Back in the Saddle: A Commentary.

courtesy of Time.

Watching the G.O.P's hegemonic house of cards collapse certainly bodes well for those of us desperate for some small measure of hope these last six horrible years, yet I have a bitter taste (slight pun) in my mouth.

Here's what's up: Mark Foley is a hypocrite, a liar, and is evidentally little better than the leery manager of a Taco Bell, who might take advantage of his/her High School employees through suggestive comments, inappropriate touching and generally creepiness. This guy's a creep.

Several pundits have stated thus, and its absolutely true: This thing is about the conspiracy to protect this guy,plus its attendant hubris, and not really about the sex itself. Yet, I have the feeling that, if this is really the G.O.P's underdoing, we really haven't learned anything. That is not to say that I am unsympathetic to his victims, because I'm not, but in the grand scheme of things, given everything this Administration and its sycophants in both houses have pulled off in the last six years...I would be crestfallen to learn it was sex that did it.

C'mon! Habeas Corpus, the legal standard since the Magna Carta, no longer applies for some of us (and that us being up to the discretion of the President). Domestic Spying. The bullshit lies leading up to Iraq. Abramoff. The assault on reality. All of these things, a host of others, and the American People are finally saying "Enough" over some soft core gay porn chat? Again, I don't want to minimize what a sleazy bastard this guy Foley is, but please. This is the worst thing the G.O.P has done in the last six years? We are one lit match throw from the Reichstag, and this is what you focus on?

I would be crestfallen because, in some way, it would be a replay of the Clinton thing, proving that people want "sexy" scandals, even at the detriment of their national good. The Republicans and the NeoCons could make some nominal reform, throw Hastert to the wolves, "punish" some people, and voila-everything is good again. The scandal, the real one, might go away, and the twisted, right wing agenda that these folks, either through ideological simpatico or just craven partisanship that has brought us to the precipice, does not get discredited as corrupt and immoral, and is allowed to live on, becoming a false analogy to Clinton's thing, and because reality has been reduced to an ignorable inconvenience to ideology, that false analogy may live long enough to become "true".

I hope I am wrong about the people. I really do.

Focus this for the world to see: Look what they've done to our Republic. Expose and discredit these fake patriots, this harbingers of fascism. Now is the time to expose this corruption for its true source: The Hubris of the G.O.P. Let the world see that Americans can do the right thing.

Update: Trav over at WireCan has an interesting tidbit that, while ostensibly about "moral voters", demonstrates exactly what I am afraid of:

"Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction."

Follow the link, and you get this little number:

"'This is Foley’s lifestyle' , said Ron Gwaltney, a home builder, as he waited with his family outside a Christian rock concert last Thursday in Norfolk. 'He tried to keep it quiet from his family and his voters. He is responsible for what he did. He is paying a price for what he did. I am not sure how much farther it needs to go'.”

Cover-up, schmover-up. Institutional Malfeasance, Negligence, nay, Criminal Conspiracy,-no way, they say. Foley was slaughtered, and let that be the end of it. After all, we can't hold these Bush bootlickers accountable, can we?

Passes on the all of the above, naturally. These people aren't Christians; They're Republicans diguised as Christians.

Is there nothing these "Christians" won't forgive? Oh yeah...

"How about the 'adulterer-in-chief' himself? Clinton's sickening affair with Monica Lewinski violated the federal sexual harrassment legislation that Clinton himself signed into law. He was not only defended, but he was celebrated by the left!"