Sphincter Says What

"I'm not frightened by bipartisanship... We should be brave enough to stand up and say let's work together until we finish defeating the left and then we won't have to work with them as much."

-- Newt Gingrich, quoted by the Huffington Post.

Interesting definition of bi-partisanship. The real problem today is that conservatives have hunkered down to a degree where reality is just a pesky inconvenience that stands in the way of their agenda. They have radicalized to the point where facts and counterarguments do not move them, but simply strengthen their resolve. As Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right now, in the midst of economic, environmental and global crises, most conservatives believe that returning to the past is possible, that somehow things will fix themselves and that the best thing to do is nothing at all. They want to continue policies that got us here in the first case. They rewrite history to support their position, get stuck on the one exception to the rule and change subjects whenever their positions are challenged. And who comprises the latest addition to the lunatic fringe? The lovely Tea Party and their inspirational wackado leader Glenn Beck (www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?pagewanted=print). But while there might be a populist element to this movement, I think we are kidding ourselves if we don't recognize that 1. They have been driven by conservative media personalities to their current position, 2. They are often led by old guard members of the far right 3. Their anger is largely based on irrational conspiracy theories and latent racism and 4. They are a force to be reckoned with, but not as large as some have led us to believe (www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/17/tea.party.poll/index.html?iref=allsearch). When you get right down to it, the media loves to report on fringe groups, but particularly right wing varieties. When they look at fringe groups on the left (real fringe groups, not the group now labeled as Leftists because the middle has moved so far right), it is usually in a mocking tone.

The one point that most Americans can seem to agree on today is that "government is broken." A CNN poll shows that 86% of respondents support this assessment: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/21/poll.broken.govt/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo. So what should we do about it? The interesting thing is that some believe we should just scrap the government altogether, leaving benevolent multinational corporations to fill the void. On the other side, there may be too much faith that government can solve our problems. In the end, hope seems to be the real victim -- washed over by expectations as ephemeral as the distance between first and second in the luge.