It may be a dusty cliche but it still has power

There's this saying 'When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold'. Sure, the saying is a hoary old chestnut but it's one that has resonance. After-all a cliche is a cliche because it works. 

Perhaps that's why I glom on to US politics so much. Because what happens there domestically impacts on every corner (1) of the globe. Be it in acts of war or global moves to fight environmental degradation the US is and will be for decades to come the catalyst for whatever happens in the future. Or the block that stops what should have happened from happening.

And it's the blocking that impacts the most. Because without sensible politicians doing sensible things in the US then the insensible happens ... like marching lock-step off the cliff of human-activity-induced climate change. In the recent Republican Primary process only one of the contenders openly stated a belief in human-induced climate change and the need to do something about it. One. Uno. A single person.

In the past the divide between conservative and progressive politics in the US was not as great. Great deals were done—Tip O'Neill, then Speaker of the House in the US in the '80s, and Ronald Reagan, for example, were able to come together to resolve differences despite partisan animosity (despite O'Neill starkly stating Reagan was the then dumbest person ever to be in the White House). Perhaps in part because back then politics wasn't 24/7 animosity. Democrats and Republicans socialised with each other and their views, while opposing, were not in stark diametrical opposition. Hell, even O'Neill and Reagan were allegedly friends outside the bear pit that was federal US politics; with Reagan joking they were 'friends after 6 pm'.

But not any more. Since Obama got in the GOP in the US has gone bat-shit insane; indeed more insane than when Clinton was in. Now the GOP has fully embraced short-term hard right populism, as fostered and brayed forth by Fox news and right-wing talk radio, in the face of the long-term health of the nation and more broadly the entire fucking planet. And thus the planet is held hostage to the ideological whims of frankly many crazy, crazy people (2). People who take pride in staying true to what they believe as opposed to what any fucking evidence says, even lying through the teeth to do so.

A classic example is Senator Jon Kyl who maliciously claimed Planned Parenthood in the US, who provide quality reproductive health access to poor women in the US, spent 90 per cent of their resources providing abortion services. When pointed out the number was actually 3 per cent, with Kyl thus having inflated the amount by 3000 per cent, his office released a statement to say that Kyl's remark was 'not meant to be a factual statement.' 

Seriously. That happened. Then there's all the crap from other morons on the right about terror babies and claims that 78-81 plus Democratic members of congress are communists.

Think I'm a silly progressive leftie what with my empirical atheism and fancy degree(s) and shit and that I am talking out my bung hole? I certainly admit to having strong views about progressive politics and regard conservatives as a combo of the foolish, malicious and both. But like many 'on teh left', I have grounded my views in the very thing that makes me progressive or '...left wing...'; a healthy appreciation of reality and a willingness to sacrifice my short term comfort—what, an extra $500 a year for leccy?—for long term gain (you know, cleaner air, a more stable climate etc.). Not to mention standing up for principles of basic fairness such as equal opportunity, educational opportunities extended to people not lucky like I was, and not monstering people based on the colour of the skin, their sexual identity, or the religion they happen to practice or be raised in.

Here's what Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, have to say about the GOP of now in The Washington Post.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

Read the rest of the article, Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem, at The Washington Post.

(1) But the world is a sphere... SHUDDUP!

(2) Craziness of course likewise reflected in conservative politics here in Australia. Though the difference with Oz of course if we catch a cold then no one really gives a fuck.