My 88 year old mother believes Obama is this century’s Hitler. I don’t argue the point with her…well, that’s not exactly correct. I have attempted to take issue with her conclusion but very quickly realized I was hurling jello at concrete. However, I did ask and she was quite willing to tell me why Barack and Adolf are kindred spirits. She only gave me one reason, but she claims to back that reason up with first hand validation, as she lived in Germany until 1937, leaving just before she turned 16:
“I heard Hitler speak.”
“Yes, and so?”
“Obama speaks too well, he’s too smooth…just like Hitler”.
Funny, but in old newsreels I don’t recall Hitler’s style looking like something one might call smooth. Regardless, he was obviously an effective communicator and from that standpoint I suppose commonalities might be found. Still, to mom it appears content doesn’t carry much weight. Maybe something else is going on. Perhaps when she looks back she feels duped. Isn't that the result of listening to smooth people?
When she made the comment that “Hitler wasn’t all bad” I began to think she was struggling with the history. Well, she left Germany in 1937 at a time when Hitler was immensely popular with the great majority of the German people. He had been Fuhrer for almost 4 years. She mentioned such things as trains running on time, full employment, mandatory sports, and his frequently quoting the Bible (something I wasn't aware of) among others. There was a new, generally pervasive feel-good factor that replaced the Depression (both economic and mental) which had plagued the German people since WWI and new enemies in their midst. That was most of what she remembered as a young girl. Still, hindsight is 20-20 and I can’t see the badness of a larger than life malevolence such as Hitler charted out like some kind of bell curve. But I didn’t live it either. Still, the bad stuff, the phantom enemies, had started long before she left and I wondered just how it could have remained so transparent.
There are things people have difficulty seeing when they’re living in the middle of it. Most of us know this, but it appears the knowing doesn’t help much. Those situations or attitudes that might seem logical now can appear like a collective insanity when reviewed historically. In most cases it involves the desire to protect and preserve identity. No one today disputes that the Communist panic of the late 40s and early 50s, which ruined careers, lives, and resulted in some unattractive executions (both public and private) was a bit of collective insanity…but not so at the time. Communists were seen as a direct threat to how Americans viewed themselves and their way of life…but that threat didn’t exist. Now take the recent simple event where an Islamic organization wants to build a community center two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center tragedy. What is insane and what isn’t?
When I first heard about a local city official protesting the construction I thought why the hell is that guy getting any press? His point seemed petty. Now it is a national and political controversy, and fodder for 20 million blogs such as this one. A televised poll has (supposedly) 67% of all Americans opposed to the proposed construction. Harry Reid, the dynamic and swashbuckling titular head of the Senate majority, came out against it without giving much reason, hoping to nudge himself slightly to the right no doubt, and Sarah Palin blamed it on Muslim insensitivities (Reid & Palin - strange bedfellows). Newt Gingrich pointed out a Neo-Nazi cannot hang a swastika outside the holocaust museum, making an obvious comparison. Conservative talk show celebrities are viewing this controversy like Homer Simpson views doughnuts. None that I’m aware of have publically commented on similar public efforts to thwart the construction of Muslim mosques and other buildings around the country over the past few years, which has been the case.
To tie the controversy to the World Trade Center tragedy and its many direct victims is a travesty all by itself. The political and economic powers that have used the World Trade Center attack as a reason to wage “war” have, by necessity, created an enemy to enact policy, perpetuate power, and extract profit. Were the policies that have resulted in the deaths of 4000 US soldiers in Iraq, 106,000 Iraqi civilians, 1900 coalition troops in Afghanistan, and 28,000 Afghan civilians (with many, many more injured) really all about just Al Qaida? Much of our leadership, which so stealthfully draws a distinction between a good faith and a bad faith serves up that insanity like it was health food. I shouldn't wonder that the number of people in our beloved, free democracy who would gleefully pack up every person of Islamic faith in the country and ship them off to the Middle East is probably in the tens of millions…or perhaps frighteningly more.
Even Obama has taken a stand, making an eloquent speech during a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan where he supported the Islam center, but he rests his position on the heritage and constitutionality of religious freedom in America. Religious freedom has nothing to do with the issue. Those tens of millions of good Christians who are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder against the Islamic horde carry no animosity toward Muslims practicing their faith. They believe they’re all going to hell anyway. Rather they simply perceive Muslim people as a threat to the sanctity and security of their Christian/American identities. They have taken the motives and actions of a few terrorists, extrapolated that rationale to Islamic extremists, and then finally applied Islamic extremism to every one of the Muslim faith…baddest, badder, and just plain bad. The tragic irony is, of course, that is precisely what the Al Qaida terrorists were hoping to accomplish.
