Knee Jerk Reactors

We’ve all been hearing lots about the Republican Party in terms of its future, its constituency and “Who speaks for it?”

If all I did was regurgitate one party line or another, I’m sure I’d be more popular with many of my readers. Yet, I’d like to add value to the wealth of knowledge on the subject. That means that I need to form independent viewpoints.

Some people make it happen. Some people watch it happen. Some people wonder what happened.

My goal is to diminish the population of the last category.

#As an independent voter with little or no emotional stake in adopting and defending a particular polar-opposite view, I believe I have an advantage in analyzing the political scene with less emotion and more reason.

I have marveled for years at the mentality of what many are referring to these days as the Republican base. I’m not sure what that base specifically consists of. But what I’m talking about is the gun rights, anti-abortion, often racist, generally-belligerent-when-it-comes-to-foreign-affairs, denial- of-scientific-facts-and-realities wing of the party. I could launch into a diatribe about these folks and generate a good deal of fury (about which I don’t have particular feelings one way or the other), but that is not my perspective. I will, however, pour a little gasoline on the fire and lump them together for portions of this article by calling them “knee-jerk” Republicans, also referred to on occasion as conservative Democrats.

The purpose of this article is to delve into the proposition that what they really are, unbeknown to the vast majority of them, are pawns and necessary distractions for those who actually rule and control the party, and through them at times, the country.

The knee-jerk Republicans are those that are easily stirred up, ready to sting, at what, generally speaking, is the slightest provocation. Sarah Palin is one of their cheerleaders, along with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich to name a few.

I recently went to a Pakistani Independence Day celebration (along with our U.S. Congressman, as an honored guest) and asked someone there, a Pakistan native, what he thought of the assassination of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. What he said to me was profound. “In our country, there are so many conspiracies and so much intertwining of interests and alliances that there is no way we can possibly sort them out. So, when we try to figure out who was behind her shooting, we have to ask ourselves, ‘Who benefitted?’”

The same logic applies here in the United States, but we are generally too dumb, uninformed, naïve, or distracted to ask ourselves this simple question.

On the eve of the second invasion of Iraq by the United States (March 20, 2003), the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations appeared on the Charlie Rose show in New York City. I had been sifting through the evidence from my armchair in California for many months, trying to figure out our true motive for the invasion (I was convinced, even then, that it had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction). The ambassador spelled it out in intricate detail.

Even though he was given short shrift by Charlie Rose, who, obviously, looked at him with disdain, he detailed both the motives of those in control of our government and what it was those parties in interest were about to gain. In every scenario, there are winners and losers. And, while we have lost much in the Iraq War, as a people, and gained little for ourselves as everyday Americans, there are those who became richer at our expense.

Oh, and I have bad news for the knee-jerks. The Iraqi oil hasn’t done you one bit of good. You still got higher gas prices—probably higher than they would have been without the war--plus you get to pay for the war. Oil may indeed have been stolen. But it wasn’t stolen for your benefit, directly or indirectly.

Ironically, one big winner was Iran. I believe that was an unintended consequence. Collateral benefits, so to speak, as part of what turned out to be a folly in many respects.

And, who were these U.S. sponsored benefactors? There were many, most obviously those who got no bid contracts for the war effort. But, I believe the intended beneficiaries were the U.S. oil companies. They did, after all, make record profits, unprecedented in the history of U.S. capitalism—in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

In his movie, Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore, has a video of President George W. Bush, acknowledging to the elite of this group that, “I call you my constituency.”

Yet, the hive mentality of the knee-jerk Republicans never gets to the point of reason. They’re too busy getting themselves worked into a lather. That could be an end unto itself for the participants. Those who use them as pawns don't care what the reasons are, for there is no reasoning. The idea is to get people worked up, distracted and take their eyes off the ball, so to speak, so the pigs can have a free run at the trough.

