Read. Absorb. Think. Act!
Be obstreperous, not obsequious.
December 2011. If you are a reasoned thinker, the thought must have flitted across the windowpane of your mind: America is no longer governed so much as it is whipped into faction-frenzies as demanded by the two predominant American ideologies, and assisted by their true believers and acolytes.
Ideologies? Wait, you say, America has never been an ideological nation. Americans aren’t ideologues.
True, until recently. In the over-hyped Sixties America witnessed the Left and the rise of the so-called New Left, many of which now wander the groves of academe. But despite their spouting of violent rhetoric, the Left/New Left were always more of a laughable proposition than a threat to the demise of America. Ah, but America has now fallen prey to a more sedate and more insidious ideology, one which has bored its way into the fabric of America. And that ideology is known as neoconservatism, the false conservatism.
The neocons first dead-headed their way into respectability in the Reagan administration, and then took over the administration of the bobblehead “Dubya” Bush. Once in control of the Bush administration the neocons employed various useful idiots (See Tea Party) and numerous shrill shills (See Limbaugh, Rush and the other demagogues of talk radio, as well as the demagogues of the FOX agitprop channel) to extend their base of largely ignorant true believers. Neocon demagogues and their addled true believers now control talk radio and the cable TV screech and sell markets.
In opposition are the so-called progressives, the false liberals. They have largely disappeared from talk radio and are now centered around MSNBC, the Comcast-owned cable TV station and various websites.
And both ideologies have numerous fellow traveler websites which entertain the faithful by pumping out ideological argot. Thus, both ideologies have created faction-frenzies, which have served to engulf a wide swath of American society and many (if not all) of today’s high-profile issues.
The aforementioned faction-frenzies, as whipped up by our techno-aided ideologues and demagogues, now serve to infuse rancor into all our national issues. And when one considers the added component of an increasingly deumbed down citizenry, a citizenry more concerned with the false world of pseudo-reality TV and the lives of nitwit celebs, one understands how we have arrived at where we are; understands how ideologues and demagogues now hold sway on issues.
As a result of faction-frenzies, our party mechanisms have broken down, overwhelmed by ideologues and their demagogue shills on talk radio and cable TV. In addition, the individuals we elect are not of the best and brightest, but largely of the worst and dimmest. The Tea Party wing of the Republican party are but a neocon-controlled phalanx of shock troops, sent in to shrilly shout the neocon party line. They are an obdurate lot and not given to compromise. And now we have Occupy Wall Street (OWS), another psuedo-populist movement without the urge to compromise. Indeed, compromise is among the first casualties of a society dominated by faction-frenzies.
Our ruinous involvement in the obscene wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the result of ideological faction-frenzy. These draining ventures have cost America thousands of innocent lives and over a trillion wasted dollars. And both the bodies and the billions continue to be wasted, primarily in Afghanistan, as our war in Iraq is officially over (I think...well, except for all those contractors.).
Ideologues and demagogues are a priori thinkers and care little for empirical evidence of history, or of events gone by. Too, they care little for reason. Ideologues and demagogues ignore or rearrange the empirical slate to read whatever their thinking is on a given issue. And in the place of reason and empirical facts we now have faction-frenzies.
How is that working out for u.s.?
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