Summer of Oddities

Politics

Watch out for those emails that seem to be in all of our mailboxes. Sometimes I get them from a friend asking me what I think. Too often instead it's just passed it on as fact. My opinion is double check it all and from any blog site-- including this one. We are living in a time where more information can be disseminated faster than at any time in history. Frequently we have no idea where it originated and without a lot of research, cannot decide on its truth.

Worse once these emails circulate, the blogosphere picks them up and they begin to be presented as valid as any newspaper report. In ninety-nine out of one hundred, you have no idea who even wrote them although they often use a celebrity's name.

Once upon a time, you'd know what your local community knew and maybe not much more. Today you know what every local community knows and sometimes it is nothing but wishes.

One of the stranger things that happened this summer was comparing Obama to Hitler. The right wing spouted it out and the left was forced to deny-- always easier to say something than to prove it but proof is not required when people want to believe something.

Basically at first it seemed just strange but typical rhetoric until they began to add 'facts' to it. Like that Obama wanted to kill old people. That became that it would be like the Nazis where he would also kill anybody he deemed unfit like say retarded citizens. Since some right wingers said he hated whites, maybe all whites except those he turned into slaves. The talk was unbelievably crazy to most of us but to some it worked.

The most interesting part of all is when we began to find out from where these accusations had arisen.

Behind the Obama Hitler Slur or Summertime for Hitler

Until this summer, who took Lyndon LaRouche seriously about anything? He had been pushed as far from the Democratic party as they could push, discredited by the mainstream media, and most citizens saw him as an extremist.

That's evidently no longer so for many Republicans as his accusation, about Obama's health care plan being like the Nazi's, was picked up by the media and with enthusiasm by some in the right wing, a party which, for far too often, the fear card has worked to extend their power.

So this summer, when Republicans would shake their head and deny comparing Obama to Hilter made sense, they'd add-- as far as I know.

How do you get from left wing nuts to right wing mainstream? Interesting question but the only possible answer is some in the Republican party don't care what they use, and extremists on either side have more in common with each other than any moderate of either party in the middle. For the moderate Republican politicians, like say John McCain, to say Obama respects our Constitution or is not a Nazi is to find themselves being booed in places like Sun City, Arizona (retirement community).

I hear the right wing has ideas for the problems we face, but has anyone heard what they are? Instead we are bombarded by birthers, tea-partiers, accusations of socialism, and on it goes. Anything to scare the American people-- even if it takes hooking up with Lyndon LaRouche. Amazing, isn't it!