My husband watches Fox News . Meh. He says it’s because all the silly Yanks amuse him, but I’m sure he watches it just to annoy me. That, and he’s confident I won’t stay in the room long enough to notice the bevy of blonde boobiage (please don’t google that I just made it up) the studio heads parade across their pseudo-news sets masquerading as guest speakers or experts on world politics and modern Christianity. (Because nothing says religion like a shiney gold cross twinkling above the neckline of a low-cut sweater.)
So a few times each week I’m exposed to (like it or not) the spewings of people like Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham. And the one question that always, always, always pops into my head is… why are these people so angry? I don’t care what subject they’re crapping on about, they’re always talking over each other, yelling, shaking their fists at the camera and girating like agitated bob dolls.
They’re always mad at President Obama. Every single thing President Bush did while in office is now magically and uniquely President Obama’s fault, including the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the big corporate bailouts, the long unemployment lines… and the most ludicrous… the fact we haven’t yet found and captured Osama Bin Laden.
I holler shoot me now! from the next room but all I get is a chuckle.
President Obama didn’t earn his Nobel Peace prize. That was the idea of some foreign lefty who just wanted to make the Republican Party look bad. (Oh please – you don’t need anyone’s help there.)
President Obama leads an army of Washington Elitists who are scheming to takeover their government and destroy their country through the elitist tactic of… wait for it… higher education! (How dare they!)
President Obama is not to be trusted because he’s an eloquent speaker and can therefore fool us all with his fancy-schmancy words and trick us into doing bad things like – fixing our health-care system or *gasp* paying the taxes that pay for things like unemployment and medicare benefits!WE DON’T NEED NO STUPID GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS! WHY WON’T THEY JUST LEAVE US ALONE!!!
I exhaust myself just trying not to listen.
So with Sarah Palin conveniently hiding out vacationing in Hawaii (even though she disliked Hawaii so much when she attended a Hawaiian college she had to quit and go find another college in another state) I thought today would be a day of serenity.
And it was! All the way up to the time I poured a cuppa and logged onto the blogs to do some reading. Yikes! Sarah’s taking on the Schwarzenegger! Run Arnie! Run!
We’re supposed to be the United States of America. But… our Republican Party is broken. There’s nothing but dissention and anger amongst the rank and file, and one can’t really build a party platform where no two people can agree on a plan.
The Republican base is changing. Sarah’s influence on the dissatisfied, discontented, we-want-answers-now portion of our citizenry is stirring a rebellion of distrust which will ultimately have us turning on each other just when we really need to be coming together – when we seriously need to focus on solving world problems rather than spitting out new ones.
The Republican Party is broken. Democrats are no longer talked about as colleagues who simply have a different slant on world affairs, Democrats are now talked about as if they are the enemy and the enemy must be destroyed.
Democrats are now outsiders and don’t belong in America.
If you’re not Christian you don’t belong in America.
If you believe in pro-choice, you don’t belong in America.
The two-party political system we’ve enjoyed for a couple of hundred years, where compromise has been the main force pushing us ahead as a giant of a country is being slowly choked by the hate, bigotry and ignorant rhetoric issuing from the ranks of the Republican base.
And no one inside the Republican Party seems to be stepping forward to herald the voice of reason.
The Republican Party is broken. Which means the American Eagle can’t fly. A healthy bird needs both it’s wings to fly. But the right one is broken. And today’s Facebook entry by Sarah Palin and the comments it elicited- are a pretty good indication of why:
December 17, 2009 at 12:11 am
>”President Obama leads an army of Washington Elitists who are scheming to takeover their government and destroy their country through the elitist tactic of… wait for it… higher education!”
Yes, well, the majority of Americans are elitists, then, ’cause Obama was elected President of the United States, right?
December 17, 2009 at 12:30 am
I don’t think that Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology is carried where you are but check it out. This is NOT the typical hippy dippy stuff and it’s loads of fun http://www.freewillastrology.com/
This week’s Virgo really applies to your post:
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Twenty-two percent of American rightwing
fundamentalists believe that Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ. On the
other hand, 73 percent of the people who read my horoscopes think that
if there were such a thing as an Anti-Christ, he would be an American
rightwing fundamentalist. But I’d like to discourage speculations like that
among the Virgo tribe in 2010. According to my reading of the omens,
you should take at least a year off from getting worked up about your
version of the devil. Whoever you demonize, just let them alone for a
while. Whatever you tend to fault as the cause of the world’s problems,
give your blame mechanism a rest. As much as possible, create for
yourself an Enemy-Free Zone.
December 17, 2009 at 1:03 am
Teh stoopid, it hurts.
December 17, 2009 at 2:03 am
I am very sad about the “fox news” syndrome that has taken over our country and that Palin has latched onto. They are “inciting a riot” by their hate and anger. I wonder if they really want to destroy the country by dividing it so methodically. They do not even hide their goal. They want Obama to fail and they want to take over the republican party and then the country. They will do anything to achieve that goal: lie, incite violence, keep people riled up and angry at everyone and everything. They don;’t seem to care that they are causing hate and destruction of our way of governing which has worked for 200 years. I agree “Where is the voice of reason in the republican party?”
December 17, 2009 at 5:20 am
I love this. Such an eloquent title … and so true. There’s nothing wrong with being conservative, or even being a Republican – or there hadn’t been up until Nixon and Watergate and subsequently what the Republican Party has become. And our constructive two-party system, any meaningful dialogue, and compromise, is no more. What I still don’t get is how the GOP has morphed into such a party filled with hypocrisy, hate, and anti-intellectualism.
December 17, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Part of the problem is that the right wing is broken. The other part is that it’s the only one. To paraphrase a Zen koan, we are hearing the sound of one wing flapping.
December 18, 2009 at 3:26 am
There seems to be a movement that needs to take place by the people for the people. If they can march by the thousands in Europe for health care, then we as Americans must follow their example. Not only demand health care reform, but also demand term limits in congress. The Corporations and fat cat Senators are going to take down the country I was born and raised in. I think the bloggers all over the world can help bring a change to this country. Organize mass marches and have the people walk, drive, bus or fly to where they can organize mass marches against those who line their own fat pockets with our blood, sweat and tears. March against the dead weight in Congress that does not work for the people, but only works for the corporations. March to have term limits applied to all in Congress. March to demand change and responsibility our government has to its citizens….it’s our damn money! It’s our damn backs, it’s our damn sweat, and by god, it’s our damn tears that is on the line here. Everyone in Congress has health care benefits, everyone in Congress has a home, everyone in Congress lives the life a fat cat loves to live.
And since I am from Alaska…..”Queen Quitter” is our biggest joke in the State!
December 18, 2009 at 1:15 pm
We are on the verge of some huge revolution in this country. It’s been coming on for a few years now. And while I won’t go so far to say SP was the catalyst for her cause, she certainly helped to catapult it further than I ever expected.
Thanks for one of the most insightful posts I’ve read in a while.
June 3, 2010 at 11:51 pm
To answer the article:
The Right Wing is not broken! It is trying to bank the bird in a very sharp turn. Isn’t it interesting that in the Democratic party, there is no talk of ideas outside of more of what we’ve got is better? What part of doing the same thing over and over changes things to solve the problem? The Republican Party, as well as others, truly believes in freedom of speach and ideas. They are at least promoting opinion–brainstorming if you will–to find solutions. Obama preached “change”: What part of doing more, WAY MORE, of the same thing is change. People really thought he knew what he was doing, and are finding out that he, in deed, is not making any changes, nor solving problems thereby.