The Wrath of an American Voter

In the rather unlikely event that anyone is actually reading this, a bit about my politics.

I am not a registered Democrat, nor do I have any particular fealty to the Democratic Party. I do happen to think that right now the Republican Party is unforgivably incompetent and criminally corrupt, and has abandoned its own princples in pursuit of short-term power and big paybacks to their backers in the corporate media and special interests.

There have been periods in American history where it was the other way around – crooked Democrats in power and well-meaning Republicans trying their best to fix things. This is not the case today, however, and the current ethos touted by the Republican Party as “conservative principles” is a morally bankrupt sham designed to elict votes from the extremist fringe of society, those to whom bigotry and division can be sold as political capital.

I believe that this will backfire. The question, though, is whether the strategy of pandering to the base elements of society will devour itself before it irredeemably fucks up the country. Neither the nation nor the Republican Party is yet beyond redemption. We have another chance to fix the former in November; the latter will have to be fixed by Republicans themselves.

There was a time, not that long ago, when it might have been John McCain that could have fixed Republicanism. It’s one of the great tragedies of American politics that the principled John McCain of 2000 has become the oily, deceitful John McCain of 2008. Maybe it’s bitterness over how he and his family were so shamefully treated by the Bush/Rove machine eight years ago, but he seems to have bought into the Bush political philosophy wholeheartedly during these eight years of mismanagement, corruption and cavalier disregard for both morality and the rule of law.

I’d have voted for John McCain in 2000. They guy running now seems to be an unclean doppelgänger of that man, his embrace of the worst excesses of Republican corruption a betrayal of both his own principles and the trust of the American people. I’d no sooner vote for this hollow shell of a man than I’d vote for Joe McCarthy.