Good Words

From a question on Quora regarding the hatred of Barack Obama...

I think it is perhaps inaccurate to say they hate him. I think their real motive is fear. Of course, the fact that the only time conservatives have ever come unglued is when a black man was elected to office does little to bolster that claim. And by unglued, I am referring to their unprecedented decision to see him fail, rather than advance their own agenda.

The near total shutdown of the legislative process is utterly unprecedented. And the constant threat to shut down government is likewise. No modern democracy has shuttered its doors in the 34 years I have been a voter, yet we have done it many times. It is a complete repudiation of the concept of a civilized society and wholly unacceptable.

Then there are the bizarre polls by reliable sources than show many of them believe Obama is the Anti-Christ, a Muslim, a terrorist, and a Communist. These are delusional beliefs.

And it is hard to treat their tactics as sincere attempts to get their jobs done. To often they are caught saying things like asserting "the right size of federal government is small enough to drown in a bath tub." This sentiment is tantamount to anarchy. And it is difficult to believe it is in pursuit of a sincere belief in states' rights, as they engage in the same slash-and-burn tactics at the state level. They want to truly roll back the calendar to a time when government provide only police and military services (a time I doubt actually ever existed).

They espouse insane ideas like shuttering the IRS, the Environmental protection agency, and the Department of Education. They advocate banning abortion, banning the pill, and continuing to refuse to fund processing rape kits. Male you win, female you lose.

They deny incontrovertible facts such as climate change, the male-female pay disparity, evolution, and the separation of church and state.

And they have become dependent on juvenile dirty tricks in their policy stances. They conceived cap-and-trade, now they lead the charge against it. They conceived the personal mandate requiring people to buy health insurance. They then sued to claim it was unconstitutional. These are tactics I have not seen before in modern politics.

I think a major motivation is the changing demographics of the US population. They are incapable of embracing Latino and Black voters for reasons that are difficult to paint as anything other than racist. This means the end of their power is an inevitability as these groups are growing faster than the white population. And they are losing women, who are offended at their refusal to acknowledge rape is a problem or that women are shortchanged on payday. Alienating 50% of the population is suicide.

On top of that, gay rights and healthcare and immigration reform are buying Democrats voters. And not just for an election, perhaps for lifetime.

Unless their voter manipulation scams can control the outcome of increasingly large numbers of elections indefinitely, it will all come crashing down on them. And do not underestimate the importance of those tactics. All the senate seats they gained this cycle and both G.W. Bush runs were won by margins smaller than many projections of the number of suppressed voters. It is literally no longer clear we are a democracy. Meanwhile, in Michigan, democracy is already dead.

Finally, a large minority of their supporters, the Tea Party, have gone "all in" on extremism. Many reasonable Republicans feel wholly boxed in by this. And siding with the extremists actually buys more moderate Republicans a temporary reprieve.

Ultimately, Republicans know they have lost the future and are just trying to delay the inevitable. This knowledge has basically made them hysterical.

What is truly frightening about the possibility they do not hate Obama, is that if it is true, we should expect no reprieve when he leaves office.

Amen, brother