Lamps and Dining Room Tables

Outrageous!

“Your word is a lamp to my foot, and a light to my roadway.” Ps 119:105

Way to go, Congressman Barney Frank! I saw the news last night.  Oh, boy.   Somewhere between the YouTube message from Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray and the breaking news about the arrest of Survivor winner Richard Hatch, CNN and Fox News managed to squeeze in a clip of you expressing exasperation and righteous outrage over one determined young woman’s attempt to make like a programmed latter day Stepford wife and demonstrate her ignorance and the fruit of her idealogical brainwashing while clutching a tattered picture similar to the one on the left in her cold, undead hand, at a town hall meeting Tuesday night in Dartmouth, Mass.

The raucous, hyperbolic  ranting of these so-called “concerned citizens” raises the specter of Willie Horton.  Remember him?  The Republican’s used him to good advantage to scare whites and derail the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988.

As I was preparing this morning to write a blog post about it, I stumbled across this blog post on FDL (fire dog lake):  Early Morning Swim: Rachel Finds a Willie Horton Connection Behind Town Hall Protests By: Blue Texan Friday August 14, 2009 4:47 am

Rachel Maddow.  Looks like she’s abandoned the Drew Carey style glasses.  Way to go, Rachel Maddow!  Good lookin’ out!

Then I stumbled across a blog published on WordPress.  The title:  Barack the Black Hitler by a 25 year old fellow from San Diego, CA named Fred Shelm (if that’s his real name). Here is a portion of the introduction:

But now America has a new star politician, Obama, and the parallels between he and the most loathed man in history are very real. In this article, we will examine the methods of assuming power employed by both men, and the role of their decisions in the lives (and deaths) of six millions jews.

You have to see it to believe it.

Could young Fred Shelm (if that’s his real name) have developed these “ideas” entirely on his own?  If so, what could have influenced and informed such thinking in the face of all verifiable facts? Could Fred Shelm be the “father”of the so-called “concerned citizen ‘grassroots’” movement currently disrupting town hall meetings throughout the nation? Who is Fred Shelm?  What are his affiliations?  Is he the 21st century David Duke?  It’s interesting to note that his WordPress blog posts, Facebook pages and Diggs all stopped in November, 2008.  What’s he doing now?  Doesn’t appear to be a Tweeter.

It would be beneficial to the majority of honest-hearted Americans and a relief to the rest of us to have our unspoken suspicions confirmed:  That perhaps Mr. Shelm, other individuals  and these “concerned citizen” organizations  may in fact really be 21^st century incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan.

These emotinally charged, hysterical demonstrations at the town hall meetings are more than just spirited disagreement over health care reform.  I don’t recall anyone ever photo shopping a swastika around Hillary Clinton’s neck  or a mustache over her upper lip during the public debates  over health care reform in 1993. Can you?  Not even Richard Nixon was exposed to such public vitriol. Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck have publically gone on the record characterizing the popular and lawfully elected 44^th President of the United States as a racist!!!  Who’s “sensibilities” do you imagine these men seek to foment?

The legitimate media is largely silent about the possibility of militia/KKK involvement.  The shouting is all you tend to see in the clips while the red faced Congressperson shrinks away annulled and defeated.  Then there’s the polite skirting around the putrefying dead bodies in the room by the news analysts and contract contributors.  Their dispassionate, carefully constructed comments chafe those of us who recognize these  purulent utterances as code. Harry and Louise were products of Madison Ave and Lee Atwater. They weren’t real!

These people shouting down our elected representatives are not sitting at home at the kitchen table drinking coffee with their spouses, David Gergen.  Who are they drinking coffee with?

Why have Sarah Palin’s regurgitated diatribes gone unchallenged by the press? Which one of these so-called “concerned citizens” groups pays her honorariums?  Perhaps there needs to be more investigation and less pontification.  Where are the investigative journalists?   What is everybody afraid of?

Is it all 360 now?  When you draw a circle, the protractor point gets driven into the paper only once and that’s where the circle begins and ends.  It starts with the reporting of the screaming and yelling and ends up with the reporting of the screaming and yelling.  All around the circle is Michael Jackson’s face morphing, Jon and Kate, pop up squirrels and the shameless promotion of their networks on Twitter.  Is Rachel Maddow the only one digging deep to find out where the “scary information” is coming from?

I applaud Barney Frank.  He had a right to be incensed.  At least he said something instead of merely looking shell shocked and befuddled.  He didn’t try to mitigate the woman’s  inflammatory, hate rhetoric by characterizing it as the frustration and anger of the citizens. The Ku Klux Klan were frustrated and angry by the integration of the University of Alabama in 1963.  They were frustrated and angry over the the “Freedom Rides” desegregating public transportation throughout the south. They were frustrated and angry over James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner working to register black voters in Mississippi in 1964.

People get  frustrated and angry all the time.  It doesn’t justify abandoning all reason, ignoring established facts and the disregard of verifiable truth.  It doesn’t justify verbally abusing our elected representatives and disgarding all civility and rules of decorum. It doesn’t justify  equating our nation’s President with an individual who was responsible for the deaths of  six million European Jews, and millions of Catholics, homosexuals, people of color and Jehovah’s Witnesses. An individual whose very name and image congers up only contempt, and pain– pain for the living descendants of the Holocaust survivors and pain for the veterans and living descendants of the men and women who served during WWII.

It’s hate rhetoric.  It’s a scare tactic.  It’s the propagation of hate masquerading as frustration and anger over health care reform.  It’s the new terroism.  Don’t let them scare you out of the public option!

This article has put a great deal of focus on the similarities between Hitler and Obama, and they are indeed numerous. Indeed, I never even got around to most of it, such as the Hitler/Obama muslim connection, or gestures they share in their oratory, or even much depth into their shared views of socialism. (I will discuss Obama’s socialist/marxist views at length in a later post.) An encyclopedia could be written documenting the parallels.

An encyclopedia?!!?

Don’t let them scare you into backing away from the public option, Mr. Obama!  And the rest of you..?  Steer clear of dining room tables.