Monday 31 August 2009

those shiftless, troublemaking Republicans

So what is life like on Planet Wingnut?

Republicans like to claim that all the people they don’t like – blacks, Hispanics, women, liberals – are the losers in our current economy, the people who just can’t cut it in the capitalist system without help, the poor, the source of all the violence in our society, lazy, ignorant, completely unrestrained in sexual behaviour, immoral, etc etc.

Well, let’s look at the statistics, shall we?

If you look at where Republican voters are concentrated, what do you find? Low income, poverty, crime, murder, gun killings, low education, teen pregnancy and – my favourite – drinking up hundreds of billions of dollars in the federal dollars which the Republicans claim they hate.

The top ten states by income: all blue states except Alaska (which is awash in a sea of nasty socialist federal money). The bottom ten: all red states, except New Mexico.

Top ten states for poverty: all red states except New Mexico.

Top states for crime? South Carolina, Tennessee, Nevada, Florida, Louisiana, Alaska….

Top states for murder: again the South, the West, the South, the West…

Top ten states for gun deaths: all red states except New Mexico. Bottom ten: all blue.

Top ten states for graduation rates: seven of ten are blue. Bottom ten: South, West, South, West…

Top ten for teen pregnancy: all in the South and West, almost all red.

Top ten states for sucking up federal money: all red except New Mexico. Bottom ten: all blue.


So all the things that Republicans think about the rest of us -- poor, ignorant, violent, lazy and terminally horny – that description actually fits them, not us. When you see wild-eyed wingnuts spewing spittle-flecked insults at Congressmen at those town halls, waving signs that say “Obama Is A Moran”, that’s not an aberration: that’s what today’s Republican party really looks like.

Trailer trash. Wife beaters. Hee Haw fans. Those two snaggle-tooth yokels sitting on the porch playing banjos in “Deliverance”.

The guys who are positive that they’re the only ones fit to run the country, and are willing to start shooting if they don’t get “their” government back.

This, incidentally, is exactly how Hitler started. Our old pal Adolf, a racist loser, practically a homeless person sleeping on the streets of Vienna, decides that a faceless army of “other people” – Jews, liberals, pacifists, intellectuals – is responsible for him being a street bum, rather than his own shortcomings. He puts together a merry band of racist losers, gives them pretty uniforms and truncheons, and an unthinkable catastrophe befalls an entire continent. But it couldn’t happen here, could it?

Well, I don’t think our luck is that bad. And Hitler wasn’t completely stupid – he had to have some talent to get as far as he did. So there’s your comparison: your typical Republican is like Hitler, but without the brains.

And incidentally, these are not people you negotiate with. Just ask the Czechs and the Austrians.

But perhaps I’m being uncharitable. These folks just wore me out this summer.

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