i finally get it. i used to think that the present batch of shitbags in white house were simply and only nihilist powermongers who'd hijacked traditional conservative ideology, fusing its hallowed intellectual heft (or at least soundbites therefrom) to a naked play for the most uptight americans and the people who vote like them out of shame at being only human. i used to believe that, deep down, these people didn't give a shit about anything but getting to push the buttons and pull the levers to the advantage of themselves and the people who paid for the jets and commercials during the campaign and back in the old days.
but now i've realized that it's not true.
they do believe in the traditional conservative raft of ideas, in small government and personal freedom and even isolation from foreign entanglements.
the attack is two-pronged: on the one hand, they're gutting the cash-flow while upping the outlay, running up the nation's credit card debt so's to starve the beast, as it were; on the other hand, they're undermining faith in government by demonstrating just how irresponsible you can be with it: getting us into a military quagmire while the people we really have to be worried about get a free pass; infringing on personal liberties to no discernible good end (how many terrorists have they caught in the mainland us since passing the patriot act?); passing a new entitlement, on a par with medicare and social security, that makes no sense to anybody and funnels most of the funding into sectors of the economy that seem to be doing just fine without government subsidies.
they're demonstrating to us, by their own fearless example, just how bad somebody could fuck up the country and the world with the us government, as a cautionary example, so that we'll come to our senses and dissolve or at least castrate it and the big animals can resume feeding without compunction in god's ordained economic state of nature, wihout fear of reprisal or the need to cloak their motivations in highfalutin' bullshit.