Action And Reaction

Isaac Newton’s third law of motion….
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

True in physics and politics as well. The push-back against healthcare reform reveals the Republicans as classic Reactionaries.

The word came into use describing defenders of the Bourbon monarchy and authority of the Pope against the French revolutionaries. They argued for the restoration of the old order. In the 20th century Reactionaries were the pro-fascist elements leading up to WW II.

The current Conservative rhetoric has the same rancid smell marked by repetitive lies, demonizing of opponents and instilling fear and dread in the public imagination.

These people must have had mothers who never taught them how to be gracious losers.

Consistent with their opposition to every piece of social reform from woman’s suffrage to popular election of senators to anti-trust laws, graduated income tax, rights to collective bargaining, Social Security, Medicare and Civil Rights they have earned their proper name, Reactionaries.

They offer nothing except to stop the clock of progress. Reactionaries are the palace guard protecting the privileged be it the emperor or corporate self-serving agenda. Greed has been alchemized into a virtue and compassion branded as coddling.

They wrote the playbook; a compendium of grand deception at high decibels. They are very practiced at the art and seem to have already won the war of rhetoric. With their finger on the pulse of inchoate rage they have tapped into the loathing of an uninformed electorate. Certain code words are understood to incite racial tensions.

The beast in America has been un-caged snarling, spitting and spewing hatred at every turn. These are the functionally deaf among us for whom reasoned conversation is outside their audible range. One can only conclude that they are either pathological racists or just nitwits incapable of directing the source of their woe begotten existence.

If Barack Obama’s name was Rocky Alabama and he looked like Joe the Plummer much of the vitriol would go away. It may well be that all the rancor is the rant of a lynch mob, noose at the ready.

When will civility return to our national discourse? When will the slumbering underserved population align themselves with a government ready to reach out?