Democracy Is A Harsh Mistress

Bill Maher’s excellent op-ed in Friday’s Los Angles Times reminds me of the Robert Heinlein novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and that phrase’s immortilization in song by Jimmy Webb.

Due to the low surface gravity of the Moon, anyone (including transportees from Earth) who stays longer than a few months undergoes (according to one of the characters) “irreversible physiological changes and can never again live in comfort and health in a gravitational field six times greater than that to which their bodies have become adjusted.”

This seems to be the malady suffered by today’s GOP.  They are having trouble surviving in the new earth, and they’re experiencing those “irreversible psychological changes.”  They throw teabag parties to protest higher taxes, which is the opposite of what is really happening.  And the list of their concerns makes them seem as though they are grasping for air.

…here’s the list of Republican obsessions since President Obama took office: that his birth certificate is supposedly fake, he uses a teleprompter too much, he bowed to a Saudi guy, Europeans like him, he gives inappropriate gifts, his wife shamelessly flaunts her upper arms, and he shook hands with Hugo Chavez and slipped him the nuclear launch codes.

Do these sound like the concerns of a healthy, vibrant political party?

It’s sad what’s happened to the Republicans. They used to be the party of the big tent; now they’re the party of the sideshow attraction, a socially awkward group of mostly white people who speak a language only they understand. Like Trekkies, but paranoid.

Just like the moon, democracy can be a harsh mistress, especially when you’re used to being her beneficiary.  But when you’ve lost the battle, how you handle the darkness says much about you.

And then the darkness fell
And the moon’s a harsh mistress
It’s so hard to love her well

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.