HISSY FIT REPUBLICANS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/24/09)

Republicans are currently having a hissy fit, posturing that they won't take money from the stimulus bill for their states because they don't like the bill philosophically. Apparently, they want to punish the citizens of their states by refusing funds that might help the same citizens. It's like losing an argument with a spouse and then kicking the cat.

The definition of hissy fit is the same as that for a tantrum, "an emotional outburst of ill humor or a fit of bad temper wherein the higher brain functions are unable to stop the emotional expression of the lower (emotional and physical) brain functions."

Most of the funds the Republicans believe they cannot accept on ideological grounds are funds for such things as unemployment benefits and foreclosures, that is, funds that would directly help people. Their higher brain functions haven't yet calibrated the correlation between votes and helping the unemployed and the foreclosed, like they can vote.

While they don't mind welfare for corporations, as in bank bailouts, they seem to have a hard time with people. Their higher brain functions are seemingly malfunctioning right now as they seek to define themselves. Sen. Mitch McConnell has claimed that the Senate is the best forum as an "incubator of ideas" for this redefinition. Good luck.

One sure mark of a hissy fit is when the higher brain functions can no longer control the lower brain functions of defiance and resistance to reason. Neither is useful in redefinition. The prospects are bleak.

ADDICTIVE REPUBLICANS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/13/09)

While interning at Neuro-psychiatric Institute at UCLA's Medical School, I learned that people who've been addicted to narcotics stop maturing during the time of their addiction. If they are addicted from age 18 to 25, at 25, they will likely have the emotional and cognitive development of an 18 year old. It is as though they have been "out of it" for 7 years.

So it is with the Republicans, only it's been longer than 7 years. I count them going back to Herbert Hoover in 1932. That's 76 years, six years older than I am. I've moved along, often times grudgingly, but I got the idea that the times have changed. Of course, I wasn't addicted during those years to those noxious substances they seem to have been inhaling, snorting, drinking, and injecting.

I recall counseling a woman who heroically reclaimed sobriety at about 45 but kept behaving socially as though she were about 16. We spent many hours together on a speed course to maturity. In contrast, the Republicans are returning to their base, unaware that one cannot go home again because home is no longer there. That's one of the poignant lessons of maturity.

Not much can be done for them, other than prayer. Perhaps, their Fundamentalists colleagues can arrange a divine intervention, but I fear would come off more as a deus ex machina than a damascene conversion. They just don't want to catch up, preferring the addictive stupor of "easy speeches that comfort cruel men."

SLOW LEARNERS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.

The Republicans are slow learners, cherishing their own past mistakes. Not only are they slow learners, they're also look like a gang of cranky old men and women, scowling, pinched, and bitter, fearing that life has passed them by.

Indeed, life has passed them by, at least American political life. While members of Congress, both representatives and senators, don't reflect the ethnic riches of American life, the Republicans have the ethnic cast of about 1850. Along with their ethnic limitations, they have ceased to represent the wide spectrum of American economic interests, having sold themselves out to the corporate-think of Wall Street, big oil, big insurance, and big banks.

Having become a regional Southern party with a few mountain outposts, they are quite willing to let Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania sink into economic and industrial decay. In their zeal to favor the rich, they favor reduced wages and corporate welfare.

In addition to these self-imposed limitations, they have now come out squarely against education, gutting educational funding both statewide and in Washington, becoming the party of ignorance. Mean-spirited, they love to slash programs that educate and offer health care to the poor and needy.

The Republicans aren't for anything at all. The phrase "the opposition party" in their hands is now "the obstruction party." As the party of obstruction, they are facing the question of their slow death. There may be a death watch for Republicans in Phoenix and Washington.

As the phrase goes, "they just don't get it."