My irritation with Glenn Beck is balanced almost perfectly with my frustration for Barack Obama. It is easier to listen to Glenn’s simplistic message (as it has always been when the right open their stinking mouths) than Obama the intellectual buffoon.
The problem, yet again, when the left of center are swept into power by the cheering crowds (when the pendulum swings) is that they are woefully unprepared to deliver what the people want. When the right get into power they let off bombs and create armies and the fearful are made safe, the patriotic are assuaged, the rich rub their hands in glee.
When the left of center are elected they ‘negotiate’ with their enemies, they want to be ‘bipartisan’ and have absurd ’round table get togethers’ with their opponents to ‘sort everything out’.
Of course I am disillusioned by Obama just like you are. I cried when he was elected. I was so happy. He promised so much and has delivered so little. He and his administration cow tows to the likes of Glenn Beck. Obama moans and whines, he says pathetically that “change is hard”.
Was the only ‘change we could believe in’ the black faces of the first family? Was that it?
For those faces to then be called liars out loud by pasty white-faced congress men? For those same black faces to doff their caps to people like Glen Beck? To be called racists? Obama has not adequately taken the reigns because deep down he fears the consequences, he may be president but he does not behave like a president. His rhetoric is merely that..rhetoric. Hollow promises, empty gestures. He looks haunted, like those negro men and women in the black and white photographs taken in the deep south, covering their heads as the police hit them with batons.
He looks beaten. He sounds washed up.
Yet, all it would take is just one moment of clarity, one moment to take back his power, a moment of shock and awe. It is unlikely to happen. He is just too busy having his photo taken like JFK in the oval office with his little daughters.
Last week a friend of mine confided in me she had heard from reliable sources that Obama would not run a second term and that Hillary would be elected and everything would be just the way we want it. Bullshit. Of course a second term for Obama is unlikely but not because Hilary is waiting in the wings to take the crown that was promised her. The people will choose a simpler message, a familiar message. One that they can understand. Change maybe what they want but they have washed their hands of change. It’s too complicated.
The nation is crippled, the people are meek and fat and stupid and unable to change anything. The nation is crippled by inactivity, inertia, fear.
The banks and their paid friends in government have deliberately crippled the USA. They will do nothing to heal this country until they have an elected government who sees things exactly their way.
When the dependable right get back into power..everything will change. Lending practices, house prices, small business..all will suddenly change and the people will breathe a sigh of relief. The banking reforms will vanish, the Obama health care system will too.
My friends tell me that President Obama has achieved much but they forget that I come from a country where real socialists have changed the fabric of society for the good and the bad. Where the pendulum really swung, where the people were represented and the legacy of that extreme governance is health care, education, infra structure. That’s all I want for you. So I do not have to endlessly put my hand in my pocket for the steady stream of homeless beggars now on every street in America. Millions of desperate unemployed.
Obama has achieved nothing of any consequence, no real and immediate healthcare, no real financial reform. How could he? He surrounded himself with banking insiders. Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner are complicit in the devaluation of your house, the loss of your job and as one government melded seamlessly into another oversaw a massive banking Ponzi scheme: the banks took your TARP money tripled the value of it and with huge grins on their bloated faces returned chump change to you the people.
Nowhere else in the world did this happen so effectively than here in the USA. The Americans tried exercising monetary hegemony in Europe but the European Union is too disperate. There are simply too many politicians from too many fractured political parties to bully and bribe and most of them have more integrity in one member’s little finger than the entire American congress and senate put together.
The European Union cannot be bought. This explains the British ruling elites fear of the Euro, the European Union and everything east of the Channel. Yet, look at what is happening in Europe. The economies are growing, the people did not lose their homes, communities were not compromised.
We have had revolution in Europe. Revolution is essential to destroy the status quo for the status quo is not good for the people. It is good for the few.
