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Just some personal observations of their reich wing agenda and GOP apologists in the US today:
Laura Bush, Peggy Noonan, et al., are simply GWB's reich wing message gone mainstream.
Dogs like Coulter, Malkin, O'Reilly, Hannity, can't be taken seriously because their severity and personal attack say nothing to the rest of us except that they have narrow and small minds. Minds which perhaps never made it through hi school. Seriously. For these reasons alone, they pose little threat to America because they neutralize their own message the moment they open their foul distempered mouths.
Laura and her kind, on the other hand, speak measured and low-key tones. They know better than to alienate future GWB Believers with the rudeness of vulgar observations. And they make the arguments of the extremist right with civility (usually) and pseudo-rationality so as to not turn off listeners. Their aim is far more insidious than that of the heel biters and slur slingers. These two seek converts. And if converts are not possible, they then seek to make the Bushie extremists seem like next door neighbors, friends, just regular Americans. In fact, though, these regular next door neighbors are as willing to kill womens' rights as they are willing to kill gays' rights, the rights of the down and out, the rights of the elderly, the rights of veterans, the rights of children, etc.
There is nothing American about such aims. There is everything NEOCON and neoNazi and fundamentalist reich wing about them. But on the surface we don't see this because of the sublety of their making nice. It is only when confronting them with dialogue that their methods become more clear. Yet, we think they are "NICE" Republicans.
And therein lies the danger. Therein was the Snake and the Apple in the Garden. "Hey!" they say. "GWB-ism is a GOOD thing. It can't hurt you. It's only the way MOST Americans feel. It is what's good for America".
Sure it is. This "niceness" of the US right is why The Book of Daniel was dropped. It is why kids' books in schools which seek to educate our future about the goodness and differences in ALL human groups are banned in certain school districts. It's why it's OK to kill thousands of US troops in an illegitimate war yet not OK for a scared young girl to protect her future with a much needed abortion.
This is why ID has become a hot topic. The right says, "ID is what we believe. You can't ban it because we BELIEVE in it". And yet, the next moment they want to amend state constitutions with same-sex marriage bans because "We don't believe in that same sex abomination evil, we don't want it, we won't accept it". Even though millions upon millions of other Americans DO accept the rights of gay people.
If you can understand these points, about how pleasantness can conceal bigotry and hate, you can understand how NICE, REASONABLE Republicans like Laura Bush and Noonan pose the most severe danger of all to American freedoms. And you understand how, when dealing with these kinds of demagogues in snakes' clothing, can be harmful to your health and well-being in the future.
This opinion piece of mine is a warning that the left is playing with fire when it accepts right wing extremism as a normal part of the American experience and allows it to flourish and grow, when engaged in conversation or even in angry response to the "good" Republicans.
Don't give ANY Republican a soapbox. Simply ignore their rants. Don't reply to them. Don't address them first. DO act as if they're not even there. It is BETTER, believe me, for America if we can all do that instead of what we are doing now. To keep America from sliding further into an elitist and dictatorial plutocracy, we must not allow the Republicans to make themselves into nice, good, just guys next door. looking out for America type of people. The kind of looking out for America they REALLY want involves the repression of rights, people and numerous American tenets of freedom.
To engage these people in anything but complete opposition is to allow the current evil to grow bigger and bigger and thus choke the US and most of its citizens' freedoms to ultimate death.
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