Tina Dupuy

I’m told the best thing about having a hearing aid is being able to turn it off; selectively, of course, around boring or annoying people. When someone wants to ask you for money. When you’d just like some quiet. There’s a switch. You have the power to tune voices out.

Which is what the media have been doing to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

The demonstrators have said they want “economic justice.”

And inevitably a talking head will wonder: “What do they want?”

The demonstrators will say they want economic justice.

Then an anchor will say, “There’s not really a cohesive theme with these protesters.”

The demonstrators will march with signs that plainly read they want economic justice.

Then a reporter will offer: “There’s not really a central message permeating in the crowd.”

Yes, the media have gone “Grampa with a telemarketer” on Occupy Wall Street.

That hasn’t hindered the Occupiers from resonating with Americans. The protests have been growing. The movement has been growing. Occupy LA is down the street from my home. Their numbers have nearly quadrupled from the first week. They now count 253 tents at City Hall and have the blessings of the City Council to stay as long as they need. It’s hard to confirm reports of all the other Occupations, it’s rumored to be in the hundreds. I can verify 24 demonstrations across the U.S. where they are “occupying.” There could be dozens more by the time you read this. People from all walks of life are taking to the streets to cry out for “economic justice.”

Now the local news will report: “The demonstrators don’t have any specific unifying points so far.”

Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill coined the phrase, “All politics is local.”

Also, all politics is personal. The housing crisis took peoples’ homes. Families have been uprooted and kicked around by giant soulless corporations. There’s nothing more personal than putting a family’s furniture on the lawn. There’s nothing more personal than seeing “bank foreclosure” signs all in a row in your neighborhood. There’s nothing more personal than witnessing your community, already struggling in the last decade, thrown further by indecipherable market-speak terms like “derivatives” and “securitized mortgage bundles.”

And then there are the students: the victims of direct-to-consumer student loans. And, yes, it’s personal. Education prices have gone up but the federal loan programs’ maximum amount have not. So kids with no means to pay for college other than borrowing, are being forced into paying credit card-like interest on their education with loans that are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, with no statutes of limitations, and can’t be refinanced. These students carry signs reading, “Debt is slavery.” It’s more like sharecropping, which is slavery while being told you’re free.

And there’s the unemployed. They’re the nation’s statistics now donning Guy Fawkes masks. They are the “lagging indicators” who are tired of being called lazy. They want to work and can’t. Those who can’t find work don’t care about the circular firing squad in Washington of everyone blaming everything on whatever side they oppose. For the unemployed, it’s also personal.

Politicians won’t take personal responsibility for the crisis – and so Occupy Wall Street has no choice but to be nonpartisan. Or just bipartisan in their frustration.

It’s the least partisan political movement I’ve witnessed. The phrase Glass–Steagall gets thrown around at Occupy Wall Street like the Volstead Act did at speakeasies. Glass–Steagall, was signed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and made much of what the banks did to tank the economy then (and now) illegal. The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act also called Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 basically repealed Glass-Steagall. It was passed by a bi-partisan vote in the Republican-controlled Congress and was signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The Republican George W. Bush then “destroyed capitalism in order to save it.” And President Obama, with his mandate for change, and an entire nation hoping for accountability – hasn’t brought any banksters to justice or re-regulated them in any meaningful way.

Any call for “economic justice” that is also hyper-partisan is disingenuous.

And still someone with overly bleached teeth on television will remark, “Personally, I just don’t understand what these people are trying to say.”

Turn your hearing aid back on, Gramps.

The movement known as the tea party started in the mainstream media, on a national show. CNBC’s Rick Santelli, fired what cable news would later dub “the shot heard around the world” in 2009, when he lamented paying for the mortgages of the “losers” who couldn’t pay their bills. “President Obama, are you listening?” he bellowed.

Well, it was broadcast on national television.

By the way they snarl about the mainstream media on Fox News, you’d think they were disseminating their programs via ham radio instead of on the number one cable news network in the country. Fox News is as mainstream a media as any. And they’ve puffed up and promoted their pet protest group called the tea party for the last two and half years.

And just like the imaginary death panels in the health care reform act or the fantasy Sharia law threat – the tea party got its legs from Fox News.

