Retired Northern Oklahoma College president Dr. Edwin Vineyard Sr. is the author of the Militant Moderate. He is the author of two textbooks, has held several educational and business posts, and he is a recipient of state and national leadership awards. Dr. Vineyard says, “For most of a long career in public life, it was necessary to exercise restraint in commenting on political matters. Since retirement, I have enjoyed the freedom to do just that.”
I want my country back!
“I want my country back.” This plaintive outburst of a woman at one of those rowdy town hall meetings in August still concerns this writer. She seemed quite emotional. It was puzzling.
The logic of this woman’s self-proclaimed misery may be difficult to discern. From time to time one is prone to ponder this woman’s dilemma, and to wonder what inner turmoil could lie behind that woman’s words. The video clip showed her in the midst of those shouters and rude haranguers. She sounded off in a loud, assertive, emotional manner in the meeting. Since then we have noticed those words on signs carried by protestors.
What is missing that makes this not her country any longer? Who has stolen her country? If this is an outcry against change, as it seems to be, then what change? What change makes one so emotional – political, economic, social, religious, or what?
For some time we have heard outcries from religious fundamentalists that “they” have taken their country away. Their complaint is not having officially sponsored prayers in classes or at formally scheduled school events. Of course, they don’t phrase or think of it that way. It is just, “They took prayer out of our schools.” These same people think that Christianity is guaranteed by the Constitution, while “freedom of religion” actually guarantees that there will no official compunction to worship in any prescribed way. Sometimes, simple is not simple enough for simpletons.
Unfortunately, there are those out there on the right wing fringe who encourage paranoia about the banning of religion. They say “God” and Christians are being persecuted. They circulate false rumors and e-mails about taking “in God we trust” off coins, “under God” out of the pledge of allegiance, and other similarly weird ideas – wrongs they attribute to Democrats. They do not always appreciate being corrected.
That is one issue that has brought out a lot of emotion. The abortion issue is another. The rhetoric about “baby killing” has worked many religious souls into an emotional lather. Some take guns and murder doctors.
Somehow the inherent freedom of women from government enforced pregnancy, child-bearing, and child rearing seems to have been lost somewhere. Too bad. Weren’t we appalled not so long ago by Serbian soldiers raping Croatian women to force them have “Serb” children?
How about taxes? For most of us taxes are just an onerous part of life, about which we complain and occasionally say a few bad words. Normally we do not cry or become emotional about paying our taxes.
There are some nowadays who seem bent on trying to make us feel persecuted by taxes. This is confined primarily to Republicans who object to paying taxes during Democrat administrations.
While they did not object to deficits of $1.6 trillion resulting from tax-cuts for the wealthy, nor the $1.2 trillion spent on an unnecessary war, somehow they now object to a lesser deficit putting money out to consumers, cities, and states for priming the pump to start up an economy left on the brink of disaster by the last administration. Some of these people come from the group that has health insurance, and they oppose health care reform because they are afraid they might have to pay a tax on theirs in order for the uninsured to have similar health security.
The “tea party” extremists believe that government is an enemy, and they get people all worked up emotionally. That group has become seditious and unpatriotic in its rhetoric. Mix this with a few gun-toting nuts and you have an armed insurrection. Do we not understand this?
Q. Who is paying the freight to promote “tea parties?” A. Wealthy persons and corporations who are enjoying lower tax rates while middle class and lower class burdens increase. Latest stats show that in Oklahoma, the wealthier are paying a much lower percentage of their income for state and local taxes than the middle and lower groups. (The primary reason is high sales taxes and low income taxes.) Oklahoma ranks 42nd in tax burden as a percent of income, yet we have all those weird people out protesting. Our tax-cutting legislature is killing public services in Oklahoma.
Although the notion is repugnant to most of us, some may feel their country has been taken away because a person of color is president. We overhear remarks of that nature, and about the number of black or Hispanic people now in government positions. Some have questioned whether a Congressman from South Carolina would ever have yelled insulting accusations at a white president appearing before a session of Congress.
President Carter has joined others in saying openly that the intensity level of the health care and anti-government activists has a racial basis. Sadly, these observations appear to be correct.
Indeed our country is changing. It is always changing. Some changes are progressive in nature, but nevertheless difficult for some people to take. Most people in our nation wanted change, and Mr. Obama promised change. We elected him. Why should we be tolerant of the false and character impugning attacks being made on him and on the agenda of change that he promised? We wanted our country back from those who drove us to ruin.
This country needed change. Most people want change.
Some people do not want change. Those with vested interests in the status quo do not want change. Some of those have no ethics and no morals. Some have very little love for their country if it is not run to serve and to please them. Some want to exploit the rest of us for profit. Those most prosperous among us too often have little concern for the less fortunate. Many of them consider government an ally in doing business their way, and they pay for that help by campaign donations and through lobbyists. These consider the government an enemy if it regulates their activities, takes back tax subsidies, or threatens their corporate or personal favors.
Those who do not like government prey upon consumers, who are dependent upon government for protection. Sometimes they fool ordinary people into becoming their allies. Without these deluded ones they might lose power.
