George Bush doesn't care about America. He doesn't care about its economy, its national security or even its people. From illegal domestic spying and botched military adventures to debt-financed budget deficits and confrontational, "John Wayne" diplomacy, Bush is clearly running this country into the ground.
Don't take this as an anti-Republican rant. The GOP of Eisenhower and Lincoln cared about this country, but the GOP of Bush, Bill Frist, Ken Blackwell and Donald Rumsfeld couldn't care less about this country or any other country. Today's Republican Party represents a dark, anti-social - as in the personality disorder - underbelly of American society that combines political activism and ideology with outright criminality and dishonesty for the sole purpose of lining the pockets of the upper one percent. If you don't believe me, look at Enron and the no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq.
With an agenda based on blatant corporate cronyism, today's GOP normally could never hope to even elect a dog catcher. Thus, it tricked people in 2004 into voting for it by plucking voters' latent homophobic strings.
I have to hand it to the Republicans. The anti-gay-marriage amendments were pure genius on their part - divide and conquer with extra-added features and a $100 rebate.
First, they got us all debating on something irrelevant to most people's lives. The GOP did this by spinning horrific predictions of all the horrible things that would happen if same-sex couples were allowed to marry, even though they were not supported by facts and the major social science, health, mental health and child welfare organizations all disagreed with them.
In effect, they brought out the underlying authoritarian leanings of the amendments' supporters, who saw a need to regulate the lives of people they deemed "immoral."
This put gays on the defensive, causing them to devote their energies toward defeating the amendments rather than building coalitions with other minority groups, which was the key to the gay rights movement's success in the '60s and '70s.
By playing to society's deep-seated homophobia, the GOP successfully got traditionally Democratic lower-class and working-class whites, African-Americans, Latinos and traditionally non-voting conservative Christians to vote against their own economic interests, all in the name of "protecting" something that was never threatened to begin with.
It didn't matter that Bush's "John Wayne" diplomacy really did make - and still makes, as I know from living abroad - the world hate this country because marriage was under attack. It didn't matter that Bush put us in hock to a handful of foreign central banks that, with the stroke of a pen, could bring our entire credit-fueled economy crashing down because gay marriage spelled the end of civilization as we know it. Climate change - which, as we all know, doesn't exist because Bush says so - didn't matter because God was going to rain hellfire and damnation on us because of boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls.
The diversion worked remarkably well. Republicans rushed to "rescue" marriage, Democrats struggled to keep votes, and gays found themselves caught in the middle. But under everyone's noses, Bush and his corporate friends got away with ensuring that this country would not have a future so that their bank accounts could grow a little bigger.
With the approaching elections, Republicans have introduced more anti-gay amendments in Congress and state legislatures so voters will ignore their agenda to make America a corporate fiefdom.
The past doesn't scare me. What scares me is that it's happening all over again.
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