Before the Bush reelection of 2004, an e-mail went around from the GOP to conservatives that stated, “They
think you’re stupid.” Liberals went crazy attempting to discuss the war and the economy instead of creationism and gay marriage. Well, the time has come to admit it. We liberals really do think far right-wingers are stupid, but more than that, we now think they’re dangerous as well. And as George Bush proved over eight years, there’s nothing more dangerous than an idiot who’s convinced that he’s right.
The discussion of health-care reform has morphed into a carnival
geek show, with every pro-militia, automatic-weapon-toting Tim McVeigh
wannabe out to show that nobody pushes them around. And since I live
among them, in the South, let’s own up to the undercurrent of racial
resentment that flows beneath these demonstrations of public anger.
It’s too simple to say, “Scratch a conservative and find a racist,”
because there are principled fiscal and social conservatives with much
to add to the public debate. But those who hold genuine conservative
principles have allowed their movement to be distorted and corrupted by
a group that could well be called the “new Dixiecrats.” These
propagandized “patriots” allow themselves to be used by corporate
interests and show up at demonstrations howling “facism, communism, and
socialism.” Where were these protesters when Dick Cheney and his
minions came close to establishing a totalitarian state?
I have a theory that’s going to piss off lots of people. I believe
we’re seeing the unintended consequences of private Christian
education. First, let me say that I am a product of Christian education
myself and I am all the better for it, because it helped me to
understand religious faiths and viewpoints other than my own. So it is
not the Christian part of the equation in which I find fault. In 1971,
when the Supreme Court upheld busing to achieve integration in public
schools, it threw the national educational system into chaos. It may
have been a noble ideal, but many considered it “social engineering,”
and in retrospect, it was impractical policy. It led to the
near-complete desertion of public schools in the South by white people.
This, in turn, led to the establishment of private Christian academies
and to the growth of mega-churches. Congregants found all their needs,
from day care and exercise rooms to concert halls and youth sports
teams, met by their church community. The unforeseen result was a new
type of self-selecting segregation based on suburban church
membership.
Another irony is that many of those who are screaming the loudest
are members of the “Greatest Generation,” who have been on the
government teet since 1945. Returning soldiers from the big war were
given the biggest slice of socialism this side of Sweden. It was called
the G.I. Bill. Not only was a college education granted to every
serviceman, low-cost government loans were made available to purchase
homes and start businesses. Now, old veterans with white hair are
hollering “Keep the government away from my Medicare” at town-hall
riots and arguing over phantom health-care rationing and forced
euthanasia.
No social progress has ever been made with the help of the
obstructionist conservatives. The only things the right-wingers have
contributed is free-market Darwinism, Prohibition, and term limits
— after Roosevelt drove them crazy. I used to ask my dad what it
was like when FDR was president, and he said the GOP, the bankers, and
industrialists hated his guts so thoroughly, they refused to refer to
him by name, only as “that man in the White House.” Or, they called him
“Rosenfeld,” suggesting that he was a Jew. Sound familiar? He was also
known as the “poor man’s friend” and called a socialist and a
communist. Even President Eisenhower was called a communist by the
right when he expressed approval for fluoride, a proven dental aid, to
be added to public drinking water. The reactionaries claimed it was a
communist plot to rot the teeth of our children. And now, the factually
challenged believe our current president is a Kenyan Muslim sent here
by sinister forces to rob white people and distribute their earnings to
crackheads and crooked ACORN employees. How did we get so damn
dumb?
Any societal advances — Social Security, the Civil Rights and
Voting Rights acts, women’s economic and reproductive rights, Medicare
or Medicaid — have been accomplished despite the resistance of
the naysayers and defenders of the status quo. Some sort of major
health-care reform is going to pass this Congress, and in a year or so,
it will look so seamless, we’ll wonder how we ever allowed our
rapacious current system to exist for so long. The Republican Party,
under the thumb of the Palin/Limbaugh wing, can’t even bring themselves
to admit there are no “death panels” in the bill, so why even consider
them any further? They lost, so steamroll them and leave them in the
wake of progress once again to sulk and lick their wounds.
