It was supposed to be a new era of hope and change in America, but it seems less than a year after President Barack Obama's historic election all of that promise has faded and anger, hate and fear has been left standing in its place.
Not that we haven't seen this coming for sometime. Americans have been filled with hate and fear for years now, and with good reason, for over the past eight years we have been tricked into two unpopular wars, lived in fear over threats from terrorists, watched as our government failed our fellow countrymen during Hurricane Katrina and stood by and watched while our economy collapsed and politicians spent record amounts of tax payer dollars attempting to fix it. Yes all of this would be enough to bring any country to the brink of insanity, but Americans are starting to take it to new levels, both politically and socially.
The signs of this new found anger, which appears to be even more intense than that seen at any time during George W. Bush's presidency, seemed to show signs of hitting its tipping point this summer when outbursts at Town Hall meetings left America possibly even more divided than ever, not only on the issue of health care, but the issue of civility.
Before and since President Obama took office, conservatives and anti-Obama proponents have been lashing out at our leader in an alarming manner. At one event, 12 angry men even felt the need to brandish guns on their hips in broad day light at a rally in which Obama was speaking. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat or even a gun owner you have to be pretty sick in the head to think that a group of guys openly displaying guns and carrying signs reading, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," is a great representation of constitutional rights or that the men actually did so with good intentions - people don't feel the need to carry guns unless they feel the need to use them. I understand the "excuses" of why these people are so infuriated with Obama and his so called socialistic tendencies, but when will one of these nuts present an honest and sane reason for acting so enraged. I just don't understand protesting the second amendment at a health care debate that has nothing to do with gun laws - although this is not uncommon when Democrats are in office. It is also not uncommon for Democrats to get shot at as history shows.
It's hard to argue that a lot of this anger isn't a direct cause of racism towards our nation's first African American president. I think when the history of the era is written it will go down as one of the most racist periods in America since segregation. But what else could we expect as the Republicans continue to be
come more out of touch with today's voters, and with it, control of America's government. We knew they wouldn't just go down without a fight.
And Democrats can also rest easy knowing that Harry Truman was widely considered a socialist by his opponents when he tried to introduce universal health care to the country some 50 years ago. Today the word socialist being associated with Truman's name is like associating compassion with Osama bin Laden. I am also confident that in time this will hold true for Obama in time. And instead of being a socialist he will be a hero for having the strength and conviction to stand up to his opponents and pass a bill that makes health care a right instead of a privilege once and for all. Although I believe the reaction to his race will be the bigger story 50 years from now.
What might be even more alarming than the horrifying actions displayed by some on the right as of late, is the host of lies and misinformation that has been directly connected to this movement, its supporters and their actions. Most of what these people have been putting out there are blatant lies in an attempt to sabotage policies that most Americans want to see put in place. And don't get me wrong, most of these extremists are not real Republicans, they are the ones that have held their party and its ideas hostage since Bush took office. The party that used to stand for small government and high moral principals, is now responsible for expanding the federal government to its largest point in history and has its elected officials trying to blow other guys in airport bathroom stalls. These nuts on the far right are misleading weaker minded Americans into a bottom less pit of lies, hate and fear, just like they did for eight years during the Bush administration and will continue to do so until people and the media stop paying attention to them.
And don't get me wrong, Bush faced great anger and conspiracy theories from crazed liberals and other left-wing groups throughout his presidency as well - although even the average American was fed up with him by the end of his second term. He too was compared to Hitler, which is so not original on the liberals end and even less original on the Republicans end, but I don't recall guns being openly displayed at his rallies and in fact if I do recall Bush would not even allow people to ware anti-Bush t-shirts to his events. I also tend to believe Bush was given more of a chance by liberals and conservatives at the beginning of his first term, even in the wake of his controversial election victory.
