What are the stakes?

The GOP's recent "These are the Stakes" ad, which we featured in an earlier post (and which the folks at Minitrue have rather nicely improved on) has been justly compared to, and almost certainly deliberately refers to, the infamous LBJ nuclear swipe at Goldwater:



A true marvel of fearmongering, even by modern standards. We ourselves can hardly watch it without urinating. The fact that the GOP ad so blatantly evokes its ancestor indicates a) desperation, surely; b) a certain snarky revenge impulse -- after forty-plus years they at last get their own back; and c) something larger and more ominous, which we will try to analyze.

Note the curious similarity of situation: an incumbent Texan president is busily prosecuting a war whose motives are unclear and which grows steadily in unpopularity. Facing a potential for political upset -- in Johnson's case the presidency itself, in Bush's his much-needed Congress -- the warmongerer-in-chief tries, through the miracle of advertising, to convince the people that the other candidate is the dangerous one to have around. Counterintuitive, yes, but it worked for Johnson. It may yet work for the GOP as well. But why on earth would they wish to invite yet another comparison to Vietnam? Do they really think that America has secretly yearned for a second chance at that? Do we?

Watching the parody clip on Minitrue, one notices how well the shadowy sepia-and-black tones of the commercial fit the Orwell decor around it -- for a moment one could be forgiven for mistaking Bin Laden for Emmanuel Goldstein. The look of the commercial eerily suggests Michael Radford's film version of 1984.

What exactly are the Republicans trying to say? Why are they in power? Why have so many people voted Republican in the last decade? What is it we, as a country, deep in our darkest hearts, actually want?

The first few years of the twenty-first century are a psychotic episode in American history, the roots of which lie decades back. We make a call to every armchair psychologist out there in the land-of-the-once-living: present your analysis. Tell us the state of the nation. Tell us what the stakes are.