Sunday, December 4, 2011

An embarrassment of fools

An admitted diatribe inspired by the December 1, 2011 Der Spiegel Online article about our "farcical" slate of Republican presidential hopefuls:

I find it ironic that the most illuminating critique I've found yet of the current slate of Republican presidential primary candidates appeared in Der Spiegel Online, an international publication. "A club of liars, demagogues and ignoramuses," the headline calls them. If some American publication or television show has already pointed out this mortifying situation with such apparent glee and open derision — opining that our entire roster of 2012 Republican presidential primary candidates is a laughingstock and a worldwide embarrassment — I have yet to discover it. The piece's German writer, Marc Pitzke, calls the current campaign season a "freakshow" that would be "unthinkable without a stage (in this case, the media, strangling itself with all its misunderstood 'political correctness' and 'objectivity') and an audience (the party base, which this year seems to have suffered a political lobotomy)."

What's wrong with the mainstream media in America? Why do they take seriously this collection of prideful dolts and unrepentant liars (so far, excluding libertarian ideologue Ron Paul,* who appears to genuinely believe everything he says; and the mildly tolerable but ineffectual Jon Huntsman, who has at least publicly declared that he believes in both evolution and global warming)? Why do cable TV news and print journalists give such unparalleled air time and ink to these buffoons, breathlessly reporting on their every scripted campaign appearance and predictable answer to questions carefully screened and pre-approved before an interview is even granted?

What's the matter with egotistical, centrist windbags like MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who devotes almost his entire show these days to rehashing the hourly minutiae of the Republican campaign circus ( when he's not shamelessly using Hardball air time to drum up sales for his latest book)? Why won't any member of the mainstream, inside-the-Beltway punditry stand up before the world and proclaim that these pathetic would-be emperors have no clothes? This cast of mendacious mediocrities is a national disgrace, and the amount of coverage they get is so unwarranted that it's hard to imagine why the majority of the press doesn't seem to see it.

Couldn't the Republican Party find a single viable candidate out of 300 million people, or are they so doctrinaire and out of touch with reality and the art of compromise that, having driven almost every more-reasonable moderate out of the party, they truly have no one left who is sufficiently reputable (or capable) to qualify for the office? And why doesn't the mainstream American press acknowledge or accept that this primary race is a complete travesty? Their cowardly complicity in covering these candidates as if they were in any sense a respectable campaign line-up — or that any of these cretins actually deserves to win the nomination — reduces the media's credibility and makes all of us look foolish and clueless in the eyes of the world.

At least a few progressive voices on cable TV and a larger number of columnists and bloggers (I'm thinking of, among others, Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Markos Moulitsas, Amy Goodman, E.J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, Jon Nichols, Matt Taibbi, and Nicole Belle) are still willing to tell the truth about the right-wing corporate donors, Wall Street fat-cat opportunists, and well-paid lobbyists who back this appalling assortment of miscreants who intentionally lie in public and then delight in hearing their falsehoods rebroadcast everywhere. This radical right-wing cohort of candidates and the Tea Party extremists who support them appear to be all that remains of the Republican Party — if you also count "our" elected congressional representatives. These people are so afraid of being "primaried" by the Tea Party that Senate Republicans, for example, invoke the filibuster (seldom used before Obama became president in 2009) to block every bill that Democrats propose. They act like they never before voted for increasing the debt ceiling or used the arcane process of "reconciliation" to pass a bill when they were in the majority. (Republicans used reconciliation at least four times during the George W. Bush Administration, most notably to pass Bush's infamous tax cuts in 2001 and 2003).

The writer of this hilarious expose from afar of American foibles sums up the candidates bluntly: "It's horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They're ruining the reputation of the United States. They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They've shown such stark lack of knowledge — political, economic, geographic, historical — that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe."

But even more appallingly, numerous members of the American media cover them in the most credulous way, almost as if this band of jokers — some of them wingnut zealots, others serial adulterers; some narcissists, others dunces and incompetents; but all almost of them inveterate dissemblers — weren't masquerading as authentic statesmen seeking the nation's highest office. Sure, the pundits chuckle self-consciously when their proclaimed "frontrunners" ultimately fall flat on their faces, one at a time — but while each designated "Romney alternative" is making the inevitable rapid climb in the polls, Beltway media denizens act as if the current favorite's sudden popularity with a finicky Republican primary electorate means that he or she actually has a legitimate chance of winning the nomination.

Many serious and pressing issues currently confront this country. We're enduring a still-staggering economy three years after the recession began - in part because, as Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman notes, the 2008 stimulus bill was not large enough to make a substantial difference. We're dealing with widespread unemployment, rising hunger, homelessness, and poverty. Factor in outrageous military spending and apparently permanent warfare, and the fact that, although veterans represent only 10 percent of the U.S. population, 16 percent of homeless adults are vets. Another disturbing trend has emerged: since so many Tea Party Republicans came to power in the 2010 elections — taking over state legislatures, governors' mansions, and the U.S. House of Representatives — the right wing has mounted a well-organized assault on union rights and a nationwide campaign to suppress the voting rights of anyone likely to oppose their candidates.

(to be continued)