The Democrats' Duty: Bring the GOP Back from Crazy
By Charles P. Pierce
Esquire blog
In the course of revisiting my Catholic theology over the past few weeks, probably as a corrective to having spent several months hanging around the Republican presidential nominating process — which, this year, is rather like walking through an abattoir in a Speedo and flip-flops — I went all the way back to the early church fathers and reacquainted myself with Tertullian, an early Christian apologist from North Africa and a notable theological polemicist.
Tertullian had a gift for the deft turn of phrase that was so pronounced that Augustine, that legendary spoilsport, is said to have remarked of something Tertullian said, This is said with more spirit than truth. At one point, while debating Christ's death and resurrection with one of the prominent heretics of the day, Tertullian rather famously stated, "Certum est quia impossibile est."
"It is certain because it is impossible."
Not long before, I'd heard Rick Santorum tell a gathering of supporters in New Hampshire of his dread of the possibility of Iran's gaining a nuclear-weapons capability. He touched upon the destabilization of the region that he believed this would cause. He spoke briefly of how it might ignite a general arms race in the area of the world that least needs a general arms race. He mentioned his stalwart support of the state of Israel. Then he claimed that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a direct threat to the United States.
There seemed to be a hole in this part of his argument. Any attempt by Iran to use a nuclear weapon against the United States would result in Iran's future as a glass parking lot. Santorum thereupon made a case that the Iranian government — the entire Iranian government — was open to the idea of national suicide because it would bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam, a messianic figure of Shiite Islam whose arrival will presage the Day of Judgment. I looked around the room, and heads were bobbing up and down in agreement.
They were certain, because it was impossible.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates, as did the Keystone XL pipeline, to which every Republican presidential candidate pledged unyielding fealty despite the fact that several prairie Republicans and an army of conservative farmers and ranchers are scared to death of the thing.
(More here.)
Esquire blog
In the course of revisiting my Catholic theology over the past few weeks, probably as a corrective to having spent several months hanging around the Republican presidential nominating process — which, this year, is rather like walking through an abattoir in a Speedo and flip-flops — I went all the way back to the early church fathers and reacquainted myself with Tertullian, an early Christian apologist from North Africa and a notable theological polemicist.
Tertullian had a gift for the deft turn of phrase that was so pronounced that Augustine, that legendary spoilsport, is said to have remarked of something Tertullian said, This is said with more spirit than truth. At one point, while debating Christ's death and resurrection with one of the prominent heretics of the day, Tertullian rather famously stated, "Certum est quia impossibile est."
"It is certain because it is impossible."
Not long before, I'd heard Rick Santorum tell a gathering of supporters in New Hampshire of his dread of the possibility of Iran's gaining a nuclear-weapons capability. He touched upon the destabilization of the region that he believed this would cause. He spoke briefly of how it might ignite a general arms race in the area of the world that least needs a general arms race. He mentioned his stalwart support of the state of Israel. Then he claimed that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a direct threat to the United States.
There seemed to be a hole in this part of his argument. Any attempt by Iran to use a nuclear weapon against the United States would result in Iran's future as a glass parking lot. Santorum thereupon made a case that the Iranian government — the entire Iranian government — was open to the idea of national suicide because it would bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam, a messianic figure of Shiite Islam whose arrival will presage the Day of Judgment. I looked around the room, and heads were bobbing up and down in agreement.
They were certain, because it was impossible.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates, as did the Keystone XL pipeline, to which every Republican presidential candidate pledged unyielding fealty despite the fact that several prairie Republicans and an army of conservative farmers and ranchers are scared to death of the thing.
(More here.)
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