I don't know if children should be allowed to watch the Republican presidential debates.
There's so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage the nation in conflict: Let's continue the war in Iraq. Let's show them what we're made of in Iran. Let's round up those immigrants and ship 'em back where they came from.
It's like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video game, with no regard for the consequences. Rudy, the crime-fighter and terror maven, says he's tougher than Mitt, who actually had illegals working on his property. Mitt begs to differ and says he'd like to double the size of the Guantánamo prison.
Are we electing a president or a sheriff?
We've got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We're in the midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions. We've got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the city of New Orleans is still on its knees.
So you tune in to the G.O.P. debate on CNN to see what's what, and they're talking about - guns.
I'll concede that it's difficult to have a thoughtful exploration of complex issues in a format that allows a candidate just 90 seconds to answer. But the Republicans, far more than the Democrats, go out of their way to present themselves as 21st-century Rambos - a childish, cartoonish posture that solves nothing and can easily lead to tragedy in a world that is in fact quite dangerous.
The Republican Party has won a lot of elections in recent years. So maybe this crop of candidates knows something about American voters that many us would rather not acknowledge, that too many of them are small-minded, fearful, bigoted and too shallow to recognize policies that are against their own - and their country's - best interests.
Or maybe that's not the case at all. Maybe this lot of Republican presidential candidates is misreading the public, and placing its bet on the wrong side of history.
I hope it's the latter. Maybe voters in the early primaries will deliver the message that a more thoughtful, insightful, inclusive and constructive style of campaigning is desired.
As I see it, these 'debates' aren't debates at all, at best they are 'forums' (fora?), are sales pitches by snake oil salesman selling different brands of kool-aid. The Dem brand is weak, but the Repug brand will plunge those who partake into a sheeplike acceptance of moral darkness disguised as patriotism, which is about where we are now.
Bush's Oil War, the response to Katrina, and the present Recession are all serious symptoms of abuse of power, abrogations of public trust, and favoritism for the few at the expense of the many. In other words, lying, cheating, and stealing while professing to be doing God's work, AKA Republican policy.
I sincerely hope the Repug candidates are misreading the public. Heck, there's only a one letter difference from what they've been doing for years - 'misleading' the public. If the Repugs had done anything - anything at all - in the best interests of the American people during their absolute reign, I could see where the sheeple would stick with them. I like to think that some, a good percentage, hopefully most, never all, of the Repug faithful of recent years have pulled their heads out of their ass and awakened to what the Repugs are really up to and have the sense God gave a goose at last and won't keep very many of them in office come the election.
As far as the Repug presidential candidates go, this is the weakest bunch of morons I've ever seen, thank you Lord. If they think Americans want even more disastrous war, more domestic policy that steals from the poor and middle class to give to the rich, and more social injustice, well, let 'em think so.
The Repugs have been so wrong about everything else for many years now, they better be wrong about that too. For all our sakes.
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