(2011-07-19) Werther Republican Death Cult

Werther frames the Republican Party as a Death Cult.

*The Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets (the rest of their platform is essentially window dressing):

1. They solely and exclusively care about their rich contributors... 2. They worship at the altar of Mars (Pure War)... 3. Gimme that old time religion. Pandering to religious nuts is a full-time vocation in the GOP... It is our view that the rise of politicized religious Fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of empiricism (Pragmatism) in America) is the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes — at least in the minds of followers — all three of the GOP's main tenets.*

But while the rank and file of the faithful believe, deludedly, in whatever nonsense they believe, their tactical allies and paymasters may be playing a more cynical game. Behind a lot of crazy movements in history there were rational actors who made money off them (Krupp and I.G. Farben vis-à-vis the Nazis, etc.). We may be wrong to blithely assume the "business community" is unanimously supporting an increase in the Debt Ceiling. There could be vultures who are pushing a default so they can buy up the pieces at a fire-sale price. What else could explain all the money the Koch Brothers are pumping into Michele Bachmann's campaign The sleep of reason breeds monsters.