••• Can we survive 2 years of the GOP till 2012? If so, how? ••• [View All]

[breadandwine]

President Obama is about to lose effective and possibly actual control of Capitol Hill. The economy has again stalled. The public is deranged and not listening to reason, which will make it very hard for them to vote Democratic. We are dealing with masses of Joe Six Pack who are ready to haul off and BELT someone for their frustrations and figure out if they acted wisely only thereafter. Gallup says the generic vote is now 10% more for the GOP than the Democrats. The combination of disappointment within our base and astroturfed rage by the right is an almost perfect storm for the GOP. $400 million in corporate cash are flooding into the election for the GOP thanks to the coup plotters on the Supreme Court.

Don't tell me I'm giving up. Far from it. I've been in Democratic politics all my life and I'm not a quitter.

But we are about to be hit by the biggest political Mac truck since Hitler took over in Germany. Beck calls everyone a Nazi --EXCEPT HIMSELF -- and the Tea Party is financed by the Koch brothers whose father founded the John Birch Society. With astroturfed town hall meetings that beat up our side, we are shell shocked and punchy and not ready for a fight and as usual our side doesn't even know what negative campaigning really is. There is no fire in the belly by the politicians on our side, no inspiring podium pounding.

We are going to suffer huge losses this Fall. We can debate exactly how bad it will be but that's not the point. There are going to be hearings. There is going to be another impeachment. There is going to be another shutdown of the government. It will not be enough for Obama to just veto the GOP Congress's avalanche of right wing legislation. They are not just going to propose, they are going to combine it all with a near assault on Democrats. They are going to beat Obama up so bad that he will be politically punchy from it all and reeling and not able to resist well. They will find all sorts of dirt in his closet, real or imagined. If you think YOU have found cases where Obama caved to corporations in a corrupt way, wait till the REPUBLICANS with their hearing process get hold of him. It will be shock, shock, shock, wall to wall, 24/7/365 how "bad" Obama is, how did we ever elect him, what were we thinking, we had no idea, etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah.

It's easy to say there will be silver linings in all this, the GOP will make fools of themselves etc. Wasn't that supposed to have happened ALREADY these past 2 years? They ran over us like road kill and never looked back in the rear view mirror and are continuing to floor the gas peddle for more destruction.

First, let's honestly try to imagine what a Republican Congress in the Fall is really going to look like.

Offer your predictions. Here are a couple of mine:

The GOP Congress will embark on a witch hunt against believers in global warming. They will investigate them. They will haul scientists before hearings and grill them like Joe McCarthy. "We have an email in which you told a colleague that carbon dioxide is a natural gas! Do you DENY it????!!!"

There will be demands that science renounce one thing after another that it knows to be true and this will be forced on universities, institutions receiving government aid and so on. It will be like Galileo at his sentencing being ordered to declare that the planets go around the earth.

I don't know who is going to get burned at the stake but many in this country will be, politically. If you think there is a witch hunt going on surrounding Ground Zero, wait until after the election. With subpoena power they will manage to declare that the Moon is made out of Worcestershire sauce. Nuts with guns will go out and shoot anybody who dares say otherwise.

I am not convinced that all this will somehow "boomerang" in our favor by 2012. Net freedom will be destroyed and the media will be even more corporate. MSNBC will be forced into bankruptcy and sold to right wingers or Saudi Arabia. Say goodbye to Keith Olbermann and everyone else. They will be economically and politically lynched. The new Congress will GO AFTER ITS ENEMIES and rest assured there will be an enemies list.



Secondly, aside from suggesting the full scope of the problem we face, and I ask you to conceive below just how bad a GOP Congress will be this time, making Newt Gingrich look like Tinkerbell, but also, if you can offer solutions below for how we respond, how we make it through the next 2 years till 2012. Don't give us the usual, well, it will boomerang, mantra. The control they get on Capitol Hill will be USED to cement their power including media power. Many of the scandals that would result from GOP takeover will be barely reported because the GOP will use its new power on Capitol Hill for cover up and to shut up critics and anyone who reports the truth. We are headed towards a fascist hegemony on Capitol Hill compared to which the French Revolution will be only an innocent child. Certainly that sounds like an exaggeration but factor in the fact that what the GOP does in the next 2 years to a world already reeling from global warming will have vast WORLDWIDE repercussions that will KILL millions of animals, plants and even people. Imagine another oil leak in the sea killing the plant life that supplies most of the oxygen we breathe. There is really no fixed limit to the destruction we face because the EARTH IS ALREADY IN THE BALANCE.

There will be massive famine around the world from global warming-caused crop failures and there will be food riots. You can be sure the GOP powers that be will insure that everyone thinks the rioters are to blame for not growing more food.

It will be things like that.

We are witnessing a period where right wing and corporate forces will collude to engulf the country in insanity far worse than what we are seeing now. Naomi Wolf's predictions of fascism in the US, in part through a combination of corporate and other forces, will be much closer to reality and people will be afraid to speak out.

You can't solve a problem if you bury your head in the sand and pretend "We're fine!" We're not.

What do we do in the next two years?