Patriotism: Property of the GOP

I had to laugh yesterday when I was 'reminded' that the REAL patriots in this nation belong to the GOP. It was a dopey reply on the WTAM Radio message board run by former Toledo radio jock Bob Frantz. Apparently the GOP knows about and is the exclusive home for American patriots.

Funny stuff, always funny on the right-wing. Slate.com posted an article about GOP patriotism today called, Wave the Flag: How the Republicans Claimed the "Patriotism" Mantle in Presidential Politics.

On the WTAM message board, hucksters from the GOP purport to be the real, true Americans and call those to the left of them cowards, un-American, and other sordid names. They love their jingoistic phrases as well. Today one of them told me that 'I love our enemies more than this country.' I'm not patriotic and 'I love to dance on the graves of our soldiers.'

Here's the odd thing: these jingoistic phrases along with 'We're bring'n freedom to Iraq' were used to propagandize the American people just before Shock and Awe on March 20, 2003. That terrible decision by the Bush/Cheney team has led to 4000 dead soldiers and more than 20,000 severely injured military men and women. The Afghanistan War, we read in today's paper, is going badly. One headline read: Outgunned in Afghanistan. How pathetic.

I often point out that the War on Iraq was a war of choice and that it took away our focus on the perpetrators of 9-11, the al Qaeda masterminds, and their allies the Taliban in Afghanistan. That angers some right-wingers. They don't like to be reminded that their man, the Republican George Bush, screwed up badly. As a result, they hide behind their faux patriotic jingoistic phrases and accuse me of not being a real patriot. The fools.

Rather than being real patriots, these people are stooges for the GOP. They proclaim to be such great Americans yet fail to analyze the awful mess that Bush created in Iraq while leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban and al Qaeda. Stooges for the GOP hiding behind the flag, not wanting to see the reality of a bad decision by a group of ideologues surrounding the President.

Patriotism- the last refuge of a scoundrel.