Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Ronald Reagan.. The best you got?

This is only a snippet, but I'm really interested in why, exactly, republicans get such a hard-on about R.R.  His economic 'ideas' came from misunderstandings of Arthur Laffer's curve .. I mean -- as an exemplar of a good Christian he's not even the best... the dude got a divorce.  I suppose divorce's approval ratings have really sky-rocketed in the past 50 years..


Which brings me to another rambling point... This cycle I have noticed.. I am sure I am not the only one, and I might have read it somewhere (I read an awful lot of stuff).. maybe inspired by something that you readily recognize.

1. "liberal" 'movement' grows around a particular subject
2. "conservative" 'establishment' cries foul, and fights it
3.  every-day people start to realize that the "liberal" 'movement' actually sounds like a fairly decent new idea --that being forced to stay married to some dipshit who beats you and your children, for instance, is generally not fucking cool.  Or maybe my favorite: Women are not property and neither are black people
4. the "liberal" stated subject gains approval
5. the dissenters die off, or otherwise have a "revelation" or some new way to read the bible
6. the ex-dissenters ("conservative" from 2.) declare that the founders of the original movement were actually the ones who didn't want the movement to progress, and are currently guilty of going against the movement's subject (such as: "liberals WANT black people to live in the inner city on welfare, and make nothing of their lives" .. notice the several layers of misguided assumptions, outright misunderstanding, and spin?)
7. repeat ALMOST forever, until we've finally realized that we're all in this together, we don't need god to be 'moral', killing is counter-productive to pretty much everything, and we should focus on moving life and our understanding of it and the universe forward scientifically (since we no longer need to dwell on childish bullshit like trying to find goddamn Noah's Ark, and other such marvelous stupidities)

This snippet grew a bit.

~Nic

1 comment:

Stacy said...

Reagan raised taxes and expanded Social Security as well. He doesn't really seem like a perfect conservative example for social or fiscal conservatives.

"we don't need god to be 'moral'"

I don't tend to trust anyone that claims they do. If the only thing stopping someone from shooting me in the face is a belief in god, I'd say that doesn't exactly make that person a moral person. It just makes them an obedient one. And authoritative directives can change.