The media and Obama hating pundits, as well they might, evoke the ghosts of the French Royal family but Michelle Obama is no Marie Antoinette.
It is easier for us to discuss Michelle’s vacations and high-waisted fashion faux pas than the dead and the maimed and the wounded in our fruitless wars. Fruitless, unless you are the owner of a munitions factory or a service industry dedicated to war. We will never be able to stop profligate war funding because we are coerced by the rich to believe it is our patriotic duty to support our troops by giving them more and more money as our schools rot and our teachers become beggars.
I am eager for revolution in whatever form it may take. The people voted for Obama not to be meek or timid or careful of his enemies but to take back what had been stolen from us during the Bush years. To restore what Glen Beck is now touting..some American honor.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have chipped away at the truth of Barack Obama so that today more and more Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim, that he bailed out the banks, initiated the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
They believe that Obama is not and has never been..is not and has never been a bone fide American. They believe that he is not like them, that he has become president by suspect means. That the good people of America could never have deliberately elected a black man and his descended from slaves wife. How could that have happened?
Their racist outrage has never been stamped upon, outlawed, mocked. Why? Because we were too busy, like bullied kids in the playground, crying and running away after trying to befriend and engage those who are simply incapable of listening.
8 replies on “Glenn Beck/Barack Obama”
I am sorry to say that there are so many points in your blog I agree with. I would love Obama to turn the corner, but I am afraid it is not going to happen.
I’ll still vote for him in 2012 as I get fatter and slightly more ignorant. Terrific post, though I wish you were wrong.
unless a better option comes forth I too would vote for the lesser evil. and isnt that bloody sad.
went to a friends childs bday party, and what was on the televison but Glenn Beck, delivering a message of such patriotic drivel…i didnt stay.
People are losing hope, and they will listen to anything that blames what they fear. Lisa, i dont think of it as getting fatter and more ignorant, its called being complacent, and thats what we cant do, if you dont like some thing ..change it, vote, take 15 minutes to get involved some where to make the changes you want to see, one cant bitch and moan if you havent tried at least. 🙂 and if that doesnt work, we can at least have a beer and get up and do it again the next day. as long as there are people who wont stand for it, theres a chance.. maybe a slim one, but its better than whats goin on today.
I had alot of catch up sleep 🙂
Can’t watch Glenn Beck, I get sick even looking at his book in stores.He is so plastic.
Tired of watching mudslinging at local level elections,sick of ignorance regarding a decent medical healthcare. Tired also of watching greed in America take centre and front stage to the needs of the poor. I mentioned I was reading Dominic Dunn. I have read ‘People like us”, The 2 Mrs Grenvilles” and ‘An inconvenient woman’ all 3 books tell the inside scoop of the rich and famous in America and their obsession with money and status.They say it all.
Great post!
Duncan,
Great points. The thing is… no one “took” power away from the people. We gave it away. AND WE CAN TALK IT BACK. There is a guy on Twitter named Chad Lilly, who talks about “sheeple”. I don’t agree with everything that he says but I couldn’t agree with that more. People are told and they tell themselves that they can’t do anything to effect change, “What can one person do?”. Or if they do stand up, then there is no follow through. The people who voted for Barack Obama don’t call in to the radio and TV talk shows when someone delivers a load of crap, to tell them that their thinking stinks. They don’t call their Congressmen/women to tell them that they have support to stand up to the idiots who poison the discourse on just about every subject these days. And our Congressmen/women amongst themselves.
