How Pundits Lie

Not The Grumpy Old Man

I am making myself very unpopular by criticizing Barack Obama.  I have been called a racist for criticizing him.   I have been called an alarmist.   I have even been compared to Sean Hannity, which really hurts.   A neighbor told me that I am not being fair.  After all, Obama has not even been sworn in yet.   He has not even had the chance to screw things up yet.   From my point of view that’s like telling me not to run away from the guy with the open buckets of gasoline and a lit cigarette.

Obama is not only surrounding himself with the worst of the Clinton Administration, he is surrounding himself with the worst of the Bush war criminals as well.   He wants Robert “The Surge” Gates to continue as the Secretary of Defense.   How is this change?   They are popping the champagne in Beijing with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  That is a pretty good indication that jobs are not going to return to American soil under Obama.   Rahm “NAFTA” Emanuel, Lockheed’s trained monkey, is going to be Obama’s chief of staff.   This does not look like change to me.  This looks like a rerun to the bad old days of the Clinton Administration, when homelessness flourished while public money was invested in junk stocks.  Yet when I point this out, I am accused of being Sean Hannity.

The problem here is that Sean Hannity is telling the absolute truth.  In this age of universal deceit, there is no better way to lie than to tell the truth.   If Hannity lied, he would be lumped in with the Sept. 11^th conspiracy nuts, and the legions of other rumor mongers.  By telling the truth, Hannity is standing out from the rest of the crowd.   He is singling himself out for national attention.   Any imbecile can claim that Obama turned in a false birth certificate, but it establishes credibility to point out that Obama is crewing the ship of state with the same band of cutthroats who brought us the Tech Bubble and the disastrous Financial Reform Bill.   Then, after capturing our attention with the truth, Hannity follows up with a real whopper.   He makes the idiotic claim that the Republicans are better than the Democrats.

Those of you, like myself, who prefer to exist in consensual reality, are probably already aware that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is the difference between AIDS and lung cancer.  Both are an eventual death sentence; the only real difference is the pain you experience as you waste away in misery.  Yet Sean Hannity will tear down the Democrats, and point out every mistake made by the Democrats, while ignoring the fact that the Republicans made the same damned mistakes. Hannity will tear Nancy Pelosi to ribbons, while ignoring the fact that Pelosi voted for everything Baby-Doc Bush ever asked for.  Hannity will accuse the Democrats of spending money on “wasteful” public programs, and will forget that Bill Clinton joined with Newt Gingrich to rip the social safety net to shreds.   Since 1980, the Democrats and the Republicans have been working together for the benefit of the multinational corporations, and it seems that nobody really notices thanks to Sean Hannity.

The Democrats became the party of the poor and the downtrodden back during the early part of the twentieth century.  As the labor movement grew in strength and popularity, the unions sought a political party to represent their interests.  The G.O.P would have nothing to do with either labor or the immigrants who comprised the labor movement.   By the time FDR was elected, unions were strong enough to influence the New Deal and made economic recovery possible.  However, years of prosperity weakened the unions, and labor influence in the Democratic Party waned until Reagan entirely broke union influence in the early Eighties.  Still, people insist on believing that the Democrats support labor and working people, even after Bill Clinton signed the original legislation that send our jobs out of the country and killed labor in the United States.

So there is Sean Hannity telling the truth about the Democratic Party, and Democrats arguing with him despite the evidence of the last 28 years.   The Democrats are arguing that they are different from the Republicans even after Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table.   Republicans are arguing with Democrats even after Bill Clinton showed his true colors and openly joined with the Republicans.   This is why I say that we can expect the exact same disasters from Obama that we could expect with McCain.

Barack Obama was the perfect Democratic presidential candidate. He is a dark skinned man who was given the kind of upbringing that is usually reserved for very privileged European Americans.   He grew up with middle class values. Despite his books, I cannot see him really identifying with his supporters.   Poverty is too far out of his experience. When he went to school abroad, he was home schooled or went to English language schools.   He grew up in his mother’s white American social class The fact that the Democrats and their corporate sponsors were forced to support a candidate of African descent is a good indication that the power balance is shifting.   The powers that be are on the verge of total economic collapse.  They need us to keep listening to Sean Hannity and pointlessly arguing with each other over two parties which are now exactly the same.   That’s the only thing that is keeping them in power.

Hannity’s purpose is to deflect objective criticism on the Democratic party and to maintain the illusion that there is an actual difference between Democrats and Republicans.   Hannity encourages us to support or oppose a president who has promised us change without outlining what the changes are going to be or how change is going to be implemented.   Hannity prevents us from giving negative feedback on the terrible choices that Obama is making for his staff and his cabinet. The left is being distracted by arguing with Republicans over the non-virtues of Democrats. We cannot afford to wait and hope that Barrack Obama comes riding out of Washington on his white horse to rescue us all.  It is up to us to rescue ourselves and the first thing on our agenda is to tell Obama that Gates, Clinton, and that rabid weasel Emanuel are not acceptable choices.   We, the people, are the bosses here and its damned all time that we acted like it.   Barack Obama works for us.  We need to remind him of that, even if we find ourselves agreeing with Sean Hannity.

Neither of Us are Sean Hannity