Mob boss John Gotti, aka the Dapper Don, used to throw a lavish 4h of July party in his Queens neighborhood. Replete with fireworks, food and entertainment.
His neighbors loved him for it.
Problem is, it's not an efficient way to throw a great party. Because Gotti and his organization inflicted a "mafia tax" on things like garbage collection and construction for all New Yorkers. You wound up paying quite a bit for those in retrospect not-so-great parties.
Ronald Reagan was John Gotti writ large. His party was in honor of "restoring our pride." Basically involved saying America was great, initiating a florid return to the cold war, and some actual fireworks, too.
However he did it, Reagan and his own nauseating administration made the first great Republican/conservative raid on the US tresury, to give funds back to those who had the most to begin with.
Now we have the Bush administration. The inept children of Reagan who so desperately want and need to throw John Gotti fireworks fests of their own. Only now things are more real for everyone, and the party makes a good percent of us queasy.
Worse, Bush and today's republicans are only capable of throwing a negative party, in which stuff gets blown up, images of destruction play like a sick fetish on tv screens, and brown people are killed en masse (sort of like a sick pinata, I guess).
And the people at the party - those white, red staters living it up - even they seem a bit uneasy as they mill about, roped off from the goodies arrayed so enticingly.
I won't belabor the metaphor too much longer. My central point, and one to beat home to everyone you know: Republicans are criminals, capable only of looting what we the people build. They represent the death of America, and years of ever more destructive and ever less-satisfying parties.