I am calling the enemy out for who they are.
It is time to realize that Liberals and Tea Party people actually have common cause.
It is time, to borrow a concept from George Lakoff, for a "Strict Parent Liberal" to call out the enemy, and declare right from wrong.
I am that liberal. I hope to be one of many.
First, some background for this particular rant.
A few months ago, I made the decision to return to Arizona from the Bay Area. I've been unemployed since November, and the money has run out. My family, friends, and girlfriend are there. As I stare down the barrel of moving to Arizona right as the rest of the nation boycotts the state, tensions are heating up in the desert full of concealed weapons. I worry that my brother's fear of a looming civil war is credible. The discourse is getting out of control.
And then there's Glenn Beck, who is doing worse. His tactics were pretty clearly exposed by Jon Stewart in this video
http://www.thedailyshow.com/...
But my blood absolutely boiled when I saw this:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A few points about this.
Around 5:50, Beck suggests that, in the event of a major event, that free speech will be shut down. No, Glenn, that was Bush. In 2002. It already happened, but it was the Republicans and Fox News doing it.
In minute 9, he actually has the gall to say that Obama is going to get people to spy on their neighbors. No, that was Bush also. They already did that in 2002.
I am so sick and tired of listening to the Fox news talking point bastards consistently accusing the left of plotting to do what they themselves already done. In the name of "freedom".
Seriously, this is a dangerous, disingenuous man.
Beck actually called Bush a progressive recently. Perhaps that confusion is why he thinks progressives will act like Bush did? What the hell? Black is white! Up is down! Facts have a liberal bias! Facts are irrelevant!
So here is my own conspiracy theory. I believe that Glenn Beck might actually be persuaded to agree with me.
The enemy is clear. The enemy is those who make their living gambling on their investments, instead of working for a wage. They are using immigration to divide and conquer the working class. It's obvious, and disgusting.
They lowered their own taxes, shifting the tax burden onto the working class, so that they had a pissed off population they could manipulate into lowering their own taxes further, damaging the very infrastructure we depend on - especially the schools. (Castro Valley High School has $0 for athletics in next years budget. Teacher layoffs are rampant. An entire building will sit vacant next year because they will have no teachers to put in the classrooms)
They are slightly less influential in the Obama administration as they were in the Clinton and Bush administrations. They gambled with our money and lost, and then asked us to pay the bill. They lobbied for laws and trade policies that allowed them to destroy the foundation of the US manufacturing economy and used predatory lending practices to keep us distracted, fat and happy while it happened from 1995-2005 (or arguably 1980-present). All the while, they placed short bets against us and made profit from our failures. We have been suckered. We have been had.
They only call it class warfare when we fight back. What needs to be acknowledged is that the "Tea Party" (size: less than the anti war movement, by the way - but gets far more coverage in the so called "liberal" (hahahahahaahahaa) media than the anti-war movement ever has) has common cause with the liberals. We are all in the same tiny liferaft, while the investment class sails away to the Cayman islands with our tax dollars.
Enough of this bullshit argument about fear and communism. This is about the existing corporate feudalism masquerading as democracy. Time to get serious about the class warfare that has been being waged for decades with nary a response from the serfs. Time to make common cause and call out the real enemy. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are the ones who use those party lines to divide us, just as immigration is used to divide us.
My fear about the big legislation that's being pushed right now isn't that it will bring about a socialist state. Far from it. My fear is that it will mollify and increasingly aware working class into not taking the sort of drastic, transformative, action required.
I want my country back. I want the country I was told I was born to. The one where the arrangement was that if you went to work and paid your taxes, you could be assured of some semblance of security. The cops and the fire department were there. The schools were a good place for your kid to be. You pay your social security taxes today so that it's a fair deal when you retire and others take care of you. Where a single income meant a comfortable but not lavish lifestyle, and where there was reason to believe that your kids would be better off than you were.
To my Republican father, who named his cat "Dubya" and encourages me to watch Beck: Dad, your kids are not better off than you were. Your grandkids will have it even worse. It's not because of liberals. It's because of the money addicts.