So when criticism is lobbed at the tea party as being an astroturf re-branding of the Republican Party, sponsored by interest groups and corporate media, it’s because it is.

To put this into perspective, look at movement Fox News hasn’t endorsed and Karl Rove’s group, American Crossroads, haven’t chartered busses for: meet Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street started as a couple thousand protesters marching through lower Manhattan and camping out at the detonator of the economic meltdown.

For the first two weeks, the protest was largely ignored by actual mainstream media. Then NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper sprayed a couple of young women peacefully assembling at this public demonstration. The footage landed on YouTube: Then there was attention. A skirmish with police. A Story. Last Saturday, 700 of the protesters were arrested by the NYPD. Another Story. Worthy of a mention even on the venerable Sunday Shows.

Who are these people? Are they the anti-tea party?

No. In fact they are not in any way like the tea party. If they were the tea party, the media would be giving value to all their political peccadilloes. Yes, “What does the tea party think?” has become a staple in American political discourse. And for what? They’re identical to Republicans. They have a public approval rating, according to some polls of 26 percent. And the tea party-led House suffers a historic low of around 13 percent (more people approve of salmonella).

Yet the tea party is given credence and credibility as a swell of a movement to give rich people and corporations more tax breaks. How is that populist, exactly? It’s a protest movement that just so happens to be suspiciously business-friendly. How, as they say in corporate-speak, synergistic.

This tea party now has a seat at the table of power. Their corporate sponsors must snicker every time they hear about the “tea party’s take” on whatever issue.

I was at an Occupy Wall Street solidarity demonstration over the weekend in Los Angeles. Around 3,000 people were there when I arrived. The first thing apparent is the crowd is young. These are not cantankerous retirees worried about the government getting involved in Medicare. No these are the children of the middle-class’ Lost Decade. These are kids whose American Dream has been eroding while the rich have gotten richer. These are the young people on Facebook and Twitter calling for an “American Autumn” to match the Arab Spring.

And the Arab Spring is a far better comparison for this group.

Like the Egypt and Tunisia uprisings, Occupy Wall Street are youths worried about their futures’ downgrade. It’s about the lack of prospects in the “land of opportunity.” Their battle cry: “We are the 99 percent and we are too big to fail.” They’ve succinctly stated their goal is “economic justice.” Pandering to the wealthy minority is the disease: Occupy Wall Street is a symptom.

What does economic justice mean? Maybe a better question is: How top-heavy can the wealth inequality get before something tumbles?

The hurdle for Occupy Wall Street is that it was not birthed on cable news. Cable news doesn’t own it so it can’t show it off like they have the tea party.

But the Arab Spring revolution wasn’t televised; it was re-tweeted.

Tweet

I asked a reporter at Unnamed Major Metropolitan Newspaper, why they don’t cover suicides. Why is it that traditionally in the press there’s a veil of silence draped over taking your own life? He said it’s because they don’t want to encourage the behavior. The concern is if they report on it; others will copy. There’s no such apprehension when it comes to covering homicides, but I digress. “Plus there are far more suicides than murders and we don’t cover every murder,” is how another crime reporter put it.

But then there are notable suicides which involve famous people. Enter Jamey Rodemeyer: a 14-year-old boy from Buffalo, New York, who was tormented at school for being gay. Jamey made a video for the “It Gets Better Project” professing his love and admiration for Lady Gaga. A couple of months after posting the clip, the bullying apparently became intolerable and he committed suicide. Now Lady Gaga is tweeting about how she plans to lobby the President to elevate bullying to the level of a hate crime.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death among those 15-24 years old, compared to 11th in the general population. The teenage suicide rate is 6 per 100,000, nearly half of the general population’s at 11 per 100,000. It means that of the total number of suicides in this country, few of them are teenagers, but among deaths of teenagers, suicide is one of the leading causes.

Every day around 100 Americans kill themselves. Every day.

Jamey’s death was not a statistical anomaly, we just have a media which doesn’t report suicides if they can avoid it. But when Lady Gaga tweets about it to her 14 million followers, they can no longer avoid it. Jamey’s YouTube videos only add to the haunting nature of his story.

When you watch at Jamey’s videos and hear his promise to others that it “gets better” – one is too many. It feels like an injustice. And because Jamey’s plight hurts, we all want to DO something.

