The Republicunt (sorry, cheap shot I know, but I just couldn’t resist) government are utterly ruthless, vicious, amoral, torture-loving ‘people’, with rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth hateful media attack dogs like Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly (a – sneer – ‘culture warrior’ who has his scum go through files from abortion clinics to spy on whom they’re giving abortions to, and at what age), Rush Limbaugh (a sick fool who recently mocked Michael J Fox about his Parkinson’s Disease, saying that Fox was putting on his uncontrollable shaking for a pro-stem cell research ad and only had to take his meds to rectify his condition) who will stop at nothing and stoop so low in their rantings about Democrats that you genuinely can’t believe what you are hearing.

It’s disgusting, disgraceful and deeply disturbing and distressing. But that’s the right-wing Christian braindead-end agenda in this country: mind-controlling, hypocritical, deluded, anti-human, asocial, vitriolic, nihilistic, condescending, uncompassionate, manipulative, power-crazed, sociopathic, preachy, holier-than-thou, Book of Revelations-loving… need I go on with the negative adjectives? You get the general idea. I was utterly astounded to learn of the existence of these type of television-and-print hatemongers, and more surprised still to learn that they are actually given a loud media voice to spout their hateful lies and derision.

That is, I was astounded until I read how much of the media in this country is owned by people sympathetic to the pathetic Republicans. People like Rupert Murdoch, whose Grand Old Party-biased Fox News is the only news on view in the White House – I like to refer to it, being completely serious, as Pravda. The Republicans are the party of SUV-driving (and MAN do I hate these disgusting wastes of petrol and space – their military-‘aesthetic’ gas-guzzling look sends a VERY CLEAR MESSAGE about its owner and their view of the world and people with less money than them - SUV’s should all be burned and buried), deer-hunting, football-watching, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching, gay-bashing (witness Simian W Bush’s recent attacks on gay marriage), anti-abortion, foreigner-despising, ethnic-minority-disenfranchising, poor-hating, Jesus-loving voters.

Stereotyped view of them? Surely. But just as stereotypical as their sneering, ranting, insanely angry caricaturing of Democrats as weak, helpless, hopeless ‘Al Quedacrats’ (a recent ‘brilliant’ piece of semantics insult I saw on AOL) whom the phantom shadow somewhere-everywhere-nowhere ‘terrorists’ hope win the government (the ‘war on terror’ – whatever the Hell THAT is – is the only card the Republicans have under their belt now to play to sway voters) so that they can destroy America (or what’s left of it after the bone-picking-clean Republican assault of the last few years) at their leisure.

Republican ranting and raving about ‘liberals’ (a key Pavlovian trigger word with the brainwashed Republican voter base, who, upon hearing the word or hearing a side to the argument different than theirs being articulated, start screaming insanely about liberals to try and push more meek people into silence and submission through pure fear and loathing tactics – vile and evil) is quite incredible – and frightening - to see.

I couldn’t understand it when I first arrived in America, and read a few books – ‘Bush on The Couch’ (frightening), ‘Conservatives Without Conscience’ (frightening), ‘Static’ (frightening)(and okay, they’re not the best book bunch for a balanced overview, but I know which side of the political debate I sit on and am not going to read stuff by, say, serial cat killer – seriously – Republican Congressman Bill Frist to get a load of lies and propaganda)(and yes, every book I listed is propaganda to a greater or lesser degree, I know, but you know what I mean) and the book under discussion here. And I came to a better understanding of why these deluded people rant and rave and rail against anything (boohissspit) ‘liberal’ in this country. And it made for interesting, depressing reading – and depressing knowledge to have.

For decades, the Republicans have been funding think-tanks to work out how best to mould and manipulate malleable minds of mindless sheep American voters, via the media or economically or whatever means they can get their creepy hands on. The end result has been so powerful that, as Lakoff points out in ‘Elephant,’ the Republicans can get voters to vote against their own economic interests time and again. The GOP run on a sort of moral identity and values stance, and get impressionable people to vote for them and their illusory ‘God and flag and country and family and mom’s apple pie’ agenda. Of course, it’s pure flag-hag garbage, but the Republican voters don’t want – or are unable - to hear that.

