There's more than meets the eye in the "America First" slogan of John McCain. McCain has tried to use this patriotic sounding slogan to paint himself as more interested in the welfare of the American people than he is in his own political ambitions. But those of us who know better see that the opposite is true and that John McCain puts himself and his party first.
John McCain is a fitting symbol and presidential candidate for the tired, crooked, burned-out, old Republican party that desperately seeks in this year of 2008 to shrug off its reputation for scandals, the likes of which haven't been seen since the days of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
McCain is a well-worn political hack and ward heeler wearing the sheep's clothing of 'maverick' behind which he has hidden for years, even while he has actually been an integral part of the ruling Republican Establishment. His votes in Congress and his entanglement with all manner of corrupt influence peddlers has made it necessary for him to use his 'war hero' and 'maverick' deceptions to counter the Democrats' offer of real solutions for national problems.
When one looks behind the slogan "America First" it is more than the usual patriot baiting of 'liberals'. The first time I saw McCain's campaign use the slogan "America First," and heard chants of "USA, USA, USA" at the Republican convention, I immediately resented it for the fact that it was another attempt of the arrogant Republicans to arrogate to themselves the mantle of exclusivist patriotism. Their partisan assumption that only they own the qualities of "morality" and "patriotism" is full of faux-self-adulation, mixed with the insolent, judgmental insinuation that the Democrats do not put America first, and are"America-haters." Anyone with an ounce of intelligence can see through the GOP's fraudulent con job on the American public: anyone except roughly fifty percent of the American public..
. The Republican Party is is a lot like an old, worn-out Harlot. The old Harlot is run by authoritarian oligarchs who are unable and unwilling to offer any real change from their policies set by rich-old-white-men who are poised yet again to succeed in supplanting the desire for real reform among the electorate with another election season of GOP gimmicks. And they'll do it by playing to the public's stupidity, ingrained in the popular culture over years of corporate-gimmickry on television, and that cultivated infantilism has them trained the American people, at least a good part of the American people to think in shallow minded terms and prefer image over substance. The public is used to commercials that lie to them and promise overpriced products that don't usually fulfill the promises made on those television commercials. Yet people buy the products anyway and willingly let themselves be ripped off.
Since there are no issues on which GOP candidates can safely run this year, since their Party is the Party of George W. Bush, the McCain campaign is ready to try and win election with admittedly updated and upgraded, but tried-and-successful Rovian dirty-tricks ...dirty tricks using aggressive deception, blame shifting, slanderous-lies and reframing of the public debate with the help of repetition from the mainstream media, to refit that debate to the Republican agenda.
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