I don’t know how to eradicate bullying. I don’t know if we need more people in jail in this country, especially teenagers like those who bullied Jamey. I don’t know how to make kids nicer to each other. I don’t know how to make being a teenager less painful.

I do know that suicide needs to be taken out of the closet. The idea that if we talk about suicide – if we read about it in the paper – it’ll be so tempting more people will kill themselves is ridiculous. It reeks of superstition. Censoring stories doesn’t save lives.

Eighteen U.S. military veterans a day kill themselves. It’s a kind of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell that’s still being implemented. Over 6,500 vets a year die this way. That’s more soldiers dying at home in one year than in 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And among those currently serving, in 2010 suicide took more lives of our military personnel than battle. The problem is so prevalent Obama is the first President in history to send letters of condolences to military families of troops who committed suicide.

Suicides for Native American males ages 10-24 are almost three times the national average. Also, Alaska has the most suicides per capita. In case you think it’s from lack of sunlight, New Mexico ranks number two. The vast majority of suicides are gun deaths.

The statistics on suicide are not done in real time; they’re not like opinion polls. The rate was steadily decreasing in the U.S. from the 1950s to 2007. But then, the world melted. Studies link higher rates of suicides to economic downturns. During the Great Depression, the rate spiked at 18.9 per 100,000 nationally (which is actually low for Alaska today). The iconic image of the stock market crash was of people jumping out of windows.

So we can guess that our national suicide rate is probably on the rise, across the board, along with the rising unemployment and a flailing economy.  We just aren’t reading the individual episodes in newspapers…unless Lady Gaga mentions them. Suicide is still stigmatized.

And since we’re highlighting an issue – here’s one of the causes: cut backs. As states are slashing their budgets, social services and mental health resources (including the VA) are disappearing. The number one cause of all suicides is mental illness and services to treat it are on the chopping block.

A falling tide sinks all ships.

A bad economy adversely affects our birth rate, health, increases in homelessness, domestic abuse, substance abuse and of course, suicide.

It’s the economy…stupid.

Yesterday, I was idling behind a seven-year-old Saturn sedan with an anti-Obama bumper sticker reading: “Because everyone deserves some of what you’ve worked hard for.”

There’s a knee-jerk response to dismiss the driver as being some dupe naively parroting slogans not meaningful in his tax bracket. (You’d never see that sticker on a Rolls-Royce.) It’s not just the success of Republican “messaging,” there’s more to it than that:

According to the CafePress page selling these bumper stickers, the five-dollar decal was created on December 4, 2008. For all you history geeks, that was before the Obama presidency. This sentiment even existed before the bank bailout. It was also weeks before reputed capitalist, George W. Bush, approved the $17.4 billion American auto industry bailout. Specifically, for GM, the parent company of Saturn.

“If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers,” said Bush in the Roosevelt Room on December 19, 2008.

After GM took government money – taxpayer money – as an emergency loan to save their company suffering from a disturbing combo of willful blindness and ignorance of the market – the first thing the automaker had to do was downsize. They shut down factories and dealerships, shedding jobs; and even eradicated some brands. One of those was Saturn.

Now this driver can look forward to higher prices for parts and repairs for a vehicle that’s essentially worthless since it was discontinued. The Bush bailout of GM was paid for by this driver at least twice. So the trade-in value losses for putting a sticker on that car? No longer an issue.

Why does this anti-wealth distribution sentiment resonate with him? Why doesn’t he want banksters and CEOs to pay up?

“Because everyone deserves some of what you’ve worked hard for.”

This message was written and uploaded before the tea party, when the economy was still in free fall. And even though “thinkers” like Samuel R. Staley, a fellow at the Reason Institute, wrote the unintentionally hilarious talking point now being repeated by GOP lawmakers: “It appears we are two years into a ‘lost decade,’” the fact of the matter is the middle-class has already had a lost decade – the ‘00s.

In the middle-class wages are flat. The three million jobs Bush created in his eight years in office were moot since the population grew by 22 million. Prices have gone up, salaries have not. Home values have fallen, retirement plans are gone, savings are drained. Not since the 1930s has a generation been less prosperous than the one before.  In 2008, the economy for the middle-class went from long-term stagnation to suddenly much worse.