What I could not believe about these voters is that they believe madmen like Bush deserve to be rich and powerful and at the top of the societal totem pole because, well, they must have worked hard to get there and the voters looking up to them too could be rich and powerful like their esteemed Fuhrer (sorry, president, got carried away there) if they work hard enough. It’s pure delusion, of course, because the old powerlines run strong and deep, and the lower classes aren’t allowed to intrude upon them, but to people raised to believe that they too could be president if they just work hard enough in America…this stuff is pure future-affluence-myth gold. Remember seeing a clip of Bush in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ saying to a super-rich crowd that they were his kind of people: "The haves and the have-mores." And that pretty much sums up his greedy, disgusting, bloated, elitist outlook and agenda.

Republican voters identify with Bush and Cheney and Rice because, well, they want to be them, pure ‘hero’-worship of the most blind, pitiable and disturbing kind, ignoring the many things – love, compassion, sympathy, empathy, dignity, trust, diplomacy, tolerance, respect, and on and on and on – that make up the best part of the human experience. Or at least should make up the best part of the human experience, but in a country where the ultimate ambition of many people is to be rich and get boobjobs and lose weight and buy worthless trinkets and watch dumb splatter movies about good wholesome Americans being cut up by sicko foreigners…the better aspects of human interaction and personality don’t count for a Helluva whole lot. Unfortunately.

In ‘Elephant,’ Lakoff points out something that I have noticed since being here too – that the Democrats need to get some sort of better, more cohesive plan to counter the right-wing autocrats in power, because right now the Republicans have them beat like dogs. Things seem to be getting better, because of dwindling support for Bush because of the war in Iraq – the Republicans’ recent drubbing at the midterms was solid evidence of that, but there is still a long way to go. And these Republicans are always going to be around, screaming and scheming their way into power, so understanding and countering them and their hateful, divisive, derisive, deranged agendas is a very important thing indeed.

In this bestseller book, the author posits two modes of party representation on the American political stage, the ‘strict father’ and the ‘nurturing mother’ parties. Guess which is which. Lakoff points out that Republicans always are on the verbal attack, having honed soundbites down to a find brainwasher art, and this keeps the Democrats on the defensive instead of the offensive. Democrats have not found a way to frame their debate in terms floating voters or Republicans can understand, and linguistics (a field Lakoff is an expert in) is a very important trigger/cudgel for impressionable voter minds.

Look at the book’s title: the minute somebody says this phrase you immediately think of the animal in question, of course. And the government Republicans know this, and have Pavloved hatred and anger and sneering into their voters to get them to do their attack work for them, keeping the country fighting amongst itself while the rich and powerful laugh on it all from high above because they don’t have to live amongst it and have given those less well off somebody to blame (ie liberals or foreigners or gays or whomever) for the state of the country brought about by their own ruinous, world-killing, oil-suckling policies. Quite ingenious - and disgusting too.

And you know, the last five words pretty much sum up contemporary spin-driven politics. Lakoff is an interesting writer, and no doubt the world would rest easier if the Democrats were in power (unless you were a power-junkie Republican Congressman cut off from your government-position power-supply dealer, that is) and they could start repairing the inestimable damage to America and the world in general by Bush and his bleakview blackheart lifehater sociopathic cohorts.

I respect the author for his ideas and ideals and ways and means to frame the political debate in America so that it strengthens the Democrat position. However. The two-party system is an anachronism, and is a form of government long ago run into entropy and corruption beyond repair: it needs a total overhaul. But of course that won’t happen as long as the rich can benefit from it and fill their pockets at the expense of the public they ostensibly ‘represent.’ And the whole fame-and-shame-and-blame-game rolls on and on and on, ad infinitum ad tedium, and things never seem to get any better. And the world just gets more and more screwed up. Politics seems dead now, and people no longer believe in its power to deal with things rationally and fairly anymore, in any country you could mention. So where do we go from here? I don’t know. I only live in the world. And hate to see it ruined by fools without hearts or minds or sanity. But we must like it this way, or things would be different. Wouldn’t they?

Graham Rae is a Scottish scribbler from the cheery charming picture-postcard-perfect post-industrial up-and-coming internationally renowned tourist destination of Falkirk, now resident in the US. He has been writing for as long as he can remember (started at any early age, carving graffiti into womb walls) and am halfway through my first novel (well, third, but the other mishmash misfires don’t count),’ Weekend Warriors.’ He has been writing about film for various electronic and print publications for 18 years now, and you can see a sporadically entertaining eclectic selection of his ramble/rantings at www.filmthreat.com