I alternate between amusement and horror when I read about the state of the union known as the United States. The Orwellian vibes blending with Eisenhower era McCarthyism makes good Daily Show and Colbert Report fodder, but sometimes it’s too real to be funny.
Glenn Beck is case in point. Despite advertisers denouncing him in droves via removal of their money, Fox News refuses to pull the platform rug that is his op-ed show from their schedule. I only catch the YouTube clips here and there, but what he is doing looks like the creation of a blacklist based on a very narrow interpretation of what it means to be a loyal American. And when the POTUS is willing to sacrifice someone in his cabinet based on ramped up hysteria over non-issues created by a talking head of questionable intelligence and sanity, can Senate hearings on Un-Americanism be all that far behind?
Parents kept their children home to avoid having them listen to a educational pep talk by President Obama last Tuesday. You can read the speech here if you missed it. There was talk of brainwashing and socialism – which far too many adults in the U.S. believe is synonymous with communism thanks to the hysterical right wing constituency and their media shills. There were even teachers, which should scare people, protesting and calling in with “blue flu”.
And I have to ask, what is going on down there in the lower 48?
The economy bottoms naturally as a consequence of years of excess and stupidity and without their credit cards to opiate themselves and meaningless jobs and shopping to distract them, people’s brains implode, leaving them vulnerable to media manipulated nonsense? If that is the case, then we are a soft, spineless generation who deserve to be scoffed at by our elders who endured world war and great economic depression among other things without becoming nearly as stupid as quickly. They managed to get over their bouts with political extremism, pull up ye olde boot straps and help themselves and their neighbors. We cower in front of Fox News and start scanning our suburbs for communists? We gather at town halls like a French mob, foaming at the mouth over government benefits for the disabled and sick and scream for the head of Obama’s Green Czar? Actual French people who protest on behalf of their own jobs and force their government to serve them as they were elected to do must be falling down in fits of giggles watching us.
Things are not wonderful. I’ll agree with that. Times are hard and will likely become more difficult for a lot more people before things turn around, and it’s even possible that life will never return to the cushy heights that defined the middle-class American Dream. But blacklists? Really? Secession? Seriously? White supremacy? Suspect thy neighbor? Disrespect for the aged, the sick and the poor? Talking heads as arbiters of right and wrong?
Sure, it makes life easier for the Keith Olbermann’s and Glenn Beck’s of the world but shouldn’t we be allowed the facts without commentary? Just the facts, and let me decide what I think without left or right leaning taint because when Jon Stewart is the voice of common sense and reason where the media is concerned, we are in uncharted waters of scary, a place Christopher Columbus wouldn’t have sailed and he was greedy enough to have sailed just about anywhere regardless of the sea monsters drawn on the map.
When the President can’t give an innocuous beginning of the year pep talk to the youth of America without mama-drama, there is something far more wrong with the state of the union than high unemployment numbers and a disgruntled far right wing.
“And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
It’s time to start reading the news, reading widely – critically – and thinking for a change. Turn off the television. Step back out into the world. And use your brains rather than let them be co-opted by other people’s agendas.
Blacklists do not just happen to other people. Eventually it happens to everyone.
anniegirl1138 
Those of us on the ground in the lower 48 are talking with our neighbors, contacting our elected officials at all levels of government, subscribing to listserves, signing petitions, supporting the work of non-profits, sending emails, making phone calls, following progressive websites, and watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. While it’s easier to perpetuate lies than it is to thoughtfully report the facts, more mainstream media outlets are putting the truth out there. I can see that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to report all the positive goings-on because so many are local in nature, which is where much of social change starts. And we are experiencing social change in the U.S., which scares those who have benefited from the status quo for so many years. It’s an exciting time and we will all be better for it.
The whole kerfuffle over the speech was ridiculous. They didn’t show it at my daughter’s school (I don’t know whether that decision was because of the controversy or because it was on the first day and they hadn’t had time to organize), so she and I watched it together online that night. There was nothing even slightly controversial in it, and even if there had been, I would have wanted her to see it anyway. She’s a student in a government school – she should know what the government’s leader has to say about education.
The problem at the moment is that anyone anywhere near the Centre of politics is being vilified as a Communist. A pity there isn’t an education program in place to teach Americans critical thinking. Oh, that’s right. There was one. Until the Neo-cons, Fundamentalists and Creationists dismantled it. There will be a gift for you over on my blog on Tuesday.
DaisyFae is right: This should be widely read.
There’s scary stuff going on around here, and it worries me for my kids’ future.
please consider submitting this as an op ed piece… anywhere and everywhere…. the polarization and deafness to facts is on both sides. whether it’s glenn beck, or rachel maddow, the tactics are the same – we ultimately will believe a charismatic rant if it aligns with what we sorta kinda already want to believe….