Many of us would indeed like to have our country back – one that is free of lies, distortions, and nutty conspiracy theories. We’d like a country ruled by a process of civil democracy. We would like our democracy uncorrupted by money and corporate powers.
This writer was never a fan of Viet Nam era war movies. Perhaps that is because he was never a fan of the Viet Nam war. That whole period seems to have been a sordid, ugly time in our lives and in the life of our nation. Young men were dying without really ever having a cause for which we could unite and believe.
I saw the highly acclaimed film “Apocalypse Now,” back during its early release time. I was not impressed. In fact, most of the film seemed to be very much a jumble of confusion and mixed messages. It was neither a patriotic war movie nor an exciting adventure film. It was a drab, confused array of scenes and mumbled conversations that defied comprehension.
I have often wondered just what the point of that movie was supposed to be. I know what it meant to me. It carried the message that war is a dark, dismal experience, full of pain and gore, and that often it has little meaning for those in the middle of it. In which case, those fighting often come up with their own sense of meaning, which begins with staying alive and surviving.
I have often wondered if the movie had an intended “moral” to it, other than its depiction of war as an ordeal in receiving and inflicting terror. I have my own notion as to the moral of the film. It hit when the renegade American colonel character played by Marlon Brando came into the drama.
He was the leader of a renegade army of his own, answering to no higher brass and not playing by any civilized rules of war. The Vietnamese feared him. He was cruel beyond imagination, stopping at nothing in fighting, capturing, torturing, and killing the Vietnamese – soldiers or civilians.
There was a conversation between the Colonel and the young American officer, still struggling with his conscience and the activities of war. The Colonel’s brief lecture was Machiavellian in nature, as “the end justifies the means.” That is, in war all actions taken to win are justified. There are no rules. (It is similar to the same justifications now offered by Mr. Cheney for torturing prisoners.)
The Colonel pressed his point that in order to win against a cruel enemy, one must become even more cruel. The enemy must fear you. The young officer then raised a question, “But if we become more cruel than our enemy, then who has won?”
The Democrats face such a dilemma in this country today as they face foes who show little sense of decency, civility, or morality in the conduct of politics.
Democrats have endured bullying by angry, shouting, gun-toting mobs, They are accused of being Nazis. Their proposals to help with health care are used to ignite all kinds of lies and suspicions. The president’s pep talk to school students has brought out unbelievable accusations of indoctrination of children with socialism (or even homosexuality and abortion by some). Programs to rehabilitate the economy have met with some success, but are loudly condemned. Democrats have as yet passed no taxes, but rather a reduction for average payers, and yet they are accused by angry, seditionist “tea party” crowds of raising taxes and running up outrageous deficits. Preachers are shouting, “I hate Obama!” and publicly praying for him to die.
Republican leaders declared that if they could defeat Obama’s health bill, they could ruin his presidency. They have joined powerful lobbyists and rich corporations in this effort. It matters not that the people need it.
Sometimes it would be easy to understand if Democrats started shouting back, if they went out in force and pushed those unruly mobs out, and if they carried guns and brought things to a fight or a “Mexican stand-off.” What if Democrats started shouting back at loud-mouths dominating the conversations on TV talk shows? It would be easy to understand if there was a huge effort to coordinate a boycott of all sponsors of Limbaugh’s program and such programs on Fox News. It would be easy to understand if Democrats formed pickets and demonstrations outside radio stations carrying Limbaugh, and outside the Fox studios and program sponsors.
It would be easy to understand if Democrats started calling lies what they are, if they started calling those who believe them “dummies” and “crazies,” and if they started called the tellers of falsehoods “liars and hypocrites.”
But then the question arises if Democrats fight back in these ways, have they sunk to the same low life behavior of pond scum, such as practiced by actors in the opposition? Are we in a new apocalyptic age, with no compass of “right” and “wrong?”
The answer is “No, not necessarily, but close.” If democrats use unacceptable, inappropriate, dishonest, or unethical methods, then they become similarly culpable. If they simply and plainly counter and rebut what is said and done, if they “call out” the perpetrators of lies and unethical conduct, and if they forcefully advocate their own ideas and programs -- they are engaged in appropriate tactics. If they tell the truth as best they discern it, they are okay.
During the President’s speech before joint houses of Congress, one Republican, in a breach of ethics and conduct, rudely disrupted with a shout, “You lie.” Such conduct is bad enough from an ignorant lout, but from a Congressman it is despicable. Worse than that, this lout was stupidly wrong in his assertion. Ignorant and stupid people should keep their mouths shut, and should never be elected to Congress.
Recently a very nice column appeared in the Enid News, written by a talented staff columnist. It recognized the passing of Senator Kennedy in a warm, yet analytical fashion, remarking about the civility of the Senate in which those from opposing parties had historically functioned in the conduct of national business.
In the course of his treatise, he cited the election of 2000 when the Supreme Court decided the presidential election, and he dwelt on the point of the acceptance and smooth changeover of government under highly emotional circumstances. This was indeed a remarkable thing, considering the skullduggery which had transpired leading up to that point.
