Open letter to Rubio and Cruz

Dear Senators Rubio and Cruz,

        I acknowledge with a modicum of  appreciation your recent comments regarding the appalling and grossly inappropriate comments of your fellow candidate wannabee, Donald Trump. If, however,  yourselves had been as concerned about civility during the past years, it might be easier to stomach your newly found sense of decorum. Senator Rubio, today you whined,  "... every society must be governed by rules of discourse. Once you lose the rules of discourse, you lose the discourse.”  Where was all this concern for respect and decorum when you, Cruz and all the Tea Partiers were leading cheers while some of the more Neanderthal of your constituents were subjecting  Mr. Obama to some of the most despicable public barbs ever thrown at a seated President?

        Where  were the pleas for civility then? When people, including Mr. Trump were broadcasting blatant lies regarding his religion, his birth and his character,  for the last 7 years, where was your indignation?  When did you ever chide Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or the scores of other persons and outlets who performed semi-daily character assassinations?  

     A keystone of your attacks has been to accuse the President of trying to "change America."  And? Apparently  you and your cohort believe we are perfect and nothing could be better. Your sense of oblivion is reminiscent of Dr. Pangloss in  "Candide."  If you've never read Voltaire's masterpiece, let me bring you up to speed: Dr. Pangloss,  Candide's  mentor, begins as a professor of "métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie"  and self-proclaimed optimist, who repeatedly avers that things are as good as can be expected and will always work out for the best. Like the Tea Party adherents, he seems to believe that the situation, as is, constitutes the best of all possible worlds for everyone. The good doctor gets  enough reality therapy during the course of Candide's  adventures to realize the folly of his position.

        Tea Party's resistance to change and violent opposition to it has much the same origins. Change threatens the status quo, primary among which in America have been such concepts as institutionalized  white, straight, male, Christian dominance of a society which, to an increasing degree is moving away from those stereotypes. That change is simply that, change. It, in truth, threatens absolutely no one, but it threatens the very fabric of society in the hate rhetoric  stoked psyches  of the Bubbas and Bubbettes of the Tea party.

        Loss of power is scary to some, to others it is anger inducing. The tragedy that is the Tea Party reflects yet another aspect of this anger, that being that for the lower middle and lower class whites which flock to it, it purports to hold out the hope that they might retain the one thing which consoles them in otherwise mundane lives - the fact that as long as they can feel superior to others  based on the traditional bases of racial, gender and ethnic dominance, they are still not on the bottom rung of the social ladder.

        Tea Party leaders, fully aware of this  well of bigotry driven anger, play their retrograde constituencies  like a Stradivarius.  Probably the only thing Tea Party leaders have in common with the rank and file is religious zealotry,  but it is the hook on which they reel in their supporters. Fueling the flames of lower middle class white America by appeals to their Xenophobia, racial hatred and homophobia has been the official  sport of the Far Right  since the Reagan years. 

      So please, Cruz, Rubio et. al., look in the mirror. What you see at the Trump rallies has been instilled in all your supporters by all of you and your talking heads for years and you share that blame.