Or at least indict Roger Ailes for Treason
Back in the Vietnam war era, I’d see bumper
stickers that said, “America, Love it or Leave It” and the message was meant
for people like me. After this past election,
I want to find one of those bumper stickers and put it on my own car now.
Politics divided the country completely in half
in the Vietnam War era much like we are divided today.
Back then an entire generation had enjoyed public schools with resources,
and as a result we saw the insanity of a military industrial complex generated war. So in 1968 we took to the streets to demand the
USA bring the war to an end.
Today an entire generation has grown up with
low budget education and 24-hour news cycles where twisted propaganda, funded
by a similar industrial complex, has bombarded our airwaves.
So in 2010 a generation took to the streets carrying
signs with misspelled words.
Back then maybe we didn't have maps showing red
and blue states. But we had jukeboxes
playing “We Don't Smoke Marijuana in Muskogee” and the message was as
clear. Half the country hates the other half
because each of us is certain, “my politics are correct and yours aren't.”
As a hippie flower child, now and then I’d
try to reach out to a right winger. In
fact one day in 1971 or so I was on a road trip with a van full of freaks, and we
stopped in an Oklahoma diner. The parking
lot was full of pickups with that very bumper sticker “America, Love it or
Leave It” as well as other stickers that shouted that decade’s breed of hatred
of your fellow citizen.
We had been on the road for days and needed a coffee
stop so we went in the diner anyway.
I remember Alfie, my companion at the time,
nudged me to just stay cool. We walked into
the Naugahyde* dominated sunlit room and all conversation at the tables came to
a stop. A waitress held a coffee pot in
mid air. Everyone stared at us. We sat at a table.
As is my bent, I ignored Alfie’s warning.
I felt a need to reach out again to a right
winger.
So I went to the jukebox and played that very same
Merle Haggard song.
The clang of guitar and lyrics rang out, “We
don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee” and filled the otherwise still silent room.
Then, as my long-haired unkempt companions
stared with mouths open, I sat down at a table full of men in cowboy hats and
tried to explain to them:
“Why say America love it or leave it? We protest the war in Vietnam because we love
America so much.”
It didn't work.
I didn't bring peace and harmony to the nation or even the diner, in
fact, the cowboys all got up and gestured at my friends like I’d challenged them
to a fight, and I'm going, no, I'm trying to explain we're patriotic, we love America,
we don't want to leave it. But Alfie and
the others sensed something sinister about to begin, so they picked me up out of my seat and
we were back out on the highway in seconds.
So it's with trepidation that as election 2012
careened through the summer I would post an occasional link to a story on Facebook
about one of the numerous accomplishments of Barack Obama.
As soon as I’d post, I’d get bombarded, by right wing “friends” I’d acquired somewhere, with salaciously angry and
off-the-wall answers such as:
Obama’s a Muslim.
Obama’s a Socialist.
Obama’s out to destroy the country.
Obama was not born in America.
I’d try reasoning with them.
Not born in America? Wouldn't Hillary have uncovered that back in
2008?
If he were a socialist why didn't we at least get
single payer health coverage? Why do
most of his actions make him seem more like a moderate Republican?
If he’s a Muslim, why does he live his life like
someone who has internalized Proverbs since an early age and anyway if we have
freedom of religion in this country, so what if he is a Muslim?
But the response from the right was inevitably
the same. He’s a socialist, he’s a
Muslim, then they would not shut up long enough to hear what I was saying.
Like the men in cowboy hats at that diner.
Half of America was getting its information from
one source and refusing to listen to any other.
They weren't stopping to consider who was funding and creating the
source where they got their information, because the information was delivered
in such a professional and calculated manner that it was designed to get that very
adamant result.
We saw signs of the hypnosis on the right last
Tuesday on election night. When it became
obvious who won, when even Fox News had to admit Obama won the election, news
cameras showed a gathering in Boston of Mitt Romney’s main backers at what was supposed
to be a victory party.
Their room went silent.
It was like all of a sudden their bubble
popped. For a good two years maybe
longer, the neo-conservatives had immersed
themselves so thoroughly in Fox News lies and their dissemination, that they thought
the imaginary truth inside the bubble was true.
Then the bubble popped. Romney supporters were out about a jillion
dollars combined between them, and now it was all gone. They had nothing to show for it.
I’d like to say “America, love it or leave it”
to all the Romney-ites who think, now that Obama won a second term, we are
headed for a socialist takeover run by Chinese Muslims, but I don't know where these
anti-tax anti-government whackos would be able to find a home. Their heads would explode in any of the more
civilized nations like France, the UK, Canada, or Australia, where they have
socialized medicine and binders full of public services all funded by taxes paid with enthusiasm by citizens who are proud of everything their country provides.
I do know that my right wing friends have been
fed a pack of lies.
Roger Ailes should be fired from his job as President
of Fox News. The way that mainstream news outlet delivered
its daily message, obviously the sound bytes were coming from above, i.e., Roger Ailes. Then each
news anchor would just find different word combinations to use to deliver the
bytes, then Comedy Central would run montages of Fox News anchors repeating the same idiotic phrases.
Messages like “born in Kenya”
and “Muslim socialist” were repeated over and over again last few years, until vulnerable
(under-educated) Americans began to believe them. It helped that Rush Limbaugh and his imitators would then repeat the Ailes-generated messages on right wing radio shows that dominate America’s air
waves.
Roger Ailes, whose career began when he ran the
dirty tricks media projects for Richard Nixon, does not have the objectivity required
to be president of a major news outlet like Fox, so Roger Ailes should be fired
from Fox News.
And then Roger Ailes should be indicted for
treason. That might start bringing the
country back together again.
Meanwhile, to all my mesmerized friends who voted
for Romney.
Step back.
Exhale.
Accept.
That's what we had to do when George W. Bush
got declared president twice even though it was obvious he hadn’t really won. Bush didn't win Florida in 2000 and he didn't win Ohio in 2004, but the race was so close and the power so emphatic on the right, that he just got declared President. We accepted it, we exhaled, we dealt with him
as President whether we liked it or not. That wasn't able to happen in 2012 because the landslide made margins for error irrelevant and no third party had to be called in to be bought then call the election. They were not able to buy or steal the election this year.
We accepted GW Bush as President and begrudgingly gave him respect.
Dear Right Wing, Please do the same for Obama.
Obama is President of the United States.
Whether you like him or not, as President,
Obama deserves respect, as do your
fellow citizens who voted for him.
Accept it.
************
Posted this morning from scratch by Kay Ebeling
*Little side note: Naugahyde is not in the Word Spell Check...
.
