The Republican Party of the past, when they had a misplaced sense of self respect, would disparage African-Americans for the sense of victimhood that had been carried over from centuries of servitude against their will, followed by civil abuse that was barely distinguishable from their previous condition. The right would say, “Don’t pay any attention to them, they’ve never had it so good. They just have a need to feel like they’re victims.”
Of course, however they fared as individuals, as a class, they were victims. The Republicans applied same slander to the poor, the unemployed, or anyone who was lacking justice in the United States.
Nowadays, the Republicans in Congress and in the Governors’ mansions around the country have decided that there is an advantage to be derived from what they had formerly accused so many of; that being to present themselves as victims of circumstances, of critics, of a “liberal” press and of socialistic Democrats; as being victims of anything but their own failures.
House Minority Leader John Boenher, (R-OH) took to hurling the Obama administration’s budget bill to the floor in disgust for not having been afforded the opportunity to read it before a vote, although, it’s a safe bet that he hasn’t read most of the legislation for which he, himself, claimed authorship.
Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) asked to be named Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration in order to gain Republican hegemony over the 2010 U.S. Census. When the position was offered without the authority over the census, Gregg’s indignant withdrawal and the wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from the right was sufficient to push the Moon an additional three hundred miles away from the Earth. Then he convinced himself that attempts to pass a bill with budget reconciliation measures designed to avoid an obstructionist filibuster comprised a sort of Chicago Mafia hit on an underdog Republican Party that, weepingly, has no control over the events swirling around them.
Republican Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska engaged in a sort of telephone booth knife fight with a late night TV host due to his offhand jokes regarding the Governor and her daughter as she was struggling to stay in the public eye, lest our collective attention span be measured in fewer seconds than the number of books on her personal library shelf. It was a case where she gauged her victimhood in terms of news cycles.
A trio of Republican congressmen, comprised of California’s David Dreier, Michigan’s Pete Hoekstra and John Culberson of Texas claimed equivalence with oppressed Iranian protestors for democracy, because they Twittered their carping about abuse at the hands of Democrats. This in spite of the President exerting acrobatic efforts at bipartisanship. I wonder who was sniping at them from windows along the street. It sure as hell wasn’t the corporate press.
You know, it’s getting to the point where their suffering has them so distraught that they can barely count their corporate campaign pelf. It’s horrible, they’re suffering at the top of their voice. Why, it’s so bad that, apparently, from all the evidence, they can’t think straight. The mistreatment shames them to the point that they feel compelled to hide their faces in their mansions.
Oh, the humanity!
What is it that we of the oppressor class can contribute to alleviate this terrible suffering? We can do nothing immediately. It will be November of 2010 before another election affords us an opportunity to be merciful and remove these poor, put upon victims from their arena of pain, even though you can’t have Palin without Pain.
It is left to the merciful among us to remove to a safe distance from public life, these incumbents who are bent under the weight of such ignoble oppression. Please, please help in casting your vote to assist in this effort.
It is up to us to ensure that they never again are put in such a position.
