Old Con

There has been endless debate about the Neocon-Theocratic alliance and it's rise and fall, mostly the discussion centers around who is using who or whether the power bloc in this administration is truely christian in it's belief system or whether there is a belief system at all. Does the Shrub pray or prey, it is probably irrelevant. I think as we move into the end game here things will become more evident, not about the relationship between these two competing philosophies - and they are competing - but about each competing element and how they came to such prominence. Neither side will ever admit that they were used by the other so the infrastructure will never be exposed as perhaps most 'progressive' Americans would like, the secret meetings, in smoke and incense filled rooms, and the agenda discussed therein will remain just that - secret. That a deal was done and 'wish-lists' exchanged there is no doubt, I think SCOTUS and unhinged, unquestioning loyalty to dear leader were the lynchpins to whatever other agreements were thrashed out between the two and if the christian right lost out on many of their cherished theological misinterpretations - quickly abandoned by the neocons - they at least have SCOTUS as a lasting legacy to hang their mitres on and it was a huge victory that I remain furious and discouraged with. The neocon agenda, meanwhile, reached a precipitous foreign policy zenith with the conquering of a third rate power - Iraq, fed in part by a wave of unquestioning patriotic myopia on behalf of the American electorate and a coordinated coup d'etat of a spineless fourth estate initiated and sustained by the bretheren.

As most on the left watch and comment, more astutely than I ever can on, the "slow-motion car crash" that is this administration, the neocon/theocratic blastwall continues to provide political and amoral cover for this administrations incompetence and deceit, even as both entities suffer from perceived hypocracy and irrelevance. Am I sure about this decline? What's on the agenda for the next 19 months, what policies is this administration formulating, in what direction do they want to steer the ship of state? Anyone on the right talking about the next great policy initiative? - I didn't think so! They are still defending NCLB, Tax Cuts for the Rich, the Clean Air Act, Medicaid Reform, in fact every piece of legislation this administration brought forth and had rubberstamped by those idiotic congresses is under siege or under review, under funded or underground in the case of Social Security Reform. And, Iraq and foreign policy in general, the President can stamp his feet and mouth absurdities until the cows come home, the days of preemptive war and never-ending conflicts with zero accountability are over and rightly so.

Both christo-fascism and neocon ideologies have one fatal flaw - inflexibility. They demand that all the laws of society, religion even science conform to their rigid world view regardless of the improbability of that ever really happening and like an unbending piece of metal plunged into liquid hydrogen once exposed and tapped a few times on a solid surface the whole thing shatters. This society and many others like us have thrived on the ability of its people and government to absorb, adapt to and embrace potentially disastrous events, they become moments that define us, change us and mold us but, this requires elasticity of thought not rigid conformity. Catastrophe and contentment should be shared by all of us, no body owns the exclusive rights to either.