Nobody Admits to Being a Racist

Tags

education, fundamentalists, Glenn Beck, GOP, health care reform, Protestant Ethic, racism, religious right, social concerns, theology, university elites, working class

You know, I can almost sympathize with Joe Wilson. Please note I said almost. I mean, I’d make a crummy politician, simply because, had I been present when Bush was babbling his infamous half truths, I’d have been yelling “you lie!” too.

Difference is, Wilson is the liar and I wouldn’t have been. It’s been well known to any thinking person that the Republicans were going to oppose health care reform however it was presented. They made that crystal clear before it ever got to “town meetings.” So Wilson knows he and his party have no plan, and desire no plan. They  can’t afford as a party to let the Democrats be the author of something that really helps people, that would be their doom. Their decision has been to obstruct and delay. They also are deeply beholden to insurance companies and their ilk.

This is not supposition, this is simple fact, from their own mouths, and from their own contribution lists.

It begs the question what is going on with the great screaming anti- everything Murikans. Some, no doubt are simply racists, in fact a good share of them are. They make crude jokes about lyin’ Africans, and tell us that they didn’t “bring their guns this time.” They are folks that you are likely to find at a bowling alley, swilling beer, and scratching. They are the great underclass of low skill working class that is tired of watching the rich get everything.

Yet, you ask, why are they not taking out their anger on the rich, instead of doing everything in their power to do the bidding of the rich? That is the one amazing thing that the Rethugs have accomplished. With a dash of Protestant work ethic, and a dash of “we want those nasty abortions to be banned and we thing those gays and uppity women are destroying Murika” they’ve seduced the trailer trash into paradoxically upholding their power.

But, you protest, any reasonably intelligent person could see through that! And you would be right, except for a couple of other factors. One is that as much as we all save and tout the value of a higher education, the working class in this country fear and distrust education. That’s so well documented as to need no further  explanation. Adlai Stevenson was not elected twice, unable to overcome the appellation “egghead.” We are constantly treated, by conservative pundits and smarmy GOP’ers who have plenty of diplomas from prestigious schools, to “eastern elites” and secularist university types, rhetoric, as the cause for all our ills.

The rednecks are aided and abetted by the wacko religious right who distrust education because it shows their ridiculous theology for what it is, a sad psychologically induced world view which makes them feel comfortable. Logic and rational thought have given way to feelings of “security” and well-being. Ricky Gervais, writer and star of the original “Office” got that jibe in last night on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show”.

“Evolution is true America!” Yes indeed it is. The rest of the world seems to get it, yet the religious right seems determined to disbelieve as a badge of trust in their trickster god. If creation goes, so goes the bible in their strange minds. It just goes to show you that there is a very small group in America that does all the innovation and discovery. The rest are lost in the swamp of creation museums and other such slick lies that line the pockets of those who create these monuments to idiocy. 

It only gets worse. While I’m the first to say that a majority of the right punditry is generated more from greed than philosophy, a few are true believers, demented as those they pander to. Glenn Beck may be one of those. Crazy as a loon is right.  I think it correct that he helps lower the collective IQ of the country. How could he not?

It’s an insidious mix all this. How so many are disabled by rather direct manipulation. Both the wealthy and the Rethugs have somewhat different purposes, but with their techniques, they have managed to virtually eliminate the functionality of a significant minority of peoples in this country. Mind control some would call it. I mean actively working against your own interests, and sadly perverting the teachings of Christ at the same time, is quite an accomplishment. Credit where credit it due.

I just wish someone would explain, since they obviously don’t know, that “Unsolved Mysteries” is not a source, nor is UTube, nor some unnamed unknown e-mail comment to a local newspaper. Nor Jack Chick, the infamous Catholic hater with a brain the size of a pea.  Nor the World News Daily, cited as authority by the ever serious, though sadly off, Jack van Impe. Nor pastors who can’t get legitimate clergy to listen to their “authorities” and so take it directly to the people. Nor weird creationist sites  peopled by folks who have no more information (perhaps less) than I learned in high school biology.

As a matter of fact, it chills me to realize how very little I got of an education in high school. I’m rethinking it again. Perhaps we should require passing some basic civic test in order to vote. The brain atrophied are clearly not qualified.  Since so many of my friends seem more than willing to pick and choose whom they think are really in “need of health care,” I think I should be fairly allowed to pick and choose who has the brains to think rationally enough to vote.