Divided by a Common Language - Today, I don't want to live here
Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 11:38AM 
I was at Costco today, and I passed the table of books for sale. There, in the middle, were three piles of books by Glenn Beck.
Glenn Beck is a radio and TV personality on the much vilified Fox News channel (called Fucked News, Fox Skewed, Faux News, Fox Noise, Fox Spews) which is blatantly conservative.
Glenn Beck, too, is blatantly conservative, famous for reports like his finding "Communist" art on the buildings around where he works in Manhattan.
Needless to say, I don't share his political views.
But, so what?
That doesn't explain why I found myself stepping over to the table, grabbing the books next to the Glenn Beck stack and trying to cover up all his books so no-one would buy them and muttering "No-one should give this man any money!"
As I was being completely irrational, an older woman, perhaps in her 60s or 70s, well groomed, came up to the table and started moving the books that I was using to cover Glenn Beck.
"Have you ever actually listened to him?" she asked me.
"Yes Ma'am, I have," I said and, realizing I was being completely nuts, walked away.
As I left, I felt a sadness, a weight bear down on me.
Fluffy Bear had heard the exchange.
"What's up, honey?" he asked me.
"These are the times," I told him, "when I am not sure if I want to live here."
"Aw honey," he replied. "Don't worry about it. Uber-Conservatives ran this country for the last 8 years and they managed not to break it."
"OH YES THEY DID!" I screeched. "The financial collapse, the war, the national debt..."
"OK, honey, take deep breaths..."
I did, but the sadness didn't lift and here I am, hours later, still thinking about this incident.
Why am I going against everything I usually believe in and, instead of allowing others their views and opinions, thinking they are wrong? Why am I so concerned about the vocal rise of the Conservatives since Obama took office? Why does living in America, where I have a lovely home in a great town, amazing friends, wonderful scenery, feel like a guilty pleasure on a day like this?
I am an open-minded person, who is very tolerant of people's views, no matter what they are.
I grew up in South Africa, for God's sake.
I remember staying with friends in the North of the country and going shopping. In the mall, there was a table with the AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging), the closest thing South Africa has to the Klu Klux Klan.
I didn't run up to them and cover up their books. I didn't go over and argue with them.
I just felt sorry for them, these people who were at the bottom of the White ladder and therefore having most to lose from the emancipation of the disenfranchised Black community.
I didn't feel threatened by them. I didn't feel like my country was in a downward spiral. In fact, quite the opposite. Even back in early 90's, we knew that positive change was coming.
Here, in a country that never institutionalized racism into law, the history currently being written is very different to South Africa's.
Unlike the AWB, who operated on the fringes, the right wing here has the might of the Fox channel, and people like Glenn Beck and Russ Limbaugh shouting across the airwaves, legitimizing their views as "news."
Unlike Mandela and De Klerk, a revolutionary embraced by a member of the old guard - black meeting white with mutual respect - the right wing here refers to a mixed race man as Black and someone takes a gun to a rally where he is appearing.
Unlike South Africa, where there was one key issue - giving Black people the vote so they could vote in their own representation - the right wing here is jumping on all sorts of issues which it says will ruin their country. Someone yells at a person in a wheelchair at a healthcare town hall meeting "I am not paying for your medical bills!" There are Tea Party meetings, referring to the famous incident in Boston, protesting against government spending and taxation. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others cheer when Rio wins the 2016 Olympics instead of Chicago, calling it the world rejecting Obama.
Why this noisy, cruel vitriol?
I wonder if the American culture - so successfully exported worldwide - may now be the very thing that is killing it's maker.
A country that has a very strong ethic of personal accountability and believes in the ability of the individual to achieve the American dream is not a country that believes in personal sacrifice for the common good.
It's not even a country. It's a set of "United States" and many say centralized government - whose very existence is to serve the common good - needs to "stay out of people's lives."
But... here's why I worry. Because...
...in a world where nature and globalization don't allow each US state to be self-sufficient, working together, for everyone's common good, has to start sometime
...in a world where jobs can be done remotely and we are all moving towards a knowledge economy, having excruciatingly high university fees, intelligent kids who can't afford education and interference in schooling by Christian fundamentalists is going to affect you economically
...in a world where the USA's economy is intertwined with everyone else's, having people choose their jobs based on healthcare benefits, sending people into bankruptcy due to unforeseen medical bills and strangling new enterprise with over-large healthcare and pension bills, is going to cause the USA to continue to slip and slide into economic chaos
...in a world where we are all suffering economically, having inefficient, over-bloated healthcare system that doesn't take care of everyone is not only unethical, it's doesn't make good financial sense.
If things keep going badly, if the USA doesn't make major changes, the future is bleak.
Really bleak.
And every old lady that buys into Glenn Beck and exercises her vote, keeps the USA headed down it's road to economic, political and environmental doom.
And I love my life here. I love my friends. I love the landscape. I love the humor. I love the down-home hospitality. I love the TV. I love Nordstrom. I love Ben and Jerrys. I love hotdogs. I love waffles. I love mac and cheese. I love the work ethic. Hell, I even love Garth Brooks.
And there's so much of this amazing, beautiful, diverse country that I haven't even seen yet.
And I don't want it to go down the tubes.
And so I'm sad.
And today, I don't want to live here.
Because I love this place. I want it to thrive. And instead, I am afraid I'll have to watch it get ruined.
Glenn Beck quotes:
Would you kill someone for that?...I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore...I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it,...No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus — band — Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,' and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.' And you know, well, I'm not sure.
- The Glenn Beck Program, May 17, 2005
- Posed question: What would people do for $50 million dollars?
Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax.…You need to have fear. You needed to have the fear of starvation. You needed to have the fear of the whole place going to hell in a handbasket. Which — do we have that fear now with global warming?…Then you have to discredit the scientists that say 'That's not right.' And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did. That's what Al Gore, the U.N., and everybody on the global warming bandwagon [are doing].[4]
- The Glenn Beck Program, April 30, 2007
- Glenn Beck on Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth
Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck
Ittybittycrazy
62% of personal bankruptcies in the USA are caused by medical debt
Source: HealthcareforAmericaNow.org TV ad
Reader Comments (1)
I'm an American living in Canada -- (Vancouver, BC) and the news from Seattle is becoming more and more like a giant soap opera!! I can hardly believe what I'm hearing!!! I've been watching this soap since the voting debacle in Florida - and the writers are getting weirder and weirder... but that's what sell, eh -- gotta have the tension between good and evil (or black and white) to make it something people pay attention too.
I was so pleased when Pres. Obama took office, breathing a sigh of relief, but OMG, I'm praying he ignores the negative energy directed his way and continues to keep his faith and his strength!
BTW - I'm ready to come home -- living somewhere else is just another soap opera!