Wednesday, March 11, 2009

My Nomination For Cretin Of The Week

Yes, my first Weekly Cretin Of the Week Award goes to (drumroll)...GLENN BECK!

I've been listening to this guy for a while, both on TV and now on his radio show, at least in the snippets that I can stand without a vein in my brain exploding. His consistantly smarmy, "aren't us neo-cons so much smarter than the rest of you" approach has been bugging me for a while, but a clip from his radio show this last Saturday is what finally put him over the top for the Weekly Cretin Award.

When I tuned in, Beck and some unidentified sidekick were discussing the prospect of dividing the country along ideological lines, with the neo-cons taking 25 and the "liberals" taking the others; Beck's theory, assuming I understood it correctly through his babbling style, was that once all of "his people" moved to the new Neo-Con part of America, they'd beat the economic stuffin's out of the Liberal States because, of course, "Free Americans" can do a lot more than those supposedly hampered by all those nasty rules, regulations and taxes. He made his first cretinous point by saying that the Neo-Cons would even take Yellowstone National Park, you know, that place that all the "tree-huggers" won't allow building and, I suppose, "freedom". Of course, Mr. Beck, who apparently was asleep during that part of High School history class, forgot that it was a REPUBLICAN President, Teddy Roosevelt, who created the National Park system, of which Yellowstone is, fortunately for the rest of us non-freedom loving types, still a part of.

By itself, the Yellowstone reference probably would have gotten him the coveted Cretin of the Week Award, but THEN Beck went a little bit further, babbling some more about how "progressives and liberals" would probably use "force" to bring the Neo-Cons back into the fold and somehow linked the "liberals and progressives" to Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and, last but not least, Adolf Hitler! How exactly was Hitler a "progressive"? Well, as Beck pointed out, wasn't Hitler's political party called the "National Socialists"? It was at that point that old Blue, seeking to prevent the vein from popping off in his skull like a 4th of July fireworks presentation, switched back over the to Oldies station.

You see, Beck, having apparently not only slept through his history classes but possibly being either (a) drunk or (b) high during them, should go back and read some of 20th Century German history. The so-called "National Socialists" were called that BEFORE Hitler even joined up with them; when he did join up with this bunch of losers, still sore about "losing" WWI supposedly because of being "stabbed in the back" by the folks at home, particularly those of the Jewish persuasion, his speaking skills managed to push him to to forefront, NOT because he was advocating "socialism" in any real manner, shape or form. In fact, a number of Germany's prominent industrialists supported Hitler because of his opposition to the burgeoning Socialist movement during the Weimar Republic AND because of Communist agitators taking some advantage of the power vacuum after the war. There is little or no evidence that Adolf Hitler ever planned on a "European-style" socialism like the Far Right is trumpeting about these days, unless you count the slave labor camps where Jews, gypsies, political opponents and gays were worked to death building V-2s and other secret weapons.

There may be plenty of possible complaints to make about the political direction the Current Resident of the White House may be taking us, but Beck's approach is exactly why the Far Right has essentially lost its collective mind and is simply throwing out mindless attack after mindless attack, preaching only to the already converted instead of attracking new followers. Even worse, the demogaugic dribble coming out of the mouths of Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity and Beck is getting dangerously close to calling for treason (remember the poll on Hannity's website the other week about which form of revolution his fans might prefer?) and may result in some some real whacko-fanatics to start shooting and bombing in this country in a misguided and ill-informed attempt to create the Neo-Con Nirvana of "freedom" that their radio-head leaders supposedly want.

What the "entertainers" of the Right Wing REALLY want is a country where THEY don't have to pay taxes on their swollen earnings, where they can lead their minions without benefit of election to follow their whims and feed their massive egos on a daily basis. "Freedom", as far as I can tell from their rhetoric, is an America that has never really existed; one where government doesn't really do anything, taxes aren't collected for anything and laws, rules and regulations (except for those supporting their so-called "Christian" theology and banning gays, abortions, immigration, etc.) are banned. They've forgotten that taxes are what has made this a civilized society, paying for schools, roads, public safety and education--getting rid of them will put it back into the Third World faster than Limbaugh could find another doctor to fill his pain-killer prescriptions--and the recent peanut-salmonella scare has reminded us again that some of those rules and regulations are there for a very, very good reason. What we need is not to abolish taxes, rules and regulations, but to go through them with a scalpel and get rid of the ones that make no sense, that do not serve the public good or that are there simply to pad someone's wallet in a special interest.

But, I digress from my initial purpose to recognize Mr. Beck as the Cretin of the Week, for he richly deserves it. I suspect it won't be the last time he gets it, but he's got a LOT of competition.

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