Bad Deeds for 9-1-2010

 

No Longer the Republican Party of Mount Rushmore — Now the Party of Easter Island – Mount Rushmore. If you’ve only seen pictures, you really can’t fully appreciate the extraordinary achievement the monument represents — carved over 14 years into the side of a mountain. Nor can you really experience the power of its testament to American values.

There are two Republicans on Mount Rushmore. Abraham Lincoln symbolizes America’s commitment to equal opportunity and liberty for all. And there is Theodore Roosevelt — the Republican President who more than any other embodied our commitment to conserve and protect our natural environment and prevent its destruction for short-term commercial profit.

Roosevelt not only championed setting aside National Parks and other protected areas similar to the one we were about to visit. He also took on – and broke up – the “Trusts” — the giant corporate semi-monopolies that dominated America’s economy as it entered the 20th Century.

It is really pretty remarkable to ponder how far the modern Republican Party has strayed from the vision of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator — and Teddy Roosevelt, the Conservationist and Trust Buster.

For decades now, the Party of Lincoln has transformed itself into the Party of Strom Thurmond and Jim DeMint. But the Republican abandonment of the values of Theodore Roosevelt is just as remarkable. The gulf between the vision of Teddy Roosevelt and the Party of “drill baby drill” is as vast as the Grand Canyon.

Now, let’s compare to Easter Island. At its peak, there were apparently about 15,000 people living on an island about nine miles in diameter. When they arrived, the archeological evidence indicates that the colonists found an island loaded with tall trees. The Easter Islanders began gradually clearing the forests — both for agriculture and to harvest wood — shortly after they arrived. According to the archeological record, deforestation reached its peak around 1400 and was virtually complete between the 1400s and 1600. The consequences of deforestation and these other human impacts were starvation, population crash, and a descent to cannibalism — the last major remaining source of animal protein besides chickens. The crisis caused the masses to lose faith in the chiefs and priests, and around 1680 they were overthrown by military leaders. Easter Island’s formerly complex, integrated society collapsed into an epidemic of civil war.

The Easter Islanders destroyed their environment and society with stone tools and their own muscle power. One of the great challenges of the 21st century is to assure that billions of people with metal tools, machines, nuclear energy and exploding technology do not destroy ours. The key to the Easter Island story is not just what can happen to a society, but the human decisions that created the disaster.
The Republican President Theodore Roosevelt instinctively understood this. The modern Republican Party — despite the benefit of an additional century of scientific research — does not.

One question before us in this fall’s election is whether the monument that embodies American values will be the bold carvings on the side of a verdant Mount Rushmore or the statues on a barren, windswept Easter Island. (The above was condensed from a much longer, but worth-reading article.)

 

Is the Republican Party Looking Out for You? – I understand that Americans are angry. But if they take that anger out by voting for Republicans in November, they will only be making a bad situation worse. In addition to playing into the Republican strategy of obstruction and dishonesty, they would be making it harder for the country to address the real and massive problems facing the country.

The Republican Party is looking out for a select group of constituents, but unless you are an extreme right-wing ideologue or in the top one percent of American earners, Republicans probably aren’t trying to help you.

 

Will We Reward Bad Behavior?
I’m all for political debate. I think for democracy to work, there has to be a free exchange of ideas, with the best solution to a problem winning the day. But in the current American political environment, we are missing two key elements necessary for our democracy to work. First, thanks to the dissolution of the mass media and the rise of a right-wing propaganda machine (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc.), there is no longer an accepted common set of facts on which to base a debate. Instead, the right wing has decided to use lies and fear-mongering (everything from inventing death panels to questioning the ideological and religious beliefs of the president, including where he was born, to stoking fear of Islam) as a strategic method to win elections.

We used to ponder the learned advise of scientists, statesmen, and great thinkers. Now we watch a rodeo clown.

Will we reward lying, race baiting, fear mongering and hypocrisy by sitting down and letting those that perform these bad deeds run amok and influence voters into voting against their own self interests as well as the well-being of the nation as a whole?

There are plenty of reasonable people who will listen to a reasonable message, but we must all help get the message to them. Time is of the essence. Early voting begins in a few weeks.

Regards,

Jim