Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Beck in the Saddle again....

Ok, I know I’m a touch late to the table on this one, but I have to say I never thought I’d see this. After all the work, all the sacrifices of life and legislature, we’re still arguing about this. What. The. Fuck.

Let me take a step back. As some of you may know, I have a rather severe distaste for racism. Call it ingrained. And yet I stand absolutely aghast day after day at the constant blathering of this so-called ‘Tea Party’ and the sewage they use for said tea. Now, don’t get me wrong, the in-fighting currently being waged on the right about who is in fact right who’s a socialist librul-lovin’ commy pinko is delicious. But now we come to one of the icons of this movement: Glenn Beck.

Aw, Glenn. How you long for attention. Long for it so much you’ll say literally anything and cry rivers of tears for it, regardless of merit or taste or honor. And yet THIS is what you would tout as your motive for organizing a convention of hate in DC on the anniversary or the speech of a man truly worthy of a term like honor. Dr. Martin Luther King stood before a gathering of thousands to express a dream. Now you stand on that same ground and pile mountain after mountain of unchecked hate.

I pity you. I detest pity; I find it a font of weakness and insecurity that is not only unnecessary but loathsome. And yet you are all these things, and so do I pity you. Arrogance has never come in a more perfect package of self-righteous bigotry with a pretty little bow of unrepentant lies. You speak of people trying to silence your truth. You wouldn’t know truth if it hit you in the face with a wet fish.

But alas, Becky boy is only a swollen node on the groin of a much bigger problem: somewhere along the way we’ve managed to slink backwards. There is still a percentage of people in this country who believe are President is Muslim. And they care WHY, exactly? Oh wait, because ALL Muslims are terrorists, including the ones that share the vast majority of their beliefs and values with Christianity and Judaism. Namely ALL of them. Riiiight. Anyone ever notice that? 3 major monotheistic doctrine-based religions, one main (shared) deity, 75% the same rhetoric, and yet all they want to do is kill each other. Wait, what?

Back to my point, the state of Texas wants to change history itself to suit its purposes of fear-mongering and cultivated hatred, a tactic used by many an oppressive regime, right down to the Inquisition. Congressmen and women from all over the country are vying for power on the basis of fear of their own constituents. The Constitution is being put on trial because it doesn’t fit the self-aggrandizing agendas of the far Right (spelled ‘Reich’ for those of you keeping score. If you haven’t looked up the actually tenants of Socialism, you might want to. Note how closely they relate to the far RIGHT as opposed the Left. Just a thought.) Xenophobia has found a foothold in the ‘Land of the free and home of the brave.’ Unless your brown. Or not Evangelical Christian. Or anything other than starkly heterosexual. Then you’re just fucked.

How DARE you. As someone of Native American stock I can’t help but laugh hysterically at the gall of these people. Those whose heretical, religious-persecution-fleeing ancestors came to this land and then orchestrated the systematic genocide of indigenous people over the course of centuries are suddenly AGHAST at the audacity of anyone not like you in your midst. And simply because there was no law against it, it was fine to kill over hundreds of thousands of people just to further their own goals.

I grant you, some of my own ancestors came to this land in this way. But let’s take a moment, as a whole, and refuse to let history be our guide and not our warning system. History, not what they teach in Texas. History, that which is so soaked in blood and nightmares that it’s hard to look at most days. History, that which we too will one day be a part of. Is this the mark that we leave, a pock mark so deep it scars over to the point that a hundred years from now we too are scoffed at as short-sighted fools?

Nah, I like to form my own thoughts. But thanks for offering. Now FUCK OFF so the grown ups can something done.

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