The sequel to the bestselling Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! continues the story of two boys who open up a lemonade stand only to have the stand seized by the government. Determined to succeed, the boys open up a swingset business, but their plan goes awry when a cast of characters resembling the politicians du jour - including a sweaty and sputtering Congressman Fwank and a tiara-donning Speaker Queenosie - force the boys to sell swingsets to kids who cannot afford them. When the swingset, slide, trapeze bar and other industries subsequently collapse, and America is on the verge of an economic depression, a "smart-looking" Obama-like character emerges on television.... "People swooned, TV reporters fell in love, and drive-thrus were more pleasant!" the book describes the rise of Marxus Obundus, the Obama look-alike who tends to appear on television every 15 minutes. Onerous taxes and regulations, 246 czars, and the hubris of elected officials sow the seeds of something eerily similar to the current new Tea Party movement sweeping the nation.
Like most of us, I get a lot of crazy crap dumped into my email in-box. Most of it never sees the light of day, but every now and again I run across something so brain-dead, so thoroughly insulting in its ignorance, that I just can't let it slide.This is where my Monday morning finds me.
I don't begrudge those of the teabagger persuasion their right to believe as they see fit. This is a free country, of course, and these fools have the constitutionally-guaranteed right to spew their lunacy as they see fit. Is it too much to ask, though, that they actually have some idea of what it is they're talking about? Is it too much to expect at least a minimal degree of intellectual honesty? And when the goal is to indoctrinate children with their lies, hatred, and propaganda...well, that seems like a pretty good place to draw the line.
How thoroughly debauched, how consumed with hatred, how dishonest does one have to be in order to write a children's book so thoroughly slanted and filled with lies and character assassination? Just imagine the weeping and gnashing of teeth that would ensue if a left-leaning author did something similar. There would be throngs of teabaggers outside the publisher's offices wielding torches and pitchforks...and they might actually have a point. Propaganda, fear, and dishonesty shouldn't be poured into the empty vessels that are our children. When you target children, you're engaging in indoctrination, and there should be no place for that in a democracy. Then again, if you live on the Far Right, you likely have no problem with pumping your hatred, fear, and lunacy into your children. After all, it's only propaganda when Liberals do it, right?
It might actually help (though I don't know how) if DeBrecht and her fellow teabaggers could actually accurately define "Socialism". If they could be bothered to think as opposed to foaming at the mouth in reaction, they might just realize that they don't have a clue as to what Socialism is. They'd realize that no one in Washington, nor anyone in the Obama Administration, is talking about redistributing wealth. No one's talking about centralized ownership of the means of production. DeBrecht clearly has no idea what Socialism really means, only that's it can be effectively employed as a bogeyman and propaganda tool. Unfortunately, she's certainly not above fear-mongering her way through a specious argument designed to poison the minds of children. Again, if this sort of thing had been written by a left-leaning author, the same argument would apply. This is just plain wrong.
In a democracy, children shouldn't be propagandized. Period. Certainly, parents should be able (and have a responsibility) to teach values to their children. Part of teaching those values involves passing along beliefs and even prejudices. We're human, after all, and most parents want their children to think and believe as they do. That part of parenting is understandable. What I find so thoroughly despicable is such a naked and unabashed effort to propagandize and frighten children into believing that government is evil and that those who think differently are worthy only of being destroyed. When we teach children to react instead of thinking critically, we end up with things like Tea Parties, where fear, ignorance, and a mob mentality rules. That hardly bodes well for our collective future.
Yes, ignorance and fear-mongering in the service of a political agenda is a very American phenomenon. As I've often said, free speech can be and quite often is offensive speech. Such is the nature of democracy. There's a line that needs to be drawn, though, and from where I sit that line should be drawn at propagandizing children. To call DeBrecht and her ilk despicable barely does justice to the fear, hatred, and ignorance she peddles in her books. Her latest effort is merely just more bile designed to poison the minds of children. Then again, it's only propaganda when children engage in it, eh??
WE DESERVE BETTER....
