SINCE THE DAYS OF THE ALLEGED "GREAT COMMUNICATOR,"
RONALD REAGAN, WHEN WE AMERICANS WERE URGED to forget Vietnam and forget Watergate, use borrowed money to indulge in mindless pleasures and worry about payback later, because everything would somehow charmingly "Trickle Down" to economic nirvana and save us all; the demand for a national amnesia began and we slowly slid into an almost totalitarian-like state.
It commenced quickly after the attack of 9-11, at the urging of our President, Georgie W., and his Vice President, Dickey C., when our nation began to demand Good Old Draconian Measures to deal with our real or imagined disorders. We were now willing to lie about who our enemies actually were, and to happily surrender the Bill of Rights if it meant clearing the streets of domestic enemies like the Blacks and Latinos and abortion clinics and the poor and food stamps and voting rights and women's rights; and whatever other ills we thought need to be eradicated. With the arrival of the Tea Party, the love of this fierce spectacle grew. Nothing made their blood quicken faster than the spirit of revenge and absolute animosity.
For many, this is uncomfortably familiar. We once had a blacklist that prevented writers, directors, and actors from working in television or movies - on ideological grounds. During the McCarthy era, we lost scientists, schoolteachers, and scholars, on ideological grounds. And now, once again, our religious Right continues trying to impose its party line on everything from a minimum-wage to the content of our cable news. We have a free press, but the majority of our newspapers wouldn't challenge the intelligence of a flea. Certainly, in our mass media, we seldom see, read, or hear from Americans without an ideological bias, if we do hear from reporters without propaganda or oratory, they are dismissed as disloyal Americans. Take a glance at any American best-seller list, or the shelves of any bookstore in a shopping mall, and see what we Americans have chosen to do with our freedoms - nowhere else on the face of the earth would the corrupt thoughts of a Glen Beck or a Sarah Palin be on a best-seller list. If it's history, most of us yawn. If it resembles a bad movie, we snap to attention.
There are reasons here for all of this. The Tea Party, after an initial period of confusion, is now gaining ground in the American political system. The minority controls the majority. This has become a struggle of choice. We lack the courage to confront these barbarians, thus the tail has begun wagging the dog. At the heart of this grim little crusade, they have grander plans for all of us. They want government to disappear. They want the poor to evaporate. They want women to obey and stay in their place. Like all the people who brought us prohibition and the Mob, the Tea Party and their allies want to impose their vision and their rules on the entire country. The lunatics are laughing at us. The likes of Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are urging their colleagues in the Congress and the Senate to make the furious, fear-driven visions of America into the law of the land.
If we are to win this revolution, in must be with a triumph of human intelligence, over the oligarchy of the stupid, with our country's best writers and statesmen and sociologists and scientists. and not allow world-class talents to be silenced, jailed, or driven into the exile of retreat by the national stupidity of ass-kissing, careerist, hacks. We have a choice to make and there is no one else to make it other than us...
RONALD REAGAN, WHEN WE AMERICANS WERE URGED to forget Vietnam and forget Watergate, use borrowed money to indulge in mindless pleasures and worry about payback later, because everything would somehow charmingly "Trickle Down" to economic nirvana and save us all; the demand for a national amnesia began and we slowly slid into an almost totalitarian-like state.
It commenced quickly after the attack of 9-11, at the urging of our President, Georgie W., and his Vice President, Dickey C., when our nation began to demand Good Old Draconian Measures to deal with our real or imagined disorders. We were now willing to lie about who our enemies actually were, and to happily surrender the Bill of Rights if it meant clearing the streets of domestic enemies like the Blacks and Latinos and abortion clinics and the poor and food stamps and voting rights and women's rights; and whatever other ills we thought need to be eradicated. With the arrival of the Tea Party, the love of this fierce spectacle grew. Nothing made their blood quicken faster than the spirit of revenge and absolute animosity.
For many, this is uncomfortably familiar. We once had a blacklist that prevented writers, directors, and actors from working in television or movies - on ideological grounds. During the McCarthy era, we lost scientists, schoolteachers, and scholars, on ideological grounds. And now, once again, our religious Right continues trying to impose its party line on everything from a minimum-wage to the content of our cable news. We have a free press, but the majority of our newspapers wouldn't challenge the intelligence of a flea. Certainly, in our mass media, we seldom see, read, or hear from Americans without an ideological bias, if we do hear from reporters without propaganda or oratory, they are dismissed as disloyal Americans. Take a glance at any American best-seller list, or the shelves of any bookstore in a shopping mall, and see what we Americans have chosen to do with our freedoms - nowhere else on the face of the earth would the corrupt thoughts of a Glen Beck or a Sarah Palin be on a best-seller list. If it's history, most of us yawn. If it resembles a bad movie, we snap to attention.
There are reasons here for all of this. The Tea Party, after an initial period of confusion, is now gaining ground in the American political system. The minority controls the majority. This has become a struggle of choice. We lack the courage to confront these barbarians, thus the tail has begun wagging the dog. At the heart of this grim little crusade, they have grander plans for all of us. They want government to disappear. They want the poor to evaporate. They want women to obey and stay in their place. Like all the people who brought us prohibition and the Mob, the Tea Party and their allies want to impose their vision and their rules on the entire country. The lunatics are laughing at us. The likes of Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul are urging their colleagues in the Congress and the Senate to make the furious, fear-driven visions of America into the law of the land.
If we are to win this revolution, in must be with a triumph of human intelligence, over the oligarchy of the stupid, with our country's best writers and statesmen and sociologists and scientists. and not allow world-class talents to be silenced, jailed, or driven into the exile of retreat by the national stupidity of ass-kissing, careerist, hacks. We have a choice to make and there is no one else to make it other than us...
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