Trying to Understand Republicans
The thing that baffles WC about the approach Republicans are taking to governance is that they keep threatening to burn the house down, when they live in that house. WC suspects Andrew Sullivan has at least an idea what is going on:
That’s how I explain the current GOP. It can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked.
The ironic thing – at least WC thinks it may be ironic – is that this is very nearly jihadist thinking. These neo-cons, in many ways, have become the very thing they claim to fear the most: unprincipled religious zealots. They cannot see how close their America would be to modern-day Iran.
“Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture.”
About right. I’d only add “and when called out, the law doesn’t apply any more.”
the problem child (@the_problematic)
September 12, 2011 at 6:19 pm