Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Good God. Another bizarre and depressing week in America, one which furthered the undeniable fact that the Republican Party has come to be the party of intolerance, ignorance, vitriol, and hypocrisy. Seven more days you and I will never get back, that began with the attempted Constitutional ghettoization of gay and lesbian Americans, and ended with non-stop debate over the "merits" of a shrill harridan's irresponsible slander of the first-hand victims of 9/11.

Both, of course, being blindly defended by the knowingly disingenuous - but dangerously influential - mouthpieces of the hysterical Right, and served up respectfully to the people by our corporate media machine as legitimate "news," without reproach or condemnation. And all this, while the issues of genuine importance to our very survival as a democracy go unattended, undoubtedly because the "ruling party" has simply run out of ideas on how to fix what they've broken.

It just makes me sick.

So sick in fact, that I'm at a loss for words. With six years of repeatedly-proven incompetence, cronyism, blood-lust, misdirection, deceit, and lawbreaking by BushCo in plain sight, this week's open bigotry and callousness are merely the icing on the cake. I can no longer find even an intellectual, devil's advocate explanation for the supporters of the Conservative Party - if these latest examples from two party icons are an accurate indication of the GOP's true character.

Nor can I stomach the continuing timidity of Democratic leaders and the supposedly "objective" media in their woefully inadequate denunciation of... well, stupidity for starters. Time for the gloves to come off, boys and girls. Time to stop using respectful phrases like "the controversial pundit sparked an intense debate over the impunity of survivors" and simply shout to the heavens, "the talentless shrew should be publicly flogged."

Time to out the Republican Party and even its casual supporters for what they've really come to represent, without our usual Liberal political correctness and sensitivity.

Theirs is a governing philosophy based on lies. On misinformation. On bait and switch. Divide and conquer. A conglomerate of feudal lords whose allegiance is to the wealthiest Americans, and whose goal is to maintain, at all costs, the status quo of the military industrial complex. A ruling class bereft of any idea other than cowboy bluster and military invasion.

It is a party whose members spread the most vicious rumors and unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks - while loudly decrying the "incivility" of Progressives. A party that trumpets "Christian family values" - while advocating torture, extraordinary rendition, and the occasional use of chemical weapons on civilian populations. A party that dares to use the phrase "spreadin' democracy" - while at home it attempts to legislate homophobia, suppress women's reproductive rights, resist investigations into election fraud, produce and distribute propaganda in the guise of "objective reporting," and illegally spy on its own citizenry.

This is a group that wraps itself in the American flag and labels its critics "traitors" - while consistently ignoring federal laws it deems "too cumbersome" to follow, and selectively dismantling the Constitutional protections that true patriots have died defending. A group that insulates itself within a circle of uniquely inept and downright destructive political cronies, staffing vital government agencies with unqualified hacks and rewarding failure with promotions and medals - all the while fostering an attitude in which genuine excellence and scientific discovery and independent thought are derided as "elitist" or "Godless."

The GOP of the 21st Century has so twisted the magnificent messages and promises of religion as to make faith itself synonymous with bigotry, intolerance, jingoism, indistinguishable from the radical Muslim fundamentalism it professes to deplore. It has followed a steady course of action that has fattened the coffers of our wealthiest corporations and individuals, all at the expense of an unemployed and uninsured American middle class whose real-life concerns don't appear on the Congressional agenda.

You know, I can't even go on with this endless litany of repulsive - and un-American - characteristics that the word "Conservative" has come to represent. And I haven't even gotten to Iraq or the deficit or lobbyists or the poor or the environment or... I just don't want to waste any more breath detailing for the umpteenth time what should be obvious to every man, woman, and child from sea to shining sea.

So that's it for me. No more trying to patiently convince Conservatives to take a different tack. No more appealing to the common human values I'd assumed we all shared. We don't share a f#%king thing. The silent acquiescence of even the "moderate" Right to this week's Bush & Coulter Show is the final confirmation that the entire lot isn't even of the same species as the Liberal population.

Republicans be damned. I can only assume that anyone adopting that label at least tacitly approves of a governing philosophy that is the single greatest demonstrable threat to the very foundation of our way of life. And that I simply can't abide.

To feel any other way would be simply un-American.