The bizarre and twisted rule of the Republicans and the New Morality of the Bush administration is turning the world upside down. Right is wrong. Up is down. War is peace. The New Morality of the Bush administration and their propaganda machine states that the only thing that matters is the accumulation of more and more power. Anything goes.
And Tucker Carson's twisted view of Giuliani's $150,000 speech at the University of Oklahoma is a perfect example of this. Morality in the twisted mind of the Republican Party is not what your mother taught you when you grew up. It is not even the most prudish version of puritanical Christianity. Morality is inherently meaningless in the twisted world of the Republican Party, and is merely a power tool used to control others.
The New Morality that is driving the Republican Party today is different from other forms of morality. It is much different from the morality that you learn in church. The difference is that under the direction of the New Morality, morals are never for the person in the mirror; they are always for the other person. In this way, morals are designed to exclude and shut out people based on one's personal whims.
But if someone actually violates one of the transgressions that the representative of the New Moralty lays out for others that this particular representative likes, then that is totally different. It's OK if you're one of my tribe. This is the sort of twisted reasoning that leads Tucker Carson to slam John Edwards for taking a $50,000 speaking fee in California, yet praises Rudy Giuliani for taking a $150,000 speaking fee for a similar event out in Oklahoma.
Just like Saurman was one claw of the hand of Mordor, Carson is merely one claw in the hand of the Bush administration. This machine is merely about getting more and more power. Bush and Cheney invaded and occupied Iraq because they knew that the world was running out of oil and they wanted to get as much of it that they could. The Republican power machine is interested in controlling every aspect of people's lives. They even try to control people's bodies by seeking to ban the right to choose and the right to make personal private decisions about when to turn off life support, such as the Schavio debacle. There is no limit to where their lust for power will take them.
Under the New Morality, being able to perform acts of immorality and not get called on it is a status and a symbol of power. This is why we see so many Republicans who preach against gay marriage who are secretly gay themselves. And this is why it is OK for Giuliani to be able to go and accept speaking fees for three times the rate of Edwards -- that is a symbol of his power, the symbol that he is part of the Beltway Elite, as determined by Broder and the Very Important People, and that he can therefore do whatever he wants.
Never mind that he supports the perpetual occupation in Iraq, which has led to the loss of lives of 655,000 people. Never mind that he would continue to sell people out to the corporate elites and that he has a shady past that is at least as bad as the Bush administration's. Never mind that he is merely advocating the Same Tired Old Politics as Usual that the Bush administration has been advocating for the last six years. He is part of the Good Old Boys Club, and therefore, he can do whatever he wants.
But may God have mercy on Edwards' soul if he does even the slightest thing wrong. If he accepts no money at all, he is merely pandering to the masses. If he does not go out and speak at all, he is no longer relevant and is not worthy of the attention of the Very Important People. Either way it works -- Heads I win, tails you lose.
And it is not merely Carson who is guilty of being a proponent of the New Morality. There are plenty of other examples of this kind of selective outrage as well:
Several media figures have attacked Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards for receiving a $55,000 fee for a January 2006 speech at the University of California-Davis -- as first reported in a May 21 entry to the San Francisco Chronicle's Politics Blog. In several cases, they have not also mentioned reports that Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani charged Oklahoma State University $100,000 for a speech he delivered in 2006 and an additional $47,000 for the use of a private jet, as Media Matters for America has noted. Moreover, several left out the response by the Edwards campaign, which asserted that UC-Davis offset the cost through sponsorship and ticket sales to the event.
--Howard Kurtz, who, in a burst of crackpot conspiracy theorizing, ties the speaking fees in with the haircuts;
--John Scott, the guest host for FOX News' John Gibson, brought SF Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci on his show to discuss this. The smug look on her face as she talks about this story in the link is revealing.
--Rush Limbaugh, who whined about the tuition raises for UC-Davis students, yet ignored the fact that the event paid for itself.
--Brit Hume, who also mentioned the tuition hike and ignored the fact that the event paid for itself.
--MSNBC's Dan Abrams, who merely mentioned the situation in one sentence.
This is tribalism at its ugliest. That would be like rating up the most blatant site violations just because one person was on your tribe while troll-rating someone who was doing the exact same thing who was on someone else's tribe. This rampant tribalism is the sort of thing that will lead to the breakup of the American Republic if it is unchecked and unrestrained. The reason that Iraq and Afghanistan are failed states is because that many people value loyalty to tribe over loyalty to country. And this sort of tribalism is also evident within the chattering classes of the "media," which is more interested in reporting about the latest disappearence of the Cute White Blonde and material more worthy of the Weekly World News and the National Examiner than it is with reporting actual news around the world.