Sorry mom, Obama is no Hitler, but no matter. The powers that guide public policy and private opinion don’t need a Hitler. They can extend fear and hatred so skillfully that even something as innocuous as building a religiously sponsored civic center can rally the troops nationwide. Perhaps it can’t be seen now, but I somehow think we’re in for a world of feeling duped in a couple of decades or less.
I wonder, what would happen to the terrorists if we collectively refused to be terrorized? Perhaps feeling good about a new civic center in lower Manhattan would be a small step in the right direction.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Education Be Damned
For several years, starting perhaps after 1998, I began having problems sleeping. It wasn’t so much a problem of getting to sleep. Rather it was waking up, sometimes quite early in the evening, and not being able to get back to it. Not a particularly uncommon malady. I found my best answer to this problem was the radio. I would plug a single earphone in and listen to talk stations. Often within an hour or so I’d be back to sawing logs.
The difficulty with my solution was that our radio market in Richmond, VA had no FM talk shows in the evening, or anytime that I’m aware of. Further, AM reception was so bad that my radio could only pick up two AM stations; the local major ultra-Conservative talk/news station and a sports network. Well…it was what it was. Not being sports savvy I’d listen to Conservative commentary earlier in the evening and talk about space aliens and Bigfoot if I awoke in the wee hours. I mean, what the hell, the object was to get to sleep, right?
It was sometime around then that I started listening to this guy named Glenn Beck. He did me no favors toward my goal of slumber. I’d actually started paying attention to his mostly run-on commentary. I would find myself participating in a phantom dialogue with Mr. Beck trying to get him to explain any of the outrageous pronouncements that flowed unceasingly from his microphone. That was not good in the quest for rest. I was literally amazed that this guy was on the radio at all and thought he was possibly just the opening act to discussions about animal mutilations and crop circles that would air soon after his signoff. I had heard Rush Limbaugh during the daytime, again because he was the only (talk radio) act in town, and felt that Beck was much like Limbaugh, minus the crude but clever humor. Cancel out Limbaugh’s humor and you’d might as well be listening to captured conversations down at the bus station.
As my sleep problem improved I more or less lost touch with Glenn Beck, although I’d hear his name from time to time. It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve been forced to become aware that Beck has joined Limbaugh as the preeminent spokespersons for Conservatives in the US today. I found that awareness mind-boggling and not a little disturbing. How could it be? His commentary, as I recalled it, was unintelligible regardless of the content. His presentations made any Dr. Seuss book read like a Harvard doctoral dissertation in Sociology. Beck now lives in a $5 million mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, has his own TV show and churns out bestselling books and other publications like he was Isaac Asimov. Who is this guy?
There is a serious problem in our country which I have commented on in previous postings (see The Most Evil Man in America 3/4/10). It is part of the current landscape so rooted that few can escape its effect. It’s so socially disabling that I’m waiting for the term “war” to be applied to it (which is America’s best solution to the seemingly unsolvable). It is the Conservative verses Liberal social debate, although I view it more accurately as the Conservative verses Non-Conservative social conflict. The point of this posting, however, is not to engage in the debate, rather to examine its de facto leaders and ask the question: why is education considered by Christian Conservatives to be socially debilitating? It occurred to me, as I considered Glenn Beck, to examine the leaders of ideological commentary and see if there is something to be gained to answering that question.
Beck and Limbaugh are arguably the current standard bearers for Christian Conservative commentary (Sarah Palin is coming on strong). Limbaugh has been for years and Beck the most recent messiah. It is the huge We Love Glen Beck posters that one sees at the Tea Party gatherings. I don’t think it is the least bit coincidental that the debut of the Glenn Beck TV program took place the day before Obama’s inauguration. There are two “liberal” media commentators that have been the most frequent targets of Conservative ire, and also labeled as the prime examples of mindless left-wing counter rhetoric by some considered moderates. They are Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow. Let’s take a look at these folks.
