Through the gossamer haze of time, I can cast back my mind on an invisible but tenacious thread of recollection and remember a time when high and mighty righteous Republicans lined up lockstep to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying under oath. And make no mistake - no matter what the fuck your definition of "is" is, that philandering louse lied. Much bally was hooed about Clinton's fibbing and fucking around, and Kenneth Starr spent a serious chunk of time and money to launch a failed impeachment. Now, as I reel in my mind from the timestream, I am confronted by the current behavior of the GOP - the party of conservative "family values", of truth and honor and God-fearing supposed virtue - and I shake my shaggy head slowly with a knowing smile on my lips as I observe the hypocrisy which chips away at what was once a strong majority with an iron grip on power.
It begins, of course, in the wake of 9-11, when our erstwhile President squanders the goodwill of the rest of the planet in an effort to demonize appropriate parties and facilitate a plan-free two-front Holy War, polarizing everything into two categories: Himself plus his allies on the one side - the "Right" side, and on the other side - evil. With it's own Axis. Axis & Allies. Like a peek into the President's game cabinet. "If you're not with us, you're against us," is something he said, and he also said, "Bring it on," which is great if you're a vigilante cowboy with a hard gaze and a harder life in a dusty street with a sixgun shootin' iron name of Sue Ellen on your hip and the sun at your back, but not so terribly moral if you're fighting a war against an abstract noun by dumping other people's children into a damned meatgrinder. Somewhere in here, the Monkeyface Administration, led by Hell's Prince of Secrets, Dick Cheney, decided to stop telling anyone anything ever, whether it was to do with arrests, activities, movements, or just shit they didn't feel like talking about. They started lying. A lot. Making an end-run around the truth to maintain operational security is one thing, but lying straight out to the American people and waving the feces-stained flag of "executive privilege" in front of things that have nothing to do with anyone's life except yours is a horse dropping of a different color. I was shocked that Evangelical Christians of the sort that currently populate the White House would lie like this, until I went over the 10 Commandments and realized that a prohibition against lying really isn't in there. So that's probably okay, then.
As the slide into complex immorality slowly got slicker and steeper, Dick shot his hunting buddy in the face, which is not ethical or moral behavior. Neither is sitting on the news for a weekend before deciding that people need to know. That you shot your buddy in the face. Just can't say it enough times. Once you get elected to the highest offices in the land, you are no longer your own man. Your ass doesn't even belong to you anymore. We hear when you get a colonoscopy, so probably a near-manslaughter rates a mention. A prompt mention.
As people have bailed on (and been bailed from) the White House - Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales, and now Snow (though I think I'm forgetting somebody) we are often point blank lied to about when they might be leaving, because the President doesn't want to "affect other events." With the truth? That would be truly novel for this administration - allowing the facts to affect the events or decisions that happen. Imagine, if some facts had been injected into the Iraq War run-up. Wonder of wonders.
Then it was Cheney Aide Scooter Libby's sex stories, with bears raping women instead of answering questions and riding on bicycles. And Congressman Mark Foley harassing underage male pages with gross massage emails, during his time off from chairing the Exploited Children's Caucus. Republican Presidential hopeful Fred "The Russians Don't Take a Dump Without a Plan" Thompson is basically responsible for the 18 1/2 minute gap, and lobbies for pro-choice groups, which seems a hypocrisy at bare minimum. And now there's Senator Craig from Idaho, who's definitely not gay, despite asking an undercover officer for sex in a men's room. He's also not a liar, even though he seems to have lied about it and tried to make it go away.
It seems as though God's party just isn't the moral bastion we were led to believe it was. Why can't we have good staunch moral people in the GOP anymore? Men like Richard Nixon, Bill O'Reilly, Clarence Thomas, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Herbert Hoover, Rush Limbaugh & William Casey? Truly, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. For what, I don't know, but we'd find a use.
