-Caveat Lector-
A kinder, gentler lynch mob
Salon, 12/15/98
THE 'PEACHY-KEEN GOP HAS SHOWN ITS TRUE COLORS -- AND THEY CONFIRM THE MOST
BRAIN-DEAD RADICAL STEREOTYPES FROM THE '60S.
BY GARY KAMIYA
I grew up believing that Republicans were the incarnation of all evil. This
was a harsh and unsophisticated judgment, but the political discourse of 1960s
Berkeley, where I grew up, lacked a certain refinement. In fact, to be honest,
it was pretty much taken straight from Saturday morning cartoons. In our
righteous view, "the people," whoever they were, were always being "oppressed"
by The Man, a bloated GOP plutocrat mouthing pious moral maxims. It went
without saying that Republicans were self-righteous, mean-spirited rich white
men who secretly napalmed Cambodian villages, turned loose the dogs against
civil rights marchers and dug the Carpenters. They were Bad, and if we could
somehow get rid of them -- meanwhile taking lots of acid and listening to
Hendrix -- Good Things would happen.
Later, like many of my co-religionists, I became embarrassed by these
sentiments. Such crude beliefs were unseemly. Sophistication demanded a more
nuanced view. Republicans, I now realized, could be decent men and women who
were just parroting the country-club line. Even the Reagan Age -- that endless
period I as a Californian was forced to spend under the Great Communicator's
genially callous thumb, while the Woolly Mammoths died out and Ice Ages came
and went across the globe -- couldn't make me return to the wooden Stalinist
sloganeering of my youth. I even reevaluated the Carpenters.
And then came the Starr referral and Henry Hyde and the House Judiciary
Committee vote, and I realized I had gotten it right the first time.
When the Republicans in the full House vote to remove President Clinton from
office, as they will almost certainly do, they will prove that those brain-
dead radical stereotypes about them really do apply. They will be revealed as
mean-spirited, partisan hacks, hypocrites, moral absolutists hiding their
craven desire for vengeance and power beneath a ridiculously transparent
façade of pious "deliberation" and "respect for law." The GOP will stand
exposed before all of America as the party of vicious, petty ideologues who,
in their outrageous desire to undo the results of two lawful elections, seized
upon a grotesquely acquired legalistic evasion that falls so far short of
meeting the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors as to be
laughable.
Or, let's give them the benefit of the doubt, as the ever-generous New York
Times did in a recent editorial. Let's assume that some of them are actually
sincere in their belief that lying about sex -- in an obvious vendetta case
brought by a biased and obsessed "independent" counsel who, after utterly
failing to find any serious misdeeds, connived to lay a perjury trap --
constitutes an impeachable offense. But if they really believe that, then we
must conclude that either their grasp of the Constitution is so weak that
their fitness to sit in any elected office is highly questionable, or that
they are so rigid in their moral purity as to be Torquemadas in power ties,
quasi-theocratic inquisitors who would turn America into a frightening Bible
Belt version of 15th century Spain or 20th century Iran.
Why are the Republicans doing this? Why, defying the express wishes of the
American people, are they trampling on the Constitution, weakening the
presidency and inaugurating a hideous new political world of blood feuds and
true hatred? And why are they ignoring the warnings from the business
community -- to which they used to listen -- that impeachment is dangerous and
destabilizing?
The answer is simple: This is who they are. This action reflects the GOP's
true nature. This is a party so desperate to burn a president they dislike at
the stake that they'll incinerate the Constitution to get the fire started.
All that hoo-hah a few weeks ago about how Robert Livingston was going to
bring a new "moderation" to the party now that nutty professor Gingrich was
gone stands revealed as empty verbiage. The truth is that this is now a party
of zealots and ideologues, obsessed crusaders who have completely lost touch
with the common sense, fairness and decency of the American people. Like Pol
Pot's Khmer Rouge, who declared a purifying "Year Zero" when history's slate
was to be wiped clean (and all nonpeasants were to be killed), these high-
minded crusaders want to restore America's sense of moral purpose -- and if
they have to trash the country in order to do it, well, extremism in the
defense of virtue is no vice! To the tumbrels with the parasites, citizens,
while the Times and the Post knit their stern editorials! GOP "moderates"?
What moderates? The few "moderates" who are trotted forth on TV to be shown to
the mob, like condemned Chinese dissidents with signs hanging around their
necks, seem barely sentient.
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