I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, how the baseless and irresponsible claims made daily by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Sara Palin, Bill O’Reilly and countless other extreme republicans use McCarthyism tactics to further their agenda and spread fear and discord. I don’t think we need a history lesson here to know that spewing unsubstantiated statements and factoids without proof is dangerous and that is exactly what these people do, every day, all day and I wonder to myself where is today’s Edward R. Murrow? It seems to me that the moderate populace who elected Barack Obama and the democrats to their super majority status have suddenly lost their voice when in fact they could collectively be the Edward R. Murrow of today and call these idiots out on their lies and extreme agendas. Instead all I seem to hear about are the Tea Parties and Glenn Beck.
Beck, Hannity, Rush, O’Reilly, and Palin might claim to be the champions of the little guy, supporters of the Tea Party movement and true defenders of America when in fact these people are true enemies of this country and not the patriots they claim to be. They offer no real solutions, they flame the fires of fear, hate and divisiveness and most importantly they obscure the truth to become something so ugly that people actually believe Obama is a socialist/communist ready to turn our county into Cuba, sell our first born to Muslim extremist and that in fact he is not even an American citizen. Sound familiar? Yes it should because these are similar to the tactics that Joseph McCarthy used in the 1950’s. Today is a scary time: high unemployment, a delicate economy, tremendous deficits and no clear solutions as to how to solve these problems. Instead of working together, government and the people, we are being ruled by fear. A lot of people listen to Beck, Hannity and Rush and believe their lies and they grow even more fearful while the other half of the population appears to be deaf and our government can’t seem to find a way to get past their polarized state of being. In the end we are left in a very scary place. So where do we go from here? How do we silence these fear mongers and not trample on their first amendment rights and where oh where is the moderate voice in this country?
A little over a year ago we seemed united and ready for change. Now all we have is finger pointing and czar witch hunts in the White House and some how we have magically forgot all about Bush and the massive problems he left us with, somehow this has all become the fault of Obama and the Democrats. A great line in a favorite movie of mine is when Michael J. Fox tells Michael Douglas, “People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.” Truer words were never spoken and today this is exactly what is happening. President Obama made a promise, took an oath to protect this country well Mr. Obama, PROTECT IT. Stand up and give a gut punching speech to this country, to the naysayers and to the extreme right wing. Tell them this is what we are going to do and you are either in or you are out but no more lies, no more exaggerations, no more finger pointing, no more party of no! You tell them you are an American citizen and you care about people, jobs, fiscal responsibility and that this isn’t the country of all for me and not you, this is the country of “We the People” We take responsibility as a country, we come together and we work together. If you can’t do that then get out. Mr. President you need to get mad, you need to get tough and you need to get down in the dirt and maybe get a little bloody but you need to come out swinging and every day you delay is another day that Beck, Hannity, Rush, O’Reilly, Palin and countless others come to the microphone to chip away at America’s confidence, it’s brilliance, its potential to be great and most importantly these people move us further and further away from the middle to a new land of distrust, fear, lies and hate. We can’t let the thoughts and ideologies of these extremist shape America. It’s up to us the people to say no more, to not drink the sand, to dust ourselves off, to think for ourselves, to educate ourselves and to fight for this country.
