Below the fold I argue that Conservatives are the most immediate threat to this country...and that their influence runs deeper than most people suspect.
Dictionary definition:
Conservative: 1. Disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change. 2. Traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness.
By definition, Conservatives dislike change. A Conservative is most likely to say "I like things just the way they are." But keeping things just the way they are leads only to stagnation. To grow, a society must change. The Founders were certainly not resistant to change. Lincoln had the courage to face significant change alone. Edison, Bell and the Wrights embraced the possibilities of change. King stood up to mortal danger to bring about change. I would argue that all the greatest Americans were champions of change. Without their unique visions and their singular efforts—without the change they brought—this nation likely would have stagnated long ago.
Given these facts, why would any true American fight against change? Plenty of people do, and the reason why is simple: because they have something to lose. The more you have to lose, the more resistant to change you will be. That is, the more conservative you will be. And today’s Conservatives wish to fight the change we need if our nation is to survive. Encouraging change, especially in the areas of media, energy, insurance, banking and politics, runs counter to their own self-interests. Driven by the fear of losing everything, they will stop at nothing to preserve the status quo.
Not since the days of the Roman consuls has the world seen a class of people so determined to watch their own society burn just to maintain the status quo. For the last 30 years, the rich have kept getting richer—and everybody else be damned. Wages haven’t changed appreciably in this time; indeed, relative to inflation the living wage has gone down. Meanwhile, CEO compensation has exploded some 1000%. Even in the robber-baron days of Carnegie and Vanderbilt, the super-wealthy understood the importance of giving back to society. Today, practically no one spreads the wealth any more. Has Buffet founded a university or a hospital? Has Murdoch (in any of the countries he owns)? Have any of them in the last 50 years? I can’t think of any.
Today, the Haves keep, refusing to acknowledge the sundry plights of their fellow Americans. Gone is genuine philanthropy; today it’s used primarily as a tax write-off. They hide their vast sums in offshore accounts so they can avoid paying taxes, forcing the rest of us (already scraping by) to take up the slack. They are concerned only with themselves, their possessions and their power. And anyone who dares knock the silver spoons from their mouths must be put down.
Why should this be? Don’t they understand that some changes are in their best interests too? I suggest that they do understand. I suggest that they simply do not care.
They don’t care that we might get sick.
They don’t care if we can’t make a living.
They don’t care that we can’t survive.
Because they expect to survive.
They expect to be exempt.
They expect to be Raptured.
They expect to retain power and control.
They expect the rest of us to be gone.
So they arm themselves with guns, bibles and money—to keep us away from them, away from their stuff.
They spew their never-ending vitriol toward anything that threatens them, blatantly telling lies and half-truths, wantonly spreading rumors and innuendo, deviously seeding paranoia and panic among a hypnotized, gullible, unthinking public. And in the process, they've created a scared and confused public who have ended up blithe, ignorant but vocal charicatures called teabaggers.
And the media help them do it...because all media is corporate media. Media outlets and conglomerates have their own corporate interests to consider. They have their own motivations for being Conservatives, for keeping the status quo: they literally have our entire society in their pockets. We are a consumer culture, but only because they push us into consumerism.
The truth is, we’re practically brainwashed. At this point, they can tell us anything ("Balloon Boy!"), sell us anything ("Snuggie!") and we will buy it. There is no longer any distinction between "news" and "entertainment," or between "politics" and "advertising." It’s all approached the same; it’s all packaged the same; it’s all bought the same. We’ve been programmed to buy: not to create, but to cash in; not to invent, but to invest.
The media keep us well-distracted and ill-informed. They dumb us down. They lie to us out of habit, whether about the amount of sugar in soft drinks or the benefits of universal health-care. Moreover, from newspapers to TV news, they still call it "journalism," but true journalism is dead. Money killed it some twenty years ago. Sure, some may give lip service to "liberal minds," "free thinkers," or "fringe elements." But added together, such programs are like a mouse’s squeak at a rave party. None of the media are to be trusted. (As an example, I offer the recent non-coverage of the James O’Keefe arrest in Washington, DC. When he infiltrated ACORN, he and his video were all over the TV. His arrest on felony mischief charges has barely been covered, if at all, on the nightly news.) Although FNC is held up as an example of far-right news bias, I ask: Relative to what? Compared to them, everybody else looks like PBS. It might be difficult to notice, but the other networks tend to engage in the same practices. Next to Fox, they seem reasonable and fair--but they're all after the same thing: convincing us that change is dangerous. Thus, Stephanopoulos can get away with not calling out a Conservative blowhard who’s obviously lying to him. Any real journalist would have been run out of town; as it is, he might as well be hosting the political equivalent of "Hollywood Entertainment Access Tonight."