Rush Limbaugh barely graduated from high school, his mother describing him as “flunking everything”. After two semesters at Southeast Missouri State University, he dropped out to pursue a career in radio, eventually making himself one of the richest men in America. Glenn Beck also barely graduated from high school, did not attempt college, choosing to work in radio even before he finished high school. A self-confessed abuser of alcohol and drugs till he was in his mid 30s, he struggled to survive until he found “salvation”, first from AA, then in the Mormon Church. Both men proudly proclaim themselves as self-educated, which is something to be proud of in most cases.
Keith Olbermann, unlike Limbaugh who came from a well-to-do family, was the son of a pre-school teacher and commercial architect. He was accepted into Cornell University at the age of 16. Graduating with a degree in Communication Arts and Journalism he began his career as a sportscaster in radio, given his love for baseball, and later evolved into political commentary. Rachael Maddow came from a middle-class military family and attended Stanford University. She was made a Rhodes Scholar and eventually received a PhD in Political Philosophy from Oxford University. From there she went into radio. Are we seeing a contrast here?
It isn’t necessarily the education, and arguably cerebral fire-power, that Olbermann and Maddow represent that make them better than Limbaugh and Beck. In truth, Limbaugh and Beck are better at the business they're in. What bugs me is the Conservative argument that such education makes them (Maddow and Olbermann) incapable of understanding the purity of the Conservative message and, in fact, essentially makes them (and those like them) subversive. It is the same ethereal argument leveled universally by Conservatives against college and university faculty across the country. Glenn Beck is not a plumber or insurance salesman. The reality that Conservatives will not even consider is that all these people, including Beck, are in the business of selling ideas, and when it comes to determining the quality of an idea education counts. It doesn’t count to sell an idea though, no matter how inane, as one uneducated, army corporal named Adolf could have attested.
The reason Beck and Limbaugh are so much better than their counterparts is that education gets in the way of certitudes. It is so much easier to argue with Tarzanian certainty “Government bad…Freedom good” than to get into the nitty-gritty of how to make things better, which carries with it a plethora of uncertainties. Maddow spends almost all her commentary debunking absurd generalizations by Conservative leaders or commentators. It doesn’t resonate…it doesn’t sell, and eventually it gets boring. Too many people want to hear from John Boehner that “we have the best healthcare in the world” instead of getting bogged down in those nasty “subversive” facts to the contrary.
Education has become a paradox in the Christian Conservative marketplace. They want their children to obtain education, however they really don’t want them to be educated. You could possibly trace this problem back to ancient Greece and the conflict between the city states of Athens and Sparta. One proclaimed the purity of ideas, the other the idea of purity. Sparta won by the way. Education be damned.
I still have problems sleeping on rare occasions. Now, however, I just turn to the sports station and listen to them talk about all these players, coaches and teams I hardly know. Glenn never could drop any sand in my eyes anyway. I suppose that’s a good thing.
The difficulty with my solution was that our radio market in Richmond, VA had no FM talk shows in the evening, or anytime that I’m aware of. Further, AM reception was so bad that my radio could only pick up two AM stations; the local major ultra-Conservative talk/news station and a sports network. Well…it was what it was. Not being sports savvy I’d listen to Conservative commentary earlier in the evening and talk about space aliens and Bigfoot if I awoke in the wee hours. I mean, what the hell, the object was to get to sleep, right?
It was sometime around then that I started listening to this guy named Glenn Beck. He did me no favors toward my goal of slumber. I’d actually started paying attention to his mostly run-on commentary. I would find myself participating in a phantom dialogue with Mr. Beck trying to get him to explain any of the outrageous pronouncements that flowed unceasingly from his microphone. That was not good in the quest for rest. I was literally amazed that this guy was on the radio at all and thought he was possibly just the opening act to discussions about animal mutilations and crop circles that would air soon after his signoff. I had heard Rush Limbaugh during the daytime, again because he was the only (talk radio) act in town, and felt that Beck was much like Limbaugh, minus the crude but clever humor. Cancel out Limbaugh’s humor and you’d might as well be listening to captured conversations down at the bus station.
As my sleep problem improved I more or less lost touch with Glenn Beck, although I’d hear his name from time to time. It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve been forced to become aware that Beck has joined Limbaugh as the preeminent spokespersons for Conservatives in the US today. I found that awareness mind-boggling and not a little disturbing. How could it be? His commentary, as I recalled it, was unintelligible regardless of the content. His presentations made any Dr. Seuss book read like a Harvard doctoral dissertation in Sociology. Beck now lives in a $5 million mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, has his own TV show and churns out bestselling books and other publications like he was Isaac Asimov. Who is this guy?