Proving a point I always made when teaching educational psychology -- namely that people do not necessarily learn what they hear or read, but do learn that which the stimulation causes them to think – this writer could not help but think about what it might have been like if that presidential shoe had been put on the other’s foot.
What if the Supreme Court had been made up of five Democrats and 4 Republicans? What if Al Gore’s brother had been the governor of the state of Florida? What if Kathleen Harris, the director of elections in Florida, had been an active partisan Democrat? During the hanging chad malfunction and the manual recount of votes in Miami-Dade, what if information on the raucous protests, shouting and disorder in the hallways showed the hallways filled with identifiable staff persons of Democratic congressmen and Democratic Party employees? What if this shouting and disorder in the halls had ostensibly caused officials to stop the recount -- keeping those votes from going Republican?
What if a democratically controlled Supreme Court took away the legal jurisdiction from a Republican majority Florida Supreme Court before the votes had been properly counted? Out of such a situation, what if Al Gore had been named president by that Supreme Court?
After the actual Supreme Court decision, flawed as it was, Mr. Gore quickly conceded the election. He went public immediately asking all his supporters to respect the court’s verdict. Mr. Gore seemed quite concerned with the preservation of the Union, and that no precedent of disorder or any challenge outside the legal system even remotely be considered.
Again, what if Mr. Gore had won in that bizarre scenario? Could we have expected the same gracious manner and actions from Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their crowd of advisers and supporters? Think about that!
Would Republicans accept losing under such conditions with only a smattering of outcries about a stolen election?
While Democrats considered Mr. Bush’s first term as an illegitimate presidency, the anti-war demonstrations and cries for impeachment came in his legitimate second term for offenses in office. Nobody was leading “tea parties” against taxes, although a burden had been shifted off the wealthy to the rest of us. No one called for rebellion or secession from the union because the deficit was run up by an unnecessary war and those selective tax cuts. Nobody wore guns to protest with Nazi hate signs.
Noting such Republican tendencies and their penchant for conspiracy theories, their belief in ideas about the mysterious birth place of Mr. Obama, suspicions of him as Muslim, accusing Obama of plotting to kill off old people -- then might one not expect quite a different response from Republicans? The current paranoid Republican flap, led again by right wing talk shows, about Obama giving a motivational talk to school kids tells us: “Yes.”
Comedian Argus Hamilton’s recent column noted that while Democrats tend to look at the glass as “half-full,” Republicans say, “Somebody drank half my glass!” Republicans have also been known to circulate the rumor that: “Somebody pushed Humpty Dumpty off that wall. Then Obama’s health care plan rejected Humpty because he was too old.”
And, what mental process makes people so motivated to support predatory insurance companies? What have they been told? What are they thinking? Without a public option, who will be the big winner in all this battle? And the answer is --- the gouging, cold-blooded insurance companies. They will have bought and paid for the right to gouge us through their donations to interest advertising groups and from their lobbyists to congress people from both parties.
We have witnessed disorderly and threatening behavior, the “tea parties” against taxes not yet levied (actually lower), the hate speech and gun-toting, and the touting of insurrection and secession, all by Republicans or organized, supported, and defended by them. This has happened in six months of a new administration overwhelmingly elected with a known platform.
How could we ever believe the Republicans would have accepted the controversial 2000 election in the same gracious manner as Al Gore and his followers? No, they do not accept election of an overwhelmingly popular candidate. Through their use of money and media, they have managed to convince large numbers of Americans that the agenda they voted for is somehow bad, socialistic, and downright un-American.
Of course, much of this is due to enactment of necessary solutions to actual economic problems inherited from the last administration. There is also the matter of accumulated deficits from tax cuts and lavish war spending. Given a clean slate with no huge inherited problems, most of the Obama agenda might have already been passed. The diversion of the economy has taken time, attention, and energy away from proposals to change the future of the country and its citizens.
Mr. Obama, just get us out! Get us out of Iraq! Get us out of Afghanistan!
There is little being accomplished by keeping over 100,000 troops and a large corps of civilians in Iraq. Those people really do not want us there. Their legislature is referring the matter to a public vote. Why wait around?
It would be better to leave now rather than under the terms of the agreement made by Mr. Bush, which keeps us there another year and a half. They seem to have their own internal religious fights to wage. There is no point in our being in the midst of those.
Some may say that it is sobering to Iran if we have an unoccupied fighting army close by their borders. We don’t really plan on invading Iran, do we?
The problems in Afghanistan are not as much different from those in Iraq as we might tend to think. We went there to get Bin Laden by taking sides in a civil conflict. The Taliban government had given Bin Laden safe haven while he plotted against us, and they refused to turn him over. We joined with the northern regional rebel forces to put the Taliban out of power.
But both the Taliban leaders and Bin Laden took refuge in the wild country of Pakistan, from which the Taliban continues to harass our occupying forces. It is their country, not ours. We are occupiers, not really welcome there.
