Andrew Sullivan bludgeons Michael Tomasky's conviction that "It’ll take 20 years" for the GOP's palsied "fever" of lunatic extremism to abate:
Tomasky's critique ... is that the Republicans will be just as crazy after the election as now, and so all of this [speculation about post-election compromise] is academic. I don't agree.... The question is not whether this fever will break; the question is how does a country function unless it breaks?
My earlier take, on Tomasky, here. Sullivan's take, however, is more powerful in that he bluntly proffers what we might call a questioning euphemism for the unthinkable. Indeed, to merely speculate on when the GOP's fever might break is a rather hollow intellectual exercise; to ask, instead, if we can possibly survive, without remedy, what is now unmistakably the GOP's lethal malignancy is to answer the question.
When will the fever break? Sullivan reframes it. The country has no option but a post-election break; otherwise, we shall have no functioning country.
"Unthinkable" is an odd, self-negating word. It's pretty hard to describe the unthinkable if one hasn't thought about it. The same goes for "unimaginable." So allow me to refine my wording a bit: What Sullivan asks and answers isn't so much the unthinkable as it is the horrifically, knowably certain. Which, to use a perhaps oddly unfevered word, is simply unacceptable.
"unacceptable" to many, I am sure. But, to all too many, it is quite acceptable. A non-functioning government, except in the ability to wage war, is exactly what many want to see.
Public schools? Who needs them? They just produce people who know how to think and understand the real world. Can't have that.
Solid infratructure? As more people are confined to urban enclaves, all the better. Can't have any mobility, that might give people the idea they can improve their lot in life.
Environmental protections? Of course not. That reduces the profits for the overlords. Besides, as people die off, they reduce demand for things like health care, food, clean water, etc.
The list goes on. For sane people, definitely "unacceptable." But for those who run the Republcian Party, its the ultimate goal.
What is really sad, is that those politicans in the party that promote this actually think the overlords will let them share the wealth. But the overlords are famous for using and discarding once the usefulness is done. The Bachmanns and Boehners and Cantors of the world will discover that soon enough.
Posted by: japa21 | June 11, 2012 at 11:09 AM
I've always agreed with your comparison of this era to the ante-bellum years. Connecting this thought to your post of yesterday, 'Unfuckingbelievable', our war has come, but it is a war over the collective American mind in this Age of (mis)Information.
Like way back when, the other side has won early and often, fighting on their own turf, dominating the field with Lee, Jackson, and Forrest, just as Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity have spun us into dispirited stagnation. We've had our McClellan, Pope, and Burnside in Olbermann, Maddow, and Schultz. But what we need are Grant and Sherman, practitioners who will change the rules of the game, finding a way to drive home the reality of our present and future, and make it stick in the minds of the American people.
Posted by: Robert Henig | June 11, 2012 at 11:41 AM
I don't know about the fever but I know what happens when the levee breaks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2m0ROgy5WY
Posted by: Peter G | June 11, 2012 at 12:53 PM