Charles Pierce stating the truth that shall not be told:
We allow ourselves only two major political parties. One of them is completely out of its fcking mind. This is a national problem.
You might want to know which particular iteration of Crazy inspired Pierce to make this statement for the umpteenth time.
But, does it matter? Does it matter that the Texas Republican Party platform is that latest iteration? It could be anything. Five years on, we may look back and with the right kind of eyes see the high-water mark. The GOP was riding a beautiful wave. They had all the momentum. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever they were doing was right, that they were winning. And then the wave finally broke and rolled back. It had all been a tea-induced mass hallucination.
Watch out for bats.
My son attended two years of college outside of Dallas, and that is considered by many to be the more Democratic part of the state, at least compared to some other areas. He was born and raised in an Ohio family of liberals. He said he never fit in and that the people there were flat-out crazy.
Something has to give in this tug-of-war between sanity and sheer insanity. Without the Tea Party there was some give and take, some small degree of awareness from the Republicans. But no more.
The Tea Party insanity is what’s dragging the country down. And the older Republicans aren’t going to hush them up because they make waves and raise money. And the Republicans continue to make gains in their agendas, like abolishing abortion and keeping human rights issues like gay rights, immigration, and minimum wage in a constant state of demolition.
I would like to say that in my lifetime some sense of balance, fairness, and decency prevailed, but I can’t see it in the near future.
Why yes…..that sounds like a mighty fine idea. That is something that could be asked of a Republican almost anywhere. Especially those places where the Tea Party is a vocal and active force. The more visible the insanity, the better the results.
Always kind of funny to see an ex-BigTime journalist wondering where today’s newz-boyz are and why they’re missin’ the Big Story. Hint: you’re Waiting for Godot, Mr Pierce!
As steggles says, methinks the insane and awful Repub party is not 100% of the problem….it literally makes no difference to the corporate media what the organized Repub party says or advocates, however crazed. They cannot be the story…
For those wondering how the Hitler Movement advanced, you’re seeing it right now. Once a political party is deemed serious, then it simply makes more and more outrageous and fantastical assertions, and ever more egregious actions, all with an undercurrent of possible violence, none of which are effectively denounced—Hesaid/Shesaid, after all. And Hitler actually had journalist opponents!
Yes, this.
The Republican Party has been parading around naked for a decade, and the media has spent those years discussing exactly how its new threads will affect polling numbers.
I’m not so sure that the Republicans are the problem.
… about the Texas Republican platform: “This isn’t a political platform. It’s a tantrum.” (Mike Nichols)
That’s pretty much dead on.
And that’s not good. The country needs (at least) two reasonably rational political parties, and we’ve only got one (if we round up).
Mr. Pierce deftly overlooks the entrenched and shared political interest that damns America to two major political parties. Can you guess which two they are?
This is a national problem that Democrats equally tolerate and defend.
Thanks for the Hunter Thompson reference. Brings back good memories of those crazy times.
I’ve always read about Lincoln and the Union side of the Civil War. Just tweeted the link to Pierce’s article and got a reply that I want to follow up
I’d be interested in hearing any opinions about the similarities in the platforms.
Came here to thank Boo for the HST. The day doesn’t completely suck when somebody throws a little Hunter my way.
The GOP nutsos break loose from conventional, polite, and dishonest communications every once in a while. Then election results smack them down and they retreat to craft new coded language that keeps their rabble with them and in check. For a while. They’ve always rejected all legal, governmental, social, and cultural changes towards modernity. It’s why their list of what they would do away with gets longer and longer with each passing decade. What they don’t reject is technology once it delivers a new gadget they are happy to embrace and credit god for delivering it.
Uh, no. It’s not the party that’s the problem. It’s the citizens who prop them up that’s the problem. If God Raptured the entire Republican Party leadership then by this time next year we’d have a replacement Party that supported largely the same things and found its electoral strength in largely the same areas.
Eventually people are going to have to come to terms with the fact that there are about 1/3rd of the people in the country who support slut-shaming with transvaginal rods, repealing the VRA, getting into a war with Iran, and ignoring climate change. You can blame entities like Fox and the Tea Party all you want, but then we could just go back 40-50 years in time and you’d see most of these same people and these parents supporting openly disenfranchising blacks, genocide in the name of beating the communists, violently lynching gays, and fighting tooth and nail against the very idea of women in the workplace.
Blaming the parties lets Joe Sixpack off too lightly.
Not the media. Not some exogenous ‘false consciousness’. The citizens. The person behind, or in front of, you in the checkout line. In the aggregate –however lovely as individuals — people are remarkably prone to act like utter shits.
Take the fundamental depravity of mankind, and the points. The fundamental depravity of mankind doesn’t always win, but it always covers the point spread.
It’s a shame that Hunter’s not around anymore to openly mock today’s Republican loons.
Taibbi’s great – but, he ain’t Hunter.
FALILV is one of the funniest books ever!!!
And FALOTCT is right behind it – as well as presenting some of the most cogent political analysis, ever!
Didn’t his gonzo style contribute massively to the failure of news media as we know it?
They were riding a tide all right. Then Bush happened and they had some ‘set backs’.
And then a black man was elected POTUS and virtually every republican in the country lost their mind.
.
When I read stuff like this, I sometimes wonder where we would be now if in early 1861 ole honest Abe had simply said, “Sorry you feel that way, good luck to you all”.
We never should have let them back in. And if they insist on leaving again, I hope to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we don’t try and stop ’em.
Nah. Aside from the human rights crisis it’d cause to the, you know, blacks, they’d just degenerate to a terror state in the vein of North Korea.
I’m sure that Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico at the very least thank Sherman for smothering this enfante terrible in the crib. And honestly, it’s the North’s fault for fucking Reconstruction up. If they weren’t willing to run the South as a military protectorate like they did Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan for a generation or two, then they should’ve imprisoned and exiled every political and military figure associated with the Confederacy above Captain and seized the assets of every slaveholder.
I definitely agree with this.
The North should have cleaned out all of the bullshit of the South.
I kind of agree with this.
I’d be a dirty peasant, probably second class citizen.
Wasn’t an option. The abolitionists had too much political capital at that point and weren’t about to tolerate a country on their border that with slavery.
I don’t know whether your comment-spam filter allows links in comments, but if it does, this:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/us-states-tightness-looseness-map
Interesting but some huge flaws. For example the claim that “tight states” focus more on prevention, but real sex ed in “tight states” is practically non-existent and thus, they also have the highest teen pregnancy rates.
“Tight states” would also be expected to more strictly regulate marriage and divorce. Yet, the age of consent for marriage in those states in generally lower and their divorce rates are the highest.
Also relying on self-reports of illegal drug use — high in “loose” states” and low in “tight” states — omits other more easily defined variables. For example, the opioid prescription rate. High in the “tight” states and low in the “loose” states. The lower use of marijuana in “tight” states could be the consequence of several variables including respondents lying which we know is common among fundies reporting their own behavior. Alcohol consumption per capita is also distorted if there is a significant portion of the population that are teetotalers in accordance with their religion.
The health related variables also argue against the “prevention focus” of “tight” states. Poverty and not state laws and cultural “tightness” are better predictors.
The Tea Party members and the rest of the GOP need to just admit that they are closet LilPUTINs. They need to then leave the USA in transportation provided by their beloved Corporate masters and all of them and their masters need to head mother Russia. Good riddance.