If the Afghan people do not care enough about their freedom to do their own fighting against the Islamic fundamentalists, then that ceases to be our problem. Their present government is corrupt. Their elections are rigged. We should not keep wasting ourselves in that war of occupation.
It seems increasingly evident that our principal reason for being there – to hunt down and kill Bin Laden – has become subordinate to fighting with the Taliban. Maintaining a base in Afghanistan for pot-shots from drones at Bin Laden and his cronies holed up in Pakistan may be of some value. But that idea should be re-studied. There are other ways of taking pot-shots from afar, if we have the intelligence to aim them.
It seems as though we are again off course. Some call it “mission creep.” Mr. Obama does not appear immune to the afflictions of Mr. Bush. We did not go to Afghanistan to occupy their country, nor to take care of their governance problems for them. That is their business, and we should get out of there shortly and leave it in their hands.
We have not adopted the Afghan or Iraqi people for welfare projects, and we can not afford decent care for our own people right here in the U.S.A. If we have not given up the notion of nation-building by now, we should do so.
The United States should plot its future without occupying land and facilities around the world, and without keeping large military forces lodged in foreign lands.
Our 30,000 man force in South Korea is not sufficient to deter an attack by hordes from the north, but it is instead a liability in case of such a new war. They could be captured in a situation much like Bataan and Corregidor in World War II. They should not be exposed to such vulnerability. Prosperous South Korea can defend itself.
If we stop involving ourselves in ground wars in the Middle East, we will no longer need facilities in Germany – nor the forces stationed there throughout the cold war. We have widened NATO commitments right up to Russia’s front door. That is neither wise nor necessary. There is no support here for war with Russia if they invade obscure nations in central Europe, especially territories of the former Soviet Union.
There is a mood in this country for disentangling ourselves from foreign conflicts and foreign alliances. We have had our fill of sacrifices for fights in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our own national security must be directly at stake. There will always be a safe haven somewhere from which our enemies will plot against us. We cannot occupy them all.
We possess the technology to make pin-point strikes from afar on those who threaten us. An earlier missile attack on Bin Laden’s camp came within an hour or so of doing what we have not been able to do since. Let us use our technology as we did then and in Kosovo, and improve our intelligence.
Postscript: Since writing the article above, a Post/ABC opinion poll has been released. It seems that 51% of the people do not believe that the Afghan war is worth fighting. Only 24% support increasing troops there, while 45% say troops should be reduced. Only 47% say they support the war there. Mr. Obama should take note that 70% of democrats say that Afghanistan is not worth American blood. It appears that the Militant Moderate is much more on target than anticipated earlier.
Having just seen and heard a promo from an Oklahoma City television station for its news anchor saying that he was “born and bred” in Oklahoma, one pauses to ponder just what that means.
The first reaction, even from an Oklahoma native, might be: “Oh, my gosh, I hope he is not advertising himself as a red-neck.” To many, even natives, bragging about being a “born and bred” Oklahoman, or a Texan, has come to mean that the person eschews culture in any classic sense, and that he/she espouses a rural, cowboy, rough and ready, independent, hard living, anti-intellectual, anti-academic, uncouth life style of one who thinks it is fun to butcher the English, sprinkle in epithets and four letter words, and lift his middle finger and bully any who cross him. Too bad. Hope not.
Historically, in polite circles of the middle class, such behaviors were thought to show a lack of gentility and breeding. Gentlemanly conduct was highly encouraged in middle and upper class families, and the lack of such thought to indicate “poor breeding.”
Nobody in this writer’s family tree was an aristocrat. One governor of Texas 75 years ago doesn’t count. But I was once lectured in the kitchen of my grandfather’s house by an uncle. He told me that the families from whence I sprung were considered to be “good stock.” That meant that they were honest, reliable, respected people, not given to excesses. Family members were expected to by ladylike or gentlemanly in speech and conduct.
Now, how is it that anyone could conjure up that other kind of image from just a simple statement of being “born and bred” in Oklahoma? If we don’t know, we ought to try to figure that one out. That image, right or wrong, has been holding Oklahoma back for decades.
But we Oklahomans are somewhat schizophrenic, i.e. we have a communal split personality. Some of us are quick to invoke the reputation of our Dean McGee Eye Institute or the success of our Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Others rarely get past their infatuation with Toby Keith and/or the Sooner football team.
Too infrequently do we rise above the latter.
However, the rowdy conduct and bad behavior demonstrated around the country in recent “town meetings” must quickly lead us to the defense of Oklahomans. Rude and boorish conduct is common across the nation. Nobody has the right to look down on us. Rather, we may well be considered polite and gentile by comparison. That’s good.
We remember well Governor Dewey Bartlett’s efforts to remake the image of “Okie” into something positive. He tried hard. This writer has a couple of his personally awarded “Okie” certificates and pins for forgotten accomplishments. During all his days as Lieutenant Governor, George Nigh took as his goal the remake of the popular conception of Oklahoma into a positive image, and he continued that effort as chief executive. Even though having limited success, both should be commended.
