Almost every weekday evening I can be found in my red VW Beetle driving the 30 to 40 minutes from my Jackson Hewitt Tax Service kiosk at a nearby Walmart where I am, for 105 days, office manager of the location. The ride is not that exciting and I invariably put the radio on and listen to either Country and Western tunes or one of three stations in Tampa that dispense political talk. In central Florida that means Michael Savage, Hugh Hewitt, or some other far right host; there are no voices from the center or left on the radio where I live, only spokesmen from the fringe of sanity who spend most of the time bemoaning the alleged fact that the left has a monopoly in the media.
Here, on Tampa radio, are the “Birthers” (convinced that President Obama is a native born Kenyan, regardless of birth certificate, contemporaneous birth announcements in the local Hawaii newspaper), the group that equates the President with Adolph Hitler, those who, paradoxically, see the President as a manifestation of Joseph Stalin; here also are those who dream of a GOP presidential ticket headed by Sarah Palin teamed with Glenn Beck.
As I listen, alternatively bewildered and amused and frightened and saddened by the callers to these shows, each starting with offering thanks for the privilege of agreeing with the paranoia spewed by the hosts, I come to a few conclusions.
First, I have to assume that screeners weed out any callers who might confront the hosts. But the most disturbing thought and realization of all is that the Savages, Becks, Hewitts, Pragers, et al., repeat the same mantra over and over again, until the words become accepted as fact!
Joseph Goebbles, 70 years ago, made the observation:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” And “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
Thus, Michael Savage utters these gems on the radio and no one questions or objects:
“The radical Left and the radical Muslims are natural blood brothers … they all want to bring down America” (2/21/2010)
Pol Pot was a “mild-mannered professor” just like “baby dictator” Obama. (2/24/2010)
Even the President’s mother is grist for the hate-mill: Obama’s mother “had contempt for America”; finds it “very interesting” that she married two Muslim men. (2/26/2010)
Last Veterans’ Day, Savage honored our service men and women thusly: “a lot of girls” join Navy “just to get pregnant because it’s a guaranteed passport to an easy life”
I really shouldn’t pick on Michael Savage because he isn’t even the most irresponsible or most viscous of the type. That award should probably go to Glenn Beck who went from a relatively amusing radio morning radio program in Tampa to a nationwide radio and television personality who even his cohorts consider him nutty.
But all of this is irrelevant to the real issues facing the country. We have serious problems, ranging from inefficient and expensive health care delivery systems to abuses in the financial and banking industries that continue notwithstanding the crises and near collapse of our economy caused by the same individuals who continue to control the system, a housing and mortgage horror that is putting people out of their homes and massive job losses and unemployment that threatens our future for a decade or more.
The public is not hearing a comprehensive explanation from the Democrats or the President. The President has failed to bring this all together in a way that the American people can appreciate. He has failed to explain that the economy cannot rebound unless the bankers, investment houses and insurance companies are restrained and made to accept moral responsibility to the country and not just financial responsibility to the corporate executives and stockholders. He has been reluctant to tell the people the bitter and harsh truth that, like in the Egypt of Exodus, the abundant years will be followed by lean years.
Unfortunately, unlike in the Bible, we did not have a Joseph who warned about preparing for the future; rather we had years and years of free and uncontrolled spending – by both parties – wherein we squandered our wealth. Now, whether we like it or not, the Piper will be paid and we will have to allocate our resources carefully and the role of government will be more and more vital. We must not allow us to believe in the unrealistic (but idealistic) view of the market place acting in control; we require a social basis for our society and it is too much to call upon the bankers, insurance companies, the industrialists to provide that basis. That is not, and should not, be their function.
While the Democrats have utterly failed to communicate the situation facing the country and set out a comprehensive plan to address the problems we face, the far right has not been so reluctant to put forth misstatements of fact, outright slander and bigotry. Some of it is amusing. Sarah Palin accusing the President of being unable to express thoughts without a teleprompter and the resorting to inked on crib notes on her palm to remind her of basic “talking points”; the suggestion by Mr. Beck that any attorney who represents a defendant accused of terrorism should, himself or herself, be executed — unless the “terrorist” is of a “domestic” type who kills physicians who perform abortions.
And some of it is not amusing at all. In fact, the repeated falsehoods have come to be accepted in many quarters of this country as fact and are, in many ways, actually influencing the attitudes of many elected officials.
For example, one of the principles of the right is that the overwhelming majority of the American public opposes health care reform as proposed by the President and, even more so, the American public is united in its opposition to any “public option” insurance program that would compete with private insurance programs. [I offer this disclosure. I, personally, would prefer a single-payer system, run by the Government, in the same fashion as is offered in virtually every other modern industrial nation in the world. To those who complain that the Government cannot do anything right, I would note that when I drop a letter in a mailbox anywhere in the country, I can be assured that it will reach its destination in a timely manner. But that’s a digression!]
The radio and media of the right have succeeded in calling the Democratic efforts to reform health care as “socialistic”, “communism” or worse to the extent that when polled generally about approval or disapproval of the “overall” reform efforts, the results are not enthusiastic. On the other hand, when polls are conducted asking for information about the individual components of the reform movement, Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of the major elements of the Obama program!
People, in general, are dissatisfied with the health care delivery system in America but have been bullied into believing that any change would (a) reduce the access to adequate health care and insurance that they already have; (b) provide generous and unlimited benefits to illegal aliens who have taken jobs from “regular” Americans; (c) would increase the national debt by untold trillions of dollars; (d) force the killing of grandpa and grandma or sick children, etc. Of course none of this is true or even conceivable but the blather continues.
The fact remains that our economy is in turmoil and it will not turn around without easing the health care burden placed on us all.
The Republicans during all of 2009 refused to participate in the creation of a solution to our health care crises. They were much more intent on proving that President Obama would fail. Now, when faced with the prospect of passage of true reform by majority vote, they urge that their ideas and viewpoints be addressed and adopted. There are a few things crazy about that scenario. First, if the GOP has suggestions on how health care can be made affordable and comprehensive, why did they not pass legislation to that effect when they had the White House and both Senate and House?
They had no sincere wish to aid anyone other than the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. Why now should anyone believe that there has been enlightenment?
The next point that must be made has escaped the GOP completely. In this country we have elections and those elections matter. The far Right hated Bill Clinton and harassed and hounded him and, by so doing, made a shameful spectacle in our government. The same “patriots” and “freedom-loving” folks hate Barack Obama and will do anything to prevent his carrying out the mandate of the voters.
Tags: Birthers, far right, GOP policies, healthcare, healthcare industry, insurance industry, liberals, national health care program, talk radio, Tampa, Tampa Bay, us economy, “Healthcare Reform in the United States."
The last word on Health Care, hahahahahahaha. The pundits will fight over this until the moose come home with the Messiah riding on its back.
BTW, what mandate of the voters?