The Republicans are Marketing Treason

Why not just call a spade a spade?

Treason is in the air. The Republican Party has declared war on America. While proclaiming the founding documents and holding up the Founding Fathers as heroes, the Republican Party has shown that it either doesn’t know what the Constitution really says, and if it does it doesn’t care, and that what the Founding Fathers really said is irrelevant compared to what Republicans say they said. Republican loyalty is neither to the actual, physical Constitution, nor to the very secular ideals of the European Enlightenment that gave birth to it and to this nation. Their loyalty is to a country that does not exist, has not existed, and was never meant to exist.
All they have to do to avoid charges of treason is convince you a lie is the truth. It’s an easy matter really: just rewrite the history books and keep repeating the lie. They have publishing houses, they have television networks, they have think tanks and they have political action committees up the wazoo and up the yin yang too. It’s a Republican mantra: when you lie, lie big. And blameshift: always, always, blame the other guy for what you’re doing.
So liberals who uphold liberty, that liberty which was the foundation of our country, are the true traitors, trying to destroy the country by…spreading liberty?
You’d think it would be a hard sell but they’re doing a surprisingly good job of it. P.T. Barnum supposedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute” and that’s never been more true than of conservative households. Of course, P.T. Barnum is a perfect example of what’s wrong: he never really said that. People said he said that; now they believe he did. See how easy it is to re-write history?

Red State Suckers Unite!

Perhaps that’s what we should call red states, or any state south of the Mason-Dixon Line or west of the Mississippi: Suckerdom. Yes, there are actually people who believe this twisted crap; quite a lot of them. Entire states full. Certainly entire state houses.
There is a little bit of history every American should know:

Articles of Confederation: each state its own nation, own laws, own currency, own foreign policy. Literally a confederation of independent states.
Constitution: each state part of a national government, not independent, do not have own laws, own currency, or own foreign policy; all subject to federal law.

It should be obvious to everyone that the Republican Party is pro-Articles of Confederation, not pro-Constitution, and for the record, the Articles of Confederation were unmanageable, which is why they wrote the Constitution in the first place. One didn’t work; the other has for over two centuries.

A Taste of Treason. Just a few of those peddling in treason: Republican Party, FOX News, Birthers, Tenthers, Koch Brothers, Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, CPAC, the Supreme Court, the Religious Right, House of Representatives, Any state passing legislation allowing it to ignore federal law

But look at the facts: A growing number of red-controlled states want to be free to ignore federal law if they don’t like it. South Carolina wants to mint its own currency! They hate all the amendments exception the Second and the Tenth and most of them don’t even know what exactly the Constitution says. Some want to repeal all the Amendments to get back to the “original” Constitution; they don’t seem aware that the first ten amendments – the Bill of Rights – were seen as essential by the authors and ratified by the same folks who’d ratified the rest.
But they – conservative ideologues – don’t want “knowers” – they want “believers.” It’s more important what you believe than what you know, so if you believe all the crap they’re selling you 24/7, 365 is true, then you’re their man (or woman, but probably man since women belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen being subjected to non-forcible rape and shouldn’t be taught to read in the first place).
We live in different realities. That is, we live in reality. They don’t. One of George W. Bush’s aids admitted this to Ron Suskind in 2004 that the world does not work according to “Enlightenment principles and empiricism” but rather we create our own reality and that, essentially, you can keep creating realities, as many of them as you want or need.
So I guess the key is that if you don’t believe you’re guilty of treason, you’re not. In this invented reality America really was founded as a Christian theocracy. They really do believe, contra Al Franken, that they are entitled to their own facts. Of course, our facts, and our five senses, tell us that those ubiquitous “Don’t Tread on Me” flags should be translated as “I’ll Tread on You” because that’s the real message being sent. There our realities coincide: it’s what they meant and it’s what we hear.
You see, he Founding Fathers recognized the dangers of local assemblies and legislatures. They knew that these could trample rights as surely as a distant king. They feared the masses and it turns out they had good reason to. Look what we’re dealing with now. These suckers have been recruited by the Robber Barons to work against their own interest, to believe “rich men are your friend” and “Keynesian economics are wrong” despite centuries upon centuries of evidence that rich men are not our friends and that Keynesian economics works very well. Their “reality” can’t erase this evidence though they can choose to ignore it.
The Persian Empire of Darius used Keynesian economics (in other words, government spending) to restore a war-shattered economy. Its eventual opponent, the city-state of Athens, used Keynesian economics too, to get their empire off the ground. It was Keynesian economics that gave Darius the strength to go after Athens and it was Keynesian economics that gave Athens the strength to resist him. We might mention here too that it was the rich men of Athens who played the victims when the people demanded an actual voice in government. The old “rich men are your friends” mantra didn’t work after Cleisthenes (himself a rich man but a less obtuse one perhaps) and it shouldn’t be allowed to work here.
And class warfare. Somehow, class warfare is the keyword when the rest of us want the rich to pay their fair share. But if the rich trample the middle classes and the poor and indigent, it is not class warfare. Interesting how that works isn’t it? Apparently, if they repeat this often enough it sticks; you don’t have to go far to find Conservadrones repeating it on Digg, Facebook, or some other social network. Few of those Tweeting are themselves rich but they think the rich are their saviors even while the Koch Brothers, growing increasingly wealthy, lay off increasing numbers of workers (who for all I know, continue to chant “rich men are our friends!”).
CPAC is really an anti-American rally at its heart. It’s not pro-American because everything essential to what America was meant to be, every principle America was founded on, is demonized at CPAC – liberty, equality, plurality, freedom of religion, freedom of choice, freedom of speech, social justice, equality before the law. All evil. Those preaching patriotism are really preaching treason. The 60’s generation of counter-culture protesters have been labeled anti-American but at least they told they wanted what they really wanted: peace and love. The Republicans tell us they are about liberty and patriotism but what they are selling are chains and treason.