Page Two: High Dive

"'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English)." – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

At least some of you probably opened the paper to this column expecting that it would either contain a more detailed explanation of this week's cover story or, because it is still within the first six months of the year, offer a celebration and/or defense of South by Southwest. Even I'm surprised that it will do neither. There are still way too many potential land mines and patches of quicksand as we navigate the former, and, as for the latter, even I am tired of hearing myself on the topic.

"Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers,

mothers lifting their children – these all I

touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.

And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions

of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than

crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the

darkness of night – and all broken, humble ruins of nations."

– Carl Sandburg, "Masses"

Discrediting and demeaning ideas and plans proposed by one's ideological opponents is the political strategy of our time. Meaningful political negotiations rank slightly above door-to-door milk delivery in terms of currency. Even pitched but mannered congressional discussions are gone.

It is a time for shock and awe, a time for spectacle over substance. Now are the days of ridicule and degradation, accomplished simply by exaggerating the most grotesque aspect of others' ideas while scoffing at the poor reasoning behind them.

The whole purpose and goal of politics has become winning elections. Winning is far more important than the country and, of late, even actually implementing the bulk of a party's platform has been moved to the back of the campaign train.

Certainly, it has not been governing at the forefront.

The Democrats make walking across the street together to go to lunch appear to be a more confused and lengthy procession than Moses and the Jews' 40-year trek through a relatively small area of desert

Meanwhile, the party of small government seems insistent on expanding both the federal government and federal powers. This happened consistently during the eight years of the Bush administration. It has continued under Obama, though some of that is an attempt to save us from the irrational, destructive Bush excesses.

On the state level, it's as if someone has yelled "Olly olly oxen free!," inducing a level of political lunacy rarely seen outside of animated cartoons. Although the powers of the federal government evidently need to be limited, the powers of the states are apparently infinite, allowing state legislators to let their freak flags fly. In many ways, Republicans have left the nitty-gritty of real-world politics behind, offering instead a program, conveyed in stream-of-consciousness rambling, concocted out of and dedicated to a fever-dream vision more concerned with hitting key words than making meaning.

Republicans ran on positives. Based on their longtime advocacy of shrinking government, they assured voters that they understood and would concentrate on job creation. They won on that platform, easily boiled down to a few key issues:

More jobs.

Less government spending.

More jobs.

Once they were elected, however, it was as though they were all infected with the devastating, self-aggrandizing Gods of Comic-Book Villains influenza. This not only causes the loss of all perspective, causing one's vision of the world to become barely even one-dimensional, but also makes one unable to talk in anything but buzz words that lack any real meaning.

Forgetting job creation, they have gone on a wacko campaign to eradicate public employee unions, destroy collective bargaining, and privatize lucrative, successful, state-owned business. In general, I hate phrases like "war on the middle class," and if someone can find a phrase that more effectively ties together all the aspects and consequences of this Republican legislation, I'd love to hear it.

As with the laughing villains from the Golden Age of comic books, these officials have showed precious little interest in creating jobs but have been absolutely mirthful about how they are ignoring promises and pledges as well as key ideological planks at the very core of their party platform.

The legislation they are championing is not to right a wrong or deal with difficult and dicey policy crises.

Instead, it is like turning on a Golden Oldies station, featuring all the political demagoguery hits of the past. There are the anti-union, anti-collective-bargaining, and often violently anti-working-class campaigns of the 1890s. There are the somewhat concurrent post-World War I corruption of the Constitution and the grand, ongoing coronation of the moneyed elite, not only as rulers of industry but also empowered to dictate what they needed done to the federal and state governments. (That so many of them were con artists, corrupt businessmen, and/or thieves just made it more fun.) Finally, starting in the early Twenties with the Teapot Dome scandal, there was the ever more blurred line between some kinds of government and criminality.

Currently, whereas all the old themes are still there, today's deadly political style finds conservative Republican state governors granting themselves unprecedented powers – far beyond those of the precedents set by previous governors, based in the Constitution, or dictated by law.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has been ignoring specific rulings by the courts, as his gang is busy implementing its union-busting legislation. A newly proposed bill in Michigan would allow Gov. Rick Snyder to completely take over cities he regards as failing, fire their elected officials, and even disincorporate them. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is planning to privatize liquor stores, a very profitable business run exclusively by the state. Kasich plans to create a new private entity, JobsOhio, and sell it to all the liquor stores at a below-market price. The best part is that Kasich is head of JobsOhio.

The new Republican style of government lacks ideological consistency, is not economically sound, but is divisive to an extreme. There is nothing noble or difficult being addressed here; ignoring massive, complex problems facing the federal and state governments, their actions are about enriching their friends and themselves while disenfranchising their enemies in the most petty and vindictive of ways.

Clearly, current Republican values and ideas are not conservative, emanating from this country's past, nor are they based in a more vigilant adherence to the Constitution. Sadly, they are clearly not motivated by what is best for the country. Instead, their once long-held ideological principles are being tailored on an almost daily basis to be compatible with the transfer of wealth from the government and working classes, specifically and contemptuously ignoring the Constitution, all in the service of the most partisan of goals.

More to come: Why, even if you hate unions, you should be shocked and deeply paranoid about the current, unified effort to destroy collective bargaining.