My dear, dear readers, I am back! It's been a tough stretch of verbalizing my rants and I know the people who bear the responsibility of hearing them are wondering why the hell I am not at the computer unloading this shit to my trusty blog. This is certainly a good question for which I unfortunately do not have a good answer. Possibly, my absence has been the result of an overwhelming amount of material worth ranting about. One day I'm thinking this issue has to be the topic of the week and later that day I'm reading some other unbelievable story and pretty soon it's brain gridlock! But today, I really cannot take it any more. Today I reached some invisible quota of perplexing, annoying doublespeak from the political right in this country and I really can't take it any more. If just one more phony-ass Repube says something you know is complete, unadulterated bullshit, I might quit watching anything on TV except maybe Wipeout and reading anything but the Sunday funny papers. I might, you know, become more like THEM!
It is beyond my comprehension to comprehend how someone can live their lives in total hypocrisy and somehow delude themselves into believing this is fine. A telling article in the New York Times last week did a masterful job explaining this phenomena. In some ultra-conservative podunk town in the Mid-West, a number of liberty loving (i.e. Obama hating) people were interviewed for this article and asked about their contempt for people who are sucking the government tit for assistance to live. This country's diabolical march to socialism has them terrified. These people are all working multiple jobs and sacrificing and going without the niceties of life and on and on. There's only one problem - every person interviewed for the article was, in fact, accepting government assistance. Free school lunches for their kids, unemployment benefits, social security disability checks, rent subsidies, etc. That's right, every one of these unbelievable hypocrites is collecting money from the government, and every one of them has somehow, someway, convinced themselves that they're not and that's just fine. They're deficient on reality. They live a lie and do it with fucking conviction! One woman actually broke down and through a stream of tears "confessed" to accepting government assistance, as if the reporter had finally stuck enough burning cigarettes into her face and she caved. How can this be?
It can be because it's become a way of life for these people. They are unmercifully caught between their conservative outlook on social issues and the fact that the Republican party to which they belong has economically fucked them every which way but up. On one side there's Rick "the dick" Santorum declaring how Obama is getting America hooked on the "narcotic of dependency" and Mitty warning that government programs "foster passivity and sloth". Euwww, who wants to be sloth? The Times article went on to point out that the top 10 "most conservative" states as ranked by Gallup received 21.2% of their income in government transfer while the number for the top 10 most liberal states was 17.1%. That's right, the safety net is much more red than blue. Of course, this is not a big surprise for anyone that takes a minute to think about it. The most conservative states are also the more relatively poor states and have greater dependence on the safety-net of government programs, especially Medicaid. Contrary to the blowhard Gingrich's claim that Obama is the "food stamp" president, Obama has not expanded this program at all. Rather, the poor state of the economy has reduced incomes and made more people eligible, and low and behold a majority of these people are from red states. Those are, as Joe Friday would say, "just the facts Ma'am". So why on earth are these needy people voting for politicians who detest these safety-net programs and are campaigning to dismantle them? It's simple, really. The GOP is a master at exploiting social issues, and these legions of brain-dead conservative sheep simply vote against their own economic interests over and over again so, you know, gay people can't legally marry and Hispanics can't live the American dream. Many people remember the old hypocrite in her motorized wheel chair yelling about how Obamacare is socialized medicine in one breath and then telling the next politician that showed up to keep their dirty hands of her Medicare. Have they no dignity?
And then there's contraception, the issue of the 1970's that has suddenly exploded into one of the most fake outrage issues in recent memory. Oh, what hypocrisy looms here. Obamacare requires contraception to be available on healthcare plans that have federal government backing. Not on private plans mind you. But it seems that churches like the cheaper government programs, which is no surprise considering that around 80% of the revenue to the Catholic Church comes from the federal government, and they and their associated businesses like hospitals enjoy tax-free status through this association. But the Catholic Church preaches no contraception to their masses, and have since the dark ages when having a zillion kids was a game of numbers as most children didn't survive childhood and the more you had, the better the odds that some would make it to adulthood. But this concept seems just a little bit dated in 2012. So, the old white men leaders of the Catholic Church conjure up this fake outrage despite multiple polls showing that up to 98% of Catholic women use or have used birth control. Oh, no shit? Jeez, I thought that the much smaller families of Catholic leaning people these days just meant Mom and Dad weren't having sex any more. Are they all going to hell then? And what about the non-Catholic people working for these hospitals and schools that the quasi Catholic/Federal Government Church associates with? Are they screwed out of health insurance provided contraception because of where they work? The Republican leadership is going to shit in their nest in a very Terri Schaivo way if they keep going after Obama on this. Women of all backgrounds are already outraged, and they represent, to say the least, a fair amount of voters. So listen Bishop Olmsted, when 98% of your membership is breaking a rule, no greater hypocrisy exists than demanding that the rule be universally accepted and respected by everyone else in this country. Besides, you've spewed so much hypocrisy in your lifetime (covering up pedophile priests and hitting a pedestiran and leaving the scene of the crime, among other transgressions) that your allotment is up. Just slither away, please.
This hypocrisy is actually gathering momentum with the Republican candidates. There's Gingrich trying to appeal to family value conservatives against a background of souless wife cheating. How the fuck does this guy look in the mirror everyday and not just cringe? Mitt Romney told a gathering recently that he was an "intense conservative". This is a fucking lie and everyone listening to this moron knew it. His tale of how he was actually for the bailout of GM and Chrysler is more convoluted bullshit. This bunch just keeps spewing out lies, but somehow, someway, this has become acceptable to their loyal followers. Once upon a time, lying was discouraged, and I think telling the truth is one of those nic-picking commandments that Christians hold in high regard when it's suitable. But there is no longer any stigma to blatantly lying to people, and the people who practice this art know that those listening are simply co-conspirators, so bogged down by the weight of their own monumental hypocrisy that they can only listen and vacantly nod. This is not a recipe for success when hustling votes from Independents and other centrists of either party. As a result, the Republicans will fail to win the White House this fall, and with an uptick in the economy and the realization by a majority of people that Obama's first term was actually OK, they will lose the House. Then the Democrats had better show the days of rampant hypocrisy are over. If not, I will vote for Mitt Romney in 2016!
