Thanks to this project and the renewed education it has given me into EXCEL spreadsheets, the worth of an human being, and the real nature of corporate indifference to the needs of their employees ( Author’s note-in this case it also applies to govermental entities), I have not had a chance to come back to this line of thought.
But now I have some time.
One of the things that I continue to be amazed about is the defensiveness of the hard core right wing pundits. They have ranted and raved for over a week about how wrong it is to mention or discuss the atmosphere that the politics of the last two years have created. One, the moron known as Gateway Pundit ( who epitomizes the “look down your nose on the rest of us” attitude I will discuss later) had the balls to mistake closed captioning for some sort of conspiracy to get applause at the memorial service this past week.
The reason why they pontificate so is because it has touched a nerve with them-they are terrified that the other side might be right. For those who are skeptics about this, ask your self this one main question-which side stands the most to gain from delegitimizing the government of the US?
Answer- the right wing. Even when they were in power they had the most to gain from that line of thought. Its been so for a long time now-but the difference between times before and the first decade of the 21’st century is the rise of media, posing as mainstream, doing the advance work for the wackos. Esquire probably has it right:
There is no more moving memorial in America than the one that they built on the place on North Harvey Street in Oklahoma City where the Murrah Federal Building used to be. There is a reflecting pool between two large arches — the time, 9:01 A.M., is carved into one of them, and 9:03 A.M. is carved into the other. The lost minute is represented by the reflecting pool and by the long lines of lonely, empty chairs, all on crystal bases, each representing one of the American citizens killed in the bloodiest act of insurrection since the Army of Northern Virginia hung ’em up. In the accompanying museum, there is a remarkable exhibit — an audiotape of a mundane governmental hearing that was going on not far from the Murrah Building when Timothy McVeigh’s bomb went off. Some poor guy is asking for permission to drill for designer water on his land. You can almost hear everyone on the tape yawning. The mundane business of self-government is grinding along. And then there’s a tearing in the universe and somebody’s screaming for a flashlight.
Outside again, the lonely chairs are reflected in the pool and one truth hangs there between the arches: This is what we can do to each other.
This moment should have been transformational. This should have been a moment of diamond-tipped truth. This is part of who we are. This is a part of our politics. This is something to look at, honestly, and admit to ourselves that, pushed by our own dread and anger, whether or not they are skillfully stoked by demagoguery or not, this is what we can do to each other. This is what we will do to each other.
And the most remarkable thing about what happened in Oklahoma City is how little it matters today. The president of the United States gave a fine speech Wednesday night in Tucson at the memorial for the people Jared Loughner shot. The only mention of Oklahoma City in connection with the president’s speech was to compare it with the speech that another Democratic president had given in the aftermath of the memorial service for the 168 people that Timothy McVeigh murdered in 1995.
People mostly remembered that Bill Clinton once had made a passing mention of what he called “the purveyors of hatred and division… the promoters of paranoia” on the airwaves. (At the actual memorial service, Clinton quoted Scripture and talked about healing.) This time, many people struck pre-emptively; Rush Limbaugh may be self-medicating his wounded ego for the rest of his life over what he imagines Clinton said about him. There was a lot of what was called “defensiveness” on the activist Right, but it was nothing of the sort. They were on offense, just the way they have been since they took that heat in 1995. They abide by the order Stalin gave to the Red Army when the Germans invaded in 1942: Ni shagu nazad.
Not a step back.
The activist Right wants this rhetoric for 2012. It wants the same dark energies that helped it win the House last fall. It wants to be able to say the same things with impunity that it’s been saying since 2009, as though Tucson never happened. Oklahoma City might as well have happened to the Hittites.
Which is how nothing ever changed. Which is why Oklahoma City wasn’t enough.
One-hundred and sixty-eight people.
One-hundred and sixty-eight lonely, empty chairs.
It wasn’t enough.
And it is never going to be enough. Not as long as there is the idea, maintained and promoted as part of the Tea Party “movement”-that the United States can only be a one party nation, only one party is fit to lead, and that as a result-only one party is allowed to govern the nation.
Consider this-the fortunes of the United States cannot advance unless it accepts the idea of a conversation between personages of equal standing; only then can it advance ideas of equal standing and in the discussion thereof- a consensus of a compromise emerge. The health care debate of 2009 undermined that idea. First, it undermined the basic need-that the system for paying for health care needed to be improved, in a manner that provided access for all citizens. Second-it resorted to the use of OUTRIGHT LIES to get as many people stirred up as it could. The bogus town halls filled with some fine examples of the lack of American education and the results of eating too much and not exercising enough-they did the rest. And the rest of the world got to see the country at its worst. In so doing-every bad image of America was reinforced a thousand times over.
However, no one should be surprised. ( And this gets to the follow up to the other post) One of the central ideas to the Tea Bag nation is that of division. Only to them its expressed in terms of “deserving” versus “undeserving”-and its key to understanding their psyche. The tri corner wearing idiots cannot accept a premise of the fact that all people deserve the same access to a chance. Which does not mean that all people will take advantage of that chance-but they at least deserve a chance. No, key to understanding this group of folks is their almost religious zeal to the idea that they produce-and the rest of “us” take what is undeserved or unearned. Never mind: 1) what the law allows; 2) the circumstances under which you receive; and 3) the fact that you may have also contributed to the best of your ability and have a right to receive that which you were promised. In other words, to borrow Curtis’ words-if you collect unemployment, Social Security, or any other entitlement-somehow you are stealing. And for sure you will waste it. ( Since most of you don’t pay taxes anyway-another convenient lie).
Because if they did accept that idea, that you have a right to that which you were promised-then it would undermine the long term goal. The creation of a one party state. Next time you see the letter GOP-think PAP. ( If you need explanation of that reference, then you are behind on the goings on here-try to keep up). Its not that the PAP has all bad ideas-it is just the high handed way they enforce obedience to them and crush dissent. They are a tea partiers wet dream.
Which brings me to Sarah Palin and her whining-and that is a good way to close. No Sarah, no one blames you for the murders of innocent people. “Yes, there was some lashing out at you over the crosshairs surveyor’s symbols, which is to be expected, but no one thinks that you are directly responsible for the murders. What is reasonable to discuss is a climate of hate and paranoid fear, fueled by lies and misinformation, that creates an environment in which lunatics like Loughner might be motivated to act out their revenge fantasies. For that, there is no doubt which party is responsible.“-Get over it. It’s the truth and that is all that matters. It’s an attempt to distract from a more complicated description of what is going on in the world. The attempt to say “the left is blaming Sarah Palin” is a way to distract from the multiple things that can lead to and encourage an event like this.
Until we as a nation collectively can accept the idea that main masses of both sides want the country to advance and succeed-it remains vulnerable to the ranting of demagogues-like Palin. The fact that Palin herself-and her impressionable , but severely learning impaired followers can’t understand that, means that there will be no civility in politics for a long time to come.