Ladies and gentlemen, meet the 2012 Republican candidate for president: Mr. Handsome. Or he will be, if he can stay out of the sex scandal business.
But first, psychology class.
Dr. Wilhelm Reich, renowned as Freud’s brightest student, and notably the one who rebelled against him with the most precision, said that politics was the very pinnacle of neurosis.
We have options for understanding the current state of politics, other than psychoanalytic. We can look at the election of Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate as a backlash against the failings of the Democrats, and Obama’s seeming failure to live up to his campaign promises. Then again, Brown campaigned with a promise to be the 41st vote against health care reform in the minority rules Senate (where you need 60 votes to get anything done). So the public is pissed off that Obama and the Dems aren’t doing enough; and the answer is to scramble the little that they have got done; which sounds more terrible twos than adolescent. The only reason I buy that analysis is the chart — which I’ll come to in a moment.
Let’s get used to the fact that the Cornballs have stolen the concept of progressivism from the Democrats and the Independents and for that matter from Abbey Hoffman and Noam Chomsky. That’s the way things go. Hippie, punk, nerd, goth, heroin addict and the American flag all find their way to the same Madison Ave.