Imma gonna rant here, so get your tl;dr gifs ready.
This whole faux-outrage over the Benghazi attack perfectly encapsulates why I gave up on the Republican party. After 9/11, it would have been easy for Democrats to jump atop the rubble and condemn Bush for allowing such a terrible attack on American. For not knowing that something this big was coming, for not putting more effort on fighting terrorism in his first 9 months, for not doing MORE. But they didn't. In part, obviously, because they didn't feel like committing political suicide, but also because I think they respected the President's right to respond to this crisis, with both words and actions. They let the President be the President.
Fast-forward to 2012 and you have the Republican candidate for President harping on the current president in the zero hour. It's been followed up by a conga line of outrage and consternation that Obama didn't use the right verbiage or that maybe he actually sympathizes with the killers and doesn't want this latest incident to turn the public eye on the campaign to slaughter Americans abroad [no one's said this, of course, but does anyone doubt the implication is there?]. Fox News and Tea Party doesn't respect the President and they don't respect his right as the duly-elected leader of this nation of respond to incidents like this. That's hardly anything new, as this has been their modus operandi for 5 years. They have the nerve, after two years of publicly-declared obstructionism, to pin the problems of the nation, the slow speed of the recovery, on the President and his party, who "just aren't willing to cooperate."
It's not enough to disagree with the President, it's not enough enough to dislike him. They hate him, hate him all the way down to his guts. He's a terrorist-sympathizer, an unworthy foreigner, a disgusting Communist, who doesn't understand what's so great about America and is doing his hardest to push through bills that will tear this country apart for his own amusement. He's not just wrong, he's EVIL. Mitt Romney's first day will included repealing every single piece of major legislation that Obama passed over 4 years in office. They want him gone yesterday, they want every shred of his existence expunged from history as soon as possible. They want everything he did to be either swept away or poisoned. And it makes me sick. I'm tired of hearing this on TV, I'm tired of my family spouting these lines they heard from Rush, Hannity, and whatever blubbering gob of flesh the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch are pushing in their faces and their ears in as many venues as possible every second of every day.
In a better world, responsible mainstream media would point this out for what it is: a barely-concealed propaganda campaign to use whatever line of attack, whatever outright lie or misconception of the truth to undermine the President and make you, too, hate his guts just as much as they do. It's painful to watch this actually WORK, especially when a quick search on Google shreds these lines to bits with ease. But they won't do that, because the popularity and power of Fox News and right-wing media has forced an absurd "fair and balanced" approached to every story. You can't call out lies and hypocrisy from one individual, it's got to be a problem with both sides. Every story has to be couched in illogical mealy-mouthed PR-speak. "Some say this, but other say that." And it makes me sick. I hear it every single day, those little lies that dig under the skin of some members of my family and propagate the hate against the President. It does no good to bring up those easily found facts, because then I just become the Democratic mouth piece who doesn't understand what's wrong with the President and why he ought to go away as quickly as possible. It doesn't work, it never will, and it makes me sick.
I hate the Republican party, the Tea Party, Fox News and right-wing radio for what they've reduced members of my family to. And I won't vote for a Republican in a national election until it finally stops. But it won't stop, and thinking that quietly weathering the 2012 storm, will finally put an end to this madness is foolish. It won't stop, it'll only be that much more shrill the next time. Think 2012 is bad? Just wait until 2014 if the Democrats win in Congress or the Presidency. I want it to go away, I desperately want a return to at least some manner of decorum, at the very least, but I don't really believe it will. So having said that, I'm stocking up on Pepto Bismol, because it looks like I'm going to be feeling sick for quite a while.