But these dumb, inbred bastards on the right have taken lying and insanity to a whole new level since Obama took office. Another great example of how desperate these people are to stop anything liberal from being passed, is the rumors they are currently spreading to convince honest Americans that the Obama administration is planning death panels, internment camps run by the national guard and guillotines to behead sick Americans in order to harvest their organs and body parts. And the sick part is there are people that will actually believe this shit. I remember during last year's election I met a few people, who were actually Democrats, and they had been convinced that Obama was in fact a Muslim terrorist. But as Homer Simpson so famously said, "If TV said it, it must be true." The sad part is aside from these accusations being obvious, blatant lies, they are also fueling a new culture of anger and hate in America, both on the left and the right, in a time when we are trying to heal our country after eight years of devastating policy, adjust to a changing world and get used to seeing a new face in the White House.
At the heart of these lies that are threatening the American way of life, and the safety of our President, is the changing communications over the last decade that are driving these views and making Americans believe that fiction is indeed fact. The 24-hour news station (most notably FOX news), talk radio, bloggers (yes that includes myself) and the internet has destroyed print journalism and the accountability that accompanied it.
What scares me even more about this new movement is the total disregard for the truth, and instead more of an intrigue in conspiracy, which has spawned such radical groups as the "Birthers" and brought back the militia movement.
Radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, who you would think should be held to some level of accountability for what they say, if not by their listeners by their advertisers, just add more fuel to the fire. Savage, who obviously cares more about lining his pockets with money than doing what's best for America, recently compared Obama's health care plan to Adolf Hitler's extermination of the mentally incompetent and the disabled in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.
"But of course this can not happen here in America (speaking of Hitler's internment camps)...If your grandmother has Parkinsons or a child has Sarapalsy you can definitely understand that there will be discrimination against them. Of course it will not be discrimination in the sense that you know it to be discrimination, because it will be framed as social justice. Of course if you go and try to appeal to the government while they are euthanizing your child by not giving them the care that they need, you will be considered un-American by Nancy Pelosi and perhaps will be rounded up, and put in an internment camp for an interminable period of time. You see there are internment camps being planned. You may not understand it cause you didn't see it on CBS News, but I direct you to an article that came out on World Net Daily...now you say they are making it up, they are just scaring you, but it is an ad for national guardsmen to run internment camps!"
Of course this type of insanity is not unprecedented in American history. There has long been these movements of anger and fear driven by those trying to change the landscape of American politics. Most notably during the 1950s when junior Senator Joseph McCarthy started accusing President Truman and other honest Americans of being communists or communist sympathizers during a period that's now known as McCarthyism. These type of lies and paranoia that resulted as direct result of the Second Red Scare in America led to investigations and questioning of the accused before government and private panels.
I remember when I learned about McCarthyism in high school and then college, and how crazy, not only how my fellow classmates and I thought it was, but how even the presentation of the period was supposed to reflect this insane paranoia that was to be a lesson to all of us living in America at the time - even though one could understand the cause for concern over communism after World War II. It was something as teenagers and young adults that we chuckled at as the naivety of the era, and what we perceived to be a less-developed society than we felt existed in our time. But today McCarthyism is starting to look tame in the wake of suspicions over death panels and concentration camps that will turn us into socialists or communists or Nazi's or whatever the popular word of the day may be for the nuts who are promoting it.
We should of saw all of this coming though. During last year's presidential election, the nutty-Congresswoman from Minnesota, Michelle Buchman, told MSNBC news anchor, Chris Matthews, that she suspected President Obama and other Congressman of having anti-American tendencies.
"I think the American people should take a great look at the views of the people in Congress to see if they are pro-America or anti-America. I think the people would love to see an expose like that." Bachmann said at the time. A statement that almost cost her reelection and with good reason.
It is one thing for some right-wing radio talk show host who is playing to his audience to accuse a Democratic candidate/U.S. Senator of being un-American, but it is another thing when it comes from a U.S. Congresswoman. Even worse yet the delusional Bachmann tried to claim that she never said such a thing even after they played the remarks back for her. How about we do an expose on whether or not Michelle Bachmann is anti-American or not. Or would that be just crossing the line?
