I never thought I'd see the day. I never thought I'd live to see the day that progressives would be loudly calling for the federal government to "protect" them from fellow Americans. I never thought I'd see the day that progressives would buy into the distract, divide and conquer tactics that our corporate controlled media is feeding us. They show us constant clips with the outrageous crazies and the racists and drive this storyline home to divert attention from the deals going down in Congress and in the White House. And many on the "left" are happy to help them.
Now you can't dispute the fact that many of these teabaggers and town hall disrupters are, indeed, racist and are simply protesting a black President. Granted. I live on the border of WV and western VA and I daily hear the most amazingly, heart-breakingly, racist and ignorant remarks about President Obama. But these people are my neighbors and I will not allow corporations to direct me to hate them. These people are not my enemy. These folks are largely being used as pawns and are being fed corporate talking points. Even Rachel and Keith show clip after clip and devote segment after segment to the hypocritical, racist extremism of the right. All well and good, but these people are not running the show in Washington. Republicans are weak, small in numbers and out of touch. Democrats are in power now- yet are largely working for these corporate interests. So how do corporations, Rahmbo and Democratic leadership take the attention away from the real obstructionists in DC? Pit liberals against racists. Perfect. We'll keep progressives so busy defending President Obama, that they won't have time to keep him honest.
Let's be careful as we proceed, that we don't join the wrong fight and start scapegoating average, mostly poor and uneducated Americans. Again, they are not our enemies. And we'd better be careful about crying out for the federal government to apply terrorism laws to radicals on the right - even murderers of abortion providers- because I can guarantee you the more likely scenario is that after applying a few cases to the right, the increased power of the federal government will target the left as we represent the more serious threat to the power structure. There are constitutionally sound laws to handle crimes and there is no need to silence free speech on either side, so please let's be careful about invoking terrorism claims against Americans (or anyone else for that matter.) Laws and the Constitution have worked for all these years, we don't need any federal government homeland terrorist department gaining power at the insistence of the left!
As for health care, I agree wholeheartedly with Bill Moyers when he points out that the Democrats have become a corporate party, no longer representing the interests of the people. Even in a supposedly strong speech to Congress, President Obama himself even called out the left as equal obstructors of the health care debate. What kind of a person would dare equate the death panels and Hitler references of the right to the left's call for universal health care? A need that is recognized as a basic human right all over the world. Yet President Obama had the nerve to do it. Our very own wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Pharma and Insurers lumped us as equally obstructive. And progressives still cheer him.
I never thought I'd see the day that progressives clamor and beg for a "reform" that has not been announced, explained or debated. Corporate interests, either knowingly or unwittingly aided by the White House and Congress, have succeeded in getting the entire progressive base to call loudly for the vague notion of a "public option." But all we've been guaranteed is mandates and fines. Oh, you may get something they call a public option- they almost have to throw us something now. They can call anything a public option since we have neglected to pin them down on what that even means. But in the meantime, Corporate Health and their minions in DC have enlisted all of us to "Support the President on health care reform!!- Oh, I mean health insurance reform, oh, I mean forced insurance requirements for all of you or the US of A will come down on you reform...
I personally no longer support the President's plan because he hasn't told us what it is yet, he dealt away the negotiation of drug prices, etc. and I am still against the unconstitutional insurance requirement that candidate Obama specifically promised he would not enact.
I think we should all stop a minute to think about what side of history we want to be on. Do we want to be used as pawns by Washington's corporate interests and continue to do their work for them? Universal health care is still possible if we don't settle. Single payer is still the best plan- not a leftist plan. And I would just like to remind everyone that we can still support President Obama against racist attacks and support his legitimacy and right to govern without getting distracted by corporate media's fixation on extremism. We can still try to educate our neighbors about race and politics and even disagree as loudly as them if need be. But please let's not get distracted from holding President Obama to his campaign promises. My poor farmer neighbors are not blocking health care reform. Washington is. (You can include Pres Obama or not as you are so inclined.)
So let's not buy into the divide and conquer scapegoating because as we all know liberals are everyone's favorite scapegoat and the tables will turn. Save the pitchforks for the corporations, not our brothers and sisters.