The GOP’s Stone Age Obsession with Power and Control

There’s a truism about human behavior that bears examination. Any good salesman knows, understands and uses this truism to the point of it becoming a tool. The simplest way to say it is, excitation causes interlock. For example, if you were to recall a certain Orange Individual Of A Certain Notoriety, there was a point in time when he talked about a caravan of illegal immigrants swarming across Mexico. This caravan was destined to arrive at the southern border bringing plague, pestilence, and death with them as they swept up from the South. For those of you who remember the Vietnam unpleasantness, the same thought process was used then to scare us all into accepting a war that no one wanted. Well, the people who make weapons of war wanted it and they spent lots of money on Congressmen to make sure they got it. The politically correct wording is they employed lobbies to petition Congressmen to consider the war mongers talking points. The only difference between what people like Nixon said then and what the Orange guy said, is the hoard was called Communists and the Orange guy said they were Mexicans.

You see, what both of those politicians did was they used fear as an excitation device and got the populace to interlock. The Orange Fanta got folks interlocked with immigration as an issue when it isn’t an issue. Nixon got people interlocked with the non-existent threat of a communist invasion which was best held off in southeast Asia. Do you think either The Orange Fanta or Nixon was concerned in the least about the possibility of an evasion materializing? Of course not. That would be as likely as Moscow Mitch giving a hoot about an unborn fetus. He doesn’t care about the fetus, he cares about how many votes he can secure by interlocking voters with that sensitive issue.

Why do you think that Q, if there is actually such an entity, gets people to buy into obvious fantasy? The issues Q addresses are all about exciting issues. It doesn’t make any difference about what flavor of excitation, it only matters that it excites the believers. Cryptic messages are exciting. You don’t understand them so you have to figure them out. That flavor of excitement is also found in jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts. Think then about the excitation of knowing something from a government insider that you can be the first to announce down at the barber shop or the beauty saloon? At the bar??? Heavens! That is a high to beat all highs. Why, you might ask? Well, it appears that should you bring that kind of crazy into a bar, you are about to become the center of attention.

From the perspective of simply being a politician or a journalist or an entertainer of any variety, excitation is your bread and butter. It’s what your livelihood depends on. There are problems with such an approach, however. You could become the little boy who cried wolf ever so easily. The tendency is to cry wolf over issues that are not actual issues. Fox is wonderfully clever at this one. If there is an excess of rain in Mississippi, Fox will blame Biden. If there is an invasion of Ukraine, Fox blames Biden. If there is a withdrawal from a twenty-year conflict, Fox blames Biden. Fox even blames Biden for stuff that happened before he was president. But you’ll also notice that Fox does not blame Biden for jobs coming on line. It is not that Fox is dishonest or any more dishonest than any other news outlet. It’s that Fox is so outrageous about it.

There are a couple of land mines in this approach to sensationalism. One is that blame is a fool’s errand. The old adage is “fix the problem not the blame.” Fixing the blame will prevent the problem from ever being addressed. The other mine that jumps up and bites us with blame is that we program ourselves to be outside of consensus reality. Check out Marge or Loren. They say these outrageous things because they think they’re becoming Orange Women and all that happens is that they become ever more stringent simply because they are slowly losing contact with reality. Same as the Orange Man-In-Chief.

Now, with an issue like abortion you have all manner of excitations. You have women’s rights, you have children’s rights and you have family rights. Well, those are the current names for the hoard marching across Mexico. These Republican governors and Congressmen and Senators do not care a whit about unborn children. They care about having an issue that will excite people and cause them to interlock with those very politicians to the point of voting for them. It seems that no one really wants to get down to the actual issues concerning abortion. The only person in the entire universe who knows what the right action is when it comes to aborting a pregnancy is the woman who is pregnant. That is the one person who will be affected by that pregnancy for the rest of her life.

Busybody politicians do not have the right, much less the obligation, to decide for anyone what proper action is. Besides, we’ve already had this argument. And those busybodies lost. They’ll lose this time too, but I’m sure they’ll come back around to try again. Before Roe, teenage pregnancy was nearly a death knell. A young woman’s life would be ruined by one, less than circumspect, prom date. Even when the girl’s parents understood and took the baby and raised it, the girl’s life was forever tainted by that one time. The boy’s life was rarely affected in any way. Sometimes things worked out, but mostly they didn’t.

So, let’s look at the arguments against abortion. The girl should keep her legs together. But not that the boy should have to bear financially the cost of not keeping his pants up. How about that the girl is a slut? What does that make the boy? A deer in rut? There are more, but the other excuses are just as goofy. Consider that Nixon knew that the communist takeover of Vietnam was no threat to the United States, just as the Orange Man knew the people walking from Central America were no clear and present danger. A woman getting an abortion is not a clear and present danger either. However politicians dictating to that woman what her choice will be is most definitely a clear and present danger. The three most exciting issues the GOP is focused on is abortion, immigration and the right to bear arms — which are all false issues. The actual issue is political power for the individuals in government. Power is also an exciting issue. And perceived power can even be a kind of dopamine high that can not be duplicated with any synthetic chemistry. Consider that the Orange Man lost touch with consensus reality over a dopamine induced high that nearly cost us a democracy. Ronnie Di is looking for that same high. Moscow Mitch is riding it as we speak. So are Chuck and Nancy. There is a fine line between pride in accomplishment and pride in oneself. We all hope that politicians can accomplish and realize that their accomplishments are brought about through Agreement with a large cross section of the populace. Not through a Theocracy. Believe it or not.