So, Glen Beck had his faux civil rights rally, gathering the faithful on America’s Lawn on the promenade in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. 1000,000 Tea Party and Glen Beck fans showed up. In other words, 100,000 morons. On the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream” speech held in the exact spot, no less.
Doctor King’s speech was a watershed moment in American history, while Beck’s was more of an irritating sweat stain on our collective armpits. Glen even claimed to be King’s “brother.” If so, then he has to be the Fredo of the King brothers
Beck and the Tea Party were never people with ideas, instead content to be angry all the time and attack other people and their ideas. Now Beck and his Tea Party fans finally come up with an idea, this rally, called “A Rededication of America,” a golden opportunity to showcase whatever policies they were able to come up with, and guess what, the only thing they could think of was a violation of the United States Constitution and the laws of the land.
Normally, the prudent course of events would be to formulate some serious ideas and policies, and then hold your rally. Even if it’s only one big idea, something to stir things up socially and politically, that would be fine too.
Their big idea? Turning America into Iran, Christian Fascist style. Beck put it like this: “America today turns back to God.” Oh, really? If he’s talking about the same country the rest of us live in, The United States of America, he was calling for a return to a special time in American history that… never happened! From its very beginnings in the late 1700s, America put religion in its proper place, far from the halls of government.
Dr. King, who was an ordained Baptist minister, never tied the Civil Rights Movement to his or anybody else’s church, and borrowed his non-violent tactics from a Hindu, one Mohandes K. Gandhi, to achieve his goals. He instead relied on the words of our Founding Fathers and challenged America to be America for every citizen. It cost him his life, but it worked.
Our Founding Fathers, none of them particularly religious people, had seen first-hand the bloody results of state-sponsored religion, and were having none of it for their brand new nation. They stated simply that Congress shall pass no laws concerning religion, rendering it a private matter for citizens to deal with, or not deal with, as they saw fit. Any and all faiths were welcome to flourish in the United States, but none of them were allowed to have a say in governing the nation.
Which didn’t stop certain Americans far too insecure in their own faith from trying to persecute other religions, most notably the waves of Catholic immigrants who came to America in the late 1800s and early 1900’s, bringing with them the “Papist Scourge.” Jewish immigrants were also treated to this lapse of hospitality.
Both groups petty much ignored the bigots and went about their business, confident that the Constitution protected their right to pray and worship as they saw fit. Of course they were correct and the bigots are forgotten by history, while these immigrants have all left their indelible marks on America. They built and ran this place as we now know it and their descendants continue to flourish, having produced war and peace heroes, Nobel laureates, poets and titans of both politics and industry.
America itself flourished with this infusion of new blood, offering an unprecedented quality of life for the working classes unmatched before or since in history. Not having a useless and demanding monarchy or a rapacious official religion to support removed a huge social barrier from humanity. Outstanding individuals and hard workers could and did climb the social ladder, something almost impossible in the monarchies and theocracies that dominated the earth in the not-so-distant past.
There are still plenty of such nations around, staining the landscape of their regions and oppressing their own people, and now Glen Beck and the Tea Party want America to join these backwards assholes and “turn to God.” Turning away from God, or at least rendering Him a private citizen, is what enabled America to build the best hope for humanity the world has ever had, and to build history’s biggest economy.
While the Tea Party has never been renowned for its ideas, what with most of them being Sarah Palin addicts and complete morons, at least they attracted the attention of a lot of people who liked the notion of a new political party, any party, just to wake up the Democrats and Republicans who figured they had a monopoly on politics in this country.
The whole idea was exciting, at least for about 5 minutes.Then one of the Tea Partiers opened their mouth and all that came out was horseshit. Dang! Then came the revelation that the Tea Party isn’t a separate political party at all, but a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, Inc.
Apparently one of those notorious closet-queen Republican operatives came up with this ruse in response to having their party unceremoniously dumped from power in 2008, figuring Americans are really, really stupid. Stupid people have long been the bread and butter of the Republicans, people who can be regularly fooled into voting against their own interests.
In years past, the Republicans employed really smart people to sell others on the notion that what is right for the super-wealthy and the giant corporations is right for America. They’ve elected some terrible presidents with that idea, but the last time around they got too cocky and installed a semi-literate bumbler as a figurehead president and just had Dick Cheney run the show.
The fact that they did this so openly and led the nation into one disaster after another is what got them ousted in 2008. Americans don’t like dictators, and were doubly insulted that our first-ever dictator was Shotgun Dick Cheney, as unlikable a human being as has ever breathed with the aid of replacement parts, like some bald and dumpy Darth Vader without the cool swagger.
So naturally you’d think that the rank-and-file Republicans would protest and go off to form their own party. Too bad for America that the only serious recent attempt at forming a 3d political party turned out to be another phony sideshow from the Republican Dirty Tricks Department. The only “leaders” it attracted were Glen Beck and Sarah Palin, two seriously unhinged individuals who are also both as dumb as your average Cocker Spaniel.
Imagine being a follower of someone like that? Wow! The mind boggles at having as your leader someone who has never made a lick of sense and never sustained an ideology they did not contradict time and again whenever convenient. On Saturday in Washington, no agenda was proposed, no famous speeches made or memorable phrases etched into American political lore.
What was it all about? Who the hell knows with these pinheads? Let’s just hope that this whole “return to God” crap doesn’t become what so many other public petitions to God have become, a bloodbath for some poor saps practicing the “wrong religion.” For now, Beck and Palin resume their lucrative careers of trashing other people’s ideas, figuring that ideas are things they never have, so it must be wrong to have one. Ask Fredo what it all means.