What was The Journeying Progressive thinking today, politically, American-ly?
I have to tell you…it isn’t pretty…and the Tour action that got my blood flowing lead to a little bit of passion against one of my biggest pet peeves, in Stage 4 of our Tour de Progress:
I am tired of always being the one to compromise because Republicans or other hard-heads would rather risk failure of this nation and her people than find a common ground. I am tired of being treated like an idiot by people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and the like, who, combined between them, have as much government or legislative experience as I do. To them, politics is a game–who can say the most outrageous, misleading, spectacularly offensive thing and get the most viewers to pocket the most cash at the end of the day? They wrap it all up in an airwave, call it “FOXNews”, and pretend that they are immortal, infallible, perfect beings that are obviously better than the rest of America. But the reality is that I CAN READ, and so can the rest of America, and we know what our Declaration says, our Constitution says, and our laws say; we know why they were founded that way and the principles that actually do make us American BEFORE we owe allegiance to a particular party or ideology.
While I once thought that open dialogue and debate would be good prospects between parties with differing opinions, I now see that the mainstream voice of the Republican Party wants no part in having a dialogue with everyday Americans.
Paul Krugman calls it “movement conservatism.” These folks wander around from issue to issue, shooting down American public dialogue like a crazy with a bazooka at a coffee shop. Then, when it’s sufficiently bloody, “Rush Republicans” have leveled the playing field enough to get their own way; nevermind that the same field is now decimated beyond belief, with a void of true passion, attention or public will. Rush Republicans make issues so divisive, so malicious and so disgusting that the average American doesn’t want to talk about them at the dinner table. Which, unfortunately for us, is exactly the place we should be talking about these things.
What three things were you not allowed to discuss at the dinner table in my house? (Keep in mind that I grew up in a very, very, very conservative family) Abortion, gun control and homosexuals. Rush Republicans have created an environment in this country where not only is it not permissible to compromise with anyone on such issues, but we can’t even TALK about these issues openly for fear of reprisal! Does that sound like American values? I honestly cannot believe we stomach this in our country, our proud country where we are supposed to be FREE from persecution for our beliefs, in theory freeing us to achieve progress unparalleled anywhere in the world. Sadly, we are sorely lacking in achieving true progress in this country.
And what does Rush, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, et. al. have to gain from this sorry state of affairs? A viewership that is drawn by fear to keep coming back to their demi-gods (which is funny, since that very first commandment says “thou shalt have no other gods before me”). For our inability to talk about things at the dinner table, the bloodthirsty media elite are raking in tons and tons of money. Just take a look at Rush’s many dwellings, or the ridiculous comfort that Bill O’Reilly lives in. Their viewers have been trained to believe that they should praise that sort of wealth, that Rush and Bill and the like should be congratulated for being so lucky as to be filthy stinking rich. But what is the reality? Those people are getting rich off of our fear. They are exploiting Americans like we work in a sweatshop. The vast, vast majority of Rush’s listeners will never be as financially well-off as he…in fact, many are still driving the same station wagons that they did when they first started listening to him 15 years ago. And we are too naive to take a step back for even one second to realize this, and instead we keep pumping fear into the great right scare machine. Fear=money, and that’s the only form of payment Rush accepts at his disgustingly malicious jukebox.
Rush Republicans are like the bully on the playground that used to take poor helpless kid’s lunch money. There were usually two ways you lost your money to those thugs–(a) you gave it up without a fight (we call that being a “wuss”) or (b) you got beat up.
Let me tell those that would bully innocent Americans around on the national airwaves–we never give up, and we sure as hell never lose when it comes to fighting. Yes, Rush, the promise of people in the Progressive Generation is that
You see our backs as we fly by your lazy ass at the local 5-K because you’d rather let your body go than take care of it and then complain about average people petitioning for their natural right of basic health care(and we don’t stop at 5K’s, either, we’ll run you 100 miles into the ground);
We’re the boxer in the gym, feet dancing, arms on guard, ducking and shifting and punching and landing on target;
We’re the workers in the hayfields of Nebraska, barechested and glistening in the sun, muscles rippling as we toss bails of hay into the bed of the pickup;
We’re the Friday night hail mary pass at a high school football game when even our folks have packed it up and started to head for the car;
We’re the soldiers on patrol in the foothills of Afghanistan and the deserts of Iraq;
We’re the young women and mothers who aren’t just the homemakers, but head of households;
We’re the team at the auto shop that wipes the grease off our hands after we’re done working on those GM cars and trucks;
We’re the teachers and administrators that hold a job far more pivotal to the success of our society than pundits like you, yet we are paid merely a paltry fraction of your immense, hot-aired salary.
We are not liberals. We are not Democrats. We are not a plague to this land. And we are NOT stupid.
We are Americans.
We’ve bitten the forbidden fruit once–Adam and Eve took care of that for us. We are not about to cave to your serpentlike ways, and continue on a path of destructive, circular rhetoric and senseless silence on issues that impact Americans. The decisions will be hard and the discussions won’t always end in actionable solutions, but they will exist free from your suggestions that someone who advocates health care as a natural-born human right, or that automatic weaponry should be taken off the streets and out of our childrens’ schools, or that what we need isn’t smaller government but smarter government, is incompetent or incapable of leadership. No, Rush et. al., our very ability to think outside of the bubble you have creatively maintained for your faux-world makes us decidedly able to think for ourselves.
Rush, Bill, Ann, Glenn and the rest of the media establishment have sucker-punched this country long enough. This is a nation of laws and men, not political pundits. We know that you won’t fall easy, but for the first time in American history, it is finally time for the people to make the news. Perhaps fittingly, our rallying cry will come from someone you know well, and gave up on like a lamb at slaughter:
“We are Americans, we are Americans and we will never surrender!”
Remember McCain? We’ve already taken our government back, and now we’re here to take back our media.
4 comments