Scott Brown, former Cosmo centerfold, is now the junior senator from Massachusetts, and more people should have seen this coming and took proper counter-measures, but like so much of what goes on in the lower 48 these days, the idea that the Republicans could have a credible chance to take Ted Kennedy’s still warm Senate seat never occurred to anyone.
Anyone but the people of Massachusetts.
After decades of Kennedy home rule, did no one stop to think that the people wanted change? And would take any change regardless of the form it took?
Brown is not change but for the fact that he isn’t a Democrat, and he effectively used the tools of fear-mongering and the idiot belief of the masses that tax cuts are the cure for everything.
Did you know that during WWII our parents and grandparents were taxed at rates that would make a Canadian gasp in horror? Say what you will about the seniors in the U.S. about their entitlement attitudes, but when the times were tough – they knew how to step up and sacrifice. Their children and grandchildren? Not so much. My peers on either side seem to think that entitlements are things that the lazy (and by lazy they really mean minorities) suck out of the paychecks of the hard-working, god-fearing middle class (why does everyone think they are middle-classed?) while ignoring the fact that tax cuts, Social Security and Medicare are the biggest entitlement programs going.
“We want big government out of our lives! That’s what the Founding Fathers intended!” is their rallying cry as they worship at the feet of Fox News.
But what they mean is “we want to keep our money because we are greedy, fat and need to be allowed to consume at obscene rates”.
They don’t seem to notice at all that the government is telling them where they can travel or whether they can use artificial means of birth control or how to raise their children or what they should think about their neighbors. As long as nothing stands between them and consumption, all is well with the world.
The world. People in the U.S. don’t notice at all that they are reviled by most of the world as glutinous god-freaks who have no concept of civil liberties or human rights and are a nation intent on forcing their anti-community ways on the world by force if necessary. They believe the rest of the world is being deluded by their governments while not realizing that people outside the U.S. have better access to news than they do. The media slants extreme right or extreme left, with the right being the loudest voice, in terms of news outlets in America. They are bombarded with agenda laden information masquerading as news all day long.
It’s depressing, as my friend Sarah commented on my Facebook feed. And I agree. I don’t know how intelligent people down there face the day knowing that each day is bringing a country, that they are essentially trapped in by accident of birth, to ruin.
Scott Brown will head to The Hill and help destroy the only hope millions of uninsured have. There won’t be health care reform in the U.S. and I want to be surprised, but I am not. Most of the adult population in my native land are narrow-minded bigots, and I should cut them some slack because they were raised to be the way they are. I taught public school long enough to know that most people are just too intellectually limited to fight the indoctrination.
When they write about yesterday’s election from a more rational point of view – decades from now – it will be seen as a watershed moment in the decline of a once great idea of democracy as the foundation for a nation.
anniegirl1138 
have you seen “Idiocracy”? Satire, dark satire. But closer to the truth than ever… i share the disbelief and sadness. We all feel ‘entitled’, fill our brains with stupid (delivered via the tv-tube) and fill our bodies with toxic sludge from the drive through… that wouldn’t be so bad, if we didn’t keep yapping about what a “Great Nation” we are…
I loved this post, thank you. But to answer your rhetorical question, remember the 80s and Reagan’s me-generation? Of course, having come off the 70s, this made perfect sense to many. Our country was torn apart, and we developed this fight or flight attitude, but it began as a fight for survival, and then a belief that the only way we would get ahead was to step on others.
I didn’t expect Obama to come in and magically fix everything, but I am frustrated that there hasn’t been a more effective response from Dems in power to respond to some of the trite that the Repubs throw out there that somehow sticks!
Great post. Unfortunately I don’t know if it’s really selfish, I firmly believe in looking out for yourself, but more what you said at the end, unable to resist the indoctrination into the world of consumption that occurs here, for material goods and lavish homes and cars, keeping what you earn and anything else is socialism or communism or anti-religious or whatever. People are can’t get health care or need help are clearly are not working hard enough. Sadly like many, I see both sides in my own family. I cringed when I heard people complaining this morning (radio show0 about how much Obama is spending. Have people forgotten how much Bush spent on the war?
I am so disappointed with this win and the entire election in general. The people who voted for Scott Brown seem to be riding on an anti-Obama wave and are focused on defeating health care. However, I think they are being very short-sighted and forgetting about all that Kennedy did for the people of this state as far as constituent services. I think that the next 3-6 months,maybe a year, people will start realizing that there will not be as much help when it’s needed. Services that are taken for granted will suddenly lose federal funding and start drying up.
Perhaps a rude awakening is what people need the most right now?
Amen. I was reading a book this morning as part of my research for Mothers of Intention. A group of very privileged women were being interviewed and were talking about how conservative they had become as they became mothers. But when you read what they were really saying, it was about keeping everything they had, not helping anyone else and being able to spend and consume as they wished. It made me so upset.
There is a deep seated undercurrent of selfishness that has become the norm in American society. It fuels everything that is wrong – sexism, racism, religious fanaticism and intolerance, elitism.
When did we become such greedy soul-less people?
I think that selfishness runs all directions. When educated, moneyed people start pulling their kids out of public schools and out of Not The Right neighborhood and try to do good “from afar” they are one of the biggest parts of the problem. Until people are willing to put up or shut up, put their kids on the front lines and do grassroots work in neighborhoods and schools where These Poor Unintellectual People live, then it’s all fal-de-ral and fiddle-dee-de. Votes mean nothing. Everything gets bastardized on it’s way down from the top. The only good government is the government of your own self in relation to the person standing in front of you right now.
But instead it’s all lord and serf mentality as we preach to the undereducated and despicable truck drivers and retail workers, telling them if only they had a middle management job (cause the trucks will drive themselves) and could get out of the circumstances of their awful culture – of which we will help them do from afar, but uhm, please don’t expect invitations to our dinner parties because you just aren’t the right type yet – and this is all based in selfishness as well.
When I see more people from the Correct Party At The Time putting their money where mouth is, then they can start pulling specks from other people’s eyes. Until then, selfish is as selfish does, and the “Look over there” of it all is just as soulless.
Or maybe it’s not selfishness.
Maybe it’s good old American insecurity and the False God of Independent Maverickdom.
Teaching kids to be independent should be a crime. It’s INTERdependence. It’s interdependence.