Taking Back Our Government

I have about had enough. The far right, in particular the Tea Baggers, have on numerous times made the comment that “We want to take our country back,” or “We need to take our country back.” Take it back from whom? Me? What did I do? I served in uniform, I got an education, I raised my kids to be honest citizens and they never went to juvenile court or prison, I worked in prisons and on the street with people the Tea Baggers wouldn’t want to even talk to, then I earned a Ph.D. and spent twenty-one years teaching at the university level and proved my worth as a scholar. Take the country back from me? Fuck You!

The problem as I see it is a segment of the public that is uninformed and who believe any story they hear about how the country is going to hell. There are plenty of “commentators” whose slick line and seemingly sincere demeanor are willing to sell their nonsense to the uninformed and those who don’t want to be informed. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Mike Huckabee to name just a few. There are many more who have taken the stage and who pander to the lowest common denominator, Sarah Palin comes to mind. Prior to the 2008 presidential election she was the unknown governor of Alaska. Now she has parleyed her notoriety into her own show with Fox News and makes a gobs of money as a public speaker.

Maybe I’m being unfair, but most of these commentators elicit an almost visceral reaction from me. Some of them occasionally make sense to me such as Sean Hannity and Mike Huckabee, but the others subscribe to an ideology that is totally foreign to me and only leaves opportunity for the wealthy and connected. Rush Limbaugh seems hell-bent on the destruction of anything that is decent and good in our country, especially if it concerns the greater good. His constant racist, lying, and simply indecent harping on President Obama is the most offensive drivel I have heard since…well since Limbaugh was going after President Clinton.

Glenn Beck must live in an alternative reality. Does he really believe that President Obama is a Racist? Why does he use the word Nazi so often? Does he really believe that we as a nation are on the brink of becoming a reactionary far –right nation? But, wait. Maybe we are already approaching that state without the warnings of Glenn Beck. Think George Bush, Dick Cheney, USA Patriot Act, etc., etc. Still Beck makes numerous assertions on his show and doesn’t seem at all compelled to substantiate them.

Rush Limbaugh though is in a class all by himself. He is a master of taking almost any piece of information or statistic and turning it around to a negative. For example, on his October 8th show, Limbaugh read the note released by the government, “A wave of government layoffs in September outpaced weak hiring in the private sector, pushing down the nation's payrolls by a net total of 95,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent last month." This is the new norm he states. He then goes on to derisively point out that no one in the present administration has ever had a “real job,” not even a lemonade stand, as if this disqualifies them from leading our nation. There was no mention of the economy being sluggish, in part, because the banks refuse to lend money to small business people, but the Congress passed a bill recently that made money available to small businesses. He only plays up the negative assuming that it will help Republicans regain or keep seats in Congress or the various state legislatures. It is people like Limbaugh and Beck who get the uninformed masses worked up and when they vote they think there is an easy way out of whatever situation we are in.

Ann Coulter is just plain mean. She is intelligent, beautiful, well educated, thoughtful, but just plain mean and on the wrong side of any issue. She is the woman I would least like to have a dinner date with.

So what is it that gets the masses go geeked up? Ignorance, plain and simply ignorance. Just a look at the levels of education of the educational levels of some commentators tells us that those with the least education are the most dangerous. This is important for at least two reasons. First, a university level education provides us with exposure to the sum total of western civilization. We are learn to critically assess information and determine if it is logical and from a reliable source. Secondly, the exposure to different points of view creates a willingness to accept different points of view and if not accept it, then to recognize that there may be a nugget of legitimacy. In other words, it cuts down our propensity to be dogmatic in our beliefs.


Glenn Beck. No college, but he did attend one semester.
Rush Limbaugh. No College, but he seems to think that reading books gives him an education.
Sean Hannity. Dropped out of NYU, but holds an Honorary Doctorate from Liberty College.
Lou Dobbs. Harvard BA.
Bill O’Reilly. Marist College, BA and MPA
Mike Huckabee. Ouachita Baptist University BA and MA Southwestern Baptist Theological University.
Ann Coulter. Cornell BA and University of Michigan Law.

Thus, I can only conclude that the two most dangerous people to our Republic are Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Not because they are inherently dangerous people, I don’t think that physically they could scare anyone, but dangerous because of their mastery of the language and the art of manipulation. They both have massive followings and are in the process of fomenting distrust of anything associated with government. While Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly seem to blow my hypothesis out of the water, I will, at the risk of being dogmatic, state that in my opinion that they are both full of beans and they contribute to the overall distrust of government.

So this brings me back to the Tea Baggers wanting to take their country back. Back from whom? People like me, teachers, police officers, prison workers, the guy who cooks their food when they go out to eat, and on and on. There is no “taking back.” We can only go forward. Forward as a people who view diversity as good for our nation, but who accept the necessity of good infra-structure, good schools, fewer people in prison, good medical care for all, and zero tolerance for corruption in government and this means the influence of lobbyists. Once we accept these stands on these, and other, issues and are willing to shoulder the tax burden to make them happen we will then be able to say, “We took back our government.”