But, again, has anyone taken a look at our congressional delegation lately? These are the people we chose to represent us. What style of Oklahoman do they represent? Of course, they would tell us that it is the hardworking taxpayers of the state. Is that so? Take a look at their positions on issues affecting the common people.
Indeed they do appeal to our everyday working folks, yet they represent the interests of the economically elite. If challenged, they will quickly come out with the argument that these businesses create jobs. They forget to mention many are at low wage, non-union levels. But then, heck, jobs are jobs, aren’t they?
Then who does represent the interests of the common person, whom we like to characterize ourselves to be? We would be ashamed to find that it is often those effete, intellectually elite Eastern liberals that we so readily condemn. But while indeed those may hold up for the rights of the working class, to which most Oklahomans belong, they often do not represent our geographic and economic interests.
The challenge to Oklahomans is to put people in Congress who are the brightest and most knowledgeable among us. We must choose for intelligence and grasp of depth of issues, and stop choosing those who ply us with worn-out clichés about family values and such, yet behave no better than anyone else, and know little of the issues except to mutter simple party slogans over and over.
Our two senators are often the butt of national humor. Not good. Probably the most able and politically savvy of our delegation is Rep. Tom Cole.
We need to choose people who will represent the interests of the voting class, rather than the donor class. Those best representing the common people have often come from the privileged classes economically and socially. Acting and talking like most of us doesn’t necessarily qualify one to represent Oklahoma, nor does repetition of the clichés of the religious right.
While our representatives may be “one of us,” they should be more able than most of us.
Oklahoma was better served by national oratorical and debate champions like Senator Josh Lee and Speaker Carl Albert. We were well represented by Rhodes Scholars like David Boren. Congressmen Jim Jones and Mike Monroney were tops in their profession. Senator Robert S. Kerr was a successful businessman, but also a populist in his beliefs. Nationally, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys have been good examples of the elite with a social conscience.
Oklahoma can do better than it has been doing lately.
Sometimes one has cause to wonder if all the civil disorder, going under the pseudo title of town meetings, is really about health care at all. Some of the anger demonstrated by rowdies uses references to health care, mostly gained from lies and disinformation spread by republican and right wing sources. But much of it is just plain anger at government.
We saw this anger at government in the earlier “tea parties” coordinated by anti-tax groups and funded by billionaires. It is that same emotional hostility that is filling our television screens when they are given a stage and cameras in the format of farcical town meetings.
But we are seeing the undertones of a much more ominous threat than disrupting meetings about health care. Essentially these are anti-government demonstrations, full of the hate and hostility. One hysterical woman screaming and crying, “I want my country back,” leaves a haunting impression on us. Did she really think her country had been stolen, or maybe just hijacked by atheists and people of another color?
More came to light in another meeting when woman went down, stood, pointed her finger, and shouted at a senator that they had taken prayer out of the schools, made “baby killing” legal, and she “wanted her country back.”
It seems that these people are being driven by all their frustrations, real or imagined. The leaders of the religious right wing of the republican party, with the aid and assistance of party leaders, have drummed into their followers the evil and sins of their own government, made them feel victimized, and suggested that their anger is righteous and justified.
It is the righteous anger and hate rhetoric of the anti-abortion crowd that has led some of its members to feel justified in violence, and even murder itself. If people are told day after day that these doctors are killing babies, then it is not long until some kook kills a doctor. The murderer of Dr. Tiller, one Scott Rowder, is a hero to some, now receiving visitors, phone calls, and mail every day telling him he is right.
One demonstrator outside a town meeting wore a T-shirt with the slogan worn by Tim McVeigh when he was captured after the Oklahoma City bombing. It quoted Thomas Jefferson saying, “The tree of liberty must be watered now and then by the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Furthermore, this advocate of violence was wearing a gun and carrying a sign labeling the president as a Nazi.
Jefferson would no doubt turn over in his grave to know his words were being used in fueling insurrection against the American government he helped found. Most of us understand that Obama is not King George III.
We have seen any number of those placards with Nazi swastikas and pictures of the president with a Hitler mustache. Again, these paranoid people are trying to connect our president, and his efforts to save the country from economic chaos and to bring decent health care to millions, with a repressive Nazi regime that threatened the entire civilized world.
One might think that these signs had only to do with the unbelievable notion that President Obama was going “to pull the plug on Grandma” or maybe on Sarah Palin’s parents and handicapped child. That is doubtful. Some may be stupid enough to believe those lies, but surely not so many.
No, again it is something more sinister. It is anti-government emotions run amuck, fed and stoked by party media and political and religious demagoguery. Strangely enough, their arousal in our minds of the Nazi parallel fits their own conduct, rather than that of a democratically elected humanitarian administration. Does anyone recall Hitler’s “Brown Shirts?”
As if the well-financed anti-tax, anti-government forces, and the Christian right wing were not enough to be scary to thinking citizens, there’s more.
Some are suggesting that there is a racial motive underlying the emotionalism and paranoia which seems to float among those defying any and all proposals for progress of the Obama administration. This writer is not ready to go there just yet.
