Team Tyranny. Don't bolt. Stay and face it. It's true. Americans haven't faced it before. That's why we keep using words like "crazy", "reckless", "belligerent", "coo-coo", "nuts". It all seems so illogical that it has to be called all those things. But it IS logical if one dares jump from seeing news as entertainment and looks objectively at it as history and uses the words of history without timidity (like tyranny).
Repealing is not an accomplishment. Cutting is not an accomplishment. De-funding is not an accomplishment. Sane, peaceful, people--regardless of political leanings--know this. These however ARE accomplishments for the warrior type--the person who has no sense but that of tearing down, stomping, setting torch to the evil they perceive and leaving to faith and divine providence what shall come later to replace the smoldering mess they make of what existed until they tore it down.
There is another diary today called "The Two Words All Democrats Must Start Using Immediately" which goes on to say that they should be "prove it"--the recommended response to Speaker Boehner's cop-out assertion in a TV interview regarding a clean bill on government funding where Boehner says "there are not the votes in the House to pass a clean CR." Fine. By all means Democrats should challenge the Speaker to "prove it" by calling for a vote. But while very important, this is yet another "downstream" issue of treating a symptom to buy some time before the problem "upstream" causes another symptom downstream. I thank the other diarist for the inspiration from whom my title has taken it's cue. It's long past time however to take a trip upstream and end this problem at it source--just who is it who put such a noose on the idea of taxes to the point that a penny raised triggers a rhetorical political assassination in the right-wing partisan media?
Real Republicans and Democrats are welcome to join the trip upstream because today, the actual political landscape consists of the seemingly insane hard right and everyone else who just doesn't want to be them. There isn't any "left" except in the mind of the crazy right--though the press seems to be stuck in continuing to use that duality as a constant for its own ease. American democracy as we have known it most of our childhoods (those over, say, 25) has however sustained a blow to the head so concussive that it doesn't exist the same way and both sincere republicans and people who identify as democrats or "independents" because they want no association with what the right has become need to face the hard truth of what's happened and realize that some Americans have taken the gloves off against others to the detriment of all--thus the title of this writing.
Team Tyranny. Say it again. Team Tyranny. Not "tea party"--use that term, tea party, and you're a tool of a shit-eating-grin Koch Bro high-paid Matt Kibbe-looking think-tanker who is getting you to give a pass to a group that doesn't care about parties, much less tea. I can't say for sure who funds all this, but that may come out in the end if this President puts his DOJ to work on ending the process that has been allowed to go on under multiple presidential administrations--including a back-to-back presidential mis-administration. And that is the designed or defacto extortion of Grover Norquist in requiring republican Congressional hopefuls to sign a pledge to a blind and absolute ideological totality with regard to taxation. No ticky, no shirty. No pledge signing, no hope of Congressional office (maybe even the Presidency too because Mitt Romney signed). Bad-mouth the pledge and be crushed in local partisan media. Sign the pledge but show a hint of independence and any of several manners of threat of reprisal will manifest.
No intelligent person with moral fiber would sign their good names away to such a pledge knowing that the oath of office is a binding legal oath taken with hand on the Bible which contains verbiage in conflict with Norquist's pledge. Thus, the people who do sign it, which is all of the Republican party with the exception of a couple of old-timers, are members of the perjury club. Some can live with that and carry on being as Republican as they believe that to mean. But others do it with a smirk, knowing it's just the means to the end of becoming a member of Team Tyranny--the angry warrior type who loves secret hand-shakes, pretends Norquist's pledge is to the voters and not to the Team and thinks that repeal, abolishment, de-funding, blocking, obstructing and so forth are ACCOMPLISHMENTS in and of themselves. Don't forget--it starts with criminal act chosen and thus we should not expect more than heartlessness from criminals. But it is in a gray area because the country has tolerated this CRIME for so long that signatories make the same choice that steroid users do in sports--accept that all my work didn't matter and accept a job with cousin Al's Auto dealership, or take these shots and make millions and get perks out the wazoo?
The true warrior type or criminal who signs Norquist's pledge and then lies when taking the oath of office can't see beyond the short-term rules of lie to get to the next place on the monopoly board. Perhaps it is that they truly expect divine providence--they can't be thinking that they'll own America all to themselves. But one thing seems certain, they don't appreciate the sacrifice and hard work over generations by real fellow Americans that it took to build up the programs, institutions, compromises and so forth that they swear and sweat to tear down.
Team Tyranny. Team Tyranny. Upstream we must go to the dam which lets only the few trickle through which meet the nasty Norquist criteria. And who or what makes Grover Norquist qualified to have this power? He has never opened his life to public scrutiny by running for office himself. And he has not built a fortune in industry which would show he is sound of mind and makes rational decisions. For all we know, he is a mad man, a tyrant whose lack of flamboyance unlike John Gotti or Hitler has kept scrutiny off of him.
Many of us can see upstream into the flow of politics and generally where and how things are supposed to meet. I for one however can't see past this damn dam called Grover Norquist. But what trickles out of this damn dam all has the same stamp of government hatred on it--the kind a crazy kid might develop and act on all his life that no one sees has become an adult obsession and irrational fixation but which is excused because it's camouflaged as "politics".
All who pass the filter and trickle out of the damned dam belong to Team Tyranny, like it or not, and they have negated American political tradition by refusing to accept and abide by the outcomes of elections and processes. Tell them they don't get to demand renegotiation of settled laws just because they showed up in office after the law was settled. Tyranny always has a tyrant. And if Team Tyranny is called what it is, maybe President Obama will send the DOJ upstream to unclog this damn dam before it contrives the next few man-made financial crises and clears that political waterway free of purity oaths and threats for disloyalty for good.