And this reasonably caused a fear reaction in this Saturn driver. What is he concerned about? Wealth distribution. Why?

It’s usually assumed that the reason Americans specifically don’t want to see taxes raised on the rich is because, in spite of driving a defunct GM brand four-door, they think of themselves as the “soon-to-be rich.” But a paper published in the National Journal of Economic Research in July suggests otherwise. They offer that it’s not hoping to be on top that makes us not want the wealthier to be taxed more – it’s the fear of being at the bottom. It’s referred to as “last-place aversion.”

The Economist wrote, “In keeping with the notion of ‘last-place aversion,’ the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the ‘rich’ but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves.”

So taxing the rich isn’t about the fantasy that we’re going to someday be rich – it’s about the very real visceral fear of being, well, the poorest. If the government helps those below you, then they’ll be at your level – that’s the unfairness they’re afraid of.

Named one of the worst CEOs of 2008, GM head, Rick Wagoner received a $20 million dollar retirement package and an owner of one of his beaters has a bumper sticker decrying higher taxes for him.

The driver isn’t fantasizing about being Wagoner – he’s terrified of being driven even lower in the middle-class. And the GOP has successfully exploited that fear.

Because when people are afraid, they do all kinds of irrational things…like vote Republican.

It’s not easy denying evolution while championing Social Darwinism. The Republicans have a delicate two-step to perform: pro-some-Bible and pro-some-science. Despite a global scientific consensus on evolution, Republican politicians embrace a literal interpretation of the Bible when it comes to how we all got here. But their reading gets suddenly metaphorical when it comes to the parts in the Bible about helping the poor. Citing the Bible as an authority, the current incarnation of Grand Old Partiers tell Americans modern science doesn’t have enough evidence to prove things like evolution or global warming. But further tax cuts for the super rich? Bible is pretty clear about it being easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. And the Republicans are pretty clear on ignoring that part.

Liberals dismiss Republicans as Know Nothings and simpletons – not true. This anti-some-Bible and anti-some-science dance is very complicated.

There’s a lot of nuance that can be summed up like this: The GOP is skeptical when it comes to things with which they disagree.

Simple? Not at all.

See, when Republicans talk about the “free market” and how the “greatest” is chosen by this fabled marketplace – that’s what Charles Darwin described in 1859 as “natural selection” in his book, Origin of the Species. So when evolution-denier Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) says she wants to repeal socialist Obamacare with “free market” solutions. She’s pleading for competition. A competition that, naturally, selects winners and losers.

Republicans are not anti-science entirely, they’re anti…sometimes.

How anti-science can you be with an iPhone in your pocket? It does take some specialization. A bit of partisan specialization. Like having seven out of eight GOP candidates proudly deny evolution as just a theory while debating in the hanger of Reagan’s Air Force One; never questioning aerodynamics or gravity —which are also, technically, just theories.  Texas Governor Rick Perry proudly proclaims his belief in vaccinations to thwart cervical cancer – a very science-y stance — but not in laws to thwart climate change.

Like I said, Republicans are not all-in on being against science. The GOP treats science as their illegitimate love child. They deny its existence for political purposes, while quietly funneling child support to it.

The Republican Party is not trying to be Amish. Republicans are not Luddites. Republicans are for technology. They don’t want to actually live in the 18^th century; they just want to idealize it. Those tri-corner hats were bought on the Internet. They boast proudly of having a bigger/better presence on Twitter and Facebook than Democrats. This is the party that sees endless uses for Predator drones and embraces all innovations with military applications. How exactly do you drug test welfare recipients without science? You don’t! How does one “drill, baby, drill,” frack or remove the tops of mountains without employing someone who knows their way around the periodic table? You don’t.

Then, of course, they treat the Bible as their political wife dutifully standing by their side in photo ops, nodding in support of everything they say.

And as much as the GOP has a reputation for pandering to churchgoers, their platform contradicts biblical teachings.  Jesus was not a banker or a CEO. He was labor. He was skilled labor at that (think AFL-CIO). But Republicans claim a monopoly on Christianity and use it (as we saw with Perry’s Texas prayer rally) as a prop. It’s part of the stagecraft for their political image. But just like science, when the Bible has something in it they don’t like, they just deny it and move on.

