Like my previous entry, life has been good to me this week. The steering committee for the project I am involved in went surprisingly well. I thought we were going to get slaughtered but we were complimented for coming as far as we had in the time we were given. That and other things have been going well for me (February is usually the cruelest month for me, and it had been until last week). To reward myself, I am going to indulge in some random babble about what’s on my mind (I want to do this much more often, but I don’t have the time; hence the use of such as a personal reward).
Where to start…I’ll go with what’s been going on back home in the US. The primaries on the far right…well honestly, their campaigning scares me. The stances of the more moderate republicans that made it this far (Romney and Paul) are what SHOULD be the extreme stances. However, we have had Perry and Bachmann showing how much farther we have slid. Heck, we still have Santorum, whom at this point is looking to finish with the silver medal.
The thing is, I sincerely doubt either of them will beat Obama. First of all, the incumbent wins ~2/3rds of the time IIRC. Secondly, the fact remains that the Republican party has moved to the far fringes. While Amanda Marcotte and I don’t always see eye-to-eye, her comparison of the far right moralists of today to the pillars of the regime during the french revolution is dead on. They’re blaming themselves and their lack of “true conservative values(tm)” for letting society go in the direction it has. The only solution is to take an absolutionist moral stance and crack down on the idea that freedom is bad and dangerous.
Also, the fact that the Republicans have moved to the right isn’t just a function of the party in and of itself. The entire United States has moved to the right in the last 30 years. What once was the dominion of the moderate republicans is now the domain of the moderate democrats. The leftist party in power in the US is further right then it is in the rest of the world. I would speculate that this is a result of the government essentially being “bought.” The most important thing for an elected official or political party is to get their people in power. In order to do that, campaign funds are an absolute must. In order to furnish this, they must appeal to business X or conglomerate Y. Those in power owe their financial success to the (failed) idea of supply side economics, the trickle down theory, etc. The widening of the gap that has grown exponentially ever since the rich became politicized. Naturally, policies like deregulation, upper class tax cuts, promotion of “light-touch” economics and the acceptance of bonus culture would appeal to these people. Since it requires an immense amount of cash to reach people, convince them you are awesome, and equally convince them that your opponent eats babies and worships every devil ever known; politicians are effectively beholden to those who control their purse-strings. The “soul” of the nation has effectively been bought.
What strikes me as amusing is this weird source of pride various people in the nation have about having moved further right. I’ve heard several USians say it’s what makes the US better then Europe (despite having never been there). As an isolated country that was also arguably the most powerful country in the world since second to last major global shift (the end of WW2, the last major shift was the end of the USSR), there is this source of isolated superiority I find more often then I would like. This is compounded in that the last major superpower whose military as a single entity could rival the US’ and took an antagonistic stance toward them collapsed under its own weight.
At any rate, the nation has, for the above and other reasons, slid to the right. I used to take pride in the fact that I was policially in the middle. However, the nation slid to the right and I simply refused to move with it. What once rendered me in the middle now renders me on the left. The Republican party has less of its “traditional” territory associated with soley it anymore, so they have to appeal to a harder core group. Deregulation and states rights seem to be peripheral topics despite the fact that they make up traditional conservatism. Wars on contraception, abortion, and coming this shy of saying that the US should be remade into a theocracy is seemingly the conservative voter base now. 15 years ago, people saying things like “freedom of speech is all well and good, but we’re at war” or “freedom isn’t whatever you want to do, it’s what you ought to do” would ruin their political career.
I would speculate that the conservatives are trying to do what the IP industry, the nobility of old, and every group whose power and beliefs are based on an older model try to do when they see progress that undermines their core position. They seek to wind back the clock. As I said earlier, they blame themselves for not being brutal and punitive enough to those who would dare defy them in allowing things to come this far from their ideal position. Here’s a funny paradox for them. I believe that the Pharasees and roman government thought the same thing about Christ and his flock being heard and gaining prominence. I am genuinely convinced if someone like Christ came today, the people who claim in their hearts to believe in him would be the first to spit in his face and call for his re-execution. However I digress.
This was a lot of fun to write. I have other things too (Valentines day thoughts and more babble about sex, love, and gender), but I’ll save that for whenever I remember it probably never, as it will slip my mind as my workload picks up
