A couple of nights ago, my husband and I watched the Republican debates on the Fox TV channel. It was a depressing evening….as we listened to the alien world view, the assumptions about life and politics that we did not share. Even the questions failed to raise what we considered to be key issues (though admittedly we gave up after an hour and half, missing the final half hour). Perhaps they came up then.
The most depressing was the quality of the candidates: The interchanges between Bachmann and Pawlenty, in which one of them was clearly lying thru his/her teeth (we suspected ‘her’ teeth—just a few moments ago, I see that Pawlenty has withdrawn from the race); the uniform faith in the market as an equalizer and an engine for growth (do we need growth, or, more likely, redistribution); the assumption that we’re all trying to make more money (when we’re already one of, if not the, richest nation on earth); the absolute and historically unfounded belief in the link between jobs and low taxes for corporations and the rich; the unwillingness to consider raising taxes when so much is at stake; zero attention to the vast and growing discrepancies in wealth in the country; and no attention at all to the rest of the world (though perhaps it came up in the last half hour…).
Romney, who at one point long ago, seemed like a fairly reasonable man, has moved further and further to the right—I suppose in response to the right-ward shift of the populace. He stressed his and Herman Cain’s special competence in running a business, which he clearly considered prime qualifications for running a government. Ron Paul, though a bit of a nut-case, at least seems to be sincere, more honest than the rest—but what would he do to the country if he were in charge? The fact that Newt Gingerich sounded comparatively sane and rational, among this lot, is a telling and worrying observation! Although the Texan, Perry, never appeared on the debate stage, his routine linking of religion and politics is another frightening spectre. And then there’s Sarah Palin, who seems to appear at any political get-together….
In the face of such options, what does one wish? Does one hope that the worst of the lot will win the Republican nomination so that Obama will have a less credible opponent? But then, what if this less credible opponent actually manages to win the race!? The right has been incredibly successful at blaming Obama for problems that clearly had their roots in the long Republican Presidential years. Bush’s behaviour and policies created problems far too deep to overcome in the short amount of time Obama has been in office—even if he’d made no mistakes.
I wrote of my fears about Bush before his first non-election, and even more fundamentally after he’d been in office for several years:
http://earth01.net/CJPColfer/ccwritings/CColferWritings.html
Although the global situation has changed—fortunately, Obama has rendered the US less of a pariah among nations than it was during the Bush era—many of my fears about Bush are replicated with this new batch of Republicans and Tea-Party proponents. Where do we go from here? The answer to that questions has profound implications for the future of the Earth and humanity.