The pendulum may have swung a full 180 since the ‘60s, with the rise of the extremist right wing grandma and grandpas taking their stance at the podiums. A black man is in office, the government is threatening to take control, economic downfall, a tiresome war with no end in sight – all symptoms of a speeding drunk truck driver hauling 500 tons of explosives.
The only difference is this time, prescription medications for blood thinning and anti-dementia have taken the place of LSD, and instead of wearing flowers in your hair there’s a pistol in your back pocket with an immigrant’s name on the bullet.
Will 2009 be the next 1969?
Not so much, because where our parents had Ken Kesey and Jimmy Hendrix, Conservatives have no one but Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. This is an elderly revolution of hate and fear where all issues circulating in the political and social tornado for the past 40 years are finally going to be confronted and people will have to take sides.
Many of these hecklers and rabble rousers claim they’re doing this for the good of their country, to protect the “republic” our “fathers” founded, but we all know that these claims are just rationalizations – like most people who need their voices to be heard, they mask their ego-driven impulses of mistrust, hatred and fear with a selfless claim of patriotism.
The truth is, people are worried about getting the money they’ve been putting into the system for so many years; they’re worried they’ll be disregarded in old age; and worst of all, they’re still clutching onto the irrational fears of becoming communist and socialist that engraved itself in the post WWII generation.
No, these arguments aren’t sound and these interruptions aren’t patriotic, these calls to arms are appalling and these ridiculous fears are what voted Bush in for a second term. Agree or disagree, I’d like to hear an explanation of these expansive reforms that need to take place instead of some starved freak needing some attention underneath the podium.
I blame the media, I blame the Democrats for trying to rush this, I blame the Republicans for acting like they always do, and I blame anybody who speaks from a self-righteous point of view who only looks to be the winner of it all.
The point is, this is a game we’ve been playing for too many years now. Go ahead and protest, make yourself heard and cause a riot – they eat it up. Let’s keep believing old men telling us our generation needs to step up and put our livelihood, our future as a united country, in jeopardy so we can fight their wars. It’s a giant game of tricks that cloud our perceptions from the reality – that our brothers and sisters are dying for an unjust cause, that our health care is an embarrassment and ranks lower than most of Europe and only two spots ahead of Cuba, and that our culture tends to show its ugliest face in our irrational fears and lust for a “me first” attitude.