However, the carrying of signs with the “N” word is disturbing. Pictures of the president with the swastika on his forehead and the Hitler mustache are “hate” expressions. Is it not just another step for some gun-toting nut to attempt an assassination “to save the country?”
A related phenomenon is the resurgence of the civilian militia movement. Gun enthusiasts and the conspiracy theorists among us have been touting the threat of President Obama “coming after your guns.” Of course, he has said nothing about that, but guns and ammunition have been flying off the store shelves. A present shortage of ammunition has been caused by the run on store supplies.
There are stories of new militia units, paramilitary groups, springing up here and there around the country. Evidently these people think they are threatened and may have to fight somebody. One would suppose that might be the government, law enforcement, liberals, or maybe persons of color and immigrants. These are the conspiracy threats felt by these paranoid people.
The last surge in organized militia and related anti-tax and anti-government activities was halted when the Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by associates of such groups. Some who refused to pay taxes were jailed. This brought these militia types into disfavor and suspicion by the general population. People began to realize how dangerous that hysterical, anti-government paranoia can be.
The last contribution of the Militant Moderate was entitled “Unruly Mobs Chill Democracy.” The truth of that one has been borne out in the days since it appeared. Disruptive mobs have continued to silence attempts at town meeting discussions scheduled by democratic congresspersons.
Disorderly conduct, rudeness, bullying, and threatening tactics are always wrong, no matter who the actors are. Some of these efforts to hold meetings have degenerated into brawls bordering on violence. Some in Congress have received death threats. Wrong is wrong.
When there was disorder in the early Christian churches, caused by individuals exercising at will their claimed God-given or inspired talents, the Apostle Paul wrote, “God is not the author of confusion.” Some have interpreted that as “God is not the author of chaos.” Further, one cannot find in our history where disorderly meetings with everybody shouting at once were ever praised as the American way of conducting public affairs.
Interesting enough, it is an element within that political party which has constantly touted itself publicly for its Christian values and its super-patriotism which is causing these disruptions of an orderly process of information, questioning, and answering about an important issue in our democracy. Along with the recent sex scandals among their super-pure, this hooliganism is another behavior short of their own shining self-image.
This rowdy group does not come to the public forum to learn and exchange information about the health care proposals in Congress. They come with minds made up how bad it is, replete with bizarre ideas. Just where did they get all that conclusive knowledge and misinformation?
The Militant Moderate served on the board of directors for a health insurance company for nine years, the last seven as an officer and chairman. He served fifteen years as chairman of an insurance purchasing cooperative buying health insurance for more than a dozen colleges and universities.
With that considerable background, the Militant Moderate is not sure that he yet knows or understands all the different proposals being floated in Congress. How did these hooligans get their great knowledge?
They heard it from their party leader, Rush Limbaugh, on talk radio, and from people like Glen Beck and others on Fox News channel. Why do we say that? Because after Rush Limbaugh says that President Obama is a Nazi, they show up with Nazi signs for their confrontations. If Rush says that Obama will save Medicare cost by euthanizing senior citizens, then they shout those accusations. They are unruly, potentially violent ditto-heads.
While these unruly disruptions of democratic political processes may or may not be orchestrated by the party itself, neither are they denounced. It is quite evident that they are coached and bankrolled by certain party supporters.
A leading political pusher is Rick Scott, now the director of an organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. It provides a meeting schedule and strategies on its website. Scott was head of Hospital Corporation of America until that company went defunct in the rounds of a $1.9 billion fine for Medicare fraud. Since then he has been in various corporate and lobbying efforts. Is this the kind of guy you’d trust for your information?
Who is the lead man of the infamous Americans for Prosperity, an anti-tax movement coordinating “tea parties” and other anti-government demonstrations? Who bankrolls the coordinative work of this political group that inflames hostility of Americans against their own government? This person is none other than Fred Koch, head of Koch Industries, the largest privately held oil company in the nation. Koch is also the nineteenth richest man in the world.
What does a man like Koch have in common with the average citizen in studying taxes and deciding who pays? How is his company viewed by royalty owners all over northwestern Oklahoma? Some say they must hassle his company constantly and watch to prevent cheating. Koch lost a court fight not too long ago involving business practices.
Why does Koch want to defeat health care for the people? It seems simple – avoiding taxes. And, that must be why he bankrolls an anti-tax group.
Sarah Palin has chimed in with support for these radicals on her website with the observation that she does not want to see her elderly aunt or her Down’s child hauled in before “Obama’s bureaucrat death panels” to judge whether they are worthy of keeping alive. She has again demonstrated her ignorance of public affairs, in this case the health care legislative proposals.
But here again, look at the signs these disorderly people carry, and listen to their strident, emotional shouts. Some of these have reference to being threatened by government euthanasia. Who in their right mind would even think that there would be any such thing in the bill?
People like Limbaugh and Palin have deliberately distorted one innocuous provision which allows doctors to be paid for counseling patients who want help with making out their living wills. Doctors do that already, but Medicare does not now allow payment for that service.