Of course Bachmann is not the only one who has used the anti-American card as of late. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the term "un-American" to describe some of the protesters at Town Hall meetings. While I don't agree with calling anyone that loves their country no-matter what their political views un-American, there is a difference between what Pelosi and Bachmann said and meant. Bachmann was trying to characterize a political candidate and possibly a whole political party as being un-American for not agreeing with her views. Pelosi on the other hand was referring to the actions of extreme right protesters to obstruct meaningful conversation and the threatening manner they used to treat their fellow Americans who had differing views at the Town Hall meetings.
Liberals are also not completely innocent in this conspiracy non-sense though. During the Bush administration many extreme liberals accused the government of all types of conspiracies, including their own involvement in the attacks of 9/11 that allowed them to create the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to help oil companies take over the world's oil supply. While President Bush's intentions, which we now know included using weapons of mass destruction to create the war in Iraq, were not always necessarily out of good at least he was given the opportunity to follow through with his vision of America, good or bad.
During those years America was angry and fearful on both sides, but what always intrigued me the most was that it appeared conservatives, or supporters of Bush's policies, who had gotten what they wanted, were always more angry, fearful and hateful on the outside than the average liberal was. Not that liberals weren't fearful, and they did in fact spread some haneous lies that could have lead to an equal amount of fear and paranoia among Americans over President Bush, but at least liberals were for the most part willing to give Bush the opportunity to screw up, these people won't even give President Obama the RESPECT he deserves to dig his own political grave - if that is to be the case.
This fear is not uncommon though and it usually spawns from periods when our government has attempted to expand its power. Most notably we saw this during the Bush administration when it instituted such bills as the Patriot Act, which gave them the right to spy on Americans and wiretap peoples phones without a warrant. Obama has also been reluctant to do away with some of the Bush era policies, including the allowance of government officials to search laptops and cell phones of Americans returning from overseas.
But aside from all of the opposition what I think we have started to lose most in America is our sense of RESPECT and DECENCY for our fellow man. From Kanye West interrupting teenage country phenom Taylor Swift on stage at the VMA's to Serena Williams losing her cool on a line judge at the U.S. Open to Joe Wilson thinking he has some historical right to disrespect, not only President Obama, but the office of the President of the United States, during a joint session of Congress, are just a few examples of the lack of respect we have for each other and our beliefs in today's America.
It's great that we have differing views on all of these issues to make sure that no one party's agenda displaces other Americans views. Hell I even believe there should be more than two major parties pressuring one another, but that is just not the reality of the political system we live in. However, I have a major problem when protests turn into violent mobs, and I am not necessarily talking about physical assaults, but verbal assaults on other Americans trying to exercise their First Amendment right in a peaceful manner. And I have an even bigger problem with people who feel they can intentionally lie to fool other people into believing they are right.
During the 1960s America faced a social uprising that ended in shaping our society into what it is today. While there was more violence at that time than hopefully we can even begin to imagine today, at least our country was stable economically. Whereas today we face many of the same problems the depression of the 1930s brought on, coupled with the social angst of the 1960s. And if we intend to get out of this era with no one hurt, with a better America, we will need to stop the angry bickering and sit down to work together to ensure all of our visions can melt into one. But I believe this starts with the truth and ends with conservatives realizing that they had their time, they had their moment to live in an America that served their ideology and they failed. Not that they need to roll over for every policy President Obama tries to pass, but it also means you don't boycott every law either. It is also time to give President Obama and the Democrats the RESPECT, yes I am talking to you Joe Wilson, they deserve to make sure America prospers not only during his term(s), but for future generations of Americans. Otherwise our children's children will be looking back at this era in American history with the same disdain as today's generations now look at McCarthyism.
Local opponents of former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno will gather tonight outside the Desmond Hotel in Albany to protest a fundraiser to raise money for his legal fund.
