I have no grand scheme to share, but I have some thoughts about the battlefield, and we Progs should make no mistake that that's what we're standing on. Leap across the squiggle if you dare.
I hate to speculate, but to understand the conservative male’s view of women, you have to understand that the shorties are, in fact, the weaker sex. Ergo, from the Conservative male's POV, women must accept the consequences flowing from that reality. And they have a valid (if blunt) point. It’s the way God set up the board: most of us (males) can kick the shit out of most of you (females) in a fight. Ergo, when the shit hits the fan and the riders of the apocalypse are upon us, and we’re plunged into a religious-zealotry-fueled battle against the postulated-into-pseudo-existence Kenyan-socialist-demon-spawn of the never-truly-defined horrible Great Poop of anti-freedom and anti-Americanism, we, yea verily we (i.e., the MEN) will rule the cave … or whatever squalor we transiently occupy as we flee the pestilence, etc. But anyway, it won’t be you running the show when all that goes down, little missy, and don’t you forget it. So if/when the socio-reality index is lowered to the lowest common denominator, you’re screwed, pardon my French, and not much else. Have I a put too fine a point on it? Call it a word to the wise.
Women, of course, know all too well that this is a crappy opening bargaining position for them, and as much as they’d like to think that the guys will eventually “get it,” it seems the Republicans have gone all Fred Flintstone on us. I dunno. Women have always amazed me, so I can’t figure out why they’re not running at least half of things already anyway. Other concerns, I guess; but I don’t think we should piss them off. I’m just saying. Presumably, they have their clandestine plans, drawn up in their secret ways, utterly opaque to us mere men. I mean, hello, guys, they outnumber us. (And that’s the root of the Liberal male’s view of women, I think. We know we’re outnumbered, and we like it that way.)
But it has not always been this way, with conservatives declaring war on pretty much everything except war and making money, as if everybody could be rich if they just tried, as if there weren’t winners and losers in cutthroat fee enterprise. They know better. That’s how they like it, and that's fine, but then doesn’t all the politispeak just make them little more than carnival barkers? “Step right up, step right up, we won’t fleece you, you could be rich!” What’s the winner:loser ratio these days?
Seems to me I remember a time when conservatives were like the brakes on a car and liberals were like the gas pedal. It was a required balance. I sure wouldn’t want to drive a car without brakes, while a car without propulsion is pretty much useless; I guess therein lies the rub. “Back in the day” it seems there was at least a common assumption between the parties that, you know, time happens. Being a progressive wasn’t sinful, just pragmatic. So it wasn’t really a question of whether to progress into the future, but rather how quickly to do so. Now going forward makes you a slut and a prostitute. Fuck you, Limbaugh.
Politically, that time-tested negotiated balance between the the Dems and Reps has been essential to American-style democracy, but we now see our long-time friend and adversary, the GOP, entirely swamped beneath the sway of the worst of its constituency. In my opinion this is the result of the high-handed and over-reaching influence of plutocrats, their messages trumpeted by FOX News and all the other devices the Kochs and their allies deploy to maintain the bubble of ignorance, hate, and fear around their dwindling number of sheeple. I think the only good news is that they’ve become so heavy-handed about it that it will leave future gens much more sensitive to the blunt hand of mass propaganda, as always disguised as something other than what it is.
See, I remember when Reagan beat Carter, and even when that went down, I thought, Jimmy Carter is probably the closest to a genuine Man of God we’ll ever have in the White House, but sometimes you need a loose cannon, and so I voted for Carter but didn’t weep to see Reagan elected. And I think overall Reagan did a decent job for that time overall; we won the Cold War, for example. But that “trickle-down” theory of his introduced a new dynamic that granted the GOP a de facto gravitas for what we used to call extortion.
And so the GOP I know is dead. I miss it. America misses it. It was wrong-headed, usually, but credible almost always. Now it is a sock puppet full of Koch with no one capable of lending a hand who might yet save Punch and Judy. I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see how this all shakes out. I’d be optimistic if the right at least acknowledged climate change, but sadly, they are utterly enthralled by the gleaming altar of self-deception. They are the party of willful ignorance, and happily so.
And here, free of charge, I give to you, in a nutshell, the dilemma for which I have no solution (i.e., from my Progressive position): The Conservative leadership should divest themselves of their fringe wingnut influence and move toward center, thus beginning the recalibration of political normalcy that they’ve too long abused, but they can’t do so because they’ve pursued a scorched earth policy for the last several decades---they have no ground to retake or any extant army interested in doing so. In a sense, this might be Clinton’s most impressive legacy. By taking the ground the Right fled in its burgeoning mania, Bill sealed their fate by leaving them no retreat without surrender.
I don’t weep at the dying of their star, especially since their pathetic swan song is sung by the likes of Gingrich, Santorum, Paul, and Romney, but I do wonder what flower might grow from the offal of their disintegration, and what will happen if there grows naught but weeds?