Possibly Penultimate Moment

Among other things, recently dead William Safire wrote speeches for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. For the most part his politics gave me the dry heaves but he certainly knew his way around the English Language. He created the famous phrase, “nattering nabobs of negativism” for one of Agnew’s speeches and ever since then I’ve been a sucker for alliteration. So you’ll have to excuse me if I call the following A Possibly Penultimate Moment.

It all started last week when I took an online poll linked from an ad on Crooks & Liars. Since taking the poll I’ve been getting a daily newsletter from the website’s author who describes himself as, “… an ultra-conservative American who has been writing a newsletter for 39 years.”

I knew right from the start that the poll was skewed all to hell … but what the hell … let’s see how 607,946 Americans responded.

The poll consisted of 5 questions and the first one was a doozy.

Who is most to blame for America’s current economic crisis?

There were 7 choices:

Investors
Home buyers
Real estate and mortgage professionals
Wall Street
Banks and sub-prime lenders
The Bush Administration
The Clinton Administration and the Democrats in Congress

I picked The Bush Administration because we got whacked a minimum of 10 trillion dollars on their watch.

The Bush Regime started two wars and put them on our credit card. Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz summed it up in March of 2008 when they wrote in the Washington Post, “You can’t spend $3 trillion — yes, $3 trillion — on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.”

Now throw in the subprime mortgage meltdown; the unholy collusion of banks, sub-prime lenders, Wall Street, and the Federal regulators in the Bush administration that blocked attempts by state governments to prevent predatory lending practices. According to Wikipedia, by November 2008 the U.S. Federal government’s efforts to support the global financial system resulted in financial commitments totaling $7 trillion.

Our phony baloney economy blew its wheels and nobody knows ultimately how much that train wreck will eventually cost. It certainly got my attention when it was described as, “the largest transfer of wealth in human history.”

So yeah … I figured The Bush Administration was mostly to blame for America’s current economic crisis where according to Michael Moore, a home goes into foreclosure every 7 seconds.

But … factor in the answers from the other 607,945 Americans who took the poll.

66% said that the Clinton Administration and the Democrats in Congress were to blame. Only 12% picked the Bush Administration.

The poll results reminded me of that crappy 2-part Docu-drama ABC aired 3 years ago. Remember The Path to 9/11? It was billed as “based on The 9/11 Commission Report” and blamed the Clinton Administration for 9/11.

Forget about the scores of warnings the Bush Administration received from intelligence agencies from around the globe. Forget about The August 6, 2001 memo, Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. And forget that after being briefed by a CIA officer on the memo, Bush said, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

Bush continued vacationing in Texas after receiving the memo and cleared some brush around the ranch … and there isn’t any record of him doing squat about Bin Laden. But according to ABC … the terrorist attacks on September 11th were because of the failures of Bill Clinton. So I guess it stand to reason that our economic meltdown was his fault too.

If you’re stupid.

It’s weird enough when people don’t know their grandfather’s history, or their father’s history, but when they don’t even know their own history … events that happened within their own lifetime … then it gets really bad.

There’s too much stupid out there.

Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God, said “ … within our culture we have a subculture which is literally a fifth column of insanity that is bred from birth, through home school, Christian school, evangelical college, whatever … to reject facts as a matter of faith.”

I disagree with Schaeffer only because he used the word “subculture.” It’s The Culture … not a subculture.

61% of Americans do not believe in evolution.
47% of Americans believe that the universe is 6 – 10 thousand years old.
And two-thirds of the idiots who took the same poll I took believe that the Clinton Administration is to blame for our economic meltdown.

Pretty big numbers for a subculture isn’t it?

The comedian Ron White said, “You can’t fix Stupid.”

He’s right.

You can’t fix stupid when deranged right wing crazy talking points get regularly injected into Mainstream Media. Tea-Baggers, Deathers, and Birthers all found their way into the Nightly News. And their insanity is disseminated daily by the highly paid mouthpieces of the Mainstream Media.

Not the Right Wing Media … The Mainstream Media. The reason I say that is because The Right Wing Media Is the Mainstream Media. Still believe there’s a difference between the two? Take this simple test:

How many times over the summer did the loony Right Wing Crazy Crap make it into The News?

During that same time … how many of their absolutely crazy claims were debunked by so-called Mainstream Media news anchor-people?

Zip.

Newscasters like Brian Williams reported on the shenanigans of Tea Bagger-Birther-Deathers but afterwards they never looked directly into the camera and told their audiences that the Tea Bagger-Birther-Deathers are lying. That wouldn’t have been editorializing … they would have been reporting the facts.

During that same time … how many spokespersons from “The Left” were on The Nightly News explaining the differences between Healthcare reform and Healthcare Insurance reform?

Again … Zip.

Rush Limbaugh can exhort his listeners to riot during the Democratic convention but a reporter from the Seattle Times referred to Mike Malloy as “incendiary.”

The Right Wing Media is The MainStream Media … The Insane Right Wing Subculture is Our Culture … and regardless of the results of last November’s election … The Right Wing is our government.

Reality check … the majority of our elected representatives have always supported funding of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The majority of our elected representatives have continually supported the ongoing war crime in Iraq.

The Majority.

Democrats and Republicans alike.

The Majority. Ugly word isn’t it? Especially when we’re not it.

So …

Instead of continually keeping a running tally of Current Events … instead of tracking the zany antics of a country that began with genocide and slavery and bloomed into murderous empire … and hasn’t veered off that course for most of its history … I’ve decided to concentrate on a couple of other things:

For starters … How to convince people that the most effective thing they can do to effect real change is for everybody to stay home For One Day.

But first we’ve all got to wake up … and then we’ve all got to wake up more and more people … The Majority has to eventually wake up … or it won’t work.

As George Carlin said, “It’s called The American Dream because you’ve got to be asleep to believe it.”

Possibly Penultimate Moment October 8, 2009