This is a lyric from the old Smiths song "What Difference Does it Make?" that has been floating around my head all day, watching these poor, ignorant fellow Americans and the Faux News buffoons. They love to throw around words like 'fascism' and 'socialism,' like confetti, and compare Obama with Hitler as if it's the most logical connection in the world.
Really? Really? I would laugh at their lack of knowledge if it wasn't so tragic and sad, if these people weren't being used to further the agenda of the greedy Republicans (I'm not labeling all Republicans that way) and their ilk. These 'ordinary people' don't even realize they are being manipulated, their rage being fueled and stoked by Faux rage, throwing terms around that they don't understand, of which they have little comprehension.
Like many, many diarists and commentators here and in other blogs have pointed out, these people do not even comprehend that government spending and taxes provide them with Medicare, roads and bridges, schools, police and fire departments, libraries, unemployment benefits etc. They are so caught up in the frenzy stirred up by likes of Glenn Beck, Faux News and Rush Limbaugh (to name a few), until it's like an incessant drumbeat that drives them mad, and the rage spews out in nonsensical ways. Fascism bang Socialism bang Government is evil bang Obama is a Muslim bang Throw in old newsreels featuring Hitler rallies, stir well, and insanity spills forth.
I would laugh if it wasn't so frightening, so revealing of a segment of a population I've never had the opportunity (or misfortune, depending on your point of view) of spending extended time with. I would laugh if it their pride in ignorance wasn't so pathetic. I would laugh if these people really understood what they were raging about, the meaning of the words they spew, of how they are just parroting the words of those who do not have their interest at heart, and use them for their own benefit and amusement.
My apologies for the rant, I just had to get it off my chest.