehearsed script carefully crafted to convince the terminally naive that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds. (Incidentally, don't think for a moment that the game of these mountebanks is just confined to Washington; the disease is systemic, indeed global, so similar shenanigans can and will be seen in practically all regional and state assemblies throughout this great republic, and well beyond its frontiers.)

Wishful thinking

Sometimes one wonders what this country could be like if its media were at the service of the people. If instead of feeding us mountains of manure and misinformation each day, those who own and control the content of the media suddenly "saw the light" and began to use this obscenely squandered social resource to focus honest attention on the basic issues that confront American society and the world. But of course, we know the answer to that. They won't be doing that any time soon because to make the media into truly dedicated and objective observers of reality, truly servants of the people, would be tantamount to unraveling their own system, cutting their own throats, for the truth and the objectively defined interests of the world's population are almost always on the side of the left. Hence, the media's role in the corporate system—as most of you know so well—can never be to inform impartially, or even entertain us well, but to bolster the system's credibility at all times...through a careful filtering of news and opinion according to well understood "professional" rules supportive of the status quo. That, and to fulfill their commercial mission: to deliver audiences to their real publics, the advertising community. Political lies and the sale of Coca-Cola and the latest SUV, that pretty much describes the function of the media in this kind of society.

Summation

As previously argued, the GOP's record is an abomination. There is not a single area of public policy in which widely beneficial and even urgent initiatives have not been thwarted or defeated by GOP operatives, from the President on down, all working stealthily and nonstop to twist or nullify the best and more enlightened impulses of the American nation and the international community. This sleight of hand has been accomplished on the backs of two powerful accomplices, the corporate media's quasi-total blackout of meaningful information, and the clever manipulation of the conservative temperament, a topic to be explored in a companion piece in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, as things stand, it looks like the GOP will go on escaping the judgment of history for a long while longer. Fasten your seatbelts.

—PG

Notes

⁽¹⁾ Christofascism has long been a serious threat to (a by now much eviscerated) American democracy. A number of authors have sounded the alarm, in both fiction and non-fiction form, including Chris Hedges and Steven Jonas. Both denounce the notion that "Christian character is the basis of all real Americanism." In an effort to make the topic more accessible to a wider audience, and reminiscent of It Can Happen Here and The Iron Heel, Dr Steven Jonas wrote several decades ago The 15% Solution, a novel that also looks into the future to fix the present, warning us eloquently about the dangers of religious fascism in America—a threat at present firmly encapsulated in the new Republican Party. The author visualizes a gradual takeover of the American government by Christian zealots and their prompt annihilation of the American Constitution, all perfectly prefigured in these fanatics’ own declarations. A number of American sociologists, historians and journalists have argued that American Christofascism is an old phenomenon in the United States, a nation born out of transplanted religious fervor. Chris Hedges, among others, has persuasively shown that religious authoritarianism first reared its head during the Great Depression, suggesting that the tendency is latent in American culture, and, like a dormant virus, can be detonated by profound social dislocations. In Steven Jonas’ view, the demise of what remains of American democracy is a long announced political cataclysm, but, inexplicably, the alarms continue to fall on deaf ears.

SELECT COMMENT

donRodrigo said...

Cyrano is absolutely correct about the GOP being composed of mostly deluded or card-carrying selfish morons. I believe that a point to remember in these disquisitions is that while the media may occasionally publish exposes of this kind, in the current information and sensorial bazaar most Americans live in it is necessary to keep repeating the message. The key to action and awareness is REPETITION...Otherwise, the item will just fly out the window. Because of its sheer message overload and chaos, the [capitalist] media system is almost perfectly built to deliver that effect...The press has to maintain the pressure if they expect the citizens to do something about a given issue. Remember Watergate? It took a bombardment of messages by most major media for over a year for the wheels to get in motion... 11:39 AM