Once upon a time, these things only happened to other people.
Catastrophe capitalists would arrive in some third-world country you never heard of, engineer an artificial shortage of something or just start a war (that's the catastrophe part), then use that to create social unrest, then use the social unrest to install a friendly regime, and then use that regime to help rape the country (that's the capitalist part).
Then, they did it to California.
Now, they're doing it to America, and the Republicans are committing political suicide in supporting it. Why?
Corruption drives up the cost of oil, high oil prices squeeze and frighten the natives so that you can get them to give up even more of the natural resources that big oil isn't using anyway. That way, after the fifteen to twenty years it takes to develop those resources, they can sell American oil and natural gas to China.
And fuck America.
You may think you're an American. You may even be white. But that won't protect you. To big oil and the Republicans, you're just another bone-in-the-nose native to be ripped off, and America is just another third-world country to be raped.
But that's not what intrigues me.
No, what I want to know is what does it take to be the native who sells all of the other natives down the polluted river? What does it take to be Glenn Beck? What does it take to be Lou Dobbs? What does it take to be Dick Cheney? What does it take to suck up to the powers that are raping your country?
Or maybe that's the wrong question. Perhaps it's more a matter of what they lack.
George Bush's family is actually rich enough to profit from all this, and they can reap the rewards of raping America from the safety of their compound in Paraguay. It's not like they give a damn about America. John McCain, characteristically, is merely taking the position he was paid to take.
But, for the rest of the Republicans, I really have to wonder. Republicans' willingness to sell out American resources that oil companies already have and don't want to use (yet) isn't a political winner for them. It's going to cost them Florida in November. Why are Republicans committing mass suicide for big oil?
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Used to be, all you had to do to prove you were a good Republican was to play dumb. Pretend you can't tell a baby from a blastocyst. Pretend you can't tell Saddam Hussein from Osama bin Laden. Pretend you can't tell habeas corpus from a get-out-of-jail-free card. Pretend you can't tell John Edwards from Hugo Chavez. Pretend you can't tell weather from climate. Pretend you can't tell eighteenth-century Deists from modern televangelists. Pretend you can't tell asset re-allocation from economic growth. Pretend you can't tell Ahmedinejad from Hitler. Pretend you can't tell anyone from Hitler, really. Just be dumb and you're a good Republican. And, since reality has a well-known liberal bias, playing dumb is really the safest place for a Republican to hide. Their incompetence is impregnable within their ignorance, real or feigned.
But now that's not enough. Now, you have to be willing to be ripped off at the pump and then happily sing the praises of the people who are ripping them off. Today, to be a Republican, you have to lick the hand that beats you.
I just don't understand what motivates that, but I'm trying.
Perhaps it's no wonder that Clayton Williams said rape victims should just lay back and enjoy it. He wasn't speaking as a rapist, he was speaking as a Republican. There's nothing they enjoy more than rape. Don't believe me? Turn on the Tee-Vee and watch them shill for big oil to the ruin of their country and themselves. Republicans, for instance, oppose gay marriage but love prison rape. Go figure.
If there's one thing a Republican can't stand, it's someone who sticks up for themselves. "Activist" is a dirty word to Republicans. Unions are worst of all. Anything other than bending over and taking it from your betters is communism to a Republican. It's no wonder that Abu Ghraib looked like a fraternity to Rush Limbaugh. That's how they think. If you bend over and take it long enough, you might get to do the raping for a change.
That's all they have to look forward to.
And the last thing a Republican wants is for someone to put the kibosh on rape, because they've already paid their dues, suffered the hazing, and now they want their screaming victim, dammit, and they want it now! They paid for this microphone!
So, corrupt our laws, make a mockery of the "magic of the marketplace," force Americans up north to choose between freezing and starving in the winter, and then sing the praises of the people who are milking Americans' suffering every single day.
That's what it takes to be a Republican now: you don't have to just submit to rape, you have to be your rapist's biggest fan.
Free-market fundamentalism maybe infantile, a half-assed anarchist's hope that everything will magically take care of itself, but subscribing to the larger "moral" calendar of Republicanism (especially when you don't actually have those values yourself) begins to look like Stockholm Syndrome.
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Previously, I had thought that the motivation to be a Republican was simply a matter of hating liberals more than you love your country. Everything could go to hell, but as long as you could rub liberals' noses in it (even imaginary liberals), Republicans would embrace it. Don't want to build more refinery capacity, 'cause it'll reduce the cost of gas and your profits? If you blame it on the environmentalists, Republicans will support you and pay your higher costs. Being big oil's bitch was just a negative externality, but being able to laugh at liberals while you're both getting fucked? Priceless! Banks don't want to build more nuclear power plants 'cause they're not profitable. But if you blame it on the liberals, you can both not build power plants and build resentment against a juggernaut that doesn't exist! Dance, little monkeys! Dance! You could get a Republican to do anything, just so long as you told them the liberals hated whatever it was.
Big oil I understand. They can read the polls. They know they're about to lose the White House, and so they're screwing Americans at the pump just as hard as they can to make as much money as possible before the party's over.
But why would Republicans support that at their own political cost? It's said that a Democrat is a Republican who lost his job, and that a Republican is a Democrat who got mugged. Maybe there's something to that. Survivors of assault often wreak vengeance on innocent third parties in order to get their own back. It's irrational, but it's common. It takes some kind of ... I dunno, morals or something to refrain from doing that. For Republicans, raised in the culture of "2nd place is first loser," the culture in which there is no right or wrong, only rich and poor, in which you take whatever you want and anyone who objects is just a loser, aren't simply creating an amoral society, they have to live in it. Free-market fundamentalism, which is merely the Law of the Jungle in suits, produces feral people. The one thing that makes that miserable life worthwhile is passing it on.
The only thing that will keep sociopaths from preying on people is fear. Fear of retribution. You cannot compel behavior in terms of right and wrong if those words are meaningless. You cannot invoke the advantages of shared responsibility in those sociopaths who call themselves "libertarians." We failed properly to punish the people who brought us Enron and now we have this. We failed properly to punish the Nixonians, and now we have Bush and this Lost Decade.
We will never be safe until the people who pull this shit are too scared to go on. For those who are stealing one out of every four dollars you spend on gas, liquidate them to their last asset and throw them naked into the street. Feed them to the starving mobs of Asia. If they still have two cents to rub together, they have not been fucked enough. We are not dealing with human beings, here, because humans are social animals. We are dealing with feral predators, no matter how you dress them up, and they will continue to attack you and your family unless they are scared to death of the consequences. To them, there is no difference between your town and Bhopal.
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