So Republicans do believe in science and they also believe in the Bible. They just believe in politics first.

There was a 90 percent top marginal tax rate under President Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan raised taxes nearly every year he was in office and still managed to quadruple the national debt. Teddy Roosevelt was an anti-business trust-buster who snatched Yosemite away from private profits. Gerald Ford ended a long pointless war in Vietnam even though pontificators like Pat Buchanan claim we could have won…eventually. George W. Bush bailed out the banks and the auto industry. I won’t even utter the names Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon (Republicans sure won’t).

Historians agree the best Republican President was also the first: Abraham Lincoln. Who’s second runner up? Which President has represented Republican values best? Easy. President Barack Obama.

First off – his signature legislative accomplishment was to implement a Republican/Heritage Foundation idea from 1989. Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans reads, “[N]either the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement…A mandate on households certainly would force those with adequate means to obtain insurance protection.”

The Heritage Foundation has since recanted and even filed friend-of-the-court briefs against the mandate. This is only after an alleged Democrat was for it. There’s been a pattern of this partisanship before policy since Obama was sworn in.

But if you ignore the misplaced (and often misspelled) vehemence against the first African-American president as a communist/socialist/Marxist/bad “ist” du jour and instead just look at the policy – we have a stellar Republican in the Oval Office.

Obama renewed the Bush Tax Cuts. Republicans love those tax cuts even more than they love being against something once Obama has signed it. In fact the President hasn’t raised taxes at all – just like Republicans say they won’t (see: “Read my lips – no new taxes.”). The only tax he’s raised is on smokers. Obama increased the tax on cigarettes even though he’s an admitted (reformed) smoker. But even that is ideal in a Republican hypocrite kind of way (see: too many anti-gay Republicans in gay sex scandals to list).

And on top of the Bush Tax Cuts – Obama cut even more taxes for 95 percent of Americans.

Plus, he’s cut the size of government! Yes. Regardless of all those email forwards your kooky great-aunt sends you from her decades-old AOL account – the public work force has been reduced under an Obama presidency – therefore “shrinking the size of government.” The reason we had no net jobs in August is because the public sector (i.e., the government) lost jobs due to cuts. The private sector gained the exact amount resulting in a push.

President Obama has managed to quell all anti-war protests and even start a new conflict. That is surely to be the envy of any Republican president who’s ever served.

Guantanamo Bay? Still open. Osama bin Laden? Shot in the head.

Talk about getting 98 percent of what they wanted. If the GOP didn’t have to change their goal post so Obama could never score in their view – Republicans could be dumping Gatorade on Rush Limbaugh by now.

How about the GOP-despised EPA? You know, that “job-killing” governmental regulatory agency GOP candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Ron Paul all promise will go dark when they become president? That agency’s pinko plot for cleaner air estimated to stop tens of thousands of premature deaths? Gone. And guess who said this about it: “I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH)? Maybe Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA)? Some tea party speaker at some quarter-full rally somewhere? Who said it? The socialist Nazi radical – current occupant of the White House – Barack Hussein Obama! He’s a wonderful Republican.

The right-wing says Obama is left of Lenin – in reality he’s barely left of Goldwater.

What does this mean? It means we currently have eight GOP candidates running against what’s essentially a GOP incumbent. It means we have eight mediocre Republican candidates running against the best Republican president since Lincoln. The safe bet is that a Republican will win the next election.

To be clear, I’m not a Republican – but I have undeniably voted for one.

In the ‘80s there were Reagan Democrats. I’ll solve this whole thing by just calling myself an Obama Democrat.

The Moche lived in northern Peru from about 100-700 A.D. Their molded ceramics are still a highlight in the annals of human accomplishment. If you walk through a museum of pre-Columbian art, it’s easy to spot a Moche piece – the faces are so realistic you expect them to wink at you.

Around 500 A.D., the world was experiencing some drastic climate changes. There was a super El Nino weather phenomenon on the west coast. Cataclysmic floods were followed by drought. The Moche, like most ancient peoples, are thought to be very religious. They wanted to thwart this devastation and improve the weather by trying to appease their gods. So they sacrificed masses of their citizens. Just slaughtered hundreds of people in hopes of saving more.

Does this sound like religious extremism? Yes. Because it is.

