Wishful Thinking?

I get a lot of grief from my ol' buddy last in line when I speak of the end of the Republican party. He chuckles and reminds me of how I am thinking wishfully.

But what about when his hero, Rush Limbaugh, says the same thing?


Before I get to why is he right, I'm happy to see that he as finally put a date on when our country is going to collapse. It's going to be sometime in the middle of 2014. Rest assured, I will be holding him to it.

But he is right. And so is Laura Ingraham. Of course, it's not for the reason they think they are right. Rush thinks it's because the party hasn't gone conservative enough and that we will then see a third, farther right party. That may happen and nothing would make me more pleased. What America needs is to hear more of how the Democrats are all communists and to see more old men yelling at empty chairs.

Laura thinks it's because the president has done a terrible job and people are just stupid. If only their messaging and delivery was better, conservatives would win. The deafness of tone here is staggering. Their message and delivery aren't working because what they are saying isn't real. Their policies have not worked and they have nothing else left except lunacy. It's not that people are stupid. It's that they are smarter than we give them credit for and can recognize how similar the Right is behaving these days to the guy on street having a conversation with an imaginary person.

I'm not saying we have a nation of geniuses. Anyone that spends any length of time on the teacher side of a parent-teacher conference knows of what I speak. But they are smart enough to know that the president was born in the United States, is not a Muslim, is not a socialist, and has done a decent job, given what he was handed. This is why he is up on the polls at present and is the favorite.

Recently, though, I have learned the hard way that it's like walking on eggshells when you fuck with someone's fiction. The hate for the president has gone far beyond Krauthammer's Bush Derangement Syndrome. At least there, people were dying in Iraq so one can see why there might be some folks upset. With Obama Complete Mental Meltdown Syndrome, it's a post apocalyptic delusion that has absolutely no basis in reality and is, hands down, the finest piece of destructive fiction since Goebbels.

Unlike Goebbels, these lies are not taking root with the majority of Americans. Yet there are still many who believe these things to be true and are acting even more crazy. Why?

The answer to this question is perfectly summed up in one of the last scenes in the film, Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. Pitt plays Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland Athletics, who takes a ragtag team of players, gathered because of their statistical ability to get on base, and manages them to a playoff berth, including a 20 game record setting win streak.

In one of the last scenes, the character of Beane meets with the owner of the Boston Red Sox, John W. Henry (played by Arliss Howard) for a job interview. As they are talking about Beane's incredible season, Henry says

I know you are taking it through the teeth out there but the first guy through the wall always gets bloody. Always. It's a threat, not just in doing business but in their minds...it's threatening the game....really, what it's threatening is their livelihoods. It's threatening their jobs. It's threatening the way they do things. And every time that happens...whether it's the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is...the people who are holding the reins...that have their hands on the switch...they go batshit crazy. I mean, anyone who is not tearing their team down and using your model...their dinosaurs. They're going to be sitting on their ass on the sofa..come October...watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

I can't think of a better way to sum up the Right's mouth foaming about this election.

The way they think, the way they do business, the way they want to implement policy, their ideology...all of it...it's not working anymore.

There is no doubt in my mind that in the next 45 days they are going to get worse. Heaven help us if the president wins again.