I love America. Seriously, despite all of the horrible, idiotic, racist, arrogant things the U.S. has done since it’s founding, I LOVE America. I love it because of it’s promise; it’s still a work in progress. Most of all I love America because it every once in a while shows the ability to correct itself when it starts to stray off of it’s path. This is evident with the election of Barack Obama. The problem is, many Americans don’t want the pendulum to swing, and they’re pulling out all the stops in their quest to halt the inevitable. 

Admittedly, I’m a leftie. Better said; I’m a progressive / liberal, so it is with great amusement that I watch the current meltdown of the right-wing in America. However, with that amusement also comes a great deal of fear, for it is exactly this kind of ideological meltdown that has lead to some of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. history. It was exactly this kind of ideological meltdown that lead a man named Timothy McVeigh to kill 167 innocent people in Oklahoma City in 1992, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil before the tragedy of 9/11. A terrorist act committed not by a foreigner, but by a U.S. citizen who justified his crime by touting himself as an American patriot with a deep-rooted hatred of the government.

Why is all of this anti-Government, anti-Obama right-wing sentiment being stirred up? I blame the right-wing media outlets such as Fox News, and “conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh. I listened to Rush for a while, mainly out of curiosity about how such a man could have such a following in the U.S. and among our military stationed overseas (his show is broadcast on American Forces Network Europe’s AM stations). I had to stop listening once it became clear to me (rather quickly, I might add) that Rush only cares about Rush at the end of the day, and hearing how his right-wing rhetoric brings out the worst in many people made me literally sick to my stomach.

See, I’m a firm believer that knowledge is power, and ignorance is dangerous. What I see in the American conservative movement right now is a profound level of ignorance, being perpetuated by intelligent, highly manipulative people in politics and the media, whose only REAL interest is self interest. The question for me is: how long is this pocket of American society going to allow themselves to be played like this? Conservatives have for years ridiculed the left for not being able to think for themselves, a stereotype being perpetuated to this day by the likes of Rush Limbaugh , Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, etc. It’s especially ironic in the case of Limbaugh, whose listeners are referred to as “dittoheads”; being a so-called “dittohead” implies that you’re indeed not capable of thinking for yourself, thus being in direct contradiction of what being a conservative is all about.

I really hope that the level of muckracking on the right does not lead to something truly horrible happening to President Obama, his family, or anyone else who doesn’t agree with their ideology, as it did back in 1992 in Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, history shows us that something likely will happen. The question then becomes: will the right-wing in America take responsibility for it, or will they act like cowards, as they so often do?