Negotiating with nature is a very ancient thing to do:  Pre-science, pre-wheel, – pre-written language. As a species, we’ve always seen patterns in natural events and taken it personally. Floods are because of sin – droughts are because of witches. Earthquakes are God’s anger towards women’s suffrage and Chinese immigration, etc.

But now we know better. At least, some of us do. Sort of. Now we know the Earth’s crust shifts. It always has. All our continents used to be one; scientists refer to as Pangaea.  We know that continuing shift results in earthquakes.  Instead of hurricanes just appearing all of a sudden as a result of moral shortcomings, we can now track them via satellite for days. There is also a growing understanding about how global warming has intensified weather patterns, hurricanes have been made worse by pollution and the extraction process for natural gas known as “fracking” has caused earthquakes.

Yes, we have a greater knowledge of weather and seismic activities than ever before.

So when the East Coast experienced a rare earthquake – there was an archaic response from religious leaders. It wasn’t that these things happen on this planet we all live on – it was because of gay marriage. Rabbi Yehuda Levin told his YouTube audience, “[We] are starting to see the connection.” As if the earth never moved before cake toppers had two grooms.

It’s ghoulish opportunism. Just like in the wake of the quake that nearly leveled Haiti and killed thousands, televangelist Pat Robertson claimed it was because Haitians made a pact with the devil to liberate themselves from slavery 200 years ago. So Robertson’s devil ran an 18^th century anti-slavery Caribbean underground railroad? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? He has an odd religion. He also chimed into the “what did we do to deserve a non-fatal earthquake in DC?” discussion by claiming a crack in the Washington Monument meant something beyond why not to build a 555-foot marble obelisk on swampland.

Then there was a hurricane in the same area within a week. For capitalizing atmospheric interpreters – it’s show time! Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told a rally in Florida – the state with the highest proportion of elderly (think Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries) and hurricanes in the country – that these events are a warning about government spending.

Because weather is a quid pro quo with God and the Republican Party’s agenda.

It’s time to build a wall (or a levee) between church and weather.

Natural disasters aren’t punishment. And religion isn’t a Doppler radar.

In 1693, the Massachusetts colonists thought a hurricane there marked the Apocalypse. In April 2011, Texas Governor Rick Perry issued an official proclamation for Texans to pray for rain for three days. Rain has yet to come and it’s categorized as a D4 Drought (there is no D5).

What does this mean? Nothing. It means church and weather should get a divorce and block each other’s numbers. Since church and state are no longer the same thing – church should secede from climatology.

It’s not for the sake of the weather – it’s really for the sake of the church’s credibility.

Because really, we could stop letting gays marry, eat all our vegetables, never cheat on our spouses and get to church three times a week – it won’t stop the weather…or the world.

The Iowa Straw Poll last weekend is to election season what Labor Day is to Fall; it’s official now – the season has begun!

I don’t care about the “viability” of candidates. I am not a prognosticator. Well, if I were, I’d be a very bad one. I said former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was most likely to get the nomination because his name is the easiest to make puns with (i.e. Pawlenty of Votes!) and he was the first one to drop out of the race. Plus, I’ve yet to see anyone (besides me) make ANY puns with his name. Pawlenty of wrong guesses!

But I’m also not interested in “who could go all the way.” I’m interested in this moment in time. And if you look at the former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney – he’s perfect for the current Republican Party.

The first reason is he has five gorgeous able-bodied adult sons who’ve never spent a day in the military. Actually, none of the as-yet announced Republican candidates have children serving in the military. We’ve been in two wars now for nearly a decade each and yet the all-volunteer force is entirely made up of Americans not spawned from GOP candidates. For the last 30 years at least, the Republicans have been relentlessly, uniformly hawkish – but mostly with other peoples’ children. This disconnect was made evident in the ’08 election when soldiers donated money to candidate Barack Obama 6-1 over Senator John McCain.

The second is Romney’s hard turn (read: total flip-flop) on women’s reproductive freedoms. When Romney ran against Senator Ted Kennedy in 1994, unprompted he offered, “Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that.” Of course, he wavered on that. His “family relative” was Ann Keenan, who died from an infection due to her illegal abortion in 1963 when Romney was 16. Now at 64, Romney toes the party line on abortion: He’s against it. He’s now against the law that could have saved his relative’s life.

