a damaged brand

what would it take for me
i might ask

to cause me to vote for a republican

no

i'm not considering it right now

rather i'm thinking about just why it's so

unthinkable

and maybe that's the key

thinking

i don't mean to say that republicans
and their voters
don't think

but listening to them
to what they say
and moreover what they don't say

it's clear that they'd be just as happy if you didn't

think, i mean

it's all gainsaying
all destruction
eliminate this
cut that
vote this down
stop that

tell me what you want to do
i may still disagree with it
as for the few of them who do bother to articulate it
rest assured i do
wholeheartedly

but listening to that porn star scott brown
just drives the point home
bereft of ideas short of a slavish devotion to the status quo
ante

which finally does make it clear to me what would be a start

let's hear a republican
stand up and unequivocally renounce
everything bush and cheney did

wait
let me think

no let's just say all of it

i'll listen to the first republican who's willing to tell me
those guys were a bunch of
condescending patronizing fucktards
who succeeded so well at addressing
facile dipshits with prepackaged code words
catch phrases and human caricatures that they
were able to get away with
shaming my country
and despoiling its citizens

also robbery conspiracy torture war and some other stuff

scott brown is self-evidently not that guy
he's just another fucking tool
with no ideas other than to use a pavlovian response
[who slobbers more voters or the politicians themselves]
to the words
'tax cut' to get elected

they haven't ruined democracy
they've ruined discourse

i'm waiting for an adult
an adult republican
to try to talk to me and convince me they're right
until they take me seriously though

why should i offer them the same courtesy