Paranoia, Defined
Lyn Davis Lear, in the Huffington Post:
All week I’ve been reading in disparate sources from Drudge to US News and World Report about Bush, Rove and Cheney being overly confident about the midterm elections. Even Republican strategists are increasingly concerned because the White House doesn’t have a plan if they lose. This lack of planning shouldn’t surprise anyone, but if you really think about it a creepy, crawly feeling grows in your gut.
Here are some questions: Are these guys simply narcissistic idiots Rove-ing around in some never-never land bubble or do they know something we don’t? Have they planned a grab bag nose punch of an October/November surprise? Or have Diebold, ES&S, and local state secretaries assured them that they will do “whatever it takes” to get a Republican Congress elected again?
…When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the vote, he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are so far down the road toward totalitarianism that, even if Democrats do win back the Congress, it would take at least two generations before the last six years of damage to the nation could be reversed. Gore frankly despaired that any amount of time could ever return the country to where and what it previously was. This prediction left me reaching for some Fernet Branca.
We all know the neocons won’t cede power easily. They have to be aware that if the tide of Congress turns, Bush’s last two years will be mired in gridlock and perhaps even be punctuated by several embarrassing congressional investigations. Of course, Cheney did say last week that everything in Iraq is hunky dory, which leads one to believe that after James Baker’s devastating report and the escalating mass destruction of the war, Dickey-boy has simply lost it. But whether it is hubris, loony tunes, or both, the White House’s freakish calm about the elections makes me as nervous as the hell we seem to be headed for. Therefore we should all be on alert. If for whatever reason we don’t win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets.
So these people sit around, wondering what it takes to be a dictator, imagining what plans they…I mean W, would make. This is a lot like the pete townsend defense, ‘I was doing research.’
I can’t find one of those Republicans that aren’t going to vote on Nov 7th. I suspect most of the hype is coming from the media who want control of the country back. For eight years in the 90′s we had no president or VP and the media ran the country, into the ground. Everyone I know is going to the polls and they sure don’t want the people who destroyed the military (over 40% cut in the military), stole billions from the retired and elderly (Enron/Worldcom)and crashed the stock market ( hundreds of criminal CEO/CFO’s) back in power.
It’s stuff like this that almost made me hope that Bush lost in 2004, or that Republicans lose in the future, just to prove them wrong.
Don’t worry; I said almost — I know that if Bush had lost in ’04, and if we do lose this year, the Lefty Loons will be comparing Gore Vidal and Michael Moore to Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel.
I’m one that’s sitting it out, but this came a long time ago.
Having said that, you have no idea how insufferable my wife and her dad have been on me…
My wife, a former democrat, told me to sit down and listen to limbaugh rant about ‘cut and run’ conservatives. I’m looking for anyone who agrees with me, and it ain’t happening. I can’t see how there is just a tiny group of conservatives and nobody else. I’d guage the ir enthusiam to vote easily on par with 04.
Comrades,
I was one of those who gave serious thought to sitting out the election. Then I decided to sit down and look at what the left was offering to replace the current ideas with. After that, I set aside the idea of not voting, and decided that the safety and stability of our nation demanded that I vote against the democrats, and that’s what it comes down to.
Even the most egregious of Republican foibles and missteps pales in comparison to what I see from the left. Do I want to cede power in this great nation to the same group that stormed the stage at Columbia? I don’t think so.
respects,
Gwedd
Not only am voting, I’m voting for a House candidate that has virtually zero chance of winning, and for a senate candidate I detest, just to help Mitch McConnell become Majority Leader in case something unfortunate should befall one of the SCOTUS justices appointed by Ford, Clinton, or Bush, Sr.
I like the Gore Vidal reference. It’s like she was afraid she wasn’t doing enough to make her post the very essence of “radical chic Hollywood name-dropper.”
On a more serious note, I am a little concerned that this attitude could presage some real nastiness post-election, if the Republicans hang on. Ever since a bunch of retirees misread the ballot in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2000, the “we wuz robbed” chorus has grown more strident with each election cycle, even as their evidence grew murkier. Now we’ve had a year of the cocoon telling them the Democrats are going to win this time, and if doesn’t happen, I think the fringe will infect the Democratic mainstream, big time.
I think we keep edging closer to domestic political violence. We’ve moved from one moviemaker excoriating president Bush over the war, and now another has made a snuff film about the guy. A Democratic victory may be useful in tempering the more excitable types who get off on imagining themselves at the barricades while they sit on their rears and type on the Internet, but I can hardly endorse an election strategy predicating on keeping the nuts from going nuttier.
Well, believe it or not. I’m sitting this one out. More dumgelaufen on my part rather than a willful decision.
I had recently relocated here and sorta assumed that it was a Motor-Voter State, altho I had intended to verify. Well, the day I verified that it was not was the day after the deadline.
What was that Freudian thingy about slips and self-fulling prophecy?
[...] …was the conspiracy theorist. Anyone recall these words by the wife of Norman Lear pre-election? …When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the vote, he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are so far down the road toward totalitarianism that, even if Democrats do win back the Congress, it would take at least two generations before the last six years of damage to the nation could be reversed. Gore frankly despaired that any amount of time could ever return the country to where and what it previously was. This prediction left me reaching for some Fernet Branca. [...]