Surviving the Republican Primaries

it seems that the incredibly thin slate of candidates for the Republican nomination for U.S. President has been reduced to a competition in which the winner is the one who can survive the cut throat politics within its own party. The larger question is whether the nation can survive the Republican primaries.

To the extent that rhetoric and ideas influence how we feel and how we act, the current primary promises to be a tsunami for the American people, as candidates curry the favor of the tea party enthusiasts and the evangelical right in an attempt to wipe out all remnants of a progressive American committed to the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. These are mean people who dislike government, people who are poor and not their color and who have a vision of America which is not only outdated, but dangerous for the national security. In addition to being mean, they are hypocritical; professing to love small government but not at all adverse (as the Bush years demonstrated) to handing out billions to those who already have millions and spending trillions on wars that either have no meaning or no end.

The rthetoric then is about "American" or "Christian" values which most of the candidates have violated with frequency but that lacks any breadth or depth; completely sidestepping most of the founding principles of the country, even those embedded in the constitution, for a reduced set of rules which only constrict the creative powers of the nationaand its people to confront the challenges of the real world. The rhetoric of American "exceptionalism" is among the most dangerous as it is the standard way that politicians of the right set the foundation for fighting wars which keep the military/industrial complex firmly on their side of the political equation, i.e. we are exceptional and that is why we have to send our sons and daughters to die, even when the end results only impoverish the country and give us a new generation of traumatized young adults.

So, for months now, as the Democrats wait in the wings, we are treated, each evening, to summaries of the latest ideas of how to make sure the rich get richer, the immigrants get deported, the unemployed get dropped from receiving unemployment benefits; the old get reduced medical care and how to turn back every progressive and intelligent reform that has been made by the government in the last 50 years.

Can we survive this onslaught of negativism and jingoism? Probably so, as the spirit of the major of Americans still seems to be resistant to the illnesses visited upon us by the "core" Republican constituents. And, there is reality also: immigrants make economies vibrant; investment in proper care of the old and the poor stimulates the economy; and most folks are tired of losing the husband, wives, sons and daughters to wars that have no meaning and no end. There still are intelligent, compassionate, justice loving and peace seeking people in our nation.

But, I would not discount the effect that this period of uninterrupted barrage of bad ideas and cultural primitivity can have on the American psyche. It would be best for all of us if one or another of the candidates wins Iowa big and then blasts everybody else out of the water by end of January and we can get on to a new level of debate in which the mean ones do not control the content or the tone.

It doesn't really matter which one it is as whichever one survives will come out of it so tainted by his or her own statements trying to suck up to the "true believers" that they will be unable to reposition themselves inside the mainstream of what most healthy people can accept. If I am wrong about this and the "tea party" and the "evangelical right" do represent the mainstream of American political opinion, then, my friends, I repent of believing that the American spirit is still capable of casting out the demons.