I'm new to FR. Well, I guess not completely. I lurked a long time, but not many posts. I find FR to be a great place to sample the news over a cuppa in the morning.
I guess you're right, though.
You seem to be hip to the real sitch, so I'll address others who may peruse this missive.
From what I can see principle is not a big consideration here - but power is. Perhaps better to say the illusion of power. Feeling close to it. Feeling connected to it.
It's the classic deal Satan offers - compromise and in exchange I'll give you some worldly power and glory. But in the end of course Old Slewfoot double crosses the chumps that take the deal and they wind up losing all.
But everybody knows that, but they take the deal anyway, because they just can't pass up the nice baubles.
My take on most of the GOP base is that they deeply need to feel somehow close to the ruling elites. They get high on the thought of even proximity to power, and so they'll sell their principles in exchange for that every time. It isn't principle to conservative causes that animates them, but rather a childish need to feel close to celebrity. You REALLY see that in the Democrats, who worship star power, but what can one say of the GOP's support of Ah-nold, who is a Democrat in all but name, is a product of Hollywood, supports abortion on demand, and is even married to a Kennedy? (I love that last one - I guess Uncle Ted personally advised on Ah-hold's campaign. How many parties are there?) It's the cheap pull of glitz and celebrity and image that gets the chumps every time.
It's really the same phenomenon of people letting their kids go to Michael Jackson "pajama parties" even though they know he's a freak - or who now demonstrate on his behalf. They need to feel close to celebrity and power, and they'll literally betray their own children to get the feeling (not the real thing, of course). The GOP faithful are like that.
The elites who control "both" parties understand the sick need of the GOP base to feel loved and appreciated by the Leader, and they can predict with near mathematical certainty how many they can three-card-monty into supporting their core platform via clever packaging and marketing of "image" issues.
Hey, I'm a corporate shirt. Been one for a good part of my life. I've spent years of my life sitting in management meetings listening to really highly paid, very smart and very ruthless people talk about identifying our psychological "need states" (it's always sex, power, presitge, security that they play to) and how to identify and exploit "market segments" based on that information.
Keep in mind that these people trained at top universities and studied the works of great minds who spent their careers dissecting human emotions and vulnerabilities over decades and decades on behalf of the corporate elites who fund the universities.
This is all really cynical stuff, folks. Believe me, I know. I remember one meeting on how best to position a candy product to take advantage of compulsive overeaters while not alienating the "youth" and "occasional indulgence" market segments. You wouldn't believe how callous it all is, talking about people with real problems and how the company can make money by exploiting their sick needs, or how they can get kids to pester their parents to buy them tons of sugar that their little bodies surely don't need.
And it works very well. If read this and haven't figured it out yet, KILL YOUR TELEVISION.
Now, the leadership of the big parties (actually, the "big party") not only know all of this, they're largely the same folks who desiged the ad campaigs that peddle smut to your children. Note the revolving door between the corporate world and top politics. Is it an accident that Robert McNamara, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and so on and so forth were corporate bigshots before they became political bigshots? I think not.
These same folks spend big money on these same Fifth Avenue advertising firms who analyze the need states of the party faithful, divide them up into market segments, package and market to them, with an eye of course on how far they can play one segment without alientating others beyond an acceptable point given the goals of the moment.
The GOP faithful are the most malleable of all the chumps, it seems to me. These folks elected Bush Sr. who stabbed them in the back on taxes and equivocated on abortion, and then they elected Bush Jr. who ran up ruinous budget deficits, killed the First Amendment, signed into law an enormous expansion of Great Society, refuses to enforce our borders after we were attacked by illegal aliens, and so on and so forth. Bush Jr. is now I think getting set to equivocate on sodomite marriage (the very thought makes me want to hurl). But the elites all understand beforehand that they can push it that far, and still keep their allegience, because they give them just enough of the illusion of influence that they keep coming back for more.
