Cliven Bundy is the latest hero of the right. He has been elevated to the status of little man facing down the power of an overbearing federal government. He is, however, nothing more than a thief, stealing from his fellow Americans. And now this celebrated – by the clueless – champion of the people has proven to be a dyed-in-the-wool racist. Any self-respecting citizen, who may have been swayed by the lies propagated by the right-wing media, should cut bait on this self-centered, selfish bigot.
Cliven Bundy. This man is not a hero.
But there will be politicians and talking-heads clinging to the myth of the man – confusing his crime for the act of a principled man standing up against tyranny.
It is an often exploited theme from the folks on the right – that they are the victims.
Take Brandon Eich. This former CEO of Mozilla, who resigned after news of his $1,000 contribution in support of a California proposition outlawing gay marriage, is promoted as a victim of the gay mafia. It doesn’t matter that it was the company’s employees, discomforted by his bigotry, who lobbied against him. No, to the “victims” on the right, it was a the gay agenda and its effort to chill free speech, that was the evil-doer of the piece.
These bigots hide behind “sincerely held religious beliefs”. But your beliefs do not govern the conduct of others. If you are opposed to gay marriage, don’t get gay married. If you are opposed to abortion don’t get one. If you are opposed to assisted suicide then you are free to suffer the agonies of terminal cancer – but don’t tell others that they must.
Robertson and Falwell. The unChristian faces of the religious right.
Too often religion is used, not as a comfort in the believer’s life, but as a club to hurt others who do things the believer doesn’t like. Take Jerry Falwell’s reaction to 9/11, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’”
Add to that, Falwell’s antediluvian attitude to race (see Bundy above) and you have a monstrous man. If Falwell is right about his God’s Day of Judgement he has a lot of explaining to do. Jesus’s first question will probably be, “why did you chose to ignore my teachings?”
The acme of conservative science.
Falwell offered his hatred on Pat Robertson’s TV show, “The 700 Club”. Robertson is best described as a fellow traveller. He has warned against the Antichrist lurking in the wrong sort of Protestant denominations; claimed that Hinduism is demonic and Islam is Satanic; and taken issue with gays, feminists, abortion and liberal intellectual elites.
It is an unreasoned position. But reason is in short supply among the ultra-right. Take their dismissal of science. Conservatives are far less likely to believe in evolution and global warming, both settled science. They claim that there is a controversy, a divide in the science community. No, there isn’t.
It is this kind of deluded thinking that causes them to see the United Nations as fomenting a take-over of America’s sovereignty; strategizing a seizure of our land-use codes; and orchestrating a gun grab to strip away American’s 2nd amendment rights.
Ted Nugent. The face of the gun lobby.
On guns they are particularly crazy. Before the last election the gun-nuts were whipped into a froth of fear that Obama was going to confiscate their guns. They fell short of offering any proof of that assertion. Much as they fall short on explaining exactly how the UN is going to effect its diabolical ministrations on the American people. Can you picture the blue-helmeted army landing on the shores of the Chesapeake and marching on Washington? Neither can I.
And how do they fight back? By promoting policies that will benefit the very wealthy – assuming that somehow the benefits will trickle-down to them. They get their marching orders from multi-million dollar radio personalities and their “news” from a cable channel dedicated to promoting a corporate agenda.
The portrait of an American rightist is not pretty. His hero is a thief. He whines that he is the victim of the people he oppresses. He wants his religion to be the law of the land. His religious leaders are bigots of the first order. He cries that the international community is out to get him. And he believes that science is a matter of opinion.
Further, he doesn’t think and waits to have his opinion handed to him. He believes uncritically what he is told. And he lives in a constant miasma of fear – where he is surrounded by evil forces bent on his destruction.
It really rather sad.
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