Bold Lies and the Courage of Conviction

Of course, overwhelming majorities of Americans strongly prefer a government that maintains justice, ensures domestic tranquility, provides for defense, and promotes general welfare -- not one of which Republicans are the least bit interested in or capable of providing -- but the Republicans are well aware that ignorant, infantile Americans will simply reward the Party that provides the most compelling scapegoats and attack ads, reward even the obvious authors of their distress while punishing those who strive to solve our shared problems if the GOP is bold and relentless enough in its lies.

Certainly, there are few Democrats who can match with the courage of their convictions the commitment of Republicans to be brazen and bold in their schemes for ill-gotten gain through the gaming of governance. In this, Republicans are just replicating in the sphere of governance the brainless ruthless go-getter ethos of brazen fraud and self-promotion that suffuses the entire field of advertising, finance, and "self-esteem" psychology, the mean debased rank-conformist know-nothing suicidal-genocidal snake that has always been coiled in the cracked egg of America's "rugged individualist" ethos.

Few Democrats can match the hysterical commitment of Republicans -- who are either predators making that latest desperate dice throw that brings the grifter either ruin or riches, or are feudal fundamentalists in a hostile secular world forever fighting The Last War to the death.

This is largely because so many elected Democrats are insulated themselves by incredible wealth and privilege from the costs and risks of failed policy of their incomparably more precarious constituencies, or because conviction is finally a propositional matter and hence the ironic, nuanced, empathic, pragmatic, flexible qualities of temperament that make for the best liberal governance rarely lend themselves to effective liberal advocacy in mass-mediated venues catering to the short resentful attention spans of distressed but also pampered Americans.