There is a serious problem in our country which I have commented on in previous postings (see The Most Evil Man in America 3/4/10). It is part of the current landscape so rooted that few can escape its effect. It’s so socially disabling that I’m waiting for the term “war” to be applied to it (which is America’s best solution to the seemingly unsolvable). It is the Conservative verses Liberal social debate, although I view it more accurately as the Conservative verses Non-Conservative social conflict. The point of this posting, however, is not to engage in the debate, rather to examine its de facto leaders and ask the question: why is education considered by Christian Conservatives to be socially debilitating? It occurred to me, as I considered Glenn Beck, to examine the leaders of ideological commentary and see if there is something to be gained to answering that question.
Beck and Limbaugh are arguably the current standard bearers for Christian Conservative commentary (Sarah Palin is coming on strong). Limbaugh has been for years and Beck the most recent messiah. It is the huge We Love Glen Beck posters that one sees at the Tea Party gatherings. I don’t think it is the least bit coincidental that the debut of the Glenn Beck TV program took place the day before Obama’s inauguration. There are two “liberal” media commentators that have been the most frequent targets of Conservative ire, and also labeled as the prime examples of mindless left-wing counter rhetoric by some considered moderates. They are Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow. Let’s take a look at these folks.
Rush Limbaugh barely graduated from high school, his mother describing him as “flunking everything”. After two semesters at Southeast Missouri State University, he dropped out to pursue a career in radio, eventually making himself one of the richest men in America. Glenn Beck also barely graduated from high school, did not attempt college, choosing to work in radio even before he finished high school. A self-confessed abuser of alcohol and drugs till he was in his mid 30s, he struggled to survive until he found “salvation”, first from AA, then in the Mormon Church. Both men proudly proclaim themselves as self-educated, which is something to be proud of in most cases.
Keith Olbermann, unlike Limbaugh who came from a well-to-do family, was the son of a pre-school teacher and commercial architect. He was accepted into Cornell University at the age of 16. Graduating with a degree in Communication Arts and Journalism he began his career as a sportscaster in radio, given his love for baseball, and later evolved into political commentary. Rachael Maddow came from a middle-class military family and attended Stanford University. She was made a Rhodes Scholar and eventually received a PhD in Political Philosophy from Oxford University. From there she went into radio. Are we seeing a contrast here?
It isn’t necessarily the education, and arguably cerebral fire-power, that Olbermann and Maddow represent that make them better than Limbaugh and Beck. In truth, Limbaugh and Beck are better at the business they're in. What bugs me is the Conservative argument that such education makes them (Maddow and Olbermann) incapable of understanding the purity of the Conservative message and, in fact, essentially makes them (and those like them) subversive. It is the same ethereal argument leveled universally by Conservatives against college and university faculty across the country. Glenn Beck is not a plumber or insurance salesman. The reality that Conservatives will not even consider is that all these people, including Beck, are in the business of selling ideas, and when it comes to determining the quality of an idea education counts. It doesn’t count to sell an idea though, no matter how inane, as one uneducated, army corporal named Adolf could have attested.
The reason Beck and Limbaugh are so much better than their counterparts is that education gets in the way of certitudes. It is so much easier to argue with Tarzanian certainty “Government bad…Freedom good” than to get into the nitty-gritty of how to make things better, which carries with it a plethora of uncertainties. Maddow spends almost all her commentary debunking absurd generalizations by Conservative leaders or commentators. It doesn’t resonate…it doesn’t sell, and eventually it gets boring. Too many people want to hear from John Boehner that “we have the best healthcare in the world” instead of getting bogged down in those nasty “subversive” facts to the contrary.
Education has become a paradox in the Christian Conservative marketplace. They want their children to obtain education, however they really don’t want them to be educated. You could possibly trace this problem back to ancient Greece and the conflict between the city states of Athens and Sparta. One proclaimed the purity of ideas, the other the idea of purity. Sparta won by the way. Education be damned.
I still have problems sleeping on rare occasions. Now, however, I just turn to the sports station and listen to them talk about all these players, coaches and teams I hardly know. Glenn never could drop any sand in my eyes anyway. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
