Letters to the Editor

Facts, lies, and the prize

Apparently, the right wing Republicans still believe that using lies and distortions will give them a leg up in the 2010 elections. Up to now their rise in the polls over the Health Care Reform issues had given them the false impression that their tactics will succeed. With gurus like Doctor Frank Lunz, the Republican version of a witch doctor, working behind the scenes with Karl Rove there has been a move afoot to take us back to the days of “gridlock.”

Are we supposed to ignore the fact that a sizable minority of the “teabaggers” was bussed in to public meetings in the swing states to use bullying tactics and shouting to interrupt the proceedings?

And, if we ignore this reality do we also accept the extremist views about “free speech” that if taken to the limit would dismiss yelling “fire” in a crowded theater to: “Just another case of boys letting off steam.”

There are increasing signs that the heat stirred up in August is cooling as the realization takes hold that “Politics as usual” is no longer good enough to address the serious issues facing this nation. When 40,000 people a year are dying from a lack of quality health care, we are in the middle of a crisis. That’s the reason millions of Americans are becoming tired of ideas being labeled: “communist,” “socialist,” “un-American,” “Nazi,” and  “democrat.” The word “democrat” defined as a “left wing crackpot.”

The outside world is not caught up in our petty squabbles and the Nobel Committee chose to give President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. They see the changes happening since the president’s Cairo speech as being indicative of things to come as previously hostile countries have begun talking to one another and dictators line up to speak with us.

When Martin Luther King received the prize there were reactions among the establishment similar to what we see today. J. Edgar Hoover even had the audacity to say that the Nobel Committee “had scraped the bottom of the barrel.” In fact, Dr. King had also been called a “socialist” and a “communist” by the right wing chorus of his day. Truth is, if not for Dr. King there would be no Barack Obama.

Yet, who could have imagined that the loss of the Olympic bid in Copenhagen would flip to a win in Oslo and force drug-addled Rush Limbaugh to flop and admit that he’s more in agreement with the Taliban than his president. So much for idea of patriotism trumping shallow political goals.

Fact of the matter is, the only thing more despicable than an “armchair general” is an “armchair patriot.”

Marvin Clark