Words Fail

I gotta say, this huffing and puffing, these shrieks and weeping and hurt feelings by Congressional Republicans and teabaggers over President Obama's recent speech is a new level of stupid, hypocritical self-parody, even for this current crop of hysterical and hyper-partisan purveyors of political porn. Really? They didn't like his tone? People who've, on the floor of Congress, claimed Obama had plans for concentration camps? Who continue, daily, to claim he's intent on destroying our country, hates our country, is in cahoots with terrorists? They take exception to his tone?

Seriously?

They've produced and signed on to a plan, the truth of which our president spoke as he outlined the differences between his approach and theirs, a plan which is mathematically and historically and politically and economically unworkable, is blatant in its skew toward the wealthy at the expense of the poor, is built on false assumptions. Congressional teabaggRs say any changes to it would be "non-starters;" they lie about "Obamacare," distort and demagogue it relentlessly, in the most inflammatory and dishonest terms; and they're offended by what Obama said? After two years of smears that make Bush-haters seem like Mr Rogers? Have I passed through some sort of wormhole? Might there be a planet on which this makes sense, and I'm just not on it?

Is there no point -- none -- beyond which our house teabaggRs won't drag the corpse of their hypocrisy? Is there no blame, for the very things they do as often as Muslims pray, which they'd not place on others? Hell, is there no time when they'd just stop and listen to themselves? Or do they actually -- confounding the most common of common sense -- not realize the irony, the dishonesty, the laughability of what they're saying?

Could it be a joke, and we're just not in on it?

I'm hardly naive; I grew up with a few politicians and I think I've heard it all. My aunt spent years in hard-scrabble politics; my parents were close friends of senators, congresspeople, governors. My brother was a U.S. Senate page; I visited him in D.C back in the good old days, watched at least a little of the goings-on. But these guys are literally beyond words; exceptional in a world of exceptional dishonesty. I have no way, nothing to bring to bear to describe them. It is both to laugh and to cry; to know their unseriousness is beyond doubt, and, yet, to be forced to realize that there are millions of people in this country who actually buy what they're selling. Swallow it whole. Are impervious to persuasion, refractory to the obvious.

What is there to say about that? It's literally unbelievable to me, as beyond my comprehension as insisting the earth is six thousand years old. Insisting that cutting taxes on the wealthy creates jobs, when it never has; demanding further cuts in taxes on the wealthy when they're at historical lows, paying for them by cutting services to the most needy, and expecting people to sign on. Who could possibly think that normal people would buy such discredited, dishonest, deceptive, and patently unworkable plans? That the very people who'll be hurt by it, will line up to support plans to enrich the already rich, at their own expense, to the detriment of our nation?

And yet, there it is.