Steve Benen, in an excellent analysis of the sloganeering that characterized Glenn Beck’s Besmirch MLK Rally yesterday, exposes the lack of substance behind the boiling Tea Party paranoia. Benen’s post, definitely worth reading in it its entirety, concludes:
The folks who gathered in D.C. today were awfully excited about something. The fact that it’s not altogether obvious what that might be probably isn’t a good sign.
According to Bill Lambrecht at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s “Political Fix,” St. Louisians who traveled to Washington D.C. to bask in the light of Beck, the self-anointed prophet, and his acolyte, Saint Palin, are equally worked up and just as vague about what it is that’s got them twitching.
One gentleman whom Lambrecht quotes melodramatically declares that “This is to wake up the people. The politicians don’t listen.” We should doubtless overlook the tang of sour grapes in this cri d’coeur – the outraged tone of those who thought that the Bush years, with their indulgence of the full range of right wing fanasy, would truly go on forever. That particular speaker though does seem to have awakened – albeit a few years too late. He is concerned, Lambrecht reports, because he has “never seen the economy so bad”:
It’s time to stop Congress from all this overspending and these frivolous earmarks. I think we’re headed for a collapse of the economy if it doesn’t stop
Similarly, an equally clueless St. Louisian is quoted as saying:
I’m scared that where we’re going is not a good place,” … There is no good ending to this story unless we make a U-turn,” he added.
The fact that the economy collapsed some time ago – two years ago to be exact – due to the ministrations of those applying just the panacea of deregulation and tax cuts that folks like these gentlemen advocate, doesn’t seem to have much penetration among this segment of the population. Instead they seem to derive intense, almost palpable satisfaction out of railing against the very measures that have kept us from the deepest and darkest of economic pits. How could any thinking person want to make a U-turn right back to the Bush policies that put us in the very bad place we were in at the end of 2008?
What is really going on when you have a wildly energized group whose raison d’etre dissolves when examined closely? Several observers noted that the tone of the Beck rally was essentially religious. However, the St. Louis attendees who were quoted in the Lambrecht article almost all seemed to locate their worries in the political sphere, And, although they might justify themselves by reference to religious beliefs, I strongly suspect that most of those attending expect to find solutions to their complaints in retrograde political action.
Am I the only person who finds this blending worrisome? On the one hand, you have easily led, poorly informed people, seething with discontent, expressing real fear and anxiety about something that doesn’t ever seem to quite materialize in an intellectually viable form. On the other hand, you have numerous interested parties feeding the group’s sense of self-importance with visions of super-patriotism, heroic defiance, and now, with the Glenn Beck crusade, a sense of religious mission. Am I the only one reminded of Father Coughlin’s incendiary radio broadcasts and his depression era Christian Front brown shirt wannabes?
This article
in the Washington Post says it all. Glenn Beck says President Obama’s interpretation of the New Testament leans too heavily on helping the poor and dispossessed. Say what? I endured four years of New Testament classes at a Jesuit college many decades ago. My memory is not as acute as it once was, but I vaguely remember stories in the gospel about Jesus feeding hordes of people, healing the sick (even to the point of bringing a few of them back to life after they’d already died,)
feeling sorry for women who were being mistreated by their husbands, telling people not to throw stones at each other, etc. I thought Jesus was all about peace, love and compassion.
Glenn Beck has made the case that “real” Christians don’t fall for that kind of malarkey. In fact, he claims that the majority of American Christians don’t believe as President Obama does that it is noble and good to feel empathy for those who are suffering. I don’t have the ability to read the hearts of millions of Christians as Beck obviously does, but I know most Christian churches have all kinds of mission work that they do. And the goal of those missions is to help poor people, sick people, people who have been imprisoned unjustly, people who have lost everything they owned in a natural disaster, and people in general need of some hope and reassurance that life is worth living.
This is not about religion at all, folks. This is about corporations, LARGE, POWERFUL corporations and individual billionaires who don’t want Congress and this President to bring some balance back to our economic system. They are mad as hell that health insurance reform passed and that Congress is putting the brakes on wildcat gambling with our pension money. They want to privatize Social Security so they can get their hands on that money for their own greedy purposes. They’re quaking in their dirty little boots about climate change legislation because they’ve gotten rich from keeping us slaves to fossil fuels.
Glenn Beck says President Obama has perverted the meaning of Christ’s message. If Beck wants to see the real pervert, he need only look in the mirror.
Those of you who attend a Christian church that still holds to the gospel of helping others had better start yelling from the rooftops because charlatans like Beck are spitting on the cross and getting rich doing it.
I was at a fund raiser 2 years ago when I spoke to MaCaskill and Carnahan staffers about the growing threat of mis-information and re-education in the corporate funded right wing. I asked how they planned on getting anything done when there is a 24 hour propaganda war over the airwaves and cable to destroy anything that would move this country in a progressive direction. I explained that overcoming this barrier of true information getting out was job one, nothing else was possible without finding a way to neutralize the propaganda. They kinda looked at me like I was nuts. There is still no plan to neutralize the lies. That is why we are doomed.