Most people are smart enough to understand that provision if informed, but Limbaugh and others like Beck and Palin deliberately mislead people, work up their emotions, and have them disrupting meetings for political gain. The movement is bankrolled by organizations with special interest money.
And, there you have it. These unruly mobs of misinformed, but outraged citizens are being used as pawns in a political and financial battle.
Orchestrated unruly mobs of misinformed, angry, right wing republicans are successfully frustrating efforts of members of Congress to hold informative town hall public meetings with constituents. Armed with pamphlets and talking points printed off republican web sites, these sign-carrying, shouting barbarians come to public meetings to disrupt and not to discuss.
Literally, we have seen nothing like this since the Viet Nam war protesters of the 1960’s. Even then the protests were mostly outdoors in public streets and public places, not during efforts to hold a deliberative meeting on the subject of war and peace.
These misinformed, loud, rude people come to meetings to shout and carry signs making false charges against health care reform, desperately needed by so many in this country. Maybe it would be different, I am not sure, if these folk were right. But it shouldn’t. Disorderly, disruptive people are violating the law and they should be arrested and hauled into court. It was so with the war protesters who got out of line, and so it should be with these wing-nuts.
This is NOT democracy in action. The actions of these crude, crazy people constitute the trashing of the democratic processes. They did not come to hear or to discuss in any orderly fashion. They came to disrupt with disorderly conduct. They are an angry mob.
What turns ordinary people into an angry mob? We saw some of it in the so-called tea parties arranged by republicans to protest taxation and rouse the emotions of ordinary, unthinking people. Fill such a group with enough lies, make them feel threatened or victimized, and then foment their emotions to the point of irrationality. Give them a script. This is their formula.
We should have seen this coming with health care. All objective views show this nation’s health care system broken, riddled with greed and class discrimination. Even the providers themselves, doctors and hospital people, see the need for reform. Millions have no health care insurance. Millions more have insufficient policies that are subject to the whims of HMO’s or insurance companies’ administrators and interpretation of the fine print.
The current system is to unwieldy and too costly for our businesses and industries to provide expensive employee coverage and still compete globally. It is so costly that premiums are rising and deductibles are increasing, putting a pinch on workers whose insurance costs have been increasing eight times the rate of their wages.
The ones really threatened by reform are the insurance companies – not their insured.
The insurance companies support republican leaders, certain other republicans, and some conservative democrats with huge campaign contributions in order to delay or defeat health care efforts in the Congress. The also pay for trash advertising telling lies and threatening old people, insured people, and branding health care reform efforts as a socialist government take-over of the whole health care system. Not so.
Some scripting is noticeable in these unruly crowds of right wing activists. Their signs include the lies told them about euthanasia of the elderly, bureaucrats’ decisions vs. doctors, socialized medicine, rationing care, and the government take-over. On all of these, the activists are tools of the insurance companies against the welfare of people like themselves.
But, very importantly, there is another kind of sign – “Don’t tax us to give health insurance to others.” This tells us all of this commotion is tied to the right wing anti-tax movement within the republican party. Some of the same raucous “tea party” people are involved, their signs and their shouts are similar. This is the base of the movement.
The republican party must accept responsibility for their hooliganism. Their leaders not only condone but encourage these rowdy, bullying tactics. This must make some ordinary, decent, rational conservatives feel ashamed. They should do something about it, or start a new party of their own.
The utter disdain for either truth or courtesy by these people is beyond belief. We would not think such to be possible in a civilized society. These people show no signs of civility, and thus would have to be termed uncivilized -- even socially barbaric in a modern sense of that term.
Dark, slimy creatures on occasion creep from the toxic political swamp pits to prey upon the unsuspecting, innocent turnip patch kids. This is such a time.
A colorful phrase has been attributed to those who are gullible, naïve, unsophisticated, or just plain stupid. Usually it is used in a defensive manner, to wit, “I didn’t just fall off a turnip wagon, you know.”
Sad to say, America is full of turnip patch kids who just came to town and fell off the turnip wagons. How else may we account for their gullibility to lies, distortions, scams, con games, and other political gimmickry?
Never was there a time when there has been more slick, slimy types emerging from the political swamps to prey upon simpleton citizen victims. Maybe simpleton is a harsh word, but politically naïve turnip patch kids abound among our voters. They represent a lush market for the lies and distortions of political hacks and crooks.
For a supposedly educated citizenry, we display an inordinate sum of gullibility for every lie and distortion that comes along. Conspiracy theories are our thing.
Some of us believe in flying saucers, and that there is an alien body stored in New Mexico. Some of us have for years been convinced by some mysterious sources that Americans never landed on the moon. All this was just a big theatrical hoax perpetrated on the country and the world by our government and the media. Hearing this for the first time fifteen years ago, this writer could not fathom such. But it is going around again.
We have a group now called the “birthers.” Since before the election they have been claiming that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, but rather Indonesia, Africa, or some other such place. It does not matter that his birth certificate has been publicly displayed, nor that officials from Hawaii vital statistics have stated over and over again that the records are complete and accurate.
