Now that the roiling suspense of the presidential primaries is
far behind us, a hush falls over the country, a hush which says,
“Can we just get to November already and elect one of these
epsilons so we don’t have to see them both on TV at the same
time anymore?”
I figured this interim would be the perfect time to warn you
about a philosophy you may have heard a little about already, but
which will be hammered into your head like a railroad spike as the
election approaches. I’m talking about “compassionate
conservatism,” the greatest oxymoronic suppository ever
forced on the American public.
“Compassionate conservatism” has been the watchword
of George W. Bush (the “W” stands for weasel), a man
whose only qualifications seem to be that he’s been the
governor of a polluted, uneducated desert for about two weeks, and
that his daddy was a one-termer. And much like the raccoon
rummaging through your garbage, he seems to think this little black
mask will make him appear cuter and cuddlier to the voters.
Before you slam me on those stats, know that Houston is the
single most polluted city in the United States, and Texas is ranked
50th in education.
Conservatives are trying desperately to show a compassionate
side they have proven they don’t have. This is why they tout
themselves as the party of Lincoln, who incidentally was the last
Republican to lift a finger to help African American people.
There’s a reason why an overwhelming percentage of minorities
vote Democratic. They’ve seen the Republican track record.
Who shows up to a black Republican meeting? Alan Keyes, and two
guys who wandered into the room by accident. In order to compensate
for this, GW has wowed the Latino community by showing them he can
speak Spanish. Ooh! Aahh!
This is also part and parcel of the conservatives’
unwillingness to pass laws that would allow more immigrants into
this country. “America for Americans!” they shout. I
guess that stuff about “give me your poor, your tired, your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free” was just something
flowery to put on a statue. “We don’t want those people
taking American jobs,” they cry. Don’t be ridiculous.
They want them doing American jobs. We set up factories in
developing countries all the time. Big business (the
conservative’s favorite bedmate) wants them doing American
jobs; they just don’t want to have to pay them American
wages.
But far worse than the conservatives’ record with
minorities is their record with the poor. Comic Relief actually
raised more money for the homeless than the Reagan and Bush
administrations combined. Republicans seem quick to accuse homeless
people, screaming, “Why don’t you just get a
job?” Yeah, sure. Apparently there’s a ton of openings
available for “dingy schizophrenic,” and they’ve
just been too dang lazy to fill out the applications.
Compassionate conservatives will argue their policy is one of
“give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him how to
fish and feed him for life.” Fine, but if you don’t
feed him something while you’re giving him the fishing
lessons he’d be better off eating the pole.
It would be nice if we could give them some form of welfare,
though thanks to the cry of conservatives, that’s been cut a
lot too. They put the blame on so-called “welfare
junkies,” convenient scapegoats who comprise less than five
percent of welfare recipients. Most of them are off the dole in
under two years. Rush Limbaugh was on it for three. It’s
surprising Republicans rail against “government
charity” so often considering they’re backed by
organizations like the Christian Coalition.
There might be a slight incentive to get off welfare if minimum
wage paid more, but thanks to conservatives in bed with big
business, that almost never happens. Just for reference, welfare
pays about $16,000 a year; minimum wage is about $13,000 (www.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/MinimumWage-2000).
You would think giving money to help the poor would be the
Christian thing to do. Of course neither the Republicans nor the
Christian Coalition would do something that compassionate.
They’re too busy fighting more important battles, like
posting the Ten Commandments at high school football games.
Oh Lord, our father, please bless this pigskin we are about to
possess by permanently disfiguring our opposition. Give us the
strength to bust their ass wide open. Amen.
So we’ve established that conservatives aren’t
compassionate towards foreigners, minorities and the poor. Who does
that leave? Why rich, white people of course! If there’s one
thing we need in America, it’s better wealth care. I mean, we
couldn’t tax the rich. How could a man who earns $5 million a
year survive on four? He’d have to live with only a medium
sized pool!
The justification for this is to encourage big business. We can
scream about human rights in China “˜til we’re blue in
the face, but we won’t do anything to shut down the
sweatshops. Nor will conservatives do anything to stop big business
from poisoning the environment. Global warming is a myth, they
proclaim. I guess it’s easy not to notice the freakish
weather and violent temperature changes of the last several years
when your head is up your ass at a constant 98.6 degrees.
To sum it all up, let me give you the parable of Phil. Phil is a
middle-class guy working for a corporation which downsizes him so
the CEO can keep his beach house. They downsize Phil because
he’s been with the company for 25 years and thus has a higher
salary. Since he’s 50, no one will hire him because of
potential health problems. He can’t get welfare because
it’s been cut. Meanwhile, he’s still getting the
bejeezus taxed out of him. His daughter, going to a school that,
thanks to conservatives, is grotesquely under-funded, gets
pregnant.
Conservatives have taken away the birth control from her high
school, cut her sex-ed, and denied her an abortion. So she and Phil
are stuck for cash. Of course they can’t start their own
business because the already-existing ones are too powerful and
crush their competition instantly. So they wind up homeless, where
of course no shelters have been built. Thankfully, there’s
always prison. See any compassion anywhere down the line?
But don’t think I don’t have any thunder left for
the liberals. Where is their compassion in all of this? The
“˜90s were supposed to promise a resurgence of liberalism and
the compassion that goes along with that ideology. What ended up
happening was that liberals went on a quest for the innocuous. Must
be politically correct. Everyone’s always right. Don’t
say anything not nice.
What happened to the liberals of the “˜70s? We’ve
ended up with a bunch of people who are conservative about their
liberalism. Saying “Jeepers, that’s swell!” about
everyone’s beliefs is not an instrument of social change. If
anything, it’s just what conservatism is about: status quo.
Compassion must be exercised, not theorized.
So folks, this fall you’ve got a choice between
conservative liberalism or compassionate fascism. Perhaps Oingo
Boingo said it best: “Let’s talk of family values while
we sit and watch the slaughter/ Hypothetical abortions on imaginary
daughters/ The white folks think they’re at the top, as any
proud white male/ A million years of evolution, we get Danny
Quayle.”