TEA PARTY PART II - LEFT BEHIND
"There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed." - Robert F. Kennedy
From the looks of things at your average tea party, many of Beck's followers are older Americans of rather generous proportions and pasty complexions. Their signs and outbursts reveal much about them. "This is a Christian nation!" "Free markets not free loaders!" "I want my country back!" They want to take their country back, all right. Backwards to the 1950s - or at least their idealized, misremembered view of it.
These people clearly fear that the country is changing and they are being left behind. In their version of America, certain people, like women, minorities and immigrants, knew their places. Certain people, like the left behinders, enjoyed an unquestioned position of superiority over them. They wake up one morning and suddenly a young black man is the President of the United States. The world has turned upside-down. They didn't believe it could really happen. Certainly they're weren't enough of "those people" to elect a black Democrat president? With Obama's election, the left behinders were forced to realize that the country has changed and they are losing something to which they think they are entitled - their traditional place at the head of the social order, their right to dictate standards of behavior (especially for women and minorities), and their right to have leaders that look and think like they do. This is their Archie-Bunker-style "meritocracy" - social position "earned" by being born middle-class and white in America, and it is being is being fundamentally threatened by changing demographics and evolving attitudes. They are bewildered and angry that they may actually now be the minority, with no special privilege above others. They may, in fact, be surrounded. They are in a state of panic, creating an opening that is ripe for exploitation by a predatory huckster like Beck.
As a result of the threat they feel, the left-behinders seem determined to demonstrate that they are better, more authentic Americans than anyone else. One way they seek to accomplish this is by plastering a ridiculous number patriotic symbols wherever possible, from their bodies, to their vehicles to their twitter home pages. Implicit in this obsessive, almost pathological, use of such symbols is the following message: the black president is not a real American. Democrats, progressives, liberals, feminists and immigrants are not real Americans. Know a real American by his full-torso unfurling-American-flag steely-eyed-bald-Eagle T-shirt. Every fiber of their being - and clothing - is screaming that some people simply don't deserve to be real citizens like they do. Instead of projecting strength and patriotism, however, this over-the-top use of patriotic symbols reveals the insecurity and impotence they feel. Worse yet, it exposes them for the fake patriots they are, if they believe in the symbols themselves but not the values the symbols represent: equality for all, inalienable rights, a democratically functioning government and freedom from mob rule. To them, being a real American is a zero sum game. When more people are included or long-overdue rights are finally recognized, existing stakeholders are somehow diminished. It is an elitist attitude from people who consider themselves to be the salt of the earth.
Another characteristic that seems typical of the left behinders is being a fanatical Christian. This does not mean all Christians. Beck's followers are not the "meek shall inherit the earth" kind of Christians. They are the controlling, intolerant, judgmental kind of Christians and they are full of seemingly irresolvable contradictions. America is all about religious freedom - as long as you exercise that freedom to vigorously choose to be a Christian. Love thy neighbor - as long as he looks and thinks like you do. Judge not - unless Glenn Beck tells you to. All life is sacred - unless it stands in the way of the acquisition of oil. The Constitution is sacrosanct - but it easily gives way wherever it may conflict with the Bible. The government is taking away our rights - but Arizona's "papers please" law is to be commended. They profess to be pro-life, yet at the same time they are pro-gun, pro-death penalty and pro-torture. The left behinders would probably be happy if America was a Christian version of Iran, with a nearly complete unity of church and state. For people who eschew reason and logic for faith and emotion, apparently it doesn't have to make sense. It seems, in fact, to have a lot more to do with wanting control than adhering to the tenets of any religious beliefs. A changing America means a loss of their ability to control the lives of other people. They fear change and Barack Obama is the symbol of change. This is why he both frightens and enrages them, all of which is not lost on Beck.
The left-behinders exhibit so much anger and hostility that sometimes they seem to be a hair's breadth away from a Lord of the Flies scenario. Some seem capable of justifying almost any type of anti-social behavior with a bizarre jingoistic necessity argument. Some have certainly prayed for President Obama's death and bragged about it. Some have celebrated security breaches that endanger his personal safety. Some carry signs which read "We Came Unarmed…This Time" and "The Tree of Liberty Must be Watered With the Blood of Patriots from Time to Time." But apparently they don't consider that to be un-Christian, un-American or to pose a risk of emobldening America's enemies. More fundamental contradictions. They are in dire need of a reality check.
Beck fear-mongers based on this group's hot buttons frequently. Tune in to nearly any episode of the Glenn Beck Program, and Beck will provide the alarming daily bulletin that President Obama is a dictator and he and his supporters are immoral, Godless anti-American communist socialist thugs and/or hippies "having sex in the mud" who reject - and actively seek to destroy - the left behinders and their patriotic Christian values. Beck's tactics are so crude and obvious as to be patently ridiculous. He will hurl any dangerous-sounding buzz word if he thinks it will incite his followers, regardless of whether or not it makes actual logical sense or has a firm footing in reality. Like the bully he is, he mocks. He belittles. You can almost picture Beck jumping up on his desk and shouting, "Oh we've got trouble! Right here in River City!" It would be funny if it wasn't so destructive and dangerous.
