( – promoted by lowkell)

Nothing is more important, in these times, than that we recognize how profoundly pathological today’s Republican Party has become. A column by Paul Krugman today calls our attention to one important dimension of this pathology: what’s going on here is irrational, beyond explanation by calculated self-interest. It’s a kind of collective insanity.

Consider this. Krugman, in his discussion of the EPA’s recent very valuable decision to regulate mercury emissions, provides this cost-benefit analysis: “the payoff to the new rules is huge: up to $90 billion a year in benefits compared with around $10 billion a year of costs in the form of slightly higher electricity prices.”

And this relates only to that small piece of the benefits that can be quantified: “E.P.A.’s cost-benefit analysis only considers one benefit of mercury regulation, the reduced loss in future wages for children whose I.Q.’s are damaged by eating fish caught by freshwater anglers. There are without doubt many other benefits to cutting mercury emissions, but at this point the agency doesn’t know how to put a dollar figure on those benefits.”

Forget human suffering. Even just in terms of dollars and cents, this is a great bargain. A no-brainer, one might say.

And how do the Republicans respond to this measure that “will deliver huge benefits at only modest cost”? “[N]aturally, Republicans are furious.” Despite the fantastic bargain, “it’s a deal Republicans very much want to kill.”

Why? What’s going on here? Here’s Krugman describing how “something remarkable” has happened to the Republican Party:

“With everything else that has been going on in U.S. politics recently, the G.O.P.’s radical anti-environmental turn hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. But something remarkable has happened on this front. Only a few years ago, it seemed possible to be both a Republican in good standing and a serious environmentalist; during the 2008 campaign John McCain warned of the dangers of global warming and proposed a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Today, however, the party line is that we must not only avoid any new environmental regulations but roll back the protection we already have.

“And I’m not exaggerating: during the fight over the debt ceiling, Republicans tried to attach riders that, as Time magazine put it, would essentially have blocked the E.P.A. and the Interior Department from doing their jobs…

“[M]indless opposition to ‘job killing’ regulations is now part of what it means to be a Republican.”

Such “mindlessness” in a major American political party is indeed “something remarkable.” But we are left with the challenge to figure out what “remark” can be made that captures the heart of this reality.

I am suggesting that the remark might well be along the lines, “This is madness.”

Madness is often described in terms of “imbalance,” and surely today’s Republican Party has lost even the concept of “balance.” Politics is about trade-offs. (For that matter, life is a lot about trade-offs.) Costs weighed against benefits. But not for the GOP. They are now possessed by a frame of mind that deals only in absolutes. It’s all or nothing.



In part, it is those lusts for wealth and power: all or nothing means the winners want it all, and the losers in the struggle for power will get nothing.

But the mentality has a pathology that goes deeper than sheer selfishness. All or nothing has resulted in a visual field in which so much is exaggerated, and so much is left out, that what’s seen is grossly distorted.

The capacity to deal with reality in terms of all the competing valid dimensions of value has been lost. The capacity to deal with politics as something other than total war has been lost.

The party that has been damaging everything it touches for more than a decade now is not only a destructive force, it is also a force in the grip of that kind of destructive force that Euripides captured in that famous line, “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

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Andy Schmookler is running for Congress in the 6th Congressional District of Virginia, challenging the incumbent Congressman, Bob Goodlatte.  An award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, Andy moved with his family to Shenandoah County in 1992.  He is a graduate of Harvard University and holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.  

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To learn more about Andy, please go to his website. You may also follow Andy on Facebook and on Twitter.  

From Song of Myself:

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself;

And what I assume you shall assume…

I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself…

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?

Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me-I stand indifferent…

I dote on myself – there is that lot of me, and all so luscious…

O I am wonderful!

…

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yaws over the roofs of the world.

Talk amongst yourselves.

And Happy Holidays to all.

I just wanted to catch up and let everyone know that I did my part this morning, twice, actually to piss of a fundamentalist Christian this morning but in comparison to what John Medeiros did this week, I suspect my attempts fall short, but we’ll get to John a bit later.

What I did was fairly simple, but it is guaranteed to piss off a fundamentalist Christian on their second most favorite day of the year – the first, of course, being the execution the big man himself, but I digress.

I simply said Happy Holidays to my brother over the phone, which of course sent him into an  apoplectic seizure, a usual ritual during our annual conversation on Christmas morning.  Now, please understand I do love him, in spite of all his beliefs, so I called him the night before to ensure he had taken his high blood pressure because I am such a nice guy, just to make sure all that button pushing that was to follow the next morning didn’t cause any harm.    

However, a trip to the grocery store this morning was so much more fun and fulfilling.  On a whim, I went to the grocery store this morning to pick up some things for breakfeast.  I am the farthest thing on th planet from a Chritian and to be honest, this is really embarrassing to admit, my dog is a believer.  She thanks God everyday I rescued her from the animal shelter so I cut her some slack over her beliefs and bake her a mini spinach quiche for breakfeast on the big mans  birthday.  And of course it is full of swiss cheeese, one of her favorites!

So I am in line at the grocery store and as the checker gives me my change, I say with a big toothy, friendly smile, “Happy Holidays.”  Needless to say, she said to me sternly ” it’s not Happy Holidays, it’s Merry Christams.”  Needles to say we had words nd I asked her how could she work for Kroger, knowing they were such non-believers to open their stores to make a buck on JC’s birthday.  Needles to say it went over really well.  But the good news is the quiche is fabulous and my dog is under my computer desk in a food coma, snoring as we speak.  

But anyway, my fun this morning reeking havoc on Christmas Day pales in comparison to the fun John Medeiros of Minneapolis has had this week.  You see, John had a ring side seat to watch State Senator Amy Koch, Republican State Senator and cu-coo for Cocoa Puffs, implode this week.  You see, Koch, a supporter of a supporter of a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage and admitted JC addict, admitted to cheating on her husband with a campaign staffer.

Poor John was traumatized by this news, knowing he and the gay community in Minnesota were responsible for ruining the institution of marriage.  John and others immediately signed up for extensive counseling to deal with their guilt, however, John, being quick on his feet, decided to issue a very public apology to Senator Koch in the form of a letter:

Dear Ms. Koch,

On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an “illicit affair” with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.

We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.

It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of “adultery.”

Forgive us. As you know, we are not church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that “gay marriage” is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.

And finally, shame on us for thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage would have little impact on anyone’s family. We now see that marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.

From the bottom of our hearts, we ask that you please accept our apology.

Thank you.

John Medeiros

Minneapolis MN    

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/201…

For those of you out there who are also traumatized by this news, please get some help.  And for those who wish to send Ms. Koch a sympathy card, please feel free to google her to locate her office address.