G.O.P. - Dream Killers

The newly empowered congressional GOP delgation has wasted no time in establishing its reputation.....as DREAM KILLERS. First there was the defeat, in the Senate of the DREAM BILL that would have granted a path to citizenship for about 2 million immigrant youth who came with their parents to this country without papers and who have demonstrated both educational acumen as well as loyalty to the nation by either entering college or volunterring for military service. So, to tell us who they really are, the GOP, killed their dremas and the American Dream.

I just wonder exactly what all the comments I have heard over the years from Republican-types about Latinos not being interested in education really mean. Here are 2 million who value education and have progressed well and the Republicans step on their dreams. I wonder exactly what all the comments I have heard from Republican-types about the lack of qualified and educated job force are really about when they step on the dreams of about 2 million who are getting qualified and educated. Well, I don't really wonder, because it has been a long standing tradition in the Republican Party to criticize the poor, the downtrodden and the marginated as responsible for all the nation's problems and then, if they show any initiative, to step on their dreams to make sure that, in fact, they do not escape poverty and they always will know their place. It is a very acceptable form of racism within the right-wing world of enthusiasm for legal ethnic cleansing.

To make sure that no one is in doubt about the mark that the GOP wants to make on our national life, the new congress with a GOP majority in the House moves quickly, while the nation burns, not to increase job opportunity or address the deficit, but to kill another dream of the poor: to have health care. So, next week, the House vote to repeal the recent health care reform even though they know it has no chance of prevailing in the Senate and no chance to overcome an Obama veto. I suppose this is what they call the effective use of legislative time that they criticized previous legislature for not having.

Okay, you say, hypocrisy has always been the hallmark of the Republicans - promise whatever you need to in the elections and then just get to work to protect the interest of rich white men. True. You've got me on that one. I guess I just have not harden my heart enough to overcome a kind of innate hope that I think lies within most of us that people can change and that we Americans deserve a Congress that actually serves the national interest and not the narrow interest of the rich white class of people who pay the bill for their election campaigns.

I an going to have to up my daily dose of cynicism in order to keep up with the times.