The biggest advantage the Conservatives have right now is the media. Conservatives, for the most part, are the media. They use it every day to rewrite history in ways that would make Orwell scream ("There were no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration."), yet most Americans don’t—-or can’t—-think twice about it. The media’s subtly one-sided coverage makes Liberals feel divided, helpless, outnumbered and drowned-out. And after less than a year, TV-addled consumers that we are, we bought that too. It’s a sad, sorry state we find ourselves in. But we must remember: it is only an illusion. Conservatives will fight with all their considerable resources the kind of change we voted for in 2008. Where did we all go?
I suspect that the media-induced desire in Americans for instant gratification (the same kind of media inducement that’s given us teabaggers and mindless Palinites) fractured us liberals early on. When things weren’t sunshine and rainbows all of a sudden, we lost interest. Then came the shout-fest over health care in August, monetarily sponsored by the likes of wealthy health-care proponents and the oilmen Koch brothers, which was both a convenient distraction and a deliberate obfuscation of the facts. So we started bickering with each other, which is precisely what they set out to accomplish.
Add to all this the Conservative hijacking of American Christianity—directly perpetrated by Karl Rove nearly a decade ago—which went ignored as the single greatest internal threat to this nation in nearly a century. The Founders insisted that politics and religion be kept separate for very good reasons, among them being the fact that ideological extremists cannot be reasoned with. Just like today’s Conservatives cannot be reasoned with: they know what they know, facts or evidence be damned. Now they are using that religious base to dumb-down our children’s textbooks, to defund schools that "won’t play along," to increase gun sales, to discourage people from helping victims of a catastrophic earthquake, to murder doctors in cold blood, to spur racist lingerings in the South and homophobic hysteria everywhere, and to spread the poisonous, paranoid idea that the world’s going to end in two years.
Perhaps that’s because they really think it will. And when it doesn't, if they win in 2012—hell, if they win overall in 2010—they’ll claim to have saved the world merely by having been there for us. While at the same time, they’ll still be stockpiling guns and gold for an end they, like the rest of us who aren’t rich but can think for ourselves, already see coming. And saddest of all, religious folks are so mind-bent by this Christian-Conservative-Republican merger—which compels them to shout "Socialist!", "Fascist!", "Communist!", and "Nazi!"—that they never even realize that Jesus described himself as a Socialist.
We are literally fighting for our lives, here. They gaze upon us as though we are cows in the field, being milked dry to fill their pockets before we’re led away to slaughter...which in turn will fill their pockets even more.
Conservatives are selfish, spoiled brats who throw tantrums when they don’t get what they want. And like all brats, they refuse to accept what’s best for them. They think they can trample everyone else to the door when the theater catches fire; they think they can lock those doors, lest the whole world learn that they started the fire themselves.
These vile, pernicious, cancerous, lying, narcissistic, greedy, selfish, evil thugs must be stopped. They must be made to understand that not everything is theirs! Natural resources aren’t theirs to purchase; they’re ours to conserve. Medical health isn’t theirs to dole out; it’s ours to enjoy. The truth isn’t theirs to control; it’s ours to accept. The future isn’t theirs to deny; it’s ours to embrace. As Liberals, we must get back to where we were 18 months ago: a united voice, calling for the kind of change we know is needed. We must be loud: loud enough to draw the attention of the media, loud enough to drown out the media. We did it in ’08. We need to do it again. We, the people.
We must stand up to them.
We must hound them.
We must pester them.
We must berate them.
We must enrage them.
We must embarrass them.
We must weaken them.
We must break them.
We must defeat them.