It’s much like a beehive. The warrior bees get worked up to the point wherein they’ll die for the hive without having any realistic idea who stirred the nest, why, or what the consequences of attacking will be. Mindless emotion; unfettered passion.

Let’s assume for a moment that the true enemy is within the nation. My working hypthesis is that it’s big business, such as banks, oil companies, auto manufacturers (before their fall), certain church/denominational leaders (such as Evangelical profiteers.)

Failure to keep the knee-jerks riled up can have dire consequences to those who their own power from the exploitation of the lemmings. Instead of being wound up and attacking, figuratively or literally, those labeled as socialists, secret Muslims, communists, or abortionists, their attention would ultimately and inevitably turn to matters which had a realistic chance of actually affecting their own personal, daily lives, such as global warming, joblessness, huge disparities in income, corporate greed and oppression, the world population explosion, ensuing famine and pollution.

In understanding the knee-jerks, it’s important to note that their causes need not be based in fact. Any rallying point will do, such as, “We’ll end up like France!”

Do you think any of them have ever been to France? Parle Francaise? Have a means of comparing the U.S. and French health care systems? Realize that, while we courageously invaded Normandy, when their country had been taken over by fascists, that much has changed since then and nowadays the French have a high speed rail system (Lyon to Paris) that leads the world in train technology, while we have struggled for thirty years or more to develop such a system, but haven’t even been able to break ground yet?

And, by the way, the French health care system has in the past been rated number one in the world by the World Health Organization. (We’re number thirty-seven by comparison.)

Do you think the knee-jerks are bright or astute enough to realize that if an issue, such as criminalizing abortion in the U.S., were ever conclusively won by them, it would be such a blow to the Republican Party’s hold over them that the Republican elite will never allow this to happen? Case in point: The Harriett Myers Supreme Court nomination. This is what is known in card playing as a “tell.” Do you think then President Bush had the wishes of the Evangelical constituency in mind when he nominated this constitutional lightweight, a crony on his White House staff with no constitutional law experience?

So, what is my point?

My point is that here’s a reliable group of people, whose votes one can have simply by pandering to the basest of instincts. Just keep them stirred up over something, anything (“Barack Obama pals around with terrorists!”) and they’ll reliably vote for those whom they presume have a similar agenda.

But, that’s where they’re wrong. Their agendae couldn’t be more at odds with the Republican establishment. In other words, the knee jerks are just being used—time after time, election cycle after election cycle.

So, is this article directed toward reasoning with these folks? No, these folks don’t lend themselves toward reason, except perhaps at the margins. Most things in life are in shades of gray, not the black and white absolutes these sorts of people require.

To the extent that they are open to reason, I would say, “Keep your eye on the ball. Try to focus on things that affect your own life, not your neighbors’, not someone you never met, what happens in a petri dish, or someone else’s bedroom. Try to focus on things like your own prosperity, a world at peace (that won’t push your sons and daughters toward an early grave), the air you breathe, or the well being of your own physical body.”

Having said that, I realize that most of them will never “get it.” As I’ve said, they’re not—by and large--inclined toward critical thought or reason.

So, what is the antidote to this lack of operating a meaningful attention span in decision making? Education. It’s no surprise that the “base,” is finding itself continuing to thrive and grow, only in the most illiterate regions of the country with the possible exception of the mountain West (a topic for another day).

It’s also “interesting,” to borrow a turn of phrase from Fixed-News that the Republicans are willing, only to talk about education, and the need for it. On a societal level, they’re not apt to actually do anything to promote it. This has been true from the self-proclaimed “Education President,” George H.W. Bush to the many-children-left-behind (underfunded) program of President, George W. Bush.

And, how does one deal with the knee-jerks? Ignore them. Marginalize them. Identify them for what they are. Remind everyone what the consequences were of choosing the villiage idiot to act as the person, nominally in charge of our country for eight years. Educate everyone, who has the capacity and inclination. Hope and pray for the best instincts of our citizenry to prevail. And, most of all, expose those who perpetuate this perversion of democracy.