Battle cry

Mark Adams, who worked at The Maui News and was, I thought, rather the ideal of the unpolitical reporter -- he enjoyed reporting stupid political moves no matter what the party -- has gotten more and more political since moving back to the Mainland.

Today, he posted a long and personal political piece that I think nicely sums up the outlook of my leftish friends, although I do not share Mark's optimism about how well the Democrats are going to do in the 2014 elections.

I share most of Mark's thoughts about the 21st century Republican Party. I can sum it up more briefly: Today's GOP is just the John Birch Society without a credible commie menace to cringe before; but Mark's version is more eloquent, so read the whole thing.

Sample graf:

But today's right isn't reasonable in so many areas, and this is not compassionate conservatism. It is a scorched-earth knee jerk reaction to a spiraling debt level that when studied in hindsight has GOP fingerprints all over it -- and their party leaders claim they have no fingers. None they're willing to lift, anyway. Their stand ironically will hurt Republicans and Tea Partiers and members of the religious right and neocons and skinheads and militia members and fascists and RWNJs and all their families as much as it will progressives and Democrats and liberals. Democrats are often wrong, but I believe they're more often right because they genuinely care about other people -- kids, grandparents, students, women, immigrants, gay kids, straight kids, church kids. My stepfather's stepkids like me. Like so many of us.