Carpe Datum

Hearts and Heads of Stone

Republicans: We Support the Troops
(Except When We Mock Them for a Good Laugh).

You know, I could pretend to be all insulted and victimized by this nonsense like a Republican would, but honestly, all it does is depress me. See, the latest little trick at the Republican National Convention is that some guy (who turns out to be a chickenhawk, pro-war draft evader) is passing out little bandaids with purple hearts on them to mock Kerry's injuries he got while fighting for our country in Vietnam.

Republican delegates, sadly, are lapping them up, plastering them all over their bodies, and they can't wait to get on camera with great big smiles like the misguided lady above (who looks a little bit like "shut up lady" from a couple of weeks ago). What leads people to this kind of senseless stupidity? These people are so blinded by hatred of anything not-Bush (honestly, I can understand somewhat about Clinton, but what the hell did Gore or Kerry ever do to deserve such hateful, mocking derision?), that they aren't even thinking about how deeply dishonorable this kind of stunt is toward our troops.

We have thousands of troops sitting in places like Walter Reed medical center nursing serious injuries (not all physical) from the senseless war our cowboy president decided he wanted. And that's just from this war. How do you think they feel seeing pinheads like these on their screen making fun of purple heart awards? I really don't know, but my guess is that it has to burn a little bit.

It's just plain sad. What are these delegates thinking? What kind of poisonous rhetoric leads one to slap on a purple heart bandaid with a laugh while holding up a "support the troops" sign and cheering for a president who has treated our military and our veterans like shit? I'm beyond anger these days. If Bush gets elected, I'll be deeply sad for this country. And also for the people who were duped into voting for him.

As Michael Moore has pointed out in his USA Today column from the convention, most of these people who say they support Bush don't really support what he stands for, so one is left to wonder why they support this guy? Why do they make such fools of themselves?

Hanging out around the convention, I've encountered a number of the Republican faithful who aren't delegates. They warm up to me when they don't find horns or a tail. Talking to them, I discover they're like many people who call themselves Republicans but aren't really Republicans. At least not in the radical-right way that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Co. have defined Republicans.

I asked one man who told me he was a "proud Republican," "Do you think we need strong laws to protect our air and water?"

"Well, sure," he said. "Who doesn't?"

I asked whether women should have equal rights, including the same pay as men.

"Absolutely," he replied.

"Would you discriminate against someone because he or she is gay?"

"Um, no." The pause — I get that a lot when I ask this question — is usually because the average good-hearted person instantly thinks about a gay family member or friend.

I've often found that if I go down the list of "liberal" issues with people who say they're Republican, they are quite liberal and not in sync with the Republicans who run the country. Most don't want America to be the world's police officer and prefer peace to war. They applaud civil rights, believe all Americans should have health insurance and think assault weapons should be banned. Though they may personally oppose abortion, they usually don't think the government has the right to tell a women what to do with her body.

There's a name for these Republicans: RINOs or Republican In Name Only. They possess a liberal, open mind and don't believe in creating a worse life for anyone else.

So why do they use the same label as those who back a status quo of women earning 75 cents to every dollar a man earns, 45 million people without health coverage and a president who has two more countries left on his axis-of-evil-regime-change list?

I asked my friend on the street. He said what I hear from all RINOs: "I don't want the government taking my hard-earned money and taxing me to death. That's what the Democrats do."

Money. That's what it comes down to for the RINOs. They do work hard and have been squeezed even harder to make ends meet. They blame Democrats for wanting to take their money. Never mind that it's Republican tax cuts for the rich and billions spent on the Iraq war that have created the largest deficits in history and will put all of us in hock for years to come.

The Republican Party's leadership knows America is not only filled with RINOs, but most Americans are much more liberal than the delegates gathered in New York.

The Republicans know it. That's why this week we're seeing gay-loving Rudy Giuliani, gun-hating Michael Bloomberg and abortion-rights advocate Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As tough of a pill as it is to swallow, Republicans know that the only way to hold onto power is to pass themselves off as, well, as most Americans. It's a good show.

It's hard to believe that people who put so much stock in fiscal issues would support Republicans. You would think that if it were that important, they would actually sit down and figure out that Republicans are screwing most of them, running up the deficit, making them pay more both now (due to other taxes and fees that are more regressive and pick up the slack for what the feds don't do but people still want) and in the future (to pay off the monster debt).

And of course if Kerry is elected and wants to be responsible, he'll have to raise taxes (on the wealthy) just like Clinton did in order to be responsible to the country and its citizens, and the media will go into a screaming baboon hysteria over it. Republicans have realized that being fiscally responsible is for suckers.

The state of politics in this country is just so fucking depressing.

Posted by Observer at August 31, 2004 01:01 PM