Common folk biting on lure of conservatism

The alarm bells about the American economy are getting louder. We have been lucky up until now.

Experts say inflation could erupt. We have been seeing a "creeping effect" in inflation that has been bad enough.

A Wal-Mart executive famously warned a few weeks ago that noticeable inflation would arrive in June. This is a store chain that has been like a savior in keeping prices low.

We could see a "flash crash" in the markets.

I didn't trust the markets even through the supposed boom times. "Easy money" is never what it appears to be. Figures lie and liars figure.

Through it all we've been fed this high dose of conservative political ideology. Even though we elected a Democratic president, he has seemed hesitant, in my view, to follow his own stripes. He seems more eager to show he is temperate than to show he is committed.

It would be one thing if rank and file Americans were truly committed to the conservative ideology. But I think not.

They seem to be clinging to frontier principles like self-reliance. That's because they're scared or at least disillusioned. America has been changing too fast for them.

Our president doesn't fit the mold they're accustomed to. Even though all evidence points to Barack Obama being the consummate gentleman, they are unconvinced.

Fox News literally harasses the president every day.

Fox News delicately manages its product so it can argue there's legitimate news there. It's a false patina, as anyone who consumes a large amount of their programming will readily realize.

Fox News carpet-bombs the president. This conflict might just be a sideshow, albeit an irritating one, if this nation were not teetering toward some truly troublesome times.

The suffering will be felt by the less well off. It will be felt by the middle class to the extent that grand American institution has even survived.

The common folk are headed toward turbulence and a lot of it will be their own making. They have bought into all the conservative rhetoric and it will be to their detriment.

They bought into it because it was a cultural thing. Conservatism seemed more in line with America's traditional values. "Liberalism" grew to be a pox in their minds.

These things can run in cycles of course and maybe liberalism still has a chance. But time may be running out.

People in Wisconsin seem to have quickly discovered what conservative Republicans are all about. It's really not about them, i.e. the common folk, rhetoric notwithstanding.

Conservatives don't really want to be bothered with the common folk. Oh, they don't actually wish any ill will, they just think everything can turn out fine if everyone just behaves responsibly.

They don't want to hear about your problems. They don't realize how life can be messy. Or if they do, they don't want to be bothered with it.

And most of all, they don't want government to be some sort of big referee that can affirm justice. Or "social justice," to cite a term that hair-on-fire Fox News commentator Glenn Beck considers anathema to everything good.

Beck proved to be a little too much even for Fox. He has been shown the door. Someone else will now be haranguing the president at the 4 p.m. (CDT) time slot.

The tea party people have been totally reactionary. Many of them are senior citizens. America has taken on new shades and it throws them off-balance.

They retreat to a conservative political ideology which they think represents their viewpoints. And powerful interests are more than happy to harness (use) them. They are biting on an attractive but perhaps deadly lure.

Sarah Palin's tour bus scours the eastern U.S. attracting attention like honey in the eyes of a bear. Her views are regressive and non-finessed. She seems to display her anti-intellectualism proudly.

We should be so lucky that these tea party principles would work.

People are slowly waking up as they see the trainwreck that Republicans caused in Wisconsin, and the anxiety growing over Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal. The proposal would end Medicare as we know it.

But surely the public won't stomach this, right? Can't Republicans read the polls on this like everyone else?

Republicans are what they are. Give them a chance to dismantle the welfare state and they'll wield a sledgehammer in a heartbeat.

They have always tried to dismantle the New Deal. Their failures don't faze them. Throw them back and they'll be back again, trying to do the same thing. This is the kind of "animal" that Republicans are.

They think if you just get out of the way of business, everything will be fine. Everything will take care of itself.
Freedom, gun ownership and low taxes will solve everything.
Let's be non-interventionist in all areas except, of course, abortion, where a vigorous government seems to be necessary. Let's be frugal, of course, except when it comes to our military.

A broad swath of the American public has gone along with this way too long. Why?

Why did Minnesota's top newspaper, the Star Tribune, find it palatable to give us the page 1 headline "Parents wary of Obama speech?" This was when the president was going to give a speech to America's schoolchildren at the start of the new school year, remember?

This is a newspaper that once had the reputation of being left-leaning. In this instance they were browbeaten by tea party types into giving credence to the naysaying offered by the tea party crowd.

Tea partiers might just as well be wearing Halloween costumes. This is a movement flailing about, not sure what it really wants, but it seems to want an America that began fading a long time ago.

I have written before that there is an "undertone" of racism in the tea party movement. There's no need to be so subtle. The message behind "Parents wary of Obama speech" is that we really don't trust this dark-skinned president.

America's story is what you might call Anglo-centric. Continental Europeans, especially Teutonic, can fit in fine too. But a dark-skinned man who grew up in Jakarta? Not so fast.

The mocking and the fury coming from someone like Glenn Beck can be explained in no other way.
Nor can the fact that Mike Huckabee is still accepted as a serious political voice even after completely misrepresenting Obama's background in a radio discussion. This kind of mistake would bring an "F" in a history classroom. It was premeditated and vindictive.

What if a Democrat were to misspeak about a Republican in such a way? Fox News would explode with rage. They'd dispatch their "ambush interviewers."

Up until now all this could be dismissed as kind of an odd sideshow. Or freak show.

But if America enters real crisis mode? Can we rally around our president if we need to? If the Federal government has to take some strong interventionist steps, can we get behind the president in this process?

I can't see the tea partiers, the far right or Fox News ever doing this.

Their cries for small government aren't what they seem. They are just scratching and clawing for a simpler America, an America that had all the answers, when our English origins seemed to define us more, when non-white people "had their place" but not as president.

So many of these uptight folk are up in years and they'll need Medicare and Social Security. Socialism will actually suit them just fine. All advanced industrial nations are a combination of free enterprise and socialism.

The people decrying "big government" just don't want to see a half African-American leading it.

This nation endured a bloody Civil War because of race. Was the war God's punishment?

Will God punish us again?

- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com