We're Becoming a Nation of Morons

Before I start, the above image is pretty awesome, isn't it? And I really like Barack Obama.

The other day I happened upon a Roger Ebert Tweet* that linked to this article.

* Before I go any further—and I know that I'm completely late to this party—I have to say that Twitter is amazing. I initially resisted signing up because I didn't like keeping my thoughts to a 140 characters and the people that I knew that were using Twitter (Ashton Kutcher being the most famous at the time) made me think that it was a medium for idiots. While I don't tweet much, the pool of people tweeting has gotten much, much deeper and their output is prodigious. It's become a daily occurrence for me to go on and see what my favorite comedians are saying, keeping up with friends and what writers are reporting on—as it happens. The Ebert Tweets are consistently among the best. They're a mixture of politics, humor and well-reasoned thoughts. If you haven't signed up, do so now.

There is a large portion of Republicans (almost 25%) that think that our President, Barack Obama, is the Antichrist. You may remember the Antichrist from such books as the Bible. He, along with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (not the backfield from 1924 Notre Dame football team), that's going to bring about the end of the days by spreading disease and famine and destruction all over the world.

The Bible is a terrific book, but it's full of hypocrisies and stories that may not be exactly true, nor were they really intended to be taken as Gospel (see what I did there? HUMOR!) fact. This is because a lot of the stories in the Bible have been written as allegories or metaphors or stories that were just not meant to be taken literally. Add to that, that the Bible was written thousands of years ago, translated from one dead language to another and then massaged by rulers with God complexes and one can see where this might not be the most factual group of pages ever assembled.

In any event there is a pretty large contingent of people who look at Barack Obama, see that he's trying to give them health care for free and have determined that this action is going to bring about the LITERAL end of the world as described in a book written thousands of years before he was alive.

Who in their right mind actually thinks that anyone is the Antichrist, much less a person like Obama? Is he perfect? Of course not, he's a career politician and those are among the most dirty swine there are. But the Antichrist is supposed to be a person who has caused thousands and thousands of deaths and is pretty much the opposite of JC in all ways and Barack Obama fills this bill?

Remember, there is only one Antichrist in the Bible so Adolph Hitler doesn't fit the suit.* Idi Amin doesn't qualify. Neither do the scores and scores of truly insane, sadistic and detestable leaders since 33 AD. None of them are even being considered for the nomination of Antichrist, yet Barack Obama is the guy? Really? He's not even the craziest leader on the planet. With a stable of nuclear weapons and the biggest Napoleonic complex since Napoleon, Kim Jong Il should get branded as the modern-day Antichrist way before Obama.

* Thirty-eight percent of those polled said Obama is “doing the same things that Hitler did”. THE SAME THINGS THAT HITLER DID. Read that sentence again, I can't even fathom what this means.

Say what you want about our current President, but I don't remember Barack Obama putting millions of people in concentration camps and executing them simply because their day of rest was on Saturday instead of Sunday. And while I've long considered our preivous president to be the Anti-Einstein, I've never gone biblical on his ignorant ass.

Aside from the Antichrist charge, there are a few other interesting nuggets that Americans believe about Obama:

1. He was not born in America! I thought that we laid this issue to rest? The man is American as the Statue of Liberty ... uh oh!

2. He's Muslim! I'm still not sure why this is a huge deal. I mean, I get the implication that being a Muslim equals being a terrorist, but there hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world. A small percentage of one percent are terrorists. That's like saying a Catholic shouldn't be trusted because of any Irish bombings.

3. He's a socialist! Here's the thing, Barack Obama is definitely not a socialist. He just isn't, aside from offering healthcare, I don't know what else he has done to be deemed a socialist. And if by some WWE-style swerve, he does turn out to be a socialist, than the chances are pretty damn good that he's not a Muslim. Most countries that are predominantly Muslim don't really subscribe to the hammer and sickle way of living. So you have to choose one or the other. This line of thinking reminds me of “The Simpsons” episode where action hero Rainier Wolfcastle had to fight Commie-Nazis.

It seems that every day more and more people are getting dumber and more scared, which is never a good combination and it's causing a mishmash of ignorant arguments at increasingly loud volumes. These people are joining the Fox News Kids Klub, AKA the Tea Party movement and are getting louder and louder and louder.

During the last decade or so, being considered intelligent is considered a bad thing. When George W. Bush “won” the presidency many people said that the reason why they voted for him is because they could see themselves having a beer with the guy. Whatever his foibles were, Bush did seem like a pretty nice, albeit completely misguided, person. I think that he would have been an awesome commissioner for Major League Baseball. That being said, he was one of the worst presidents ever. Everything from domestic policy to foreign policy to environmental issues to education has been left in ruins since his two terms in office.

The people I share beers with are good and intelligent people, I do not want any of them to run the country.

And Fox News knows what they're doing. They're masters at whipping the gullible into a lather and are pretty much behind the organization. From Wikipedia (as trust-worthy as the Bible):

“On February 11 ( 2009) talk radio host and Fox Business Network personality Dave Ramsey appeared on Fox and Friends, waving tea bags and saying "It's time for a Tea Party." He was on the show criticizing newly confirmed Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, who that morning had outlined his plan to use the $300 billion or so dollars remaining in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds. He intended to use $50 billion for foreclosure mitigation and use the rest to help fund private investors to buy toxic assets from banks.”

This resonated with conservatives and Fox began playing it up at every possible opportunity. From Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh (who's not on Fox, but is a conservative) these people have jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon and are driving it at breakneck speed. The news organization that compared anti-war protestors in Bush administration to traitorous terrorists are telling their viewers to essentially destroy the fabric of America.

In the last few months Tea Partyers have disrupted sessions of Congress, have shouted racial and anti-gay slurs at elected officials, turned last summer's healthcare town meetings into shouting matches. For a group of people who consider themselves “patriots” Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin are ripping this country apart and they know it. They all have that same smug look of satisfaction when they come back from a Tea Party clip where some person is just screaming nonsense and Fox talking points.

For all of their caterwauling about the influences of the “liberal media”, the conservative media has much more influence and always has and they love it. They are the ones that further the mistruths against Obama by providing incredibly vague headlines (“Is Obama a Muslim? We aren't saying if he is or he isn't!”) and distorted facts (“Death panels! Your grandmother is going to die!”) knowing that most people want a soundbite and not read the entire story. What is most infuriating is they love to play the role of the underdog, despite the fact that these conservative icons have more money than most of the world. And yet they still get the poor to go along with their plans that will only improve their lives. It's a very ingenious plan that these swine have put over on the American public.

And that's what sucks the most. America is being torn asunder by a not-so-clandestine group of people who want to save a few sheckles on their tax returns. They have no compassion for the working man, but pretend to sound like they do. They're just using them and once their plan works so that regulations on every industry is rolled back, healthcare is something only the rich can afford and a free society is only afforded to the wealthy, then the American people will realize that they've been bamboozled.

Only then it will be too late. I love my country, but the American people are being used like a two-dollar whore by the rich. The poor have an enemy, but it's not liberals. It's the rich and the sooner they realize that, the better off this country will be.