I don't know if it's OK to copy this here or not but I hope so.
>
> Subject: Fwd: We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
>
>
> >
> > By Garrison Keillor
> > > August 26, 2004
> > >
> > > Something has gone seriously haywire with the
> > > Republican Party. Once, it was the party of
> > > pragmatic
> > > Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles
> > > who
> > > decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their
> > > communities and supported the sort of prosperity
> > > that
> > > raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who
> > > vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party,
> > > the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and
> > > Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner
> > > element.
> > > The genial Eisenhower was their man, a
> > > genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for
> > > reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the
> > > Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate
> > > Highway System, declined to rescue the French
> > > colonial
> > > army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and
> > > prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and
> > > letters flourished and higher education burgeoned
> > > and
> > > there was a degree of plain decency in the country.
> > > Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today's.
> > > Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel
> > > a
> > > Christian obligation toward the poor.
> > >
> > > In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the
> > > party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of
> > > Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service
> > > and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great
> > > Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of
> > > Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and
> > > fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such
> > > as
> > > the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who,
> > > while
> > > George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a
> > > pass and made training films in Long Beach. The
> > > Nixon
> > > moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged
> > > by
> > > a legion of angry white men who rose to power on
> > > pure
> > > punk politics. "Bipartisanship is another term of
> > > date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of
> > > the GOP. "I don't want to abolish government. I
> > > simply want to reduce it to the size where I can
> > > drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the
> > > bathtub." The boy has Oedipal problems and
> > > government
> > > is his daddy.
> > >
> > > The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified
> > > into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and
> > > corporate shills, faith-based economists,
> > > fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of
> > > convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat
> > > boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats,
> > > nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes,
> > > sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks,
> > > Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil
> > > Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New
> > > Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest
> > > of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch
> > > president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the
> > > free
> > > flow of information and of secular institutions,
> > > whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body
> > > parts trying to walk.
> > >
> > > Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world
> > > thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.
> > >
> > > Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in
> > > the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public
> > > trough!
> > > Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a
> > > massive
> > > scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and
> > > write
> > > legislation to alleviate the suffering of
> > > billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in
> > > the
> > > moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this
> > > hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated
> > > gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the
> > > sure
> > > sign of Divine Grace.
> > >
> > > Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for
> > > reelection
> > > on a platform of tragedy the single greatest failure
> > > of national defense in our history, the attacks
> > > of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this
> > > nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of
> > > which
> > > the White House fought to keep secret even as it
> > > ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks
> > > to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to
> > > lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render
> > > government impotent, even as we engage in a war
> > > against a small country that was undertaken for the
> > > president's personal satisfaction but sold to the
> > > American public on the basis of brazen
> > > misinformation,
> > > a war whose purpose is to distract us from an
> > > enormous
> > > transfer of wealth taking place in this country,
> > > flowing upward, and the deception is working
> > > beautifully.
> > >
> > > The concentration of wealth and power in the hands
> > > of the few is the death knell of democracy. No
> > > republic in the history of humanity has survived
> > > this.
> > >
> > > The election of 2004 will say something about what
> > > happens to ours. The omens are not good.
> > >
> > > Our beloved land has been fogged with fear --- fear,
> > > the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous
> > > silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered
> > > warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and
> > > silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear,
> > > you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the
> > > bark
> > > off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory
> > > agencies, bring public education to a standstill,
> > > stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the
> > > rich.
> > >
> > > There is a stink drifting through this election
> > > year. It isn't the Florida recount or the Supreme
> > > Court decision. No, it's 9/11 that we keep coming
> > > back
> > > to. It wasn't the end of innocence, or a
> > > turning point in our history, or a cosmic
> > > occurrence,
> > > it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism
> > > shouldn't prevent people from asking hard questions
> > > of
> > > the man who was purportedly in charge of national
> > > security at the time.
> > >
> > > Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along
> > > Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local,
> > > hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the
> > > morning paper under their arms, I think of that
> > > non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to
> > > exploit
> > > those people with a little economic uptick, maybe
> > > the
> > > capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and
> > > proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in
> > > his second term.
> > >
> > > This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray
> > > us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated
> > > Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards,
> > > people
> > > who talk to telephone poles, the party of the
> > > Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow
> > > over
> > > and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of
> > > the
> > > World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and
> > > they will lie about their economic policies with
> > > astonishing enthusiasm.
> > >
> > > The Union is what needs defending this year.
> > > Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the
> > > Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln
> > > spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii
> > > has
> > > humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for
> > > the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and
> > > claimed the right to know what books we read and to
> > > dump their sewage upstream from the town and
> > > clear-cut
> > > the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the
> > > institution on behalf of intolerance and promote the
> > > corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to
> > > hell
> > > with anybody who opposes them.
> > >
> > > This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by
> > > angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it
> > > to
> > > our grandchildren in better shape than however we
> > > found it. We have a long way to go and we're not
> > > getting any younger.
> > >
> > > Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is
> > > reserved for those who in time of crisis remain
> > > neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you,
> > > dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine,
> > > and there is more to life than winning.
>
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