Role Reversal

All you have to do is listen to any random right-winger, and you'll learn that they think the country is going to hell. On that, it happens, we totally agree. Just a matter of which direction it's taking to get there, and whose version of hell is its destination.

To teabaggRs, the destruction they see comes in the form of allowing certain people to have rights that everyone else has; it comes in the form of maintaining the tradition of separation of church and state; it comes in the form of allowing non-white people into this country, in the form of making quality and affordable health care accessible to all citizens of the richest country on earth. It comes in the form of taxes at a level that would allow the continuation of public education, the building and repairing of infrastructure, and in the form of believing in science, of protecting the planet, while also reducing deficits.

And, finally, it comes in the form of being asked to give an actual, MEANINGFUL -- as opposed to a flag-waving and empty -- shit.

In other words, what teabaggRs hate, and are doing their unlevel best to destroy, are the very things that have, until recently, made America great: addressing injustice, valuing diversity, funding education, respecting science and invention, advancing the right to vote. Promoting the general welfare, you might call it. Constitutiony sorts of things. Founding fatherish sorts of stuff.

So what we see rising in states controlled by such people are laws that allow the shooting of innocents, free from fear of prosecution. We see biblical literalism forced into schools, and we see religious views wrapped around sonogram wands and forced into vaginas. We see democracy actively diminished by voter suppression laws and by unwinding the regulation of political donations, replacing the wreckage of democracy with unbridled plutocracy; constitutional government replaced with theocracy. We see bogus budgets put forth that will devastate the country. Now that they have control of the House and think they'll grab the Senate and the White House, they're barely trying to hide it any more.

If it were the case that the remnants of the Republican party placed any value at all on truth, they'd just up and acknowledge that they've had it with democracy, with the constitution, with equal rights for all Americans. They'd openly state that their words are empty as Sarah Palin's knowledge of the world when they claim they worry about future generations: they'd admit that they want what they can get, now, that the future is only a word, a tool they use to pry open the vault. They'd concede that what they want isn't a return to anything; because the country toward which they're dragging us all has never existed on U.S. soil. Parts of it, singly, one at a time, maybe. But not all of it, ever, not even most of it, all at the same time.

If you want a look at the ideal of the current Republicans and teabaggers, look to Iran, to Saudi Arabia, where religion is supreme, votes are rigged and suppressed, women are second-class citizens, opposition is quashed with deadly force, diversity is non-existent; and from where no significant scientific advancements have come in centuries.

The only difference between that and what teabaggRs want is which holy book they hold dear, and the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia have already made it happen. But we're working on getting there, sure as hell.