Anyway, since I'm just sitting around today I'll tell you another story from corporate land. I was at another dreary corporate meeting about 10 years ago, and an Advertising expert was going on and on about the big Ad campaign for the coming year. There was the usual parade of television commercials targeting this or that group, and playing on their basic needs in selling the products. I remember he got to the part about planting stories in the press through "friendly" journalists, and he said something like "we find that planting advertising as news stories is the most cost effective form of advertising, because - get this - most people believe that what they read in the press is objective journalism!" And all the corporate jackals around the table just laughed and laughed, including me. Man, we just couldn't get over that one. Such easy marks. Such nice cows just waiting to be milked. Nicens little moo-cow.
And it's TRUE. Most people really don't know that the major media is one large corporate advertisement. News is advertising, advertising is news. "The media are the story" is the slogan.
Get it?
Again, if you're only getting this now I gently suggest that you immediately murder your television. Cut your cable connection. Don't let your kids watch that crap.
I think that this is really the crux of it. Most people are well intentioned little bundles of need who just want to be cuddled and cared for and appreciated by those with the concomitants of power and noteriety, and they'll sell their souls (and those of their children) to anybody who can scratch their itch.
Most of the GOP base are just working stiffs who like their NFL team, watch a lot of television designed for sixth graders, and drink a lot of beer. Most have never left the confines of their small towns, never travelled much, speak only English (and that often poorly), have read little other than newpapers, and get their opinions in the can from talk radio. I mean, for these folks Rush Limbaugh is a great mind! Sheesh!
They're mostly good folks, but they're easy marks for the predatory animals that are our revolving-door politcal/corporate power elites just love to take for all their worth. Men like Cheney and Rumsfeld. Those guys scare the bejeesus out of me.
But what can one say to the a group who take the Left Behind series seriously - seeing it as a reliable blueprint to American Mideast policy?!
I mean, WHAT THE F### CAN YOU SAY TO THAT?!
It's so patently delusional, and dangerously so, that - well, 'nuff said.
You know, I think that the big problem is that humans have too much of a spread on the IQ bell curve. There aren't so many really smart people, but there are lots of really not-so-brights, and this disparity just BEGS the oppression of the dumb by the smart. It just leans out for the smart to form their own alliances to milk the nice, dumb moo cows.
One last rhetorical question: do most of you here understand that the corporate elites on both coasts sneer at the inhabitants of the rest of America? They call where you live "fly-over country" because they never go there they only fly over it on their way between New York and LA. Do you understand that they consider you animals to be herded and kept in their place?
There's a book called the "Bell Curve" that approaches this question (and if you've heard of it, I can tell you that the issue of race is just a small part of it), and foresees a future of very wealthy intellectual elites safely ensconsed in their walled suburban developments ruling over masses of the not-so-bright. This is a serious book written by serious scholars, and I can't recommend it too hightly. It also ponders the question of how these bright elites who will tend to have brighter children might try to form an hereditary elite of the smart. Although not mentioned, it hints at exclusive use of genetic tools to ensure that only their children are smart, and all the rest are dumb. There's an interesting Sci-Fi film called "Gattaca" that explores those notions. I think that we may be seeing the beginnings of that now. I also suspect that on some subconscious level this sneering contempt that our elites have for those of us from "fly-over country" drives their desire to dilute our numbers through massive immigration (if not legal, then they'll settle on just ignoring the law - hey, they rule!), abortion on demand, medical research on human embryos, and so on. I admit that I'm specualting there, but think about it. Doesn't that ring true with you? It does with me.
I didn't think so.
Okay, go turn on the tube before you miss the next NFL play off game? Don't forget to take your Soma (I mean, drink your Budweiser. Tastes great! Less filling!)
And don't forget to vote for whomever Rush tells you next November (if he's sober enough to talk!)
Anyway, end of rant!!
What do you make of the fact that his support is weighted more toward the female end of the voter spectrum (not unlike Slick Willie Clinton)?
Good rant; interesting commentary, BTW.
Very insightful.. thanks for posting it!
I hope you decide to stick around here, and don't get run off by the bootlicking contigent.
BUT...flyover country is a lot smarter than your average ad exec, and I'm convinced that while Joe 6 pack watches the country dip into the sh-tter, he is also going to get it out.
In the meantime you're STILL wasting your time on this forum...they all WANT to be lead to the slaughter.