Dr. Forbush Thinks

Republicans are looking for anything that they can to discredit Democrats. They are lifting up rocks in an effort to find anything at all. And, they have hung their collective hats on the politicization of the Coretta Scott King funeral. They have done this because they believe that they won points when they did the same thing in Minnesota at the Paul Wellstone funeral in 2002.

But, these people were political people and they spent their lives fighting political issues. Isn’t this what they wanted their lives to be about? Well, Republicans argue that this isn’t appropriate at a funeral. However, at Ronald Reagan’s funeral we had a different type of politicization. Instead of speaking out about the triumphs of a political movement on particular issues we had Ronald Reagan’s version of morning in America. Who could argue that that wasn’t a political message?

Politics is about what a person believes and how that person works with the tools that they are given to accomplish those political goals. Ronald Reagan used an illusion of what many people believed that they wanted to see in our country in an effort to acquire power for the Republican Party. That power wasn’t used for all Americans, but for a select group of Americans. The smoke and mirrors deception worked so well that it has been expanded in the Bush administration. Giving the people the illusion that they want is politics and it was done at the Reagan funeral. Being honest about your goals and achievements is just as political and it is what was done at both Paul Wellstone’s and Coretta Scott King’s funerals.

In my opinion both groups should feel proud of what they did. They recognized the lives of these great politicians. And, politicians do things that are political. But, when a group tries to shame another group for being political, they need to look in the mirror. The act of the accusation is political in itself. It is a shame that the Democrats don’t make a point of this. But the Americans people don’t understand complex issues very easily. And efforts that are twice removed become too complex for the average American. The only way to fix this is to fix America’s education system by asking people to think about ever more complex issues. But, since that isn’t going to happen any time soon we will just need to do our best to point out the hypocrisy of the Republicans, on the less complex issues.

For Example, in the last 24 hours, we've seen troubling reports that Dick Cheney directed "Scooter" Libby to release classified information to discredit critics of the war in Iraq...we've heard hard-to-ignore accusations from a former top CIA official that the White House "cherry picked" intelligence to make the case for war...and we've received stunning evidence that the president sat on his hands and did nothing for 12 hours after the White House had been informed that the levees broke in New Orleans.

When will the American people wake up?








Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, and BlogSpot



Politics