“We have met the enemy, and he is us” – Walt Kelly (Pogo)
It began slowly over the course of the 2008 Presidential Election; spurred on by Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media propagandists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Then it began to slowly creep into the campaign in full-throttle: that President Obama is a Socialist. By true definition of that word, he most certainly is not; the fact that he is left-of center cannot be denied…but that does not make him a Socialist. It’s one thing for these Right Wing nut jobs to simply go off and call the other guy a lot of names; hell, George H.W. Bush called Governor Michael Dukakis, “a card carrying member of the ACLU” (like that was a frightening thing? It was also a dumb thing to say because the ACLU even champions Right Wing causes when warranted and is apolitical). OK, so the Socialist tag got stuck in the campaign; you deal with that, and the Obama Campaign handled that with great aplomb. It’s when the train REALLY started to jump the track that got me worried, and still scares the living daylights out of me. It should scare the living daylights out of you too, and for the next several posts; I’m going to hopefully wake you up to the very real possibility that the Right Wing may very well be conspiring to overthrow the legitimately elected government of The United States of America.
Over the past decade, the Right Wing has moved ever so much further away from just the traditional “cut taxes and deregulate everything” footprint that was the bedrock of the old Republican Party most of us used to know. The GOP has become a shadow of its former self, and has absolutely no resemblance to any kind of sane political movement. It has become the refuge of fringe Christian religious fanatics that could be very well even more so than their Islamic or Jewish counterparts, quite simply because they have a chance to regain power every 4 years and have the entire US Armed Forces (plus nuclear arsenal) at their disposal. These are people who WELCOME death and destruction, as it will send their souls toward heaven where they will be united with Jesus once again. Oh boy. I’d say it was a bad novel if it wasn’t true, but it is…and this is only one arm of the GOP that is working against not only the United States, but Humanity as well.
The other arm of this political hydra are the Corporate and Military special interests. They lie in bed together like Brad Pitt and Angelina Joile do, and perform all sorts of acts that best be left off this page; but the general outcome is this: someone gets fucked. In this case, it’s the American people…smoke ’em while you got ’em. I hope that was as good for you as it was for me; because essentially since Eisenhower warned us against the rise of the vast Military-Industrial Complex in 1960 that’s what’s been happening to us. People are out today protesting high taxes; well guess where vast amounts of the Middle Class’ money goes? Yup, that very sweet hooker we’ve had a thing for since the 1950’s. President Obama steps in, and is beginning to tell these guys that the rules of the game are going to be changed a bit. The Military is going to have to spend wisely; the era of the no-bid contract is over. Those nice, shiny missile defense grids with secret decoder rings are not going to get built. Corporations are not only going to be accountable to shareholders, but the American public who is itself essentially the majority shareholder in a few of them. There’s going to be a few rules for those guys as well.
Now we come to probably the biggest, single-most source of waste and fraud and taxpayer dollars: Health Insurance Companies and Pharmaceutical Manufacturers. The American people have LITERALLY been held hostage by these two special interests since 1947, when Harry Truman’s plan for National Health Care fizzled. In that time, Corporations pay more to insure their workers; people are forced to pay more out of pocket despite having insurance; and forget about the cost of certain drugs…I’ll save a personal horror story that recently happened to me for another time…but THAT is where EVERYONE makes money. And it’s not just the GOP who is bought, paid for, and has sold its soul to on this issue…it’s the Democrats as well. The President wants to shake up this unholy duo as well as it not only costs citizens large sums of cash, but the Federal Government as well.
Let’s review: Right Wing Nut Jobs (w/Religious Fanatics)+Military Industrial Complex & Large Corporations+Health Care and Pharmaceutical Companies= the new base of the GOP. Let’s wrap that all up into the flag while tying yellow ribbons on the old oak tree for wars we should never be involved with…PLUS A LARGE TELEVISION NETWORK PUSHING, AND INCITING some of the more fanatical elements of this cabal. THIS is where I have a problem; THIS is where I saw the train start to go off the tracks toward the end of the election…when we started dividing parts of the country into “Real America” and not; between who IS an American, and who is not; and most disturbingly, calls at some of the McCain/Palin rallies for very awful things to happen to our current President (then candidate).
I honestly thought it would die down after the election; all the hate and the fear and the lies and the deception from the Right. Instead it has picked up steam; it is being pushed forward proudly by a television network who aids and abets this ideology of Neo-McCarthyism. People are dismissing it as people being sore-losers from the last election; and perhaps some of that is right. But did ANY of the elected politicians call to “rise up and defend America” like Michele Bachman did after the last President Bush won? Others have called for the same thing…what is this “rise up”, other than to essentially promote treason; and by the very definition Fox News should be called “The Sedition Network”.
Because, ladies and gentlemen…if we don’t get a handle on these crazies now, we will lose this country forever and be mired in a conflict that would make the Civil War pale in comparison.
NEXT: The hard evidence of the right wing’s desires to take back power at any cost.
“It is only necessary to make war with five things: with the maladies of the body, with the ignorance of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the sedition of the city, with the discords of families.” – Tacitus
Intersections In Real Time 