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South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer may sound like a despicable fool here. He may sound like someone who thinks less of the impoverished people in his state than he does of stray cats and dogs. It may sound like his pro-life credentials are in deep jeopardy, considering the massive euthanasia-by-starvation he suggests here.
But if you believe that, then you've just been had by the most brilliant satirist this side of Jonathan Swift. In under three minutes, he's out-performed Stephen Colbert's entire career. Jon Stewart is crying in his latkes.
But so far, very few people are on to him. Sure, he may gain popular support in the Bible belt, where many of his constituents are poor themselves but too proud to admit it. They do not believe that he is talking about them, but about those OTHER lazy, shiftless people that have to rely on government aid and are keeping them from their millions.
You see, Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer is smart enough to understand that government aid to the very poor only amounts to a drop in the ocean of the federal and state budgets. He also understands that it is degrading to be forced to take a drug test, and further that taking away the free lunches of any parents that did fail to pass a drug test is only hurting the already-hurt and neglected children, not the already neglectful said parent. The whole endless cycle of poverty thing to the next generation. He understands that the hungry have low test scores partially because they are hungry and many only get any actual meals only at school, because their families can't afford to work AND live.
LG Bauer is delicately laying down a trap. He's merely got the ultra-conservatives right where they are most vulnerable, their naked contempt for Others, even if those Others are themselves.
I mean, he's not a cold, hard-hearted, stone-dumb idiot monster. Amirite?
Watch for the whammy next. He will go on record as to wanting to starve fat corporations of their government welfare. And then he'll hit the middle class with their tax breaks. Lastly, he'll hit the so-called "Moral Majority" for being so hypocritical, so willing to kill living people while seemingly advocating the rights of the unborn (but of course Mr. Bauer knows that it's a double-edged sword to usher in every fetus as being made in God's image and fully human while denying those same rights of children and adults).
It will be then that those who have rallied behind him - the Tea Party faithful, the Ayn Rand worshipers, the Ditto-heads, the White Aryans, the Birthers, the John Birch Society, the Free Marketians - will look around all starry-eyed at this cloudy and increasingly dim world and ask, "Now what? What can be done now? Our world is turned upside down. We have no faith left."
And this is when Lieutenant Governor and Future Savior of the Republic Andre Bauer will lay out a bold, grand, and lovely new schema: Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned and the infirmed, welcome the stranger, pray for justice and mercy. Whoever wants to lead must serve, whoever wants to follow must be innocent like a child.
And he will lead by example.
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