by
It must be a nightmare, clinging to beliefs that are regularly refuted by empirical facts, embracing myths of a country which only exists in the febrile Right Wing imagination, cringing in fear of contrived boogie men and having the world look upon you with a mixture of amusement and pity.
Because that is the reality of being a Republican today.
In order to maintain a semblance of relevance, a Republican must ignore the haunting truth behind their desperately embraced identity: fear of becoming obsolete in an increasingly progressive world. Clinging to those dependable dinosaurs Guns and Religion (as well as dinosaurs themselves---the ones that walked the earth 6000 years ago) the modern Republican party is a veritable curiosity shop of bygone beliefs, the kitsch without the cute.
What a waste of passion and faith, their surges of populist zeal ending up being about as effective in the end as an outbreak of acne.
And for the rest of the sentient world such a phenomenon is viewed with sadness, like seeing a once able athlete turned into a drooling yet lethal lummox, the glory days far, far behind.
The scourge which has brought the Republican party to its knees (and not a few bought-and-sold Democrats) is greed, of course. It is as virulent as anything Michael Crichton could have cooked up, its variations are manifold and gain entry under any number of guises: as fear, as gaudy celebrity, as hoary American archetypes.
Decades of impersonalization masquerading as technology have robbed Americans of their once inherent understanding of liberty's tenuous grasp in a turbulent world. They have been assured by corporate wolves that there is no need to be vigilant over the flock; their security is in good hands (cue the evil laughter).
And so the spectacle continues news cycle after news cycle, packaged reality after manufactured crisis, a theme park of Democracy, America the ride. It is non-stop thrills guaranteed to distract from the real action taking place in board rooms and think tanks.
The hell of it is, the Republicans (or broken down into sub categories of the Scared, the Marginalized, the Willingly Ignorant and the Patriotic) could have truly mattered if only their leaders had not succumbed to their baser impulses, the ones which used to be more closely associated with cavemen but which now, today, fully define the party of Lincoln.