817. Politiblog

Mondays tend to be reserved for self-reflection as Wednesdays generally belong to football blather. Tonight is different. I watched Fox News channel’s Hannity show for a few minutes. In that short time I watched Hannity air an anti-Obama commercial in its entirety. Not as part of a commercial break, but as part of the actual show. He then went on to misrepresent the facts as part of a segment that defended the commercial and took the points made one step further. He called it analysis.

Just a week ago I was watching an episode of the Colbert Report online and watched Colbert do the same thing. I found it funny on Colbert, because it is a comedy show on comedy central. I found it disingenuous on Fox News, because they fallaciously claim to be both fair and balanced as a broadcaster. Neither is true, as evidenced by the above Obama bash.

Look, I get it. We have a quickly vanishing white class in America. The people being born today and over the last thirty years are largely separate from the old style white America. See, the new white America can be defined as a separate culture, while the old white America can only be defined as American. As strange as it sounds, that older breed is how the world saw us (and largely still sees us). That older breed is not who we are anymore. Like Britain before us, we are coming to be defined in a multi-cultural context and the picture of the American is no longer, well, Tim Pawlenty. We Americans are still us first materialists with a marginal grasp on world politics, religion, and economics, but we look different. This is what is so radical; so scary to that Good ‘Ol Party. They want things back the way they were at the very height of that image. They want the Reagan Years.

I’m not talking about Republicans as a whole. I think the elected Republicans are merely seeking strength in numbers in order to survive a world that has turned hostile to them. I don’t object to it. I think it eliminates individualism in the face of moving forward the most important issues, but there is nothing inherently evil about that. I get pissed about how they conduct their business.

Earlier this month I quoted Alfred from the new Batman trilogy when he said, “Some people want to see the world burn.” I believe the elected Republican leadership has become that beast. They are willing to sabotage any progress in order to create an opportunity to install their preferences. They are willing to lie on a galactic scale, and defend that lie as though it is truth. Worst still, they play the victim so easily should any of their tactics be turned back upon them.

Tim Pawlenty called the outrage towards Chick-fil-A’s anti-gay stance an attack on the first amendment. Now, it is both ironic and moronic for someone to call free speech (which is what the outrage is after all) an ATTACK on free speech. UNLESS you believe free speech should only exist where you agree with the speech being freely given. It is important to note here that Pawlenty was at the head of the pack of people attacking the people responsible for trying to open a Muslim community center near ground zero. He went on to dismiss the religion and the right of the religion to be practiced openly anywhere near that zone.

Of course, the right to practice religion where you want is a tenet of free speech–UNLESS you live in the world of the Republican leadership where “free” is subjective.

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