But this is consistent with the Republican Party of today. The man known as “Mr. Conservative” himself – 1964’s Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater was not pro-life. His wife Margaret Goldwater helped found the first Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930s. If ever there was an issue (or an area) for government to get out of – it’s a uterus. But as much as current Republicans like to bark that government is getting too intrusive – Romney and his ilk want the government to tell women what to do.

Speaking of the government telling us what to do – the health care reform “individual mandate” that Republicans are so rabidly against? That was a Republican idea (first introduced in 1993) Romney implemented in his state in 2005. Now? It’s a job-killing communist plot that will destroy America! Romney and his parallel Republicans were for this job-killing communist plot that will destroy America – before they were against it.

The third thing that makes Romney the ideal representation for his party is his time in the private sector. Yes, Romney calls himself (un-ironically) a job creator. And well, he did create jobs, but mainly in other countries. He cut thousands here at home. But he touts this accomplishment anyway. The GOP has become an anti-worker movement. They use the language of the common man, railing against “the elites.” But when it comes to policy – the GOP worships the privileged. They love the gilded class and don’t want them to have to pay taxes or hear a cross word about themselves. They’ve convinced non-elites that the top one percent are all-American magical job makers and that if we just make this tiny fraction of our country happy – our economy will once again flourish. There’s no evidence of this ever being the case. It’s pure fantasy. But Republicans treat lies like incantations – they just have to say something enough and it will manifest.

So regardless of whoever gets in the race or drops out – Romney is the ideal symbol of his party. He is the GOP. His story is the story of the Republican Party.

He’s perfect.

Just imagine there was a giant swarm of super-super liberal freshmen in Congress. They had given the President a “shellacking,” secured a large number of seats in the House of Representatives and had been on the job for eight months. Just a bunch of lockstep liberals clogging up the Capitol. In that time, they’d done amazingly little work while cashing their government paychecks. Sure, they’re supposed to represent a nation still wounded from the worst economic disaster in two generations, instead they spend all of their time debating and passing symbolic go-nowhere bills while going on television to blame the economy on the President. That’s when they’re not on recess. These freshmen hate Washington so much they’re almost never there.

Oh, and their battle cry while doing nothing which keeps the government from functioning? “Washington is broken!”

These imagined liberal freshmen are extremists. They’ve already signed a pledge with a liberal lobbyist saying that they will not – under any circumstances whatsoever – cut, alter or in anyway change social safety nets. So whatever burning national issue of overriding importance comes up their only solution is to adhere to their lobbyist’s pledge.

The Smurfs use the word “smurf” for all verbs. As in: “I’m going to smurf you!” These extreme no-lawmakers use “social security.” As in: “We can social security our way out of this crisis.”

And they want to re-write the Constitution. Yes, they say it’s a great document (blah blah blah) but it would be much better if it were amended to suit their sole goal of bringing down the incumbent President. So since the last amendment took 203 years from proposal to ratification – they decide no one can do anything until we have another amendment.

Then the polls say that Congress’ approval rating is at an all time low. The margin of error looks more favorably on the Congress than the American public. As a direct result of the brazen incompetence and blind ideology – a rating agency downgrades the country’s Treasuries. The stock market tumbles. These liberal tea party-like folks are caught on video cheering at the news of the chaos they’ve caused.

If they were liberals – Fox News would run headlines: “Liberals Hate America.” Well, basically Fox News would say pretty much the same stuff, but in this case it would be warranted.

These liberal obstructionists would be called terrorists. Not just maybe once in a private off the record meeting with the VP – but on the record and all the time. Since these liberal freshmen would seem to have the same economic goals for the U.S. as Osama bin Laden – that would be pointed out repeatedly. They’d be accused of treason. Their loyalty would be questioned: “Are they upholding the Constitution or their pledge?” There would be calls to deport them. People would tell them to leave the country and go wreck some other economy. They’d be dubbed a hoard of Neros fiddling with their pledges while Rome burned.

If liberals were doing to the country what extremist tea party Republicans are doing – it would be called unpatriotic. A whole tsunami of sound bites would sweep the country calling for the sabotage to stop.

