SHOULD PEOPLE RECEIVING ENTITLEMENTS BE ALLOWED TO VOTE?
- Billboard along I-5 outside Chehalis, WA
On our way to a wedding in eastern Washington last weekend, I ran across this question on a billboard along northbound I-5 just south of Chehalis, WA. The billboard (and it’s accompanying Right-wing silliness) has been along the freeway for years now, and the questions posted on it are normally as forgettable as they are astonishingly brain-dead. I normally fly by at 70 MPH and marvel at the reality that anyone with a low-double-digit IQ and a few bucks can put up a billboard…but then such is the nature of free speech, no? Why engender debate about real issues when you can pose questions designed to inflame those who, if brains were dynamite, couldn’t blow their nose?
This time, I found myself pondering the question, not because I thought it was legitimate, but because I was astonished at the arrogance and world-class ignorance behind it. Something tells me that there’s a good chance that the person behind the billboard (and I have no idea who it might be) is on Social Security, Medicare…or something else that might be considered, or, I don’t know…an entitlement? Perhaps a military pension (Joint Base Lewis-McChord is just down the road) or a monthly disability stipend? Of course, it’s an “entitlement” when someone else gets it; when you get it, it’s “income.”
This reminds me an episode of Michael Moore’s “TV Nation” from back in the ’90s. In one episode, he was talking to people in Atlanta who railed against the evils and excesses of government and it’s profligate ways…as they eagerly enjoyed the benefits and largesse of said profligate spending. It seems that some folks just don’t have the intellectual agility (or honesty) to recognize when government is providing a service they’re benefitting from (“Keep government out of my Medicare!!”). Evidently, roads, bridges, and Social Security just magically appear out of thin air…because we’re Americans; ergo, we deserve such things. Welcome to Tea Party Amerika, where facts and reality are useful only insofar as they support what you want to believe. It’s like listening to people talk about the “Good Ol’ Days”, when you know damn well that those days exist only in their imaginations, because the reality was nothing close to the fantasies they’ve constructed.
Winston Churchill once said that he refused to have a battle with an unarmed opponent, which I think is a wise approach in general. The problem with America these days, though, is that those unarmed opponents think they deserve to be able to have complete control over the political process. Through their bullying, their refusal to consider any views but their own, and their complete ignorance of inconvenient facts and truth, politics in Washington has devolved into a zero-sum game. No longer is politics the art of the possible (apologies to the late Tip O’Neill); politics is now about brute force, kill-or-be-killed. Sadly, the people doing the brutalizing and killing (metaphorically speaking) shouldn’t be trusted to run a Dairy Queen, much less the government of the most powerful country on the planet.
I’ve said many times that the nature of free speech is that it can be, and too often is, ignorant, offensive and/or objectionable speech. That’s the nature of a functional democracy. The test of our democracy will undoubtedly lie in whether or not we can triumph over the ignorance and the reaction in time to allow the adults to regain control over the process. I find it difficult to be confident sometimes, but this isn’t the first time in our history that the forces of ignorance and reaction have jumped to the front of the line (Prohibition, anyone??). Somehow, America seems to find a way to right the ship; all I have is the hope that we possess the wherewithal and the strength to do it again. If not, I fear that we may well come to resemble the set from Idiocracy.
To paraphrase Woody Allen, to the left lies mediocrity, ineptitude, and self-delusion; to the right, complete and utter destruction and desolation. Let us hope that we’ll choose wisely….
