Unwelcome Realization

I was doing my usual perusal of news websites and ran across Glenn Beck's editorial on this morning's CNN page. Well, I reasoned, I'm up for a laugh and some bitterness directed at a right-wing kook, so I clicked on the link and read the column.

Whereupon:



This is a good impression of my reaction to the fact that I found myself agreeing with several of the points he made.

First, I agree with his self-assessment. Glenn Beck IS a Rodeo Clown.

(Have I mentioned that I really, really LOATHE clowns?)

Second, I agree that we as a nation have been arrogant and stupid. I would also add woefully ignorant to that list, since it takes an uninformed and largely oblivious electorate to let the government get away with a lot of the things it's been doing.

In order to keep food prices up and farmers from leaving the land we subsidize them, even to the point of paying farmers to not grow food. Now we're paying to stop growing any food crops at all and instead grow corn for cheap corn whiskey to power our cars. Our erstwhile allies who provide us with oil are not necessarily friends of ours, and the only worthwhile attempt to break our addiction (synthetic fuels - sort of like methadone for the oil addicts) twenty years ago was a failure.

Beck closes with the question: "So let me be the big, dumb rodeo clown once again and ask the obvious question: Why aren't we doing it?"

Well, Glenn, let me go out on a limb here.

You start with lots of money. I mean amounts that would make Croesus gulp in disbelief, that would make Midas start wondering where his fingers have been lately. You then add the 535 venal bastards who are our elected representatives (and who Mark Twain classed with lawyers as the only true criminal class in this country), and top it off with a Vice President and President who are both oil men and beholden to the industry for their fortunes.

Now mix in an uninformed electorate more interested in some vapid "celebrity's" panties than in understanding the trouble that their ignorance and the government's arrogance has led us:

A war founded on fraudulent premises in the heart of Oil-Land, almost guaranteeing troublemakers will screw with our oil supply;

Payment for the war through borrowing from China like freakish gambling addicts at a loan shark office;

Concerted efforts by the oil industry to keep prices up by timely "maintenance" shutdowns of refineries during peak periods, and not building any new ones for the past 20 years or so;

Concerted efforts to block conservation measures, emission standards, gas mileage standards, synthetic alternatives, etc. etc. etc.

But I think the most hideous part of this whole contretemps is that I found myself actually agreeing with Glenn Beck.

I shall now drink heavily and take a nap.