Heed the Apostate

When you are really looking for the most scathing indictment of a particular religion, such as modern american Republicanism, it's always best to seek the opinion of the apostate, the lapsed believers who feel most ashamed of their formerly held beliefs. David Brock at MediaMatters, the recent comments by David Frum, etc.

and, Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, of course. Formerly one of the most fervent supporters of Bush, Cheney, and the criminality of their administration, he now sees the GOP for what it is and has been for years: a party that is "proudly ignorant", trafficking in lies, distortions and fear, devoid of ideas but laden with hate. He quotes approvingly from an article that appeared in The Atlantic:

Senior editor for The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it all in a nice neat package: Proud Of Being Ignorant.

A lot of you have e-mailed me to note that Virginia governor Bob McDonnell has decided to honor those who fought to preserve, and extend, white supremacy. I don’t really have much to say. The GOP is, effectively, the party of willfully unlettered Utopians. It is the party of choice for those who believe global warming is a hoax, that humans roamed the earth with dinosaurs, and that homosexuals should work harder at not being gay.

That the party of unadulterated quackery also believes that Birth Of A Nation is more true to the Civil War than Battle Cry Of Freedom, is to be expected. Ignorance does not respect boundaries. It is, at times, qualified and those who know more, often struggle to say more. But people who believe that the Census is actually a covert attempt to put Americans in concentration camps, are also likely to believe that slavery was incidental to the Civil War.

This is who they are—the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn’t “have had all these problems,” this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a “Real American” with no demonstrable interest in “Real America” then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you.

Well said. The GOP is the party of creationists and climate change deniers; nearly every major GOP politician is anti-science, because they know they won’t get any votes if they don’t toe the right wing line. And increasingly, the barely suppressed racism inherent in this atavistic world view is bubbling to the surface, as we see today in Virginia.

Obama isn't perfect, in many ways he has failed those who most fervently supported him, who saw in him a truly transformative liberal cipher. On the other hand, the loyal opposition at this point is a calumny.