It's Not the End...

Drunken Florida husband
threatens suicide, wife gives
him a gun and he does it.

Well, you can’t see the end of the world from here, but you can certainly predict it. If Democrats (however chaotic, misguided, and wrong-headed about many things) do not get serious about the coming elections, it appears we will be on the way to the end. And I fear we may have reached that tipping point where American voters have become so uninformed, lazy, and ignorant they may just stand by idly and let the new Republican Party win. It is not too hard to imagine what will happen over time if we allow the most ignorant, hateful, greedy, racist elements of our society to take over. With the Tea Party calling the shots we would most likely be doomed.

First of all, they deny global warming, probably the greatest threat to life on the planet ever. They are unwilling to follow the advice of the huge preponderance of scientists who are warning us daily about the consequences of global warming and the urgency to do something about it. It is difficult to imagine stupidity greater than this. Then there is the issue of tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy. A decision to allow these to continue is, as Bernie Sanders has said, the dumbest thing we could do. They will also rescind the health care legislation putting millions more Americans with no health care unless they are wealthy. They would quite likely attempt to do away with the Department of Education. This might not matter too much except that it represents their attitude towards education in general (it is in the best interests of corporate America and the Republicans to keep us as dumb as possible). They would almost surely try to do away with Roe vs Wade, thus driving millions of women into the alleys once again with coat hangers and such. The separation of church and state, as designed by our constitution, would fall by the wayside, creationism would replace evolution in our biology and other classes, turning the clock back at least to the early 19th century. Huge numbers of immigrants would be deported, Muslims would probably be denied entrance into the U.S. and mosques would disappear (no doubt along with every other religious institution outside of Christianity, preferably fundamental Christianity. Hundreds of thousands of otherwise decent hard-working Americans would continue to languish in prison because of minor marijuana violations. There would certainly be no Gay marriages and, indeed, there would be renewed useless attempts to “cure” homosexuality. Stem cell research would not doubt cease. We would continue our insane pursuit of endless “wars,” attempting to impose our way of life on the rest of the world, while at the same time greedily stealing their resources to maintain our self-elevated position at the top of creation. Banks and Insurance companies, along with the Health Industries would continue to rip us off shamelessly, more things would become privatized (water?) and so on. Perhaps not so likely, but not necessarily beyond the pale for these people, masturbation would be made illegal and the Missionary position would become mandatory. Birth control devices would not be allowed and abstinence only would be the only sex education permitted. Abortion would not be permitted even in cases of rape or incest. Think what a glorious world it would be if all these Tea Party beliefs would come to pass.

While it is true that not all of these things would necessarily be realized, many of them doubtless would. But what the bottom line here is, the most ignorant elements of our culture would be empowered to take over our country. If this happens we will be paying the price for our all-around neglect of the most important aspects of our lives, a neglect helped along by our materialistic, free-market, corporate and consumer-driven greed, by our unwillingness to spend any effort to educate ourselves and participate in our own democracy. All of our worst behaviors are now catching up with us and the price is going to be most unpleasant. It may not be too late to restore at least some semblance of common sense and sanity into our body politic. I wonder if Stewart and Colbert are up to the task, they seem to be the only ones much interested in the problem. The Republican Party has decided to support Christine O’Donnell, you can’t fall any lower than that.

LKBIQ:
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
Laurence J. Peter

TILT:
There are training schools for training pig-tailed macaques to harvest coconuts (which are not nuts).