Liberal dissent is akin to a security breach but conservative economic calamity is given a pass. We’ve treated the tea party like they are our country’s kooky, graying, drunken uncle at Thanksgiving dinner spouting some non sequiturs he picked up on AM radio. When really they are well-funded economic saboteurs who refuse to participate in the democratic process. Their goal of causing the executive branch of government to fail means our entire country goes with it.

The media likes to pretend it treats the political spectrum as opposite equals. The right is the same as the left – the other side of the same argument. Politics is not symmetrical nor is the coverage of the partisans. Nothing makes this clearer than the coverage and tolerance of the brinksmanship-happy tea party.

If liberals did this to their own country they’d be called criminals. The tea party did do this to their own country and they are treated like avant-garde Civil War reenactors.

The difference between a documentary and a reality show is staging. A documentary tells a story about real life. The subjects are normally not paid, not actors and the story is non-fiction. It’s a quiet, illuminating and thoughtful genre (read: boring).

Reality shows are like life, in that people on these programs do things people do in real life, (i.e. travel, date, lose weight) but the circumstances are contrived. The contestants are put in artificial situations with heightened rewards and it’s put on camera. The stakes are fake. The participants pre-screened. The episodes are scripted. It’s “reality” television.

It’s like reality…only augmented for drama and ratings.

Enter the United States Government. Civics and public servants are usually a snooze fest. Rules and procedures and suit-fillers giving long speeches are not all that interesting. Sure there was the occasional duel involving a member of Congress in the last 235 years. Bill Clinton’s enemies brought us a primetime sex scandal. But for the most part politics was watching history in the making, which is like watching anything else being made…slow and tedious.

Think documentary.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment politics crossed over into full reality show mayhem. These things usually happen in a “perfect storm” situation. Meaning: it wasn’t just one thing. It was a couple of unforeseen events happening all at once – all horrifying to Republicans. One was the meltdown of the financial system in 2008. It was the moment Bush had to “abandon free market principles to save the free market system” with TARP. The other was McCain’s concession. Go ahead and watch the speech again. The homogeneous crowd looks like they’re at a wake for a Ralph Lauren and L.L. Bean murder/suicide as their candidate says Barack Hussein Obama will be his president.

If deregulation and tax cuts had done what they was claimed they would do and not wreck the world’s economy – then maybe having a guy whose middle name was the same as a Middle Eastern dictator we’ve spent trillions to take out, as the new president – wouldn’t have seemed so drastic.

But this is the moment when politics went from CSPAN to Jerry Springer. What happens when a guest on Springer gets accused of something and he’s clearly at fault? He gets louder and starts throwing out desperate accusations. “How do I know you didn’t give it to me?!”

So instead of contrition – they opted for defensive blustering with something vaguely foreign-sounding to blame.

This is the tea party: Freaked out Republicans. Lovers of unpaid-for tax cuts, unpaid-for wars and saturnalia on Wall Street were faced with the evidence that their ideas, when implemented, are terrible. So they took a cue from reality shows – they went full bombast. Then it was Obama (whose name also sounds like Osama) who passed TARP and doubled the debt (when that actually happened under the “compassionate conservative” Bush with a GOP Congress).

And just like when reality show producers figured out backstabbing and borderline psychopathic contestants meant ratings – during the health care reform debate the Republicans learned anything chanted by old people on television (no matter how nonsensical) dominates the debate. “Keep the government out of my Medicare!”

For the last two and a half years politics has been trash television. We’ve had right-wing stars staying relevant through mudslinging and shamelessness. The tea party wouldn’t be satisfied with just one Snooki. We’ve had fake stings by phony pimps and ideology-driven hoaxes. Astroturf is being sold as organic outrage.

In short: it’s staged. It’s over-produced indignation by interest groups that don’t do as well in the dullness of documentary style politics and need the chaos of the ridiculous to keep progress at bay.

Cutting government spending (think government jobs) during record unemployment? More tax cuts for the top 1% during record low tax rates and unprecedented tax exemptions? Do these ideas sound like something people come up with when they’re not just cynically throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks?

How many times do the cable news networks need to have a countdown clock up for congressional dustups that could shut down the government?

We’re being held captive by stunts. Choreographed stunts. This is not what deliberative government looks like.

This is what deliberate turmoil looks like.