Our family has a little insider question when it comes to nearly any issue, "Is this a thing what matters, or a thing what don't?" When it comes to the Republican primary vote I can't help but think this is a thing what don't.
The person currently winning is the person who currently has enough money to savage his or her opponent in the media. No one bothers with even a pretence of honesty; policy doesn't matter and personalities are pre-packaged and delivered in accordance with the latest poles. Is there any thinking person who believes that the eventual Republican Candidate will be talking like a birther or a T-party fanatic during the general election? Will they be calling to force gay people back into the closet or be touting their religion as the only true religion? Be they opportunists (for claiming to believe those things during the primary campaign) or hypocrites (for forgetting those claims in a national campaign) is also a thing what don't matter. At best either one makes them miserable excuses for human beings.
The national election will be pretty much the Republican primary writ large. My guess is most of the money will flow into the Obama campaign. The Republican candidates are so bat-shit crazy they will eventually bite the hands that feed them. For example a quick Internet search suggests the US birth control market is worth something like $900,000,000. Are pharmaceutical companies really going to get behind Rick Santorum and his "no birth control" policy? Will giant agricultural conglomerates fund a candidate who vows to drive the near-slave-labor that picks their crops back across the boarder?
Though the T-party / right wing / religious fanatics currently make both their headlines and their living wailing about the end of civilization should Obama remain in the White House, in reality he has remained a good servant Wall Street and the military. The stench of huge amounts of money (see that as pure corruption) will taint both the Republican attempt to move into the White House and the Democrat's defense of same, but in the end Obama will have the most money to spend and win rather handily. But his next Inauguration will be a thing what don't matter, just like his last one.
At Obama's first Inauguration there was some slight hope that he actually would be something different, set a new course for the country, end arbitrary wars, support civil rights, help us become a country of laws once again, maybe even reign in the military just a tiny little bit. It was a slight hope soon proved completely illusionary. With the full backing of a House and Senate both dominated by the Democratic party he didn't do much of anything at all. Two years later the Republicans made political hay of stagnation and then elevated doing nothing to a high art form. No matter who wins in November it is likely doing nothing while making a lot of noise will be the real agenda.
Most of the country is rightly convinced that, with Obama in command, the USA is on the wrong course and in decline. But we are on the same wrong course with Bush the Later in the lead, and Clinton, Bush the Former, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, and probably Eisenhower. Regardless of which party holds what seats in Washington, corporations and the military rule, money is diverted to power, and the needs of the many are sacrificed to the wants of the few. Damned near 60 years - we have been on this wrong course a full generation. There is little hope it can or will change.
Corruption is endemic to any empire. That is, in a way, the definition of an empire. The few, using brute force and with only their own self-interests in mind, taking advantage of the many. As empire fades that foundational corruption only gets worse. You can hear a lot of political debate about things what don't matter, but one thing that garners very little debate is that the US political system is rife with corruption. Even the corrupt (say a wanna-be POTUS who shelters income in off-shore tax havens) decry the corruption of some Super-pacs. (Not their own of course, but the Super-pacs of others.) I'm old enough to remember when Newt Gingrich was last in power. Watching Newt complain about corruption in politics is to have a front row seat in the Theater of the Absurd.
The decline of the empire of the US is something what matters. If it ends up being the beginning of the decline of any empire in the world, it will be a good thing what matters. If it is simply one corrupted empire giving way to an equally (or even more corrupt) empire, then it will be a bad thing what matters. I have a feint hope that it will be a good thing what matters. Empire, in a world where information is almost universally available and national boarders increasingly impossible to defend, seems a near impossible task. The fall of the British, German and Soviet empires is in the recent past. The fall of the US empire may be unfolding before our very eyes. One can hope that the Chinese fall short of becoming an empire, and that the nascent empires of religion will also fail. (As several have in the more distant past.) Should history look back on the early 21st century as being that of the fall of empire in the world, that would be thing what really, really matters...and matters in the best possible way.
Either way, in things what matter and things what don't, the Republican primary is a thing what don't.
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