i've been reading victor davis hanson's carnage and culture, a book about landmark military battles(salumis, tenochtitlan, midway, tet, etc)& how each of those battles somehow reflected or embodied an aspect of western culture that's allowed it to be so dominant for so long.
in his chapter on the great battle of midway, he writes:
" although slow to anger, western constitutional govenments usually perfered wars of annihilation---wiping the melians off the map of the aegean, sowing the ground of carthage with salt, turning ireland into a near wasteland...and were far more deadly adversaries than military dynasts & autocrats...western militaries continued to believe that the most economic way of waging war was to find the enemy, collect sufficient forces to overwhelm him and then advance directly and openly to ANNIHILATE him on the battlefield..."(emphasis mine).
when i read this i thought about what the republican party is doing at present. every night ann & i sit slack-jawed in front of the television watching another episode of the republican melt-down. over & over, they defy political common-sense & flail away at clearly manufactured straw-men or blindly genuflect to ghosts of glory days past(reagan & teddy roosevelt, for god's sake!)& proffer ideas that have either been proven deeply wrong-headed or simply no longer applicable. what in the hell are they doing, we keep asking.
when i read that hanson passage i dawned on me that THAT'S what they're doing. having won the culture wars w/reagan & dubya & having very nearly annihilated their liberal opponents, they can't give that impulse up. it's rendered them incapable of compromise.
sf chron today did a story on john mccain's daugher, meghan, as the future face of the republican party. she's pro-sex, pro-life, pro-gay marriage. i'm doubtful. but what i DO know is this: the republicans will endure another humiliating loss in 2010. unless obama makes some unbelievable & unforeseeable & catastrophic mistake(btw, god help us if that happens), they will be forced to re-evaluate their intransigence. self-preservation will make them re-think their position which by then will itself be on the brink of annihilation by their own hand & that is definitely NOT how they roll. i think by then they will NOT be a party of "you're either with me or against me" on all issues. they will have to accept pro-choice, pro-gay candidates. mainly, they're going to have to accept that, for the most part, the american public will no longer be swayed by emotional social issues(abortion, gun control, gay marriage). this is not to say those issues won't be on the table then. what i am saying is that the public will no longer elect candidates who ONLY stand for their side on those issues & have no clue about economic & global issues. if you aren't working & can't feed your family or we're at the mercy of foreign oil powers, worrying about bob being married to fred seems kind of irrelevant, or more precisely, a luxury.
what's amazing to me is that the republican party adopted this "all or nothing" militarialist position while being helmed by draft dodging, self-serving craven ass-wipes like dubya & cheney(not to mention the worthless sack of human flesh, rush limbaugh). hell, reagan didn't ever see ACTIVE duty.
if we're to see the two party system continue, the moderates of the republican party will have to take a stand against the 25% right wing base of the party. they cannot win w/just them in their corner. the party will have to return to the real roots of american sucess & learn again that compromise & tolerance is more american than annihilation despite our history & inclinations.
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