Some people would rather believe some sort of malicious rumor than acknowledge the truth in front of them. Even worse we actually have republican senators and congresspersons who refuse to correct lies, rumors, and distortions that they know full well to be wrong. We have seen this occur in candid TV cameos this week.
In fact, in some instances republicans have deliberately spread falsehoods from the rostrum of their chambers. This week a republican congresswoman said before the TV cameras in the House Chamber that the new health bill would result in “government bureaucrats killing old people.”
This writer has been told the last few days by other seniors that the new bill will deny medical treatment to seniors. These ideas are termed “euthanasia” by neglect or by rationing. This new round of euthanasia rumors is ostensibly the result of speculation that treating old people will not be termed cost effective. Also, this may have come from efforts of the last ten or twenty years to have “living wills” executed so that personal preferences may be followed in terms of extensive, drastic life support procedures.
A Republican National Committee advertisement is running on television now with a new version of Harry and Louise actors. The story line is that the man is being refused his needed surgery by a government bureaucrat while he is being forced to pay for Planned Parenthood and for abortions. Another ad claims the bill will take away your choice of doctor, usurp your doctor’s choice of treatment, take away your present insurance, support senior euthanasia and other distortions. What slime!
Independent media researchers of the bill are reporting that there are nine falsehoods and distortions in these two latest republican ads. “Would you say, “There ought to be a law about such?” Apparently, free speech includes the freedom to lie.
To their dishonor it seems that some politicos know no shame when it comes to defeating something which is being pushed for the public good. One cannot but believe that most intelligent people will be offended by such advertisements. The problem is those turnip patch kids, gullible enough to see, hear, and believe lies to the detriment of their own good.
The insurance companies are putting up big bucks to defeat the health care bill. Big bucks! Unfortunately, the Republican Party, in its zeal to defeat President Obama on anything, has joined into an axis of evil alliance with the insurance companies to rob the American people of decent health care they can afford.
Many senators and congresspersons have already been bought off by insurance company campaign contributions and personal favors from their lobbyists. Blue Dog democrats have been tainted with the swamp slime of fund raisers sponsored recently by health care and insurance lobbyists.
Now the media blitz is being turned directly on the turnip patch kids who are most vulnerable to such toxic tripe from the political swamp.
Sadly to say, and sadly for the citizens of our country, they are gaining ground among the gullible.
We are frequently advised by issue advertisers to write our congressman or senator about such and such a point. The newsletters we receive, both welcomed and unwelcomed, urge us to write our representative or senator. We have become accustomed to this sort of thing nationally.
As a matter of practicality, it normally makes little sense for a citizen in Enid, Oklahoma, to write his senator or congressman. Why? It is because all of ours already have their minds made up on nearly every issue, and nobody but their party leadership will change their position. If you write a letter, you get a response utilizing their version of their party line.
Regardless of its uselessness, this writer does on occasion write a letter to his congresspersons.
Several years ago when President Bush and the republicans were pushing to privatize Social Security and invest our money in the stock market, I wrote a letter citing the distortion of statistics and scare tactics being employed and detailing reasons why privatization was a bad idea. In return, I received two-page form letters ignoring my points and giving me again the faulty statistics and faulty reasoning to which I had objected.
That Social Security issue is exemplary of the various issues about which we are told to write our congressperson. It is a useless activity because our senators and representatives do not listen to any opinions contrary to their party line.
Further, our congresspersons do not effectively represent consumers and average citizens. They represent pressure groups with axes to grind and money to lubricate the process. They represent the donor class of citizens. They represent voter blocs of single issue, special interest people with a desire to bend government for their own gain.
The average Oklahoma citizen with no pressure group or lobbying affiliation, and with only a few dollars to drop in the campaign collection boxes, has little representation in Congress. Our pleas will turn no heads nor reach any receptive ears.
But please allow the drawing of certain exceptions to the rule just laid out.
If I am a hard-shell conservative with right wing tendencies, my congresspersons are representing me well. If I am a rich businessman, desirous of maintaining tax loopholes, dispensations, or other ways of avoiding taxes, then our congresspersons represent me well. If I am a member of their party, and remain so in spite of obvious disregard of my personal interests, then they represent my views. If I have never stopped to think and analyze political agendas and actions, and was born into or sold the party line in the past, then they represent me.
But if I am a fiscally conservative but socially progressive citizen, nobody represents me. If I am a citizen with a social conscience who believes in caring for others in need through government, then nobody represents me. If I am one who doesn’t scare easily by use of terms like “socialist” or “liberal,” but who is concerned about the issues themselves, then I have no representation. If I am a “populist,” who puts common people first, then I am not represented.
It is doubtful that anyone has ever made a study of the above characteristics and the proportions of those represented and those not, but one might well suspect that something over half of the people living in Oklahoma have no real representation in congress – despite the vote tallies.
Finding this a probability, it gives cause for concern about democracy in our state and nation.
Money and special interests have corrupted our political system. Considering what a candidate must do, and how much of himself he must sell, in order to raise campaign funds, it is remarkable that we have an electoral system that works as well as it does.
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