Wednesday, June 25, 2003

One of the things that amazes me about the new breed of right-wing extremists is their inability to even come up with their own descriptions of the opposite political point of view. If mindless aping was an Olympic sport, the right side of the GOP would have to hold a dumb and dumberer lottery due to its inability to separate the participants. I give you Mr. De Marino's letter of this week past.

Mr. De Marino simply couldn't complete his task without conjuring the Fox News moniker: "Fair and balanced." I always assume that someone who has to tell me they're fair, is not. Of course no description of the Democrats would be complete without the words "militant (three times), extremists (twice), socialist (in some form, five times), and radical (twice)."

I searched Mr. De Marino's letter for myself, but couldn't really find me. I don't think of myself as an old-time unionist, but I am a union member. I've never met a member of Queer Nation, and can't believe they comprise a substantial minority of Democrats. I don't get any entitlements, but do pay an awful lot of tax. And I'm not a socialist.

Furthermore, I can't imagine trying to encourage the breaking of bonds between myself and my children, nor could I imagine how it would be in Hollywood's economic interest to do so.

If Walter Cronkite is a pacifist, I can swear after firing a quarter million rounds of 30mm ammunition that I am not. I'm also not into social dreaming, so, again I state I am not one of Mr. De Marino's Democrats. And I am not a political singularity, except perhaps in these environs.

What I do find in Mr. De Marino's letter are most of the telltale spore of the new Republican. These are the people who started leaving the former party of Lincoln when the Democrats started courting people of color. Democrats are no longer hard-working Irish, Italian, Polish, and Jewish immigrants, but by implication, lazy entitlement-seeking blacks and their socialist supporters.

They are radicals who want to break up the traditional family. They want the UN to rule from its lofty, unaccountable perch. They're liberals and un-American, and antiwar, and French and German environmental extremists.

What we need, by implication, are the old-style Strom Thurmond Democrats who call a spade a spade.

What is so sad about De Marino's drivel is the fact that so many people who call themselves Republican believe as Mr. De Marino believes. Thus the success of Fox News, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, and a host of other brave draft dodgers who are willing to tell people what they want to hear.

The fact is, I don't have to exaggerate the damage being done to the common man by the present administration. President Bush and his co-prisoners of big business are doing everything in their power to dismantle the protections built up over the last century for the common citizen against the holders of real power.

Environmental protections, fiscal protections, anywhere the government has intervened to level the power of money over all of us, are now under attack by a rapacious group who cloak their real intentions behind verbal attacks and right-wing dogma. These protections began, I might add, with a great Republican: Theodore Roosevelt.

The electorate has become fat (literally), and intellectually slothful, so no one, Democrats included, seem to want to stand up to this clown of clowns.

The Democratic party is a big umbrella that undoubtedly includes many individuals who hold some of the views Mr. De Marino writes about (except for the weird theory on splitting the family; I didn't get that).

The Republican party undoubtedly includes real fascists, racists, misogynists, morons, simpletons, and bastards. I happen to know some who are not.

They're just people who desperately wish to limit the fiscal power of the government, and don't trust the other side to do so.

I believe these people are seeing what they want to see with the present administration, but I personally wouldn't dare try to catalogue them except to say I don't agree.

And for those Republicans out there who can still understand honest disagreement, I would hope you can disagree without the constant negativity expressed by the spokesmen of your party. I'm not going to hold my breath on De Marino.

Timothy J. Parker

Peachtree City