Reality Liberation Front

Recently, Alan Keyes had a lot to say about President Obama. He calls Obama a “radical communist” and an “abomination.” He accuses Obama of advocating “infanticide.” He questions whether or not Obama is truly President, citing the long disproven claims against Obama’s citizenship…and he questions whether or not American soldiers truly have to follow Obama’s leadership. He warns of “chaos, confusion, and civil war.” Lastly…he states that “we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.”

It bears stating that Keyes is not just some crazy, uneducated bumpkin…nor is he one of the far-right pundits, from whom we expect this kind of ridiculous vitriol…nor is he the leader of some whacked out, extremist church. He is an educated, African-American man who has run for the Presidency as a Republican three times (most recently in the last election), and in 2004 he lost in the Illinois Senate race to Barack Obama. HIS…is the face of what has become “legitimized hatred” in America. He is representative of a population that we can no longer dismiss as a “few harmless, misguided, and ignorant zealots.”

We have entered a most dangerous time…Keyes is right about that, but for the absolutely wrong reasons. Liberals, Democrats, President Obama, and the majority of America…pose no threat. But we live in a time where the rightist extremists, having had their egos stoked for eight long years…having been told REPEATEDLY that it’s acceptable to harbor hateful and unreasonable sentiments based on prejudice and ignorance…they now feel free to unleash the worst kind of racist, violent, inflammatory, wrong-headed, and irresponsible talk, laced with thinly-veiled threats against our President and doomsday predictions of “the end of America.” Observe Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary, “Right America: Feeling Wronged,” and you will hear argument after argument filled with hate, proud ignorance, threats of violence…and completely devoid of factual information; Perhaps this is explained by the fact that everyone interviewed claimed they get all their news from FOX…or based their views on a flagrant misinterpretation/misunderstanding of religious scripture. As Pelosi follows the McCain campaign’s state-to-state journey, she reveals to us the true source of America’s ills:

The fact is…America, in terms of the principles upon which it was founded back in 1776…has already ended…

…THEIR America…must come to an end now, for the TRUE America to be reborn.

Under President Bush, America, in principle, came to an end. I’m sorry…but it’s true, and if you didn’t realize it was happening…don’t feel bad because it all happened very fast and you were probably too scared or too busy to ask a lot of questions. What do I mean by this?

- In major categories of education, medicine, poverty, crime, and science…our standings plummeted. On many lists of the aforementioned categories (and their associated subcategories)…we are ranked near the bottom with THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES.

- Habeas Corpus, the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, other BASIC LAWS AND PROTECTIONS…utterly undermined. Undone in the name of “security.”

- Our national unity? Destroyed. An “us versus them” and “you are with us or un-American” mentality was ACTIVELY CULTIVATED. We have been told for eight years that there are only two types of people in this country…and only one of those groups was “right” and “good” and “patriotic.” In large part, we bought it. Some people bought the sales job based on “traditional” and “family” values…other simply started openly voicing the offensive and ignorant views that they had, up until then, kept to themselves. We rapidly became the two types of people they wanted us to be…just because they said so…and are now at war with ourselves.

- Our economy…is no longer number one in the world, and we are bottoming out and taking the rest of the world economies with us. Except for the holders of our massive national debt: THEY NOW OWN AMERICA…not merely contractually…but because they have the power to crush us at any time by calling for repayment. We have gone from a manufacturing giant and an export leader, to a service-driven economy with a net importer status. We no longer innovate, or lead the way in science and technology. Our corporate greed has led to increasingly less innovative products…which are more poorly made…and are made with raw materials from other countries…and are assembled in other countries.

- Our image abroad is the worst it’s ever been. Once seen as bold, brave, compassionate, and principled…we are now viewed as petty, violent, hypocritical, backwards, and irresponsible. We started doing things to people from other countries, and even our own citizens, that we had always claimed we would NEVER do. And…we were unapologetic about it.

- We have little sense of national identity or knowledge. Studies show that few people in this country actually know what is in the Constitution, where the various states are on a map, or anything specific about the history of this country. How can a person protect the America ideals…if they don’t even know anything about what they are, or how hard some men and women fought for them?

- We are as lazy, and as delusional about it, as we have ever been. The right clamors about the “lazy people” wishing to live off of “stolen wealth.” For the most part, the truth is that not one of them does as much as his or her father and mother…and their father and mother did a fraction of what THEIR parents accomplished. Our ancestors built their houses and barns, raised gaggles of children, farmed crops and worked in factories, served in World Wars…they did all these things and more…things that we now either don’t do, that we do with more complaining and less skill, or that we hire someone else to do for us. We sound like petulant children when we accuse each other of being lazy…the rest of the world watches us whine about minor inconveniences while we become increasingly soft and unhealthy under our relatively luxurious lifestyles.

- Due to unmitigated corporate greed and deregulation, we now have 40% of our citizens living below the poverty level, 1% controls 99% of the country’s wealth, and the middle class has shrunk to unprecedented levels. Industry giants…insurance, banking, pharmaceuticals, credit and lending, auto industry, air travel industry…they filled the coffers of our politicians and were given a license to cheat regulations, steal, pollute, export jobs, produce tainted products, and mistreat workers.

Freedom, liberty, strength, wisdom, compassion, prosperity, innovation, industry, adaptability…these things defined what America is SUPPOSED to be. And the right-wing has systematically destroyed each in turn to fill their pockets (and their friends’ pockets) and to expand their power. Their supporters? They still chant “U-S-A” mindlessly while doing little to stop (or even notice) our nation’s decline. If confronted about our failings as a nation…they either deny them or they illogically fault “liberals, lazy welfare people, lefty communists, gays, atheists, and baby-killers” with somehow causing the downfall, while they continue to support the same policies and leaders that are, in fact, pulling our American foundations apart, brick by brick.

Their “America“…must end. We must restore each of the true American ideals if we wish to continue with “the great experiment” that is the United States…for we have now become the very two-party, corrupt aristocracy/oligarchy that the founding fathers wished to abandon. Keyes and those like him…it is they who “must be stopped” and not by violence, but by the condemnation of all decent Americans. Free speech does not protect talk of treason, insurrectionist rhetoric, or incitement to violence. Our friends, family members, and coworkers…when they speak of a return to “traditional values,” if what they mean is a return to past bigotry, injustice, and division in the name of an amoral and nonsensical interpretation of Christian scripture…they must be confronted…condemned…censured. Their calls to violence must be met by fierce prosecution. Their lies, met with facts.

The culture war…the war for the very soul of America has begun. And the tendency amongst the majority of decent Americans to become apathetic…uninformed…and to quietly dismiss the zealots and hatemongers…these luxuries must be abandoned in favor of strong, informed confrontation. The conservatives, having destroyed the foundations of liberty…now control the hearts and minds of 40% of the population, through their corporate and propagandist media empires. They say, “America…love it or leave it.” We must say, “America: improve with us, or stagnate alone.” It is necessary for THEM to evolve and come to accept the next level of human tolerance, decency, intellect, and cooperation…not for us to devolve and accept prejudice and injustice. The work is cut out for us…but the benefits are great. The return of America as a proud giant in the world…would make all our strife worth the cost.