Barack Obama has made some big errors as you pointed out by bringing in the very pirates who looted our financial systems to help fix the disaster that they created. And yes, for someone who seemed so politically savvy, he’s let the opposition frame almost every debate in a way that is like asking a prosecutor asking a witness, “So, Mr. Jones, when did you stop beating your wife?”. The question itself makes an assumption that is very hard to counterbalance.
then
Duncan,
Great points. The thing is… no one “took” power away from the people. We gave it away. AND WE CAN TALK IT BACK. There is a guy on Twitter named Chad Lilly, who talks about “sheeple”. I don’t agree with everything that he says but I couldn’t agree with that more. People are told and they tell themselves that they can’t do anything to effect change, “What can one person do?”. Or if they do stand up, then there is no follow through. The people who voted for Barack Obama don’t call in to the radio and TV talk shows when someone delivers a load of crap, to tell them that their thinking stinks. They don’t call their Congressmen/women to tell them that they have support to stand up to the idiots who poison the discourse on just about every subject these days. And our Congressmen/women fight amongst themselves.
Barack Obama has made some big errors as you pointed out by bringing in the very pirates who looted our financial system to help fix the disaster that they created. And yes, for someone who seemed so politically savvy, he’s let the opposition frame almost every debate in a way that is like asking a prosecutor asking a witness, “So, Mr. Jones, when did you stop beating your wife?”. The question itself makes an assumption that is very hard to counterbalance. You’re playing defense, instead of offense.
But Barack Obama is not god. He is not a king. He is the president. He cannot enact law. He can and has gotten together Congress people to propose and try and steer proposals such as banking reform and health care through Congress and he can veto what he doesn’t like. (Hopefully, without a two-thirds majority who will vote to override that veto.) He has had to fight some members of his own party and almost always everyone in the GOP. And he’s had to fight the media. Those who jump on stories like that of Sherrod and make him seem weak if he — doesn’t — react immediately. And those who reiterate all the nonsense that he’s not a native-born American and is secretly a Muslim because, well, other people are talking about it — even if they’re idiots — and that makes it “news”. Instead of letting this stupidity die down. Which distracts everyone from the real issues in this country which hardly get air time.
Its not about “us” and “them”. I’ve heard some smart things said by conservatives. Not the Tea Party fringe. Dear God, no. However, here is nothing wrong with trying to establish consensus. But you have to know when to stop speaking softly and to use a big stick. For whatever reason, Obama’s not there yet. But anyone who thought that he would somehow magically be able to reverse the eight years of the Bush debacle when in the middle of the worst economic disaster since the great Depression in 24 months doesn’t live in the real world. And let’s not forget having to deal with the Gulf oil spill and the stranglehold that big oil/gas/coal has on this country. And North Korea. And Iran. And the Israel/Palestine problem. All very dangerous global problems that could enmesh us in a heartbeat. He is not a miracle worker.
As for Beck/Palin and their ilk. I keep thinking of the book and film, “Ship of Fools”. You’re right. They are dangerous. But the most dangerous are those who let them spew their garbage because they’re “controversial” and controversy makes money. There’s a line from the cartoon strip “Pogo” that goes “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We need to keep taking a maintenance dose of the red pill and stay awake. Because we keep going back to sleep. And whose fault is that?
We need green elections starting at the local and state level and working on up to the Federal. People CAN take their power back. They just need to mobilize and believe that the cards aren’t stacked against them. We need someone to demand a fresh deck. And a new dealer, like an FDR or a Martin Luther King. Someone who CAN bring people together in community, for the common good. It has happened before. There is absolutely, no reason why it can’t happen again and gain momentum. Who knows, maybe Barack Obama WILL fulfill the hopes of so many who put him into office.
I am a RELENTLESS optimist. However, we must remember that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. So even if all you can do is send an e-mail or type a tweet or call in to a talk show or respond to a heinous news story… RAISE YOUR VOICE! Power is NOT about money. It is about community and it is about numbers. ROUSE YOUR TRIBE! UNITE! And for the love of God, stop demonizing other people. They may be selfish, benighted shits but if God can find a way to change Saul of Tarsus, a mass murderer of Christians, into St. Paul, the apostle, then surely, we can find a way to work for the common good. And maybe some power addicts will have to be left behind to hit their bottom. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and move toward the Light. “Get to gettin'”.
Blessings,
Amanda