The John Birch Society was founded by Robert W. Welch, Jr., in 1958, and was named after--that's right!--John Birch who, among other things, was a Baptist missionary in World War II.
I was twenty-seven, too green and naive to know that the John Birch Society was not, in its essence, something new in America. In those early years of the John Birch Society, those of us who were working for social justice, discourged by the Korean War, frightened still by the anti-communist raging of Joseph McCarthy, and threatened by the John Birch Society, which saw conspiracies and communists and un-Americans everywhere, were being attacked by a swarms of killer bees.
Conspiracy theorists are with us always. Paranoids are with us always. They swarm when things are tough, when times are troublesome, when we do not understand what is going on.
What is going on today is that we have barely avoided another Great Depression. Under the political policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations, another long-felt anger against government was allowed to work its wonders. People who hate government, and who believe that private enterprise can do almost everything better that government can, gutted financial regulation, and attempted to turn as much of our social programs as possible over to private captial, including Social Security, health care, pension plans, education, and even things like military forces (Blackwater!), toll roads, public parkland, and prisons. Damn the police! Give people guns! Shoot illegal immigrants yourself! Quit paying taxes.
Tea Baggers, and people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin and all the racists and homophobes who are threatening to kill politicians and presidents and neighbors, who see conspirators and un-Americans and people who aren't Christian everywhere, have always been there. They just aren't always scared nearly shitless by the policies they, themselves, advocate. But now they see enemies everywhere: people who want health care, people who do not want to go to war, people who think that arming the ranting, raging, frothing people with guns is madness, people who do not believe that oil and coal companies, insurance and investment houses have the interests of the nation in mind.
Is it so odd that people who invest their own money want, most of all, to make money?
The Republican Party is reducing itself to a corporate defense league, and to Southern racism. Racism isn't just Southern, but the South is where Republicans and the racism are snuggling up to each other.
Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and the Tea Party people are not a majority, by far. But they do represent a sizeable swarm of blooming, buzzing confusion and anger. I find it hard not to be outraged at what they say and do, but that really does not help much. They will not go away, and cannot. Only improving the quality of our life together is going to quiet them, somewhat. People need jobs, education, homes; some sense that this is a good country. They need health care, too, even if the people screaming about it do not think so.
All of us have our irrational sides. A nation has its irrational behavior, too. It happens to us, mostly, when we hurt.
I can understand why bees swarm.
I despise the people who poke the nests with sticks.
I was twenty-seven, too green and naive to know that the John Birch Society was not, in its essence, something new in America. In those early years of the John Birch Society, those of us who were working for social justice, discourged by the Korean War, frightened still by the anti-communist raging of Joseph McCarthy, and threatened by the John Birch Society, which saw conspiracies and communists and un-Americans everywhere, were being attacked by a swarms of killer bees.
Conspiracy theorists are with us always. Paranoids are with us always. They swarm when things are tough, when times are troublesome, when we do not understand what is going on.
What is going on today is that we have barely avoided another Great Depression. Under the political policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations, another long-felt anger against government was allowed to work its wonders. People who hate government, and who believe that private enterprise can do almost everything better that government can, gutted financial regulation, and attempted to turn as much of our social programs as possible over to private captial, including Social Security, health care, pension plans, education, and even things like military forces (Blackwater!), toll roads, public parkland, and prisons. Damn the police! Give people guns! Shoot illegal immigrants yourself! Quit paying taxes.
Tea Baggers, and people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin and all the racists and homophobes who are threatening to kill politicians and presidents and neighbors, who see conspirators and un-Americans and people who aren't Christian everywhere, have always been there. They just aren't always scared nearly shitless by the policies they, themselves, advocate. But now they see enemies everywhere: people who want health care, people who do not want to go to war, people who think that arming the ranting, raging, frothing people with guns is madness, people who do not believe that oil and coal companies, insurance and investment houses have the interests of the nation in mind.
Is it so odd that people who invest their own money want, most of all, to make money?
The Republican Party is reducing itself to a corporate defense league, and to Southern racism. Racism isn't just Southern, but the South is where Republicans and the racism are snuggling up to each other.
Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and the Tea Party people are not a majority, by far. But they do represent a sizeable swarm of blooming, buzzing confusion and anger. I find it hard not to be outraged at what they say and do, but that really does not help much. They will not go away, and cannot. Only improving the quality of our life together is going to quiet them, somewhat. People need jobs, education, homes; some sense that this is a good country. They need health care, too, even if the people screaming about it do not think so.
All of us have our irrational sides. A nation has its irrational behavior, too. It happens to us, mostly, when we hurt.
I can understand why bees swarm.
I despise the people who poke the nests with sticks.
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