George Carlin used to muse that the reason the mainstream media, talking heads and politicians kept the masses arguing amongst themselves over right versus left paradigms was so that they, the elite, could keep giggling off to the bank.
As with many other things Carlin waxed upon, he was probably right on this score.
It’s useful to the power elites, the uber-rich and the corrupt in and outside of Washington, DC for us to become distracted by petty differences.
Over the past 8 years, I’ve observed more side-choosing than at any other time in my life. When I was younger, I can remember Republicans and Democrats who voted issue or person and not straight party ticket. Those days appear to be gone and choosing a public servant based on their career or ethics seems to be an unspeakable sin. These days, everyone seems to be out for blood and the party-defense rhetoric is getting pretty damn creepy.
I have to wonder if some personalities on air take their cues directly from DC. Listen to ‘conservative’ talk radio (is there any other kind?) for an entire day and you’ll notice the exact same topics, catch-phrases, buzz-words and bitching carrying over from program to program and from host to host. It’s all just a bit tiresome and suspiciously ‘on point’.
People in what can only be referred to as the entertainment industry (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Randi Rhodes) suck down a cool salary for getting you and I to hate one another — based only on our differences in political views. Not a very noble profession, is it? Well, we probably have only ourselves to blame. We are, after all, the consumers and so long as we keep tuning into this divisive hackery, the longer they will continue to produce content.
The fever pitch of the left-eat-right, right-eat-left idiocy is no longer reserved to uneducated and embittered radio hosts. It’s now found its way into our halls of government. I cannot point to a particular moment when it started, but I certainly know when it came to a blistering head. That is, during the Bush administration.
Some of the initiatives that President Bush threw his arms around were very thinly veiled reach-outs to a portion of our population, based on their world views and not anything Constitutionally based. I speak of the National Day of Prayer. I’m of the opinion that the faithful reach out in prayer whether or not they have a national day for it and the rest of us forego the process of our own free will. And, that’s as it ought to be.
But, it was a good mechanism for ‘rallying the base’ and getting people to henpeck one another over things that have nothing to do with public policy in the first place. It was a straw man.
Straw men like that, however, are effective in getting people to denigrate each other, close their minds to views from other walks of life and are, generally, destructive and a massive waste of time. Surely, the government has no Constitutionally based role in promoting or opposing any activity of a spiritual nature. It is, after all, a private matter.
With the election of Barack Obama has come a new twist on the entire right versus left war on human thinking. Now, we’re being conditioned and instructed that criticism of this country’s first non-Caucasian president is an empty act, prompted by racism or Republican sour grapes.
I got my first taste of this after attending a Tea Party tax protest this past April. Along with friends, I carried signs that read “No Answers? No Taxes!” and “End the Fed.” Nary a peep about the current president or his cabinet, mind you. I was protesting what I consider to be enslavement of good people under the Federal Income Tax system and the private banking cartel we call the Federal Reserve.
Yet, comedian Jeanine Garafolo soon appeared on cable news, declaring that Tea Party protestors were nothing more than racists, radicals, evangelicals and right-wingers – all sore as hell that a black man was in the White House.
Huh?
I had shed a tear when Obama was inaugurated. No, I didn’t vote for him. Yet, I knew that he could never have won without the cooperation of white voters. To me, it signaled that my country and finally, FINALLY grown up and shed its moronic value system of race classification. It meant, to me, that we had finally decided that a human being is a human being, irrespective of that person’s color or ethnicity. To me, even though Obama was not my guy, it was a profound moment in our country’s history. But, Garafolo would have you believe me a racist and a radical. Why? She’s stirring shit.
When I was involved in the effort to protect the life of Terri Schiavo, I was interviewed by a presenter from NPR’s program, Fresh Air and part of that interview went a little somethin’ like this:
Presenter: “Your detractors say that you are right-wing, evangelical Christians who are attempting to impose your will on others. How do you respond to that accusation?”
Me: “I’m actually agnostic and a member of the Green Party.”
Presenter: “So, you’re calling such labels unfair?”
Me: “No. I’m calling them lies.”
The point is that pigeon-holing people is a recipe for fail. There are things that I take a conservative world view on. There are other things that I take a liberal world view on. It’s called thinking.
In June of 2007, then-candidate Barack Obama said of the unending detention of certain persons believed to be terrorists: “We’re not only going to close Gitmo, we’re going to restore Habeas Corpus. We’re going to lead not just by our words, but by our deeds.”
Yesterday, it was reported that he and his administration are considering an Executive Order to allow such suspects to be detained – indefinitely.
Go to any online forum, such as Fark, and see what his supporters are saying. They vigorously defend this move and claim that their president is doing what he has no other choice but to do. These are the same individuals who bemoaned president Bush for doing (stay with me, here ) the exact same thing.
So, the left-right paradigm has been quite effectively sold to the American consumer. We eat it up every day, without questioning a thing, without asking ourselves if what we’re seeing is actually reality or just another dose of DC bullshit — intended to keep us growling at each other. We just don’t get it, do we?
If you really thirst for something different, if you really desire change, if you truly want a new day, you have no other choice but to reject the left-right paradigm. Look at the person. Look to the third parties. Look inside yourself and stop defending a party over your life, your future or your children.
You know what you’re being fed is nothing but a pile of shit. Why do you keep consuming it?
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