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A Compendium of Extraordinary Beasts [1]
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Date: 2022-10-24
An occasional discursion on various kinds of creatures found in our midst.}
II.The RINO (Camellifactio stridens)
(It’s not what you think)
(abbr: Republican In Name Only)
Definition: A member of the Republican Party who calls another Republican a RINO.
Examples: Almost any present-day Republican elected to almost any office.
This creature, an invasive species unknown less than 20 years ago, has evolved in a remarkably short time to proliferate almost uncontrollably. It has all but obliterated the genuine Republican, a common weed that nonetheless had some nutritional and ecological value. Your actual RINO is to the political landscape what the Asian long-horned beetle is to a hardwood forest.
When it first appeared, the RINO had no specific name, but was subsumed under the generic term “Teaparty”. Imported into the Republican Party in 2010, it was at first thought to be a minor mutation of a long-standing but only marginally useful Republican subspecies, the Unreconstructed Reactionary (Auraqua arizonensis). The new strain, however, proved hardy and effective, eventually overpowering all but a few traditional Republicans, who are now nearly extinct.
The RINO has developed what at first glance seems to be an unusual method for avoiding predators. Instead of protective coloration or speed, it uses misdirection: it points to other Republicans while screaming “RINO! RINO!”, loudly and often. In this, it has help from a parasitic species, the Far-right Newsmedia (Foxanonque proculodexter), which amplifies and broadcasts the RINO’s every utterance.
This scheme,however, is nothing more than an extension of the old political habit of projection: blaming everyone else for your own failings. For Republicans, it goes back at least to the start of the Cold War, when the party decided to stake its future on being “tough on Communism” (easy to do, especially after the Soviets acquired The Bomb). Their definition of “tough” was essentially this: build enough weapons so that you can hide behind them and yell at the other guy without much personal risk. Should you engage an enemy – or any other entity, for that matter – without such armaments, you were immediately branded “weak” or “soft”. Interestingly, though, the only leader to go head-to-head with a perceived adversary was one of those “soft” Democrats. No Republican has ever poked his or her head above the wall long enough to be shot at.
[It’s fair to ask which creatures are more afraid of their environment: ordinary folk who go about their business without the need for extra armaments, or the gun-toting RINOs (of which Texans are a subgroup) who are afraid to go out in public without at least one loaded lethal weapon, for fear that someone might look at them cross-eyed. Just saying.]
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The RINO (as we’ve defined it here) is often associated with a symbiotic creature that hasn’t been studied enough to have acquired a taxonomic designation. This is what we might call the CHINO, that is, the CHristian In Name Only. Examples include almost all televangelists, old General Wotsisname who keeps nattering on about One Religion for the USA, and that unspeakable family in Kansas who think Jesus ordered them to harass, insult, and generally annoy anyone who doesn’t… – well, anyone, really. But CHINO is a useful designation only if you accept as genuine Christians such exemplars as, say, Desmond Tutu or Dorothy Day. For a lot of people (possibly including the Auld Faarte hissownself), Christianity itself is CHINO. But that’s a whole other kettle of loaves and fishes.
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