"Entitlement" Sex, Lies, and ObstructionTape

Fri. Jan. 27, 2012:

Don't get me wrong -- the following criticism is bipartisan.
Democrats over decades have inadvertently sapped our democratic republic by succumbing to the "American exceptionalism" that federal government can save every citizen [and even noncitizen] from herself/himself.  And not just at home, but also abroad.  [Google reviews on Thomas Edsall's new volume, The Age of Austerity.]
At home, everything from farm subsidies to organized labor's paid vacations & early retirement packages come to mind.  Abroad, we keep spending billions on nation-building, from the Balkans under Clinton to Afghanistan & Iraq under Bush & Obama.

But by almost any sane measure, Republicans seem even more reckless these days, and their mindless vindictiveness appears to blind them to their own nation-destructing.  At least 3 ways come to mind.

1.  "Entitlement" Sex:  The zeal with which John Boehner, Eric Kantor, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan obsess on cutting "entitlements" is almost like virtual Sex to them.  And even Democrats, when fighting these guys, fall into the same "entitlement" lingo.  Yet, as a Maine friend points out, how can "entitlements" be such a single-minded target, when much if not most of these "entitlements" have been earned, by a lifetime of working recipients' taxable incomes?  These are not federal government handouts, but benefits achieved from sweat off a million nameless Americans' brows.  YET:  Democrats themselves, and the "liberal" mainstream media, never challenge this word "entitlements."

2.  Lies:  Hitler notoriously advised his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels that if you are going to lie to your populace, make it a big lie, and repeat it over & over.  Enter Republicans since Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2009.  One tiny example of a gazillion:  a CNN Republican critic of Obama's State of the Union speech said Obama contradicted himself by praising the huge success of General Motors bailout, but later promised "no more bailouts."  However, not only had Republicans voted overwhelmingly for that GM and other bailouts back in 2008 & 2009; but also, this CNN critique ingenously elides over the fact that Obama always preferred "no bailouts"!  Yet, what else can you do in 2008/2009, when private sector Wall Streeters and Detroit automakers ran roughshod during Bush-era deregulation and ignored foreign-auto quality, and brought us to the brink of a 2nd Great Depression?
Remember an earlier State of the Union speech, when obscure backbench South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson interrupted "You lie"?  How ironic that -- other than South Carolina's tea party senator Jim Demint -- Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell leads the league in half-truths en route to their early-2009 announced goal of making Barack Hussein Obama a 1-term president.  Some patriotism, from the flag-wrapped Republican party!

3.  ObstructionTape:  One of McConnell's & Boehner's & Romney's favorite ubiquitous Republican charges is that Barack Hussein Obama has "failed to lead."  How does that square with our minds-eye surveillance Tape of Congress's obstructionism on every Obama initiative since Jan. 20, 2009?   Remember this, in the tea party spirit of Demint's spring 2009 comment -- "If we can defeat Obama on health care, we can break him right away"?

In closing, Thomas Edsall's brand new Age of Austerity, introduced on PBS last night, may help our children's generation rescue our beloved USA from its current dysfunctional "democratic republic."