Opinion by Allan McNew
Author’s note: this was written in response to an opinion letter printed in the Record Gazette.
There’s more than one flock of political sheep out there, and no one has cornered the market on “truth, justice and the American way”. I neither like nor trust either of the two major parties and the other parties seem to be touched by various forms of unworkable lunacy.
I thought that the Chicago riot at the 1968 Democratic convention was democracy in the streets, little did I know it was set up and orchestrated by the traitor (acting agent of North Vietnam and much subversive else) Tom Hayden to bring in sweeping changes to the Democratic party that shape much of our present spit flying debate.
I mocked Nixon even before Watergate happened. However, Watergate sealed what Hayden began in Chicago.
President Ford was no winner, he could have easily blended in with a paisley background. I might have thought that Jimmy Carter was good, but looking back I think the primary difference between the peanut farmer and Mr. Rodgers is that one of them became President. I believed the Iranian revolution was democracy unfolding and Khomeini taking American embassy personnel hostage was a reaction to American imperialism, what a misjudgment. Before the 1980 election, I was convinced President Reagan would be a bad reactionary force. I believed in single payer universal health care. I refused to stand for the national anthem because I thought America was an oppressive nation with an evil past. I don’t remember anyone force feeding these views on me, the ideology swirled around me and I soaked it up.
For about twenty years after 1980 I experienced a political blur: Reagan and Gobachev, Bush the First about reading his lips, Bill Clinton, blue dresses and $400 haircuts, Dubya the Second stammering his way to the White House. Then 9/11 happened with the subsequent wars and the serious fight over illegal immigration began. I explored the issues beyond the hysterical talking points for myself.
I believe Obama quietly continued the revolution New Left change agent Tom Hayden began with the 1963 Port Huron Statement, which founded the original Students For a Democratic Society in 1962. SDS was comprised of various Maoist factions long before Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn of the Weatherman faction dismantled it in 1969 and went on a domestic bombing spree to “bring the war home” in the belief it would touch off violent overthrow of the government. The far left’s momentum was slowed by the end of the Vietnam war (the antiwar leadership verbally opposed the war but wanted it to continue in order to exploit public antipathy), with much quiet work done before the 2008 election.
I didn’t know what I would get with Trump, but I knew what would come down the pike with Hillary and I didn’t want to get any of that on me. In the meantime, the left is the very worst at doing what they vehemently accuse their opposition of. There’s the hysterical, drumbeat mantra of multitudinous talking points, wildly inflated as well as obviously fabricated, which have become “proven” social or scientific fact, discussion over. The shout downs, changing the subject of discussion, accusations of bigotry, the unquestioning faith of hate filled secular religion which has all the attributes of the Spanish Inquisition short of torture chambers and burning at the stake, all in the cause of a future, earthly, perpetually elusive, economically impossible Utopia – belief abetted by a media which largely seems to confuse opinion and agenda with journalism.
In the meantime, the Republican Party elite act like they got theirs and have pulled up the ladder. Most of the other political right seem to think they are engaged in a tame arm wrestling contest while the other side throws sand in their eyes, hits them in the groin and kicks their ribs in while they are down.
Sheep. It’s what’s for dinner – no matter what flock it’s from.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary