Here it is.
I hope you read the rest of the diary before you rate me as a concern troll. Someone I know, who is in a position to be harmed by the policies of the people who made this video, sent it to me with the words "I thought you might enjoy this video."
As I said-I suppose it means what you mean by "enjoy": It is, at any rate, an interesting piece of propaganda. Below, is my response.
Well, I enjoyed it in the sense that I found it useful to know what the current propaganda is- and interesting to see how many false premises are put together to come a false conclusion. It's also interesting to see how much is implied and how a sort of vague implicit threat of violence is mixed with a threat about electoral outcomes.
Firstly, the people putting this video together are not the ones who worked to elect Obama, or any other Democrat. They are the ones who worked to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin, and who earlier supported George Bush and Dick Cheney, and before that Newt Gingrich, and before that Ronald Reagan.
The "change" and "hope" that Obama ran on was that he would reverse the policies favored by those candidates. It is false, and in fact silly to imply that Obama ran on a platform of being a conservative Republican. It is similarly false to suggest that the agenda Obama has been attempting to enact is substantively different from the agenda he ran on.
It seems simply absurd to me to blame Obama for the unemployment rate. The recession started before Obama was elected and it got worse even before the inauguration. Obama's spent a year trying to keep the recession from getting worse, and though I have some specific criticisms to make, I do believe all the evidence is his policies kept unemployment from being 20% instead of 10%.
What do you think the unemployment rate would be today if McCain and Palin had continued the policies of Bush and Cheney that got us into this recession?
Health Care Reform was and has been a central plank in the Democratic Platform. There has been an amazing amount of false information spread about what is and is not in either the House or Senate Bill. But primarily, what both bills do is expand subsidies, and also to a lesser degree, Medicaid. Not only is nothing being taken away from you, you will find it easier and more affordable to get health insurance (that's not to say everything about the bills is perfect, but they are not what the video alleges they are).
The video also rests implicitly on numerous other false premises:
The bailout of the financial sector did not begin with Barack Obama, nor did it result from his policies. The need for the bailout resulted from the extensive deregulation of financial markets promoted by the underlying philosophy of the Republicans, which is in essence, deregulate. Unfortunately, this policy of de regulation was practiced by both Democrats and Republicans. The bailout happened in October, before the election. It had wide support by both Republicans and Democrats. You can't blame Obama exclusively for the bailout. And I will add, that while there is much that is wrong with the bailout, I ask what the alternative is? Were we supposed to let the financial system collapse?
Actually, the bailout did not lead to a takeover of the financial system-and more is the pity because the financial system needs to be cleaned up and it isn't going to do it alone.
The irony of this video, and of your acceptance of this video (or so I assume) is that it blames people like Democrats, or Liberals, or "leftists" or "radicals" (while never bothering to even define who or what these people are or what they seemingly believe) for the failures of the last 30 years of the Republican philosophy of "deregulate".
But the policies it proposes and wants you to vote for are precisely those policies that have gotten us into this mess.
There is another implicit premise in the video: and that premise is that a sinister group of people have somehow hijacked the process. Whether you like or dislike Obama and the Democrats, they won the election by norrmal processes and are governing by normal processes. Say you dislike the way the Senate runs (fair enough). But to think that something unusual is going on, or that it runs differently, or would run differently under Republicans, is simply absurd.
At least as far as legislating is concerned, Democrats are following the rules of elections and legislating. Disagreeing with people's policies does not make them sinister. It means you disagree. And the tone of the video is clearly designed to stoke, anger, hatred-and to imply that violence is somehow justified or desired, because there is an immanent threat to the nature of the Republic posed by people who "don't belong" and are "different" from "regular" Americans, like you and I.
This brings me to my last point: about civil liberties. What has happened to civil liberties in this country over the last 30 years? The simple fact is that they have been eroded. It is easier for police to search you on the roadside. Government has much greater power to monitor your communications. And all of this has been favored and promoted by the kinds of people who made that video and who elected and voted Republican. This creeping and extensive abuse of personal freedom has been pushed and promoted by every Republican since Nixon and the conservative Republican appointees to the Supreme Court. It's all part of the "law and order" philosophy that underlies the Republican approach. But to be fair, many Democrats, including, quite sadly, Obama and Clinton have gone along with it.
So, you have to decide what it is you want in the next election:
Do you want large health insurance companies to be able to drop you from the plan with no explanation at all? Keep supporting the people who made this video and vote for their candidates-it's easy to do-just vote straight Republican.
Do you want large health insurance companies to deny you care you paid for with your premiums? Again, just vote for the people favored by the makers of this vide0-Vote Republican.
Do you want even more U.S. troops in even more countries and even more wars with Americans dying every day. Like I say-vote Republican.
Do you want large banks and credit companies to be able to screw you over whenever they feel like it and pay their CEO's large bonuses to do it. Vote Republican.
Do you want the government to be able to spy on you, harass you, monitor you? Vote Republican.
Is there a group of people who when in power have set up secret foreign policies, ran illegal wars, showed contempt for the electoral process, gave all kinds of special breaks to their cronies, conspired to deprive you of personal freedom... There sure is. They're called Republicans.
Who pulls their strings? Large corporations-including banks, health insurance companies etc.
Who's against things like health care reform? Large corporations, especially health insurance companies.
Tell you something.
OK-well does this mean the Democrats are really bringing the kind of change we need? Well not exactly.
But why not? That's easy: they're too much like Republicans.
So, if you want, vote Republican. Hate the Democrats, the "liberals", the "radicals" and all the other people the large corporations tell you to hate. It's easier to just go along and listen to large corporations than actually learn what it is people actually think.
But this is my prediction about what will happen in the future when the Republicans win.
They'll go right back to the policies of the last 30 years that created the need for a bailout, that gave us the worst recession since the 1930's, that let health insurance companies run amok...
And then, someday, you'll have to look past the empty threats and the ease of hating people who are "different" and ask yourself-what kind of change do you really want?