"The Stepford Wives" tells the chilling story of once smart, independent women who get abducted and turned into tamed, mindless robots.
I have a theory about a similarly subversive process that turns grown men once capable of independent and reasoned thought into robotic extremists. Call them Stepford Republicans. The nefarious transformation always occurs before the individual gets close to becoming a Republican president or vice president.
Stepford Wives become robotically subservient only to their husbands; they pose no threat to the rest of us. But Stepford Republicans become subservient to right-wing forces of corporatism, war and prejudice. Once converted into mindless ideologues, Stepford Republicans are a threat to us all.
The prototype of a Stepford Republican is PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN. After his apparent abduction and alteration, he became an instrument of corporate power in the White House: union-busting, downsizing, cutting school lunch funding. This is the Reagan many remember: champion of the overdog.
But when Reagan was still a sentient being, he was actually a bleeding-heart advocate for working people. He denounced budget cuts ("millions of children have been deprived of milk once provided through the federal school lunch program") and tax cuts that "benefit the higher income brackets alone." He assailed corporate profiteering, and labeled a top Republican "the banner carrier for Wall Street." He hailed unions and complained that "labor has been handcuffed by the vicious Taft-Hartley law."
In other words, before he was robotized, Ronald Reagan could be a warm, compassionate human being – and I offer a remarkable tape to prove my theory.
Many Americans have long suspected that VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY is an android. What they may not know is that – before being Stepfordized into a neoconservative drone – he was capable of non-ideological thought that would allow him to choose a peace option over war, able to use human reason to figure out why invading Iraq would inevitably lead to "quagmire." This short video clip offers compelling evidence.
Today, MITT ROMNEY is such a robotically rabid spouter of social-conservative dogma that he's won the praise of radio rightists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Offered as evidence of his Stepfordization is this video revealing a once human and tolerant Romney who seemed to care deeply about women's rights and abortion rights, and resisted any connection to the policies of Reagan-Bush. It was this pre-abduction Romney who boasted that he would do more for gay equality than Ted Kennedy.
JOHN MCCAIN was also horrifically rewired toward servile courtship of the Religious Right. Dramatic evidence of McCain's Stepfordization was caught on video: "Before" footage which shows you a strong human speaking bravely against right-wing "agents of intolerance" like Jerry Falwell; "after" footage reveals a lifeless, docile tool of those same forces.
Perhaps you can't accept my theory – despite the powerful taped evidence I offer – that these Republican icons are victims of Stepford-like abduction and transplant.
If so, I'd like to hear an alternative theory as to why these individuals betray their own principles or intellect – why they turn themselves into fawning servants of economic forces or ideologies or social movements they once abhorred.
The blind pursuit of power, you say? I'm simply unwilling to believe that human beings – even top Republicans – are so inherently opportunistic and corrupt.
I'll stick with my abduction theory.
www.jeffcohen.org
Jeff Cohen is the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. He founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.
For years he was an on-air pundit on CNN, (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Well, your theory is as good as others I've heard. Hard to disprove. McCain had a slight program error when he tried to oppose torture, but Bush repaired that anamoly with signing statements so that McCain doesn't seem to care about that anymore. Apparently the Stepford software, or hardware, still seems to be working as designed. But if Republicans have been Stepfordized, the Democrats seem to have caught a pre-Stepfordizing programming virus because they no longer are able to access a program called... "I will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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Mark A. Goldman (81 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 243 comments) on Friday, Feb 1, 2008 at 2:56:33 PM
good for laugh but these politicians are merely yes men when it serves them to sing the praises of a hitler they sing the prises of him.When it serves them call Religeous leaders on the right a bunch of hate wongerers they will do that also. the bottom line is that they can not be trusted to do anything they say.
they are like snakes with forked tongues .
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dave stanley (5 articles, 1 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 286 comments) on Friday, Feb 1, 2008 at 4:46:39 PM
I can understand where power corrupts, but cannot understand
Where power corrupts to the point of waging war based on a lie.
I firmly and whole-heartedly believe this is psychiatric ward material.
Because ordinary people possessing the faculties of empathy, conscience and remorse are simply not capable of waging wars based on lies, cutting back healthcare for children, or for that matter cutting back lunches for schoolkids and waging a nuclear arms race.
Only people lacking remorse or empathy for their victims are capable of such things. Only murderers are capable of violence (physical or not) without regret.
So that is where I depart from the theory above. I have a hard time believing that once sentient human beings are capable of all that---just because of being "purchased". I'll tell you one thing: You couldn't pay me enough trillions to do it. And I'm sure the same is true of every reader here.
Since psychologists et al are not allowed to diagnose without actually seeing a client, it is up to the laypeople to do it.
Anybody agree with me?
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Kathryn Smith (110 articles, 2 quicklinks, 43 diaries, 542 comments [23 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 2, 2008 at 1:19:24 AM
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