THE REPUBLICAN SAGA

The progression of the Republican presidential campaign is curious. Romney's poll numbers are fairly good and stay the same. He is a strong candidate, but the Republicans don't like him. They try each of the alternative candidates in turn. Michelle Bachman is up; then she is down. Rick Perry is up; then he is down. Herman Cain is up; then he is down. Now Newt Gingrich is up. Luckily for him, there is not much time left before the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire voting begin. That does not give the party much time to evaluate him. But how much time do they need? He has been in politics since the 1970's. He is the ultimate insider, who, like everyone else, pretends that he is an outsider. After all, no one likes insiders.

Gingrich (the Grinch who shut down the government when he was speaker of the House of Representatives) calls himself a transformational person. That is actually very true and accurate. Everyone seems to agree that he is actually the one who transformed the Congress of the United States from a body which worked together and trusted each other and cooperated with each other, even though they had different approaches to government. He changed all of this to pure hatred of the other party. Since the Republicans are no longer fighting Communism, they have begun fighting the Democratic Party. They view the Democrats as treasonous. The Republican goal has nothing to do with serving America or the American people. The Republican goal is to gain and keep control of power. George Bush's goal was to "starve the beast." That meant to bankrupt the country so that the Republicans would have a good excuse to cut out every type of service of which they ideologically disapproved. They call Medicare, social security, food stamps for the poor, and unemployment insurance, socialism. These programs are "evil" and must be eliminated. Besides, we can't afford them. The only thing we can afford is military spending. They want a powerful militaristic government that will control the whole world. And the Republicans will control the government. Poor people can simply starve if they are too "lazy" to get jobs. George Bush did the ground work for them with two unfunded wars that have cost us untold billions. And the Republicans claim that Barack Obama has spent all this money and created all this debt! They said nothing at all about the debt that was piling up while George Bush was in office. That was exactly what they wanted. Republicans complain that 40 million people do not pay taxes. That is because 40 million people are living in poverty and can barely afford to feed their children. The wages of the poor and of the middle class have actually fallen in the last 25 years while the wages of the millionaires and billionaires have risen astronomically. This has been due to tax changes that have benefitted the wealthy, the outsourcing of jobs, and the loss of labor power to negotiate. The wealthy have everything exactly the way they want it, and they actually have the financial power to control the government. This may be the end of democracy in America.

The question is, will the American people ever be able to see the program of the Republican Party and vote them all out of office. Unfortunately, the American people are very busy with twitter, face book, i-phones, and television. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. At this point in time technology is the opiate of the people. The people are so occupied with their technology that they do not see what is happing to their country. The book FARENHEIT 459 was an example of this type of problem. We are now living it out.