Beck has ominously stated that the situation in the United States because of President Obama (who has been in office only about sixteen months at this point) is already so dire that it is time to "choose sides" and to "build an ark". It's always Armageddon day on the Glenn Beck Program. He predicts an impending collapse of the dollar and the collapse of the entire economy, and accuses President Obama of deliberately engineering it. He warns that destruction of the left-behinders' way of life is imminent. Obama and his cronies are trying to take everything away from them, because Obama is a wrong-headed black extremist who wants to redistribute the wealth in a way which is radical and completely unprecedented in American history. Beck loves to riff on this point - it is one of his fundamental memes. Socialism. The evil government wants to take what is yours and maliciously give it to someone else. And not just anyone else - a lazy, immoral, hedonistic, undeserving free-loader. Probably a black person or a minority, too. The left-behinders seem to be of the belief, with strong and continuous encouragement from Beck (who takes advantage of the worst kind of stereotyping), that there are a large number of these undeserving free-loaders. Beck has yet to provide any real evidence of their existence or of their numbers, other than a few anecdotal examples he regularly relies upon.
To put a bit of a finer point on it, the left behind crowd believes Beck's allegation that, in order to stay in power, Obama needs to get his hands on some "Obama money" and bribe a certain faction of the electorate with it in order to cling to power. And where does he get this Obama money? Why, out of the pockets of hard-working, God-fearing, tax-paying 'Murkins, that's where! This has the left behinders in a state of hysteria.
Beck has warned that Obama wants to take people's guns away, even though Obama has made no proposals involving restrictions on gun rights and has reiterated a number of times his support for Second Amendment rights. Beck also frequently refers to a partial-birth abortion procedure which he graphically describes (with words as well as obscenely gross hand gestures) as "putting a spike through the head" of an eight-month old fetus, although he never makes clear the basis for bringing it up. In typical Beck fashion, it seems that he wants to leave viewers with the implication (because stating it outright would be a lie) that Obama endorses such a procedure, or that there is a threat that such procedures are becoming commonplace because of a general lack of morals and personal responsibility that is oh-so-typical of degenerate Communists like Barack Obama and his hedonistic, hippie, amoral supporters. Statements like these are examples of Beck stoking the left behinders' fears of government oppression and destruction of their way of life and values.
The left behinders want comfort. Someone to champion their status quo. Someone to tell them that they are not surrounded and outnumbered - that in fact, the left behinders surround these liberal, Godless, America-hating socialists, whose goal is to destroy everything that is good and right about this nation. And this "comfort" is exactly what Beck provides, by skillful wielding of a cross wrapped in a flag from his bully pulpit of a major cable news channel, in a way that would make any fascist dictator proud. The left-behinders think Beck is giving them a chance to save America and Christian values, all from the comfort of their laptops and cushy "grass roots" tour buses paid for by right-wing billionaires. What a deal - turn-key patriotism!
Shame on Glenn Beck for turning neighbor against neighbor. Shame on Glenn Beck for keeping older, vulnerable Americans in an unjustified state of near-continuous panic. These people are so terrified they are at Beck's mercy. He has them believing he is the only thing that stands between them and complete annihilation by a demonic federal government. They see Beck's daily rage, they hear his absolute and total contempt for President Obama, and they hear his dire warnings about complete collapse of the economy and a coming "one world government". He knows what buttons to push, and he has the left-behinders dancing like puppets on strings. This is how he turned a group of mild-mannered tax protesters into an angry mob that now wants to overthrow "restore the honor of" the U.S. government. Beck's fear-mongering for the purpose of inducing mass panic in the public and unjustified distrust of our government is deeply, grossly irresponsible. Even if Beck does not possess the decency or internal moral regulator to restrain himself from crossing the line (and clearly he does not), no responsible producer or network executive should allow it. It is an interesting question to ask why it is being allowed now, especially with the Glenn Beck Program hemorrhaging advertisers.
It is also an incredible disappointment that some members of the generation we should be able to look to for wisdom and guidance instead succumb to Beck's cynical manipulation and vile fear-mongering. Shame on them for being so easily duped into hating their own fellow Americans and their President by a man they have never met and do not really know. Far from rising to the standards set by the Greatest Generation, they are the greatest disappointment.
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. - Gandhi
WE SURROUND THEM V. MAO'S ENCIRCLEMENT STRATEGY
Interesting side note: You may recall Beck kicked off his 9-12 Project political activism phase with his meme of "We surround them" (starting at about 3:00):
"weeping...And it you know it seems that the voices of our leaders, and special interests, and the media, they're surrounding us - it sounds intimidating...The truth is, they don't surround us, we surround them. This is our country."
You may also be aware of how Beck loves to smear members of the Obama Administration as "Mao lovers". Therefore it is very odd that Beck's "we surround them" sounds a lot like Mao's encirclement strategy:
It must be emphasized that Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory of the establishment of rural revolutionary base areas and the encirclement of the cities from the countryside is of outstanding and universal practical importance for the present revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed nations and peoples...
Beck is all about setting up a "we vs. them" scenario - we being the common, every day Americans (his audience, "We the People", the rural folk of the countryside) who are "revolutionaries" just like the Founders fighting against the oppression of Obama's angry-black-man-radical-socialist-dictatorial-dishonorable-hippie-immoral-city-slicker government. Once this similarity was pointed out on twitter, Beck's use of "We Surround Them" seemed to trail off.
Related in this series:
Beck's Dark Secret: Hell in a Handbasket
He Blinded me with Skousen
Glenn Beck: The Moron Whisperer
Tea Party Part I - The Sore Losers