Ademloos las ik vandaag een artikel van Mike Lofgren over de Grand Old Party die hij bijna drie decennia diende, de Republican Party. Aanleiding was een artikeltje van journalist Herbert Blankensteijn in de Volkskrant: 'Republikeinse kandidaat mag best een beetje dom zijn'. Hij verwees naar deze Lofgren en de commotie die zijn afscheidsartikel op Truth-Out veroorzaakte.
'Dit jaar kon Mike Lofgren, dertig jaar lang medewerker van de Republikeinse partij in het Congres, er niet meer tegen. Hij nam ontslag en lichtte dat toe in een lang artikel op internet: 'De Republikeinse partij zit vol gekken.' Hij spreekt schande van de maandenlange Republikeinse weigering het schuldenplafond te verhogen, wat hij een daad van 'politiek terrorisme' noemt.'
Dat 'kon er niet meer tegen' is nog voorzichtig uitgedrukt. Het moet hem tot hier gezeten hebben. Wat een bitterheid spreekt uit zijn relaas, en wat een uitstalling van politiek cynisme geeft hij.
'Both parties are rotten', o.k., maar 'both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.'
En dat licht hij uitvoerig toe. Hij eindigt met de drie principes die de Republican party volgens hem tegenwoordig volgt:
1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. 'The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public.'
2. They worship at the altar of Mars. 'While the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. '
3. Give me that old time religion. 'Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP.' [...] 'It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.'
Ademloos werd ik vooral door de praktijken die hij schetst, de gevolgen van deze uiterst cynische politiek. Waarbij ik toegeef dat ik de materie van de schuldenberg van de VS lastig te volgen vind, die vergt extra leeswerk waarin ik niet altijd zin heb. Maar het bewust bevorderen van politieke desinteresse, het bewust ondermijnen van vertrouwen in volksvertegenwoordigingen die juist voortkomen uit de zelfde grondwet (Constitution) die de Republican party zegt te omarmen, het bewust onderhouden van een machtige leugenmachine die zijn weerga niet kent, je kan er benauwd van worden.
Deze Lofgren werd dat kennelijk ook. Hier is waarom hij vertrok:
'I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.'
Nog een citaat:
'A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.'
En nog een:
'As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.'
Ja, dat zie ik er in sombere ogenblikken van komen. Ook wij hebben politici, 'volksvertegenwoordigers', die daarnaar lijken te streven. En er was in 1933 een sprekend voorbeeld.
NB. Nog een citabele toevoeging over taal:
'How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?
You know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.'
'Dit jaar kon Mike Lofgren, dertig jaar lang medewerker van de Republikeinse partij in het Congres, er niet meer tegen. Hij nam ontslag en lichtte dat toe in een lang artikel op internet: 'De Republikeinse partij zit vol gekken.' Hij spreekt schande van de maandenlange Republikeinse weigering het schuldenplafond te verhogen, wat hij een daad van 'politiek terrorisme' noemt.'
Dat 'kon er niet meer tegen' is nog voorzichtig uitgedrukt. Het moet hem tot hier gezeten hebben. Wat een bitterheid spreekt uit zijn relaas, en wat een uitstalling van politiek cynisme geeft hij.
'Both parties are rotten', o.k., maar 'both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.'
En dat licht hij uitvoerig toe. Hij eindigt met de drie principes die de Republican party volgens hem tegenwoordig volgt:
1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. 'The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public.'
2. They worship at the altar of Mars. 'While the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. '
3. Give me that old time religion. 'Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP.' [...] 'It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.'
Ademloos werd ik vooral door de praktijken die hij schetst, de gevolgen van deze uiterst cynische politiek. Waarbij ik toegeef dat ik de materie van de schuldenberg van de VS lastig te volgen vind, die vergt extra leeswerk waarin ik niet altijd zin heb. Maar het bewust bevorderen van politieke desinteresse, het bewust ondermijnen van vertrouwen in volksvertegenwoordigingen die juist voortkomen uit de zelfde grondwet (Constitution) die de Republican party zegt te omarmen, het bewust onderhouden van een machtige leugenmachine die zijn weerga niet kent, je kan er benauwd van worden.
Deze Lofgren werd dat kennelijk ook. Hier is waarom hij vertrok:
'I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.'
Nog een citaat:
'A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.'
En nog een:
'As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.'
Ja, dat zie ik er in sombere ogenblikken van komen. Ook wij hebben politici, 'volksvertegenwoordigers', die daarnaar lijken te streven. En er was in 1933 een sprekend voorbeeld.
NB. Nog een citabele toevoeging over taal:
'How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?
You know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.'
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