Healthcare Reform. That is supposed to be the prime agenda item for this country right now. The topic I had intended to write about this weekend. But first things first.
Seven months of talk, and now Congress has adjourned and gone home for a month to hear what their constituents think about this topic. Except, it increasingly looks like no such worthwhile or beneficial discussions will take place. Why? Because instead, our needed national discussion is being sabotaged by manufactured opposition with no other objective than self-serving personal advancement.
Remember the late 60s/early 70s? It was our most recent period of great public social unrest. The Left, predominately led by young adults, mounted public protests against the administration then in power (Johnson, then Nixon). Abbie Hoffman and similar self-appointed spokespersons called to their sympathetic peers from the steps of Columbia and the campus grounds of Berkeley and led their collective discontent into public forums. When people tried to speak different viewpoints, Abbie’s armies shouted them down and refused to let speakers speak. The news media never lacked for a story, and gave it all full play regardless of substantive or objective content.
In reaction to all of this, Middle America recoiled. They switched the political party / president of choice in the White House and, over time, in other elections. A Vice President (Agnew) became the lead spokesperson for blaming all problems on the Washington / New York elite news media (shoot the messenger), those “nattering nabobs of negativism.” A “Silent Majority” of Americans was asserted to be arising to reclaim “true American values.” And their rallying cry? “America; love it or leave it.”
Flash forward to 2009, 40 years after the Age of Woodstock. The Left won the election. For better or worse, they have the White House, House, and Senate. They are now “the administration.” The sons and daughters of 1970’s Silent Majority are now on the defensive, and their party of Republicans claims only 20+% of the electorate. So how are they responding to their new minority status? Certainly not with reason and class. Abbie Hoffman has morphed into something called a Rush Limbaugh, with his sidekick the court jester called Glen Beck and a whole cohort of Fox News “personalities” (not to be confused with actual news reporters). Instead of speaking through bullhorns from the steps of our universities, they literally scream through microphones from the insulated safety of the TV studio. They seize upon the very real fears, frustrations and confusions of a slice of the American population, and manipulate them into controlled actions of orchestrated protests as smoothly as Tiger Woods putts a golf ball. We have scripted Tea Bag rallies: small numbers of people making loud noises generating great (if distorted) TV visuals. They overwhelm attempts at town meetings and shout down legitimate speakers. If necessary, the scripts become uncontrolled and physical violence is resulting. And a similar former governor of a small-population state and (would-be) Vice President blames all the discontent on biased news from the elite media. Abbie Hoffman, meet Rush Limbaugh. Spiro Agnew, meet Sarah Palin. Replays of the past descend eerily upon us, except that they are mirror-imaged.
In the 70s, some extremists on the Left crossed a line and became violent political terrorists, resulting in a protracted scary period of investigations and prosecutions. Is a 2009 version of political terrorists from the Right coming next, from which our citizenry will need police and legal protection?
The “big lie” concept perfected in Hitler’s Germany still works. And it is rapidly working here today. The words of exaggeration, outright lies, and over-the-top hate seeping out of Rush & Company are no longer comical but truly frightening, because words are becoming actions. Words that have nothing to do with protecting this country, finding solutions that will help our citizenry, or unifying us to do the hard work together that needs to be done. No, it is blatantly all about glorifying egos of 2nd-rate lightweight personalities, ready to say anything to raise ratings without regard for any resulting larger consequences. “Who, me? My Fault?” Those who have been zealots for 2nd Amendment gun rights while comfortably seeking to limit 1st Amendment free speech should be thankful that their speech now remains equally protected, even to speak stupidly and dishonestly. That which you once decried is what you have now become. That which you hate so much is making you into hate itself.
The world has changed, sons and daughters of 1970’s Silent Majority. You lost the 2008 election. We have a black President, and he was elected with only a minority of white voters; white British descendants no longer control the show. We have a Latina Supreme Court associate justice in spite of most Republicans accusing her of being racist and unqualified with no basis of fact in her legal record. Thereby shooting themselves once again, this time in their own racist foot with Latino voters. American capitalism and innovation are still alive and ultimately our best economic hope, but a decade of Bush/Republican deregulation and economic anarchy can no longer be tolerated. Corporate irresponsibility by a minority of executives will give way to protections for consumers and a commitment to take care of our people. The near-total Bush/Republican economic collapse we were facing last winter has been halted, and another Republican-sponsored Great Depression #2 no longer looms around the corner. And 90% of our workforce is still employed. Is it really so hard for a Rightist to give some credit where credit is due to a Center-Leftist?
We have a ways to go. Solutions and rational words are what are needed, not political terrorism. And if you cannot see that and get on board with having a civil dialog, then maybe it is your turn to “Love [the new] America or leave it.” And in the ensuing quiet resulting from your departure, let is all have an honest, fact-based, intelligent adult dialog about how to get proper health care to our citizens. The real issue.
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“FEAR, LIES, GREED AND STUPIDITY – THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE!”
This is the sign I put on my front lawn when George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. I put my American flag away and hunkered down hoping for a better day. With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, I thought my hopes might be realized. For a brief moment it seemed that the country was pulling together to solve some pretty important issues – health care reform, financial system reform, clean energy legislation and reestablishing our credibility among the nations of man among them. I knew that Mr. Obama had inherited a mess, but with careful and right-minded prioritization and a sizeable Democratic majority in both houses of Congress I felt the moment was at hand to move forward.
Unfortunately, it now appears that after only seven months of the new administration, things are going in reverse, even spinning out of control. The nation seems more polarized than ever before. Corporate lobbyists are still in control, greed is still the primary motivating factor in maintaining the status quo, fraud and outright lies perpetrated by the right make the general populace ever more fearful and the media legitimizes all of it. Perhaps the American people are smart enough to sort these issues out and elect an even stronger progressive majority in the coming mid-term elections, I don't know. I hope so because unless and until we fundamentally change the way we do business in this country, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. As Keith Olbermann noted recently, Lincoln in his Gettysburg address didn't say “that this government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations shall not perish from the earth.”
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