Rather than keeping the faithful readers of Cloozoe's International House of Pancakes -- all three of you -- waiting to read the Rushfoxican Party's thoughtful, nuanced response to the speech that the President of the U.S. is going to give this evening, I thought I'd go out on a limb and report what they will say before they say it.
He's a Communist!
He's a Nazi!
Government programs are evil!
Keep your hands off my Medicare!
He hates white people!
He's going to kill my grandma!
He's going to kill all white grandmas!
He's trying to take my guns!
He's trying to take my grandma's guns!
He's going to cut off my grandma's medicare then put her in front of his death panel and shoot her with the gun he took from her!
He kicked my dog!
He kicked my dog's grandma!
Admittedly, it's not much of a limb to go out on. Kind of like predicting rain in the tropics.
And for all you moronic wingnuts who manage to allow yourselves to be whipped into a frenzy by even the most modest nods toward increased social justice and equity that would still leave us considerably to the right of where we were during your beloved 1940s-1950s (imagine if someone today proposed the Marshall plan, 90% marginal tax rates, the GI bill, etc.?!); who believe (or pretend to believe; it's hard to reliably tell the difference between willful, mind-numbing ignorance and deliberate, cynical provocation) that a two percent increase in marginal tax rates on the top one percent of earners is the acme of socialistic tyranny, here's something for you to legitimately get your panties in a twist about: the speech I wish Obama (who in truth is a centrist by historical standards; moderate in both outlook and temperament) would give, but of course will not. I, on the other hand, am moderate in neither temperament nor outlook and if you want to call me a radical, I won't quarrel with you.
Members of Congress; fellow citizens.
I'd like to begin by apologizing to all thinking people for having wasted valuable time and resources in my repeated, futile attempts to mollify the members of the lunatic fringe whose numbers are relatively insignificant but whose every howl of deranged rage -- scripted and orchestrated by the moneyed interests -- is effectively amplified and exaggerated by the media which has in turn been played by said moneyed interests like a Stradivarius.
I've come to realize that I can no more reason or negotiate with these irrational, data-denying dupes than one could reason with a particularly obstreperous two year old in the midst of a temper tantrum.
I've further come to realize that bought-and-paid-for obstructionists -- including those in my own party such as Senator Baucus -- should be exposed for what they are, i.e. corrupt tools of the plutocracy. I intend to set aside all political calculus and pragmatism and speak truly and directly from this moment on for the rest of my term.
I fully understand that the realities of our current political and media system almost certainly mean that my commitment to speaking truth to and about power will result in my being destroyed and end any chance of my achieving anything of even modest substance. Perhaps I'll even be killed by the forces of the right as President Kennedy was, but more likely and less dramatically I'll simply be marginalized, slandered, scurilously discredited and voted out of office by the oh-so-easily-manipulated public after a single term.
But I've concluded that the situation as it currently exists is intolerable and only a radical re-ordering has any chance of preventing this country from inevitably and irrevocably becoming akin to a giant version of a Central or South American kleptocratic autocracy, with the vast preponderance of the population living in squalid, pestilential slums and a tiny elite residing behind razor-wire-topped walls on palatial estates patrolled by heavily armed guards.
And while it's obvious that no one would like to live on the wrong side of the wall, it's perhaps less obvious that there is no right side. That's why, for example, the well-known communist, Warren Buffet, decries the fact that his $40,000 per year secretary is taxed at a higher rate than he is and believes that he should be paying much more in taxes than he is now. He decries this not simply as a matter of fairness and common decency; he believes this not merely out of sheer altruism, but because he is wise enough to apprehend that the greatness of America was always predicated on a large, prosperous, productive and passably contented middle class. And that a reasonably egalitarian society where even the least among us can afford the basic necessities of food, shelter and medical care is a society that ultimately benefits the most successful among us as well. In short, he understands that it is more in his enlightened self-interest to have billions of dollars in the America that once was and can yet be again, than to have many more billion of dollars in, say, Sao Paulo, where only the force of arms keeps the seething masses from the throats of the masters, the rats have no trouble breaching walls, and the air above their tennis courts is no more fit to breathe than it is outside the most wretched hovel.
This is the disastrous path we've been on for the last thirty or so years, fellow citizens; one that grew parlously steep during the Bush years. And the hidden lords and masters of this country were so emboldened by having a president and government they owned fully, that rather than being sated, they are clinging to that absolute power with a ruthless ferocity and looking always for just one thing: more.
I can no longer in good conscience fail to expose the prime movers and unbridled, unprincipled greed behind this ever more egregious state of affairs nor make any further attempts to negotiate with them; to humbly beg them to please be satisfied with something ever so slightly less than everything.
I frankly have little confidence that anything can be done to stop or even slow them -- so enormously wealthy, powerful, amoral, avaricious and implacable are they -- but I've determined that even if we are destined to go down, I for one intend to go down swinging.
Good night, fellow citizens, and may truth and justice prevail through the grace of a merciful God and the heroic efforts of honorable men and women.
How does it happen that, as you point out, such an insignificantly small minority of citizens, through "tea parties", "spontaneous" town hall outbursts, etc., are able to hijack the world's oldest democracy?
ReplyDeleteZenCane
They're not able to, Zen; they're merely tools of those who have. It works like this:
ReplyDelete1. The right wing media, owned and operated by and for the plutocracy, stirs them up and provides snappy bumper sticker slogans. At best, said slogans are oversimplifications and distortions of the truth; at worst, they are outright lies. Doesn't matter in either case, though, since most people are too lazy, ignorant, stupid or some combination thereof to discern whether they are true or not, and the mealy-mouthed, so-called "liberal" media can be counted on to give them equal time vis a vis statements of fact thus legitimizing blatant false-hoods and falacies,and will characterize the conflict as legitimate differences of opinion, along the lines of "blue is a prettier color than red" as opposed to pointing out unambiguously that, for example, 2+2 does not equal 5.
2. The main stream media covers them extensively, since a bunch of sign-waving, raving loonies is a lively story and will boost ratings and readership, while covering serious people doing serious research and having serious discussions would bore the average dolt to tears.
3. The extensive coverage creates the impression that the loonies are a large group with legitimate concerns who must be attended to.
4. The bumper sticker slogans and extensive media coverage in fact do increase the original size of the loony camp exponentially, since the average idiot will buy any swamp land being sold if the pitch is catchy enough. By contrast, responsible explication of complex issues is nuanced, sexless and dull. Given the average human being's attention span and intelligence, a point of view being promoted by long, detailed explanations and exhortations to read a book stands no chance against one being promoted by a howling mob screeching "Death Panels!"
5. All the foregoing provides crucial political cover for Congresspeople whose true motiviation is no more complicated than the fact that they have been given millions of dollars in "campaign contributions" (bribes) by the plutocracy to do its bidding, which closes the circle and brings us back to point #1.