The Enemy Within

With the 2010 mid-term elections looming, one fact that is hard to escape is the mainstream media’s willingness to follow the lead of the right-wing commentary to question and put in a negative light virtually everything that Obama administration has tried to do. Naturally, the right-wing media (Fox News and talk radio) accuses the rest of being “liberal,” the only logical explanation for this is that it sees anything a few degrees left of far-right as “liberal”—that is to say, anyone not blasting Obama with both barrels must be a “liberal.” The reality is that the mainstream media has treated Obama with far less deference than it did the Bush administration. CNN in particular has given the enemies of the Obama administration far more opportunities to lie and mislead than permitting Obama’s proponents to defend his policies. Not that we should be surprised; CNN, which backed Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries, spent countless hours for two weeks hammering Obama on the Jeremiah Wright issue—while at the same time allowing feminist commentators to complain that the media was “sexist.”

The mainstream media (with the exception, perhaps, of MSNBC) has failed utterly to expose the hypocrisy of the Republicans and their unabashed intention to “break” Obama right from the start. There was never any intention to work with Obama, but to use his race to attempt to portray him either as a “radical” or incompetent. The Democrats, when they were in the minority during the Bush years, never attempted to derail his agenda, even when they had the power to do so. Obama was helped by the southern wing of the Democratic party, either; especially in regard to health care reform, which fought every attempt to promote a public option independent of the insurance companies.

Meanwhile, the so-called Tea Party movement has its first “official” U.S. senate candidate, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, whose first major pronouncement was to chastise the Obama administration for being “too hard” on BP in regard to the current oil spill catastrophe. The Tea Party movement is supposed to be a major danger to the Democrats in the mid-term elections, and for good reason: the mindless mob mentality has a way of spreading, like a disease. Sometimes it has a way of infecting even those who should know better. For example, I happened upon a local “alternative” weekly called the “Weekly Volcano,” which I’d never seen before. Inside was an article on the Olympia Tea Party gang. The author of the article, who claimed to be on the left of the political spectrum (writing for an “alternative” weekly, you see), talked to these people, and came away with this suggestion: “I have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Say again?

A local Republican tea partier told the credulous writer that he was for “fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.” Sounds like typical Republican speak, and the typical mendacity. In regard to “fiscal responsibility,” where were these people when Reagan and Bush were president, when the biggest deficits in U.S. history were run up? Is it only “OK” when Republicans do it? In regard to “free markets,” isn’t that what many people are saying contributed to jobs going overseas and the high unemployment rate today? As for “limited government,” outside the right (which Tea Partiers belong to), people are hammering the Obama administration for doing too little to ease the country out of its financial and economic doldrums. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. What do people want? Or more likely, do they even know?

The fact is Tea Partiers are a one-note show. They only talk about what they are against. Ask them what they are for, all you get is the simple-minded talking points they heard on Fox News. There was a similar movement called the “American Party” back in the mid-19th century; they were better known as the “Know-Nothing Party.”

The writer of the article also noted that the Tea Partiers have a “legitimate” complaint about the TAARP bill that was passed during the Obama administration. But wait: wasn’t TAARP passed during the summer of 2008, during the Bush administration? In fact, Bush approved a bill that did not contain a provision for oversight, which explains why banks could not explain what they did with the first installment. This is just one example of the fallacies and distortions that the movement is shot-through with, and managing to con gullible left-wingers with.

Tea Partiers, it is said, claim that a 35 percent top tax rate on the rich is unfair. This doesn’t sound like “populist” sentiment to me—more like far-right extremism. They also claim that 47 percent of all Americans (meaning the low-income brackets) don’t pay any taxes at all. This is again right-wing propaganda; just because someone gets a tax refund doesn’t mean they didn’t pay taxes, and some of the richest corporations in this country manage not to pay one dime in taxes. The super-rich, it is said, are “creative” and “useful,” so they deserve to pay themselves 300 times the amount of the lowest paid employee. It’s so “unfair” to the rich.

But again, what is reality to a Tea Partier? Manufacturing jobs remained steady until the Bush administration, during which there was a decline of 3 million manufacturing jobs. This can’t all be blamed on NAFTA, though many people try (ever heard of China, with which we have a 5-1 import-to-export disparity?). Part of the reason is the loss of that “creative” and “useful” spirit. The Bush administration frankly left the door open for financial gambling casinos by completely deregulating the financial sector. The “creative” MBA’s these days are not starting new companies—they are out to make the quick buck as “banksters.” They are even less “useful” than janitors, as we have seen in the financial sector meltdown.

And where are all these great geniuses, anyways? Current technology is based on principles a century old, with only incremental changes. Rocket science has a reached a virtual standstill. Where are these “creative” and “useful” who are going to discover an energy source that will cure the world’s dependence on fossil fuels forever? They certainly can’t be found in university engineering and science departments, where there has been a decrease in the number of students, and the ones who are there spend less time creating than learning how to use expensive calculators.

The “enemy” is not the Obama administration, which has been hampered by the cynical distortions of the right and right-leaning media that refuses to tell the truth. It is indeed “us”—“us” who believe the cynical and deceitful propaganda, and “us” who are gulled by the nonsense because it is sounds “sensible.” The only sensible thing to do is not to be deceived, and vote against Republican pretenders in 2010, because this is the only thing they have played for the past two years. The well-being of the country is the last consideration on their minds.