“I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up,” posts CNN.com, sharing the vitriol of Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group. When I read those words I immediately remembered why this site is called talislegger. See, people are extremely impressionable and thus vulnerable to vitriolic information that somehow makes them feels good or gives them someone to blame. The truth of the message is basically irrelevant, so long as agreeing with the message means that you feel good and insulated amongst other believers. Such is the power and the problem of politics.
I’ve been studying this shutdown debate from a power dynamics position. Here is how it works: There are three governmental groups at odds. 1 is controlled by one party while the other two are controlled by a second party. The party with the least amount of control is the one pulling all the strings. They are necessary to the bill-passing process and unless they are willing to participate, the government will shut down–which it has. Now that we are in shutdown mode, the spin is taking off and the blame is being spread around. The media is not much willing to tell the obvious story. There is no story in what we already know, so they chase the other story–the ideas perpetuated by those unwilling to accept responsibility. So, we get stories about Obama the Muslim again.
Obama is not a Muslim nor a socialist–two ideas that exist in some opposition. However, there is a growing number people willing to believe he is somehow both and somehow part of a vast conspiracy to destroy America. Well, I guess it is easier than having to think, reason, and fact check for yourself.