I've been mulling over some of this for a while, so I decided to write some of it out. Partly to help me figure out my thoughts, partly because... well, I feel like I need to say it. This is the post that it has taken me the longest to write, by far. I hope it makes sense, and means what I mean to say.
The news about the shooting in Arizona made headlines over here too. A lot of discussion and analysis about why it happened also began appearing here. A lot of people were blaming the angry rhetoric of people such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin for causing him to go off the edge. Now, I understand that the shooter was not a tea-party-er, but it got me thinking. The one thing that I have not missed, and actually been grateful to get away from, has been American politics. Not necessarily the political structure, but the way political event, commentary, ads, etc are in the media.
Out here, I have yet to see one attack ad. Okay, I'll admit, I'm not here during an election, so there's far less likelihood of them being shown at all. But even opposite sides of the government are expected to show at least a certain degree of solidarity. They may rip each other to shreds during the weekly PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions, for those of you unfamiliar with it), but they still walk out together, meet outside of Parliament, and demonstrate a common... bond, goal, I'm not quite sure what to call it. A united front, maybe. Not quite like in the States, where one person runs an ad saying "look who's paying for his ad and where that means his loyalties really lie! look at (insert flaw here) that we found in his voting record/personal life/whatever! He's trying to lie to you for votes!" with response ads of "He just ran a baseless attack ad on me! Well let me tell you about him!" and everything gets polarized and nothing resolved. I really, truly, do not and don't think I ever will miss that type of mudslinging.
And the commentary. Oh my goodness, there is so much to be said for being away from that. But this leads to the part where I have to be perfectly blunt, even though I know of a few people who read this who will strongly disagree: the Tea Party scares me. As in, scares the s^&# out of me. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of sane, rational, smart people among those who claim to belong to the Tea Party movement. These are not the people who scare me. What scares me are the frontrunners and spokespeople for the Tea Party. Sarah Palin, for a start. She is the first thing that finalised my decision to vote Obama two years ago. Partly because she represented McCain going from maverick to pandering to the Republican party for votes, but also because she, herself scares me. Now, she's a great motivational speaker, I'll give her that; but she has neither the experience nor, in my opinion, knowledge required to lead America into anything.
As for spokespeople who are not leaders; I have to say, the idea that people picked Glenn Beck as a leader of anything is simply unbelievable to me. I mean, this is a man who regularly spouts of comparing "progressives" to Communists, Socialists, Fascists and Nazis, often in the same sentence. He's the spokesperson and a driving force behind much of the Tea Party, yet he doesn't even seem to realise that those four things are not only not the same thing, they are all on different ends of the political spectrum. Not to mention, he even equated Social Justice with communism and nazism on his show. Because freeing slaves and helping the downtrodden is oh-so-Nazi-esque. My original intent for this post was to mull over the claims that it was angry rhetoric that caused the shooter in Arizona to go off the deep end. Now I don't know about that man; but if it wasn't then, it's only a matter of time until the violent rhetoric often used by people like Beck will cause someone to go off the deep end. Now I'm not saying that there's no bias elsewhere in other shows like his; but the only response I can have to that is to tell you to go watch Jon Stewart's "Lupus of News" clip. Even as a person with lupus, it was hilarious and completely accurate.
I thought before that those two were my main problems. But then C. and I were back in California for a week at the end of January, and our friend T. showed us a couple of videos of another Tea Party frontrunner (whose name I am currently blanking on, so if someone reading this knows, please comment) in which she said that our Founding Fathers "fought tirelessly to end slavery" until the practice was ended. Um, nice rewriting of history. Fact is, the Founding Fathers were so divided over the issue that in order to get the Constitution ratified, they had to write in that Congress would not address the issue for the next twenty years. Not to mention, every last one of them died before slavery was abolished, so unless they were zombies or ghosts, they couldn't have kept fighting until its end. Basic history, people. Let's make sure our politicians remember it.
I guess I'm just getting frustrated that people who are trying to lead can't get some very basic facts straight. If someone can't even get straight basic historical facts about the founding of America, or understand the differences between Nazism, Communism, Fascism, and Socialism, how can we expect them to really understand the basic facts about what is happening in the world today? I honestly don't think we can. And so I cannot bring myself to trust them, and the fact that people can trust them, believe in them, and just plain believe them, scares me. There's just no other way to say it. They scare me.
Now I'm remembering a story I saw recently on notalwaysright.com, in which a cashier relates the story of one customer seeing something on a news station playing in the store and goes on a rant about Obama's healthcare bill, how it's unconstitutional, Americans aren't socialist, we don't need any socialist programs... and then goes to pay for their purchase with a food stamps debit card. Don't need any socialist programs, really?
In many ways, I'm beginning to think that Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity was right on the money. It's time for the sane, smart people to be heard. In the writing of this post, I have watched the clip of his imitation of Glenn Beck and his gospel choir address to Bernie Goldberg of Fox News more times than I can count, just to remind myself that sanity is out there. They may not be the loudest ones, but they are there.
In the meantime, the only thing that comes to mind is a phrase my pastor used to use a lot: "It hurts me right in the IQ!"
