NYT, Herbert: Rambo and the GOP; "Brute force as the favored solution to difficult problems"

[DeepModem Mom]

Rambo and the G.O.P.
By BOB HERBERT
Published: December 1, 2007

I don’t know if children should be allowed to watch the Republican presidential debates. There’s so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage the nation in conflict: Let’s continue the war in Iraq. Let’s show them what we’re made of in Iran. Let’s round up those immigrants and ship ’em back where they came from.

It’s like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video game, with no regard for the consequences. Rudy, the crime-fighter and terror maven, says he’s tougher than Mitt, who actually had illegals working on his property. Mitt begs to differ and says he’d like to double the size of the Guantánamo prison....

We’ve got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We’re in the midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions. We’ve got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the city of New Orleans is still on its knees. So you tune in to the G.O.P. debate on CNN to see what’s what, and they’re talking about — guns....

I’ll concede that it’s difficult to have a thoughtful exploration of complex issues in a format that allows a candidate just 90 seconds to answer. But the Republicans, far more than the Democrats, go out of their way to present themselves as 21st-century Rambos — a childish, cartoonish posture that solves nothing and can easily lead to tragedy in a world that is in fact quite dangerous....

***

The incessant drumbeat of brute force as the favored solution to difficult problems serves to normalize state violence to the point where we hardly notice it....The Republican Party has won a lot of elections in recent years. So maybe this crop of candidates knows something about American voters that many us would rather not acknowledge, that too many of them are small-minded, fearful, bigoted and too shallow to recognize policies that are against their own — and their country’s — best interests. Or maybe that’s not the case at all. Maybe this lot of Republican presidential candidates is misreading the public, and placing its bet on the wrong side of history....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp

[thepurpose]

1. No regard for the consequences. Their kids lives aren't on the line and never will be.