John F. Kennedy once remarked that his father told him that all businessmen are sons of bitches. A reporter reminded Kennedy that his father was a himself businessman, to which JFK replied, "Well, then, he should know what he's talking about."
Republicans (GOP) are the party of sons (and daughters) of bitches. Since its inception, the GOP's agenda has been to plunder society on behalf of the fat cats who created it, by pandering to the greed, fear and bigotry of the masses and by sabotaging the government, whose purpose is to protect society from predators. Though right-wing demagogues have convinced NASCAR America of the opposite, the nation prospers under Democrats, while the GOP brings ruin to all but its own, from Grant to Hayes to Harding/Coolidge/Hoover to Bush.
The irony of the GOP's claim to the moral and political high ground was brought home to me in a mundane way today. I needed a new dishwasher in December. I went to the Sears Website and found a model, but decided to defer the purchase until January, the sale month. Sure enough, today Sears is offering "15% off Appliances." I went to the model I had seen in December, for $480 including rebate, and found the new, "discounted" price had been raised to $518.49 and no rebate.
People are confronted by this kind of deception and chiseling every day. And yet for them, there seems to be a disconnect between their being played for suckers and the party who plays them. The GOP knows how to push the boobocracy's buttons, of greed, fear and bigotry, phantoms which effectively obscure the very real abuses which the GOP inflicts upon its prey.
There's a reason for this absurdity, an answer to What's the matter with Kansas. Quite simply, the GOP, like the class which owns it, is well-aware of the stupidity of the average Joe and cynically exploits it to make Joe believe black is white and up is down. Orwell's doublespeak was never so well-employed, when Ronald Reagan proclaimed, in 1984, that Orwell's 1984 had failed to materialize, when in fact, Regan and his GOP had brought this nation to a permanent 1984 state, where society has become a mindless mob.
Theft and deceit are the basis of business. John Calvin said that business is God's providence, enabling men to pillage one another without resort to violence, as it was before business and still is in the kleptocracies of sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia. It is not a coincidence that Calvinism/Presbyterianism remains the religion of businessmen (Ronald Reagan and his idol Calvin Coolidge, for example).
It's true that business, or capitalism, has had a civilizing influence on the world. As with replacing war with diplomacy, replacing violence with mendacity -- replacing robbery with guile, in terms of human lives, has been a worthy trade-off. But before we get too sanctimonious about the pursuit of wealth, which we have come to equate with the pursuit of happiness, let us remember, in the New Year, that business is not a virtue but the lesser of evils.
