Do You Know The Enemy?
Posted on | June 19, 2011 | No Comments
Woke up this morning with Green Day playing in my head. It’s easy to say that we are our own worst enemies, but there are also very real enemies in this fight. Some of them are easy to find, but some hide away in the dark, and some put on false friend faces. Examples:
Obvious Enemies: The crop of rabid republiCon (thanks Norman Goldman) governors like Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Rick Snyder, and John Kasich. They are so obvious and over the top that they come off like comic book villains. I will arbitrarily add Dick Cheney because anytime I think Evil Comic Book Villain he is at the top of the list. The bad news is that we don’t have very many obvious comic book heroes to fight these guys. The good news is that the people of their states are putting up reasonably effective fights and may actually win a few battles.
Shadow Enemies: Some of these are easy. The Koch brothers have been getting a lot of press lately and so we have some knowledge of all the harmful things they have done and continue to do to America. But my guess is that this is an iceberg situation and we only know the tip of it. Plus the millions of voting citizens that get all of their news from Faux probably never heard of these two. The Koch brothers have largely stayed out of the spotlight for years and there are certainly other rich families conducting similarly sleezy hidden influence campaigns. We know there is a family in Michigan that has been attacking the public school system for instance. We know one of the Bush Crime Family made a bunch of money off of standardized testing. There are many more out there.
We also have a ton of conservative think tanks and foundations. Mostof these are readily identified and its easy to see that the reports they publish are heavily slanted or even outright lies, but I wonder how much damage they are doing where we can’t see it. I was listening to the radio Friday (apologies I don’t remember which show) and heard a discussion that the Heritage Foundation pumps millions of dollars each year into many of the rightwing talk shows. Not as advertising which would at least be visible, but as behind the scenes money that buys topics and talking points. I haven’t verified that, but it sounds about right. So I’m figuring that there are millions of dollars from these outfits promoting all sorts of anti-middle class ideas.
Fake Friends: Multiple types of these, but the two that worry me the most are the fake grassroots movements and the fake/timid democrats. The teabaggers truly are their own worst enemy, but they don’t realize it. These people are on the front line of this war. They know that the oligarchy is screwing them over royally and they are upset enough about it to do something. Unfortunately, Americans For Prosperity and other oligarch funded front groups have co-opted the teabaggers and convinced them to fight on the wrong side. Rachel Maddow has talked about this a lot and it is amazing to me to see so many people so determined to fight the wrong enemy.
The fake friend democrat poses a dilemma. Blue Dogs are easy. They call themselves democrats but clearly align with republiCon principles and should be drummed out of the party. The hard ones are people like Harry Reid. I’m sure that Harry actually believes in supporting the middle class. He is just too gutless to ever act on it. He won’t ever call a vote if he thinks it might lose. He won’t disband the filibuster. Here’s one: the republiCons kept the senate in session over memorial day so Obama couldn’t make any recess appointments. I’m not a senate rules expert, but you can’t tell me there wasn’t some way for Harry to say “Fine. You want the senate in session then we will all stay here around the clock through the whole weekend. Oh by the way, we will spend it discussing real life examples of the millions of Americans that will die if You RepubliCons cancel Medicare and Medicaid.” Yes the recess appointments would still be blocked, but their would have been some visible fight for our side out of the democrats. I really wanted Sharron Angle to win last time. I didn’t want to lose the democrat majority in the senate, but I don’t see that the majority does us any good if Harry is too afraid to use it.
Bonus Enemy: Ayn Rand. Started reading one of her books many years ago and dumped it in boredom. I may have to actually read a couple at some point, but I don’t have to read the books to see the damage this Cult Leader and her Disciples have caused to our country and to the world. I am so pleased to finally start seeing Rand followers called out as being un-Christian and immoral for following her. If you forced schools to hand out free copies of Mein Kampf and publicly stated your intent to promote the policies and beliefs of Hitler you would be drummed out of politics. But if you do this with Rand who idoloized a murderer and thought non-rich people should be left to starve on their own, that’s okay. I’m not saying that Hitler wasn’t evil – I’m saying that Rand’s policies would probably end up killing just as many people but it would simply take longer.
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