MR. BECK CALLS FOR GOD

In my skull like dreams I see Glen Beck, the vicar of ignorance, holding sway over the myriad denizens of the United Crackerbox of America. He is beseeching the penitent who have traveled long, and with much difficulty, to see him standing on a stair like mount with a seated icon of a man hovering far above him. He wants them to yearn for the good old values of our forefathers, for the angry religion of the truly faithful, for the rugged individualism of the pioneers.

It is nothing new, it spews out love and brotherhood in a political cauldron brim full with a stew that would devour the unworthy sans trial, sans deliberation. It is a Hunter Thompson bag of fear and loathing. Every nut bag crazy, every conspiracy theorist, every seething anti-tax, anti-integration, anti-Miranda Rights, anti-individual rights, anti-humanist in the land thrills to hear him speak, to mock, to alienate those of us called the infidels – the progressives, the climate scientists, the skeptics, the so-called big government entitlement practitioners.

I watch the mostly corpulent devotees with their signs of “Taxed Enough Already”. Maybe some of them are teachers who lost their jobs due to their own reticence for paying taxes. But most of these people appear to be too old to worry about things like attrition, or military service, or fixing bridges even. They worry about the off culture things, like community ambivalence towards the church and its attendant lack of fitful prayer. They worry about a socialist preening himself in the White House even though they cannot adequately identify a socialist or define socialism either. They worry about a generation coming up that seem to be indifferent to abortion, ambivalent about drugs and fidelity in marriage. They worry about the consequences of a nation that has socially peaked and appears to be spiraling toward demise. They fear that evolution might be true but they will swear to creationism till the bitter end.

A black man is president, a minority woman is on the Supreme Court, everyone might soon be entitled to health insurance, Mexicans are streaming across a leaky border taking good jobs from Americans, and terrorists leer out at them behind every mosque and crevice of government.

They want to stop everyone’s entitlements but their own, which they bought and paid for. They see the abuse of power because Beck points it out to them. They fear for their future because they hear so much misrepresented and believe so much tripe and furor because it is spoken loudly, angrily and with passion. They wouldn’t recognize the truth if it kicked them in an unholy spot.

Somewhere in the heartland of America is a spirit that clings to important things like the pursuit of knowledge, a passion for the truth, a symposium for various cultures and beliefs. Maybe someone like Bill Maher or Dylan Ratigan will unearth it, but it seems unlikely. We are locked in a struggle for the veritable soul of this country and I wonder who will discover that freedom is not spelled WASP.