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BS ‘n’ About…
The Republican Party
The Republican Party seems to have lost its way in America. While the GOP has always been perceived as the party of business and the bigshots, the underlying assumption was that We, the People were still the bottom line. Making our lives better was what America was all about.
Twenty five years have gone by since the electorate, appalled at the weaknesses of the post-Vietnam era, gave Ronald Reagan their mandate. And boy did he use it! He rattled sabers overseas and got away with it. He cured inflation. He eased our fears and made us proud to be Americans again. He even won the Cold War.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the unions were being busted, the Supreme Court was being Right-Winged, military budgets were skyrocketing, and all restraint was being removed from Wall Street. They even had the nerve to feed our kids ketchup and call it a vegetable.
Next, Ronnie gets on TV and promises us that if we entrust business and the rich guys with our money, they would use it to rebuild the infrastructure, boom the economy, and make America strong. The ensuing benefits would ‘trickle-down’ into our lives, resulting in an inferred age of peace and prosperity. Reaganomics. We bought it. And are still paying for it.
The ideology the Reagans brought with them when they arrived in Washington was as direction-changing as that brought by any administration in American history. And it is an ideology that is still running the show, still using the Rumsfelds and Cheneys, Bushes and O’Neills to set forth its agenda. But it is an agenda that seems to have lost sight of the Constitution.
The GOP seems to have forgotten that the Constitution begins with “We, the People….”. These days we are not treated like citizens. We’ve become demographics, spun-doctored cannon fodder for the corporate wars and diplomatic saber rattling. We are downsizable at a whim. Every boom the rich get tax breaks and new war toys get funded. Every downturn the first things to get slashed are education, healthcare, and public transit.
Reaganomics resulted in the single biggest transfer of wealth from one class to another in the history of mankind. The result was a boom by financial page standards as corporations got rich and Gilded Age fortunes were amassed. But We, the People were not made better off.
Our jobs are no longer secure, stable, or skilled. Our families are scattered. We don’t have time for our kids, nor the money to send them to college. Healthcare is no longer part of the deal and our Golden Years terrify us.
The Republicans seem to have forgotten about us. Even worse they seem to disrespect us. They play on our fears to gain support for agendas which they know aren’t in our best interests: We don’t like it when corporations are given more rights than we have as citizens. We don’t want to be imperialistic bullies. We don’t like all the lying, cheating, and stealing that is going on. We liked being the good guys.
America, at the dawn of this new Millennium, is not a very nice place. The rich are getting rich at the poor’s expense and all the wealth is still accumulated at the top. The infrastructure of our lives hasn’t been significantly improved. Foreign policy is at odds with everything we stand for. Dark times loom on the horizon.
The Republican Party seems to have forgotten that it represents even the humblest of us. And that it represents us in the context of a free Democracy. We shouldn’t be starting the wars. We shouldn’t be proposing Constitutional Amendments that discriminate. We shouldn’t let businesses have control over our lives. We shouldn’t have let education, healthcare, and social security get this messed up.
The Republican Party seems to have lost its way in America. When we gave them our mandate it was because we wanted to be strong again. Now our families are weaker. Our security is weaker. Our skills are weaker. Our future is bleaker. Where is the strength in that?
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