A Modest Suggestion
I think anyone from 20 years ago who was transfered to today's American political scene, whether they were a Democrat or a Republican, would be stunned by what has become of our political discourse. The crudity, the contempt for the truth, the open criminality and incitement to violence that radiate from virtually every Republican leader would not have seemed possible even a decade or two ago, but here we are.
However, even with the press and the Republican party tolerating or often embracing this degenerate behavior, one thing still has the power to shock me: the open acceptance when the party's top leaders exercise their fifth amendment rights, not once but literally thousands of times, rather than admit to the American people how they have conducted themselves in their positions of power. Pleading the fifth amendment is tantamount to admitting that you are a criminal; how can people like this be casually tolerated in government?
Here is my suggestion to this problem. In advance, let me admit that it will never happen, because not a single Republican leader will ever support legislation to limit their criminality. Anyway, I would like to see a Constitutional amendment to prevent any person who has pleaded the fifth in a Federal trial from ever holding a position of trust in the Federal government. Is it really too much to ask that self-confessed criminals be kept out of power? Well, okay, I guess it is, but that is my suggestion, however hopeless.
Comments
Ever since Goldwater campaign the thiglicans have increasingly sunk into the sewer.
Think of Nattering nabobs or campaign officials telling the south to ignore what they say and watch what they do.
Addled ronnie and his vile campaign officials spreading rumors about others.
Pejurer poppa with Lee atwater sounding new depths of dishonesty. This after he semi publicly complained about how he wasn't able to use the n word to attack oppenents. Rumors against McCain and a "Black Child" in Carolina primary. Willie horton ad against dukakis.
Unending personal attacks and endless investigations against clinton with rush limbough constantly braying trash in the background. Newts distribution of language by GOPAC in campaign materials for all thuglican candinates. to be used against D's such as treason, stupid, criminal etc
The twit riding karl Roves dirty tricks and lies. Mocking a veterans record with play bangages mocking his purple heart.
How can one overlook the vile and unending assualt of smears. lies, fabrication Obama.
This overlooks the constant prescense of dirty roger Stone, bill barr and his pardon machine and changeing the name ofthe DemocratIC party in a search in a way to emphasize rat.
I am not surprised.
I must tell you that I believe the descent of the Republican party into a tool of the rich was well underway by 1890 at the latest. Rich people saw, in this new party, something still unformed and ripe for exploitation, and by the end of the nineteenth century we could already see a party which had been founded on the highest of principles decline into a partisan pressure group. Efforts to manipulate right wing religious people began soon after that; many are not aware that the nation's spectacularly disastrous flirtation with prohibition was directly the result of Republicans attempting to capture the religious vote. That's why one of Roosevelt's first acts when he took over was to begin the dismantling of prohibition. And of course, redbaiting and various other dishonest campaign claims were rife among Republicans in the post-World War I world.