I held my fire in response to the rally held at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday. Glenn Beck the Fox News ultra conservative pundit and fearmonger extraordinaire organized the rally in Washington to give a big "shout out" to God. Beck is convinced that President Barack Obama hates white folk, and, lo and behold, it was white folk in the tens of thousands who gathered at the memorial for a prayer meeting/call to patriotism, which also featured a speech by Sarah Palin. On Saturday I wanted to entitle this blog "Dumb and Dumber" but that would have been uncharitable.
There is nothing wrong with an invitation for people to make God part of their lives, and freedom of expression in necessary in a democracy. What seems clear is that there is a constituency in the U.S. that is nostalgic for a day that never existed. A day when everyone prayed and loved Jesus, and only Jesus. A day when black people knew their place and didn't expect to be president.
A day when there weren't so many taxes and none of those "communist" notions about governments feeding the poor and making sure they had healthcare as well. Wait a minute, carng for the poor and the sick sounds like Jesus, but lets not worry about what Jesus actually said.
Saturday was the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, and while the location of that civil rights rally and Glenn Beck's rally were the same the dream is very different.
Did you pay attention to what happened Saturday? Any thoughts?
2 comments:
David...I have passed your 'blog' on (sadly not to the people I would most like to read it - a "pass the potatoes moment I fear)
You are so right. Glenn Beck scares me. There is a portion of society that make their decisions and base their faith on fear. These people know it and know how to manipulate it.
If I had a prayer for this it would be that people would make their decisions based on fact and not on fear.
Sigh.......
You're so right about fear Lynn. What happened to "perfect love casts out fear?" Our religion is still Christ-ianity, not Fear-ianity. isn't it?
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