The definition of conservatism: A general preference for the existing order of society, and an opposition to efforts to bring about sharp change. With that definition in mind, let me pretend to be a member of the Republican party. Not your typical ill informed Republican, constantly being bombarded with right wing propaganda in order to be convinced to vote against his own best interest, but instead, a member of the elite, wealthy, powerful inner circle of Republicans working to guide national policy to achieve their own very narrow goals.
Here are my goals as a member of this powerful Royal club. Note that this is truly a club, in that in this very exclusive group, members all know each other, associate with each other, and conspire with each other. Some of these members are household names, like the Koch brothers, or Sheldon Adelson, but for everyone in the group you can name, there are hundreds of other lesser Royals pulling the strings of their own self-interest. As a member of this group, my number one goal is to insure that I can maintain and increase my wealth for my benefit and for the benefit of my heirs. Each of my other goals are simply subordinate to my number one goal. I will attempt to reduce taxes on my wealth and on that of my heirs. I will at all costs attempt to prevent the existence of a voting majority that might threaten my status and my wealth.
My Royal club that is tirelessly working to achieve it's goals, and is supported by a cadre of lesser Royalty, the Dukes and Earls of America, if you will, who benefit from the policies of their superiors and, the soldiers,or knights you might say, who enforce the royal will upon the American serfs. These knights, otherwise known as politicians and pundits are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the lords.
As a member of this American Royal family, let me explain how we achieve our goals. First of all, as I have said previously, we convince a substantial percentage of the voting public to vote against their own best interests. Through our knights, we promote xenophobic ideas regarding race, religion, and poverty. We convince the public that it must have guns to protect itself against potential uprisings of minorities, the poor, and the undocumented immigrants. We convince the public that we are an exclusively Christian nation, and that Christianity is under assault in America. Then we denigrate the poor, claiming that they are all lazy "takers", undeserving of government help, and beneath contempt of "hard working, God fearing Americans". Under the guise of religion we use gay and abortion issues to compromise the will and rights of individuals and to lure the religious zealots to our party.
We have very successfully made the words, socialism and communism, synonymous, and used the cold war fears of totalitarian Russia and China, to convince citizens to despise programs that universally help people, by labeling them socialist. We hate programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and now, the Affordable Care Act, because on the one hand they take money out of our pockets, while on the other hand, these programs make people more independent and less beholden to us.
So far, these moves have helped us achieve most of our goals, except for the two major prizes, a permanent Republican Presidency and a majority court system under our control. We are currently hard at work on policies to overcome the demographic obstacle of a nationally elected president, and have mounted a grass roots approach to co-opting the court system and obtain even wider margins in the house and senate.
The weakening of the nation's campaign finance system now allows us to pour in vast amounts of dark money to not only national campaigns, but also increasing into local elections. As it has been said, "all politics is local", and as we build up a large cadre of Republican county commissioners, judges, and state legislators, we are building the future of the party. Our efforts in these areas have already reaped rewards.
Many states now have majority Republican Legislations working tirelessly to restrict Democratic voter turnout, roll back the political power of unions, thus cutting of important campaign finances to our Democratic opponents, making judicial positions partisan, and in some states, revamping electoral college laws to allow proportional representation where that would be an advantage to us.
Of course the main interest of the wealthy is to become more wealthy, so on that front, we, through our knights, have mounted a battle against the intellectual liberal elite. We simply cannot have people going around saying that air and water pollution is harming us, fossil fuel is driving Carbon Dioxide levels to irreversible highs, or that mankind is causing global warming and sea level rise. Our knights are working to discredit scientific study, reduce research, and actually decree that terms derogatory to the business climate not be used by government employees. When the time comes, we will retreat to higher ground and our knights will protect us.
Each of us looks forward to a time when our Knights obtain insurmountable political power and we can begin to completely unravel the social fabric of our country, and return our Royal families to the Utopian servant economy we so richly deserve.
