Very Possibly the Most Critical Six .Weeks in Our History

I started this blog because I firmly believe that our wonderful country, with all of its grand traditions, is currently facing the most serious threat to our way of life that we have ever known. More serious than Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Ahmadinejad. More serious than even the Nazis or the Communists. Because all of those threats were external. Since the United States is by far the greatest country the world has ever known, we will always, as we always have in the past, conquer any enemy that threatens us from without.
But threats from within present an entirely different problem. When it's us against us, anything is possible, and the predictability factor goes out the window. Right now, we are facing the gravest existential threat that has ever confronted us. It is right wing extremism, and it has been insidiously encroaching upon us since at least the 1950's, although groups like the Ku Klux Klan prove that right wing extremists and their first cousins, merchants of hate, have apparently always been among us.
Of course, I'm referring primarily to the so-called "Tea Party," and its minions in the Republican Party. The way that Tea Partyism sprung up overnight and the nonstop momentum that it has gathered exponentially ever since is particularly frightening because it is mostly built upon the sands of anger, hate, jealousy, greed, selfishness, racial prejudice, and just about every other base characteristic that one can think of. The fact that a movement grounded upon these most negative of characteristics has grown so fast in such a short period of time does not speak well of our citizenry.
Which, of course, brings us to their titular leaders, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, one of whom has less knowledge than your average first grader and the other who seems to have been released from a facility far too prematurely.
I hate to bring up the subject of Hitler, because that most awful of names has recently been bandied about much too frequently in a myriad of situations in which it has absolutely no application. But the Beck/Palin duo unfortunately do reveal a certain commonality of characteristics with those by which Hitler gained power in Germany:
(1) They are both willing to say anything, no matter how obviously false and/or ludicrous, in order to achieve their desired goals; (2) Although I can't see or understand it, both are apparently captivating, charismatic public speakers who are able to gain numerous ardent supporters by their mere intonation; and (3) Most reminiscent of Hitler, both Beck and Palin are accomplished purveyors of "The Big Lie," a stratagem by which the same untruth, repeated often enough and loudly enough, eventually becomes the truth in the mind of the listener. (I believe Joseph Goebbels was the originator of this artifice.)
Consequently, the vast majority of Tea Partiers do not seem to have the slightest idea of what they actually want. All they know is that it is presumably a catharsis for them to rail against the President of the United States, who, whatever you might think of him and his policies, is beyond the slightest doubt, trying his very hardest to do what's best for the people of his country. Yet the shockingly misplaced comparisons between the President and Hitler first arose during the "debate" over health care reform. Huh?? This President's best efforts to make decent medical care available to as many Americans as possible remind people of Hitler? Can someone please explain this nonsequitur?
The Tea Baggers' unlimited lack of insight and understanding defy comprehension. They foam at the mouth at the mere thought of some of their tax dollars being used to provide health care or unemployment benefits to truly needy people, but they don't have the slightest problem with the Republicans' relentless efforts to provide huge windfall "tax cuts" to the super rich who don't need them in the least. What in the world are these people thinking? Of course, by being so gullible and so easily duped, they fall right into the trap laid by the dishonest, Machiavellian hierarchy of the Republican Party which has somehow convinced them that the burgeoning deficit about which they so constantly and irrationally complain will not be negatively affected by the giveaway of billions of dollars to the super rich, a plan that every objective economist has concluded will do absolutely nothing to help our faltering economy.
Of course, since the Tea Parties are almost exclusively comprised of right wing extremists, they invariably mesh perfectly with the Religious Right, as is shown by such Tea Party darlings as Palin, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, and their latest gift to our body politic, Christine O'Donnell.
Angle, Miller, O'Donnell, Rand Paul, and Ken Buck all believe that ALL abortions should be illegal. That is ALL as in no exceptions even for rape and/or incest. So these Tea Baggers who excoriate the current administration for supposedly growing government much too large apparently have no problem at all with omnipresent government agents arresting and prosecuting young girls and women who try to have abortions, as well as their doctors, of course.
I could go on forever because it's so frustrating that so many people in this country refuse to see what's right in front of their eyes. We only have about six weeks within which to wake them up. Let's hope that's enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcATvu5f9vE