Here's the political problem that we face with the Republican party.
Back in the 80s, there was a grifter named Jerry Falwell. He wanted to fight integration and other progress that African-American citizens had made. But the research showed that overt racism was a public relations disaster.
Falwell discovered there were two issues which would work as red-meat for Republican voters. One was abortion, the other was gay rights. Throughout the 80s and 90s and well into this century, those two issues were used as red-meat initiatives and referendums to get the conservative and reactionary base to the polls — where they would also vote in various Republican candidates. This was a very successful tactic. Even in those few cases where their initiatives were voted down, they still forced the Democrats to spend a lot of money fighting.
But the real issue for Falwell (and his backers) was holding back People of Color. So was the "war on drugs." This was a calculated plan for maintaining white supremacy. This was the real agenda of the political movement he created, "The Moral Majority." (The Moral Majority was neither.)
With the legalization of same-sex marriage and the national movement to legalize marijuana, both of those issues are no longer viable ones for what remains of the Falwell machine.
But ... the real damage is much more permanent. Because what Falwell created was the appearance of a religious justification for voting Republican. He presented himself as a Reverend and The Moral Majority justified its opposition to abortion and gay rights as a religious one. This worked very well for Falwell — and even for that senile old pustule, Pat Robertson, who declared himself a candidate for president in 1988. (He also won the Nehemiah Scudder award for Best New Attempt at Demented Tyranny.)
The reason Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the other founding fathers insisted on separation of Church and State was simple. The thirteen colonies represented several different religious beliefs — none of whom fully trusted the others. The only way to unify the colonies into a nation was to guarantee that no religion could have any kind of official status. This is why the first amendment specifically says that Congress shall make no law sanctioning any religion.
This has annoyed fundamentalists for 240 years. They insist that this is a Christian nation. And therefore that Christians are entitled to special rights and privileges. (And gay people are not.)
But Falwell's disgusting legacy is that he very much succeeded in blurring that line between Church and State. As a result, the Republican party is no longer a political party. It's a religious cult.
And that is why bipartisanship has become impossible.
If God is on your side, if you are doing God's work, if you have a mandate from the Creator of the Universe, then you don't have to compromise on anything. Because you're right and the other side is wrong. That's it. End of discussion.
It's not just plain stupid obstinacy that keeps the Republican party functioning as efficiently as a burlap condom. Because the evangelical movement (masquerading as a mad tea party) has captured control of the south, they've restructured the party's ability to govern from inept and incompetent to malignant and dangerous.) The Party Formerly Known As Republican is now indelibly hardwired that their beliefs are reality—therefore, they do not have to listen to any disagreement, let alone negotiate with those nasty lesbian socialist agents of Satan.
In fact, to the Neo-Confederate Party, negotiation is weakness. You don't compromise with evil. Blah blah blah.
So it's not just political maneuvering that keeps our Congress gridlocked--it's a political philosophy that has been perverted by religious mania.
But let's not stop there. Let's follow the money. The bullionaires (intentional misspelling), like Adelson and the Koch bros, were in this from the beginning. They found the religion angle a very convenient mechanmism for furthering their own ends. By funding this movement, they created a political bloc which gave them additional tax breaks, rolled back regulations, and gave them unfettered access to the reins of government.
So once again, religion has been used as a tool of oppression—in this case, it has been used as the crowbar that cracks open our democracy to be looted by the robber barons.
The people who were most desperate for change, for progress, for hope, sold their votes to the national grifter and his entourage of enablers and con men.
A hundred years ago, the United States was being looted by the robber barons. (That's where the term "trickle-down" was first used.) The consequence of that was a decade of global depression that gave rise to fascism and war.
We're heading down that same path because of the greed and stupidity of this generation of robber barons.
The good news--there is still good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for--the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed gave us 20 years of serious reorganization of our government. The most dramatic and important result was the creation of Social Security.
Now, I have no idea why the robber barons are so stupid that they want to keep our economy unbalanced. It seems to me that the more money in the hands of workers and consumers, the more opportunities there are to create a healthy demand for goods and services. You can sell a lot more cars and TVs and cellphones to people who can afford them.
But ... it comes back to that evangelical belief that wealth is a measure of personal validity. Your rich because you deserve it. Other people are poor because they don't deserve to be rich. They're lazy moochers (who have to work three jobs to keep their children fed).
We are not going to change this nation until we change the narrative — it's a simple change, but a nearly impossible one. We have to give up the conversations of selfishness and replace them with conversations of connection, partnership, and most of all, empathy and caring for each other.
And ... we have to create a global conversation that if we cannot live in harmony with the ecology of this planet, this planet has a cure for that — human extinction.
On the home front, a large part of the problem is advertising. All those ads that keep telling you that you're not good enough unless you have this, own that, look like this, wear this, go there, and ultimately vote for this grifter who will take away your last best hope for affordable health care.
This is why the robber barons are so desperate to rip out the machineries of government — because if the government has tools to regulate corporate responsibility, well ... they won't be able to get away with as much. And this is why they love the evangelical movement. It keeps the government gridlocked.
Any questions?
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