United We Stand..Divided we...

What a sad time for America when a political party and the conservative movement so hate and disrespect the President they: 1. Encourage schoolchildren to boycott a Presidential address advocating doing your homework. 2. Cheer when the United States fails to get the Olympics. 3. Constantly criticize Health Care Reform when we desperately need it. 4. Stand ready to attack needed changes in foreign policy after squandering trillions in Iraq. 5. Accuse the President of being Hitler and a Socialist at the same time (historically impossible). 6. Attack every move the President makes regarding the economy, accusing him of causing a recession that started in 2008. 7. Rant at deficits, which hit record levels during the previous administration’s folly of fighting two wars while cutting taxes. 8. Acting in disloyal ways, screaming they are patriots, claiming political dissent condones refusing to serve in Iraq because the President was allegedly not born in the United States (a charge that is ridiculous). 9. The Republican Party has been captured by the radical right, whose motto is “the ends justify the means”, moderates are no longer welcome.

At the nine month mark of President Bush’s first term the country had just endured the horror of 9-11. My truck carried a decal promoting unity in our struggle with terrorism. I am a long-time Democrat, and no fan of Bush’s policies. And this was a President remember, who had just been elected with a MINORITY of the popular vote. However, when the nation is in trouble it doesn’t make any difference, we stand together. This does not mean we stifle democratic debate. But starting a campaign in January 2009 to destroy the brand new landside elected administration using any means necessary is NOT patriotism.

Shasta County is in economic trouble. As usual, the recession is hitting harder here. And what do they do? They scream, they demonstrate. They carry flags urging another “tea party”, chant about nonexistent lying, and shout down honest citizens who ask innocent questions. And, they praise comments advocating political terrorism, as if democratic argument is a blood sport.

The facts are we have a long way to go to get out of this mess. No matter what party is in control, we are in trouble in this country. We have allowed our economy to develop generic weaknesses that have resulted in what may well be chronic long-term underemployment. We have ignored a fatal addiction to foreign oil, designing our society with a total disregard of dwindling oil supplies. We have allowed our health care system to become a disaster, dragging down our economy. Finally, our educational system has been ignored, criticized, manipulated for political gain by all sides, to the point where it is faltering.

Meanwhile, California, who has been seen as a trend-setter for the nation, is committing economic suicide because of the rages of a conservative minority who clings to tax cutting as the cure for all the ills of our society, while our schools starve to death, our firemen and police are laid off, and we flat don’t have enough revenue to repair roads that now rank 49^th as worst in the nation. The right has run our state into the ditch.

And they do this for the sake of an obsessive goal to win back the White House and the Congress at all costs? They rail they “want our county back”. And if they get their country back, what about the rest of us; are convenient internment camps next?

The radical right did exactly that in Germany in 1933. The first internees in the concentration camps were the “socialists” and those who believed in democracy. Most were never seen or heard from again. The ends of political hegemony justified the means of killing the political opposition. Is this an unfair comparison? History teaches us that it is not. When people scream we want “our” country back it means they are claiming somehow an exclusive ownership, which implies the “others” don’t belong. This directly leads to either sending the “others” out, or eliminating them.

After WWII, our schools taught this basic principle of how political systems go wrong. As a baby-boomer I remember the films and the lectures about what the radical right can do to freedom. The horror of the concentration camps was a lesson about how wrong an ideology can become.

The right wing tendency to somehow “own” or have an ordained right to “our” country, in contrast to everyone else, is a sociological fact that has destroyed democracies throughout history. All that is needed is a scapegoat, illegal immigrants, or “socialists” and the inevitable self-righteous political violence begins. This has and will lead to the fall of democracy.

President Obama’s difficulty in getting a Health Care Bill is because compromise and cooperation are the ONLY way to get bills passed under our Constitution. Without basic cooperation our government ceases to function. This is exactly what the radical right thrives on, discrediting democracy (the end) with the means of obstructionism and criticism of government.

Thanks to the Conservative Right, we are divided and we are falling. The inherent threat they pose to our democracy continues and will intensify unless we stand up and bring rational debate back into our political discussions.