Progressive Vs. Regressive: The Right Wing Wants History to Go Backwards

[babylonsister]

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/9580

Progressive Vs. Regressive: The Right Wing Wants History to Go Backwards

By Mark Karlin


The latest right wing psychotic hysteria over Barack Obama's Nobel Prize is part of a broader movement of primitivists who fashion themselves "conservatives" because they can't emotionally cope with progress.

Obama represents the reintegration of America into the international community and an effort to move toward peace, rather than conflict.

Both internationally and domestically, as Gore Vidal once noted, the Republican Party is the political equivalent of advocating death; either in permanent wars or in a desire for a lifestyle that runs counter to the evolutionary progress of America and civilization.

When Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or the GOP politicians repeatedly talk about returning to the world of their childhoods, they are repudiating the historical reality that the history of men and women has been one of evolutionary progress. Our heritage as the human species is to build upon the foundation of those who have come before us.

Perhaps that is why the religious right is so latched onto the concept of Creationism, because with such a worldview life is fixed in a glass bubble from the moment of "Divine creation" to today. There is no history, no advancement, no rational enlightenment, no progress; all is in frozen in the "Divine Word."

Of course, the brownshirt media populists (who are just in it for the big bucks) shill for a less celestial -- although interrelated -- concept of going backwards: they evoke an emotional yearning for a white Christian nation when minorities knew their place, and the male was king.

Ironically, as Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, the right wing Goebbel wannabes of the airwaves stir up a cauldron of atavism and Know-nothingism that puts America farther and farther behind the rest of the world, which is continuing to advance without the hindrance of a Neanderthal populism that seeks the reversal of evolution, the denial of evolution itself. (Just look at "Communist China" and India, who are economicaly, industrially and scientifically moving forward full steam ahead.)

It is sometimes so difficult and terribly painful to realize that a nation that came so far on its innovation, free spirit, scientific exploration, and liberation from the constraints of feudal systems in Europe is now hampered by a segment of its population and a large part of its media that wallow in ignorance and dreams of going backwards.

Barack Obama represents hope to the world that we can once again become a nation of enlightenment and international engagement, if we can ever overcome the disabling distraction of an army of fools egged on by multi-millionaire media demagogues who live the good life while dangerously stirring up the prejudices and fears of their listeners for a past that reverses the course of human history.

[Demeter]

1. The Fearful Can Go Backward--As Long As They Don't Force Me Into It

As they've been doing since 1973, when the ERA, on top of Civil Rights and the Peace Movement, was SOOOOOO threatening, that they had to start the Culture Wars.

[havocmom]

2. For many regressives, the past they yearn for was a delusion too.

Really, what they want is a time/place where their delusions are not so constantly challenged by the ever-changing nature of reality. They want to stop by the Beave's house and find some nice woman there to rub home made cookies on the wounds of their day. Then they want her to disappear in 30 minutes.

[GTurck]

3. Oh so true...

The dream of a little woman in high heels, shirtwaist dress and real pearls doing housework just appeals to those with no connection to reality. LOL

[havocmom]

4. They don't deal with the reality of the 50s, when men were

drunk and women were on Valium (if they were well heeled middle class). But well heeled middle class WHITE was about all that was on the TV. Wingers then couldn't discern the differences between what they saw on TV and in real life.

Their delusional world suffered cracks they were faced with the news evening news. That was when media became (for them) 'the liberal media'. Film of real things like the horrors of war and the civil rights marchers undeterred by fire hoses, cops on horseback, ax handle swinging bigots, and the boys in sheets all invaded their living rooms every evening.

The TV, which had offered up such pretty delusions, suddenly became the harbinger of real world conditions. That was when the wingers seriously started their break with reality. The have been doing what delusional people do ever since: working to convince us that their delusion is reality.

43 was the man for the job of lulling them into believing they had won, so cheney could take the last bit of sweetness out of their Christmas stockings, along with the roast beast for their Who feast. 43 is off their TVs now and reality is creeping back into their delusions. They don't want that to happen. The last thing they are equipped to deal with is reality.

edited for typo

[get the red out]

6. Well written

And all true!!!!!!

[havocmom]

8. Thanks, and I did it before my morning coffee

Maybe I should give up coffee,

Actually, the whole dynamic has been bouncing around in my head for some time: What is their problem with facing reality? I have a theory or two on that basic question, but the HOWs are becoming clearer to me as I poke at the root question.

[GTurck]

10. What we forget...

and so do they is that most wingers today are BOOMERS. Their imagined paradise was their childhood and no child sees the reality of their childhood. I keep getting these nostalgia e-mails on what we used to do without fear and really they are just pure nostalgia because few who send them grew up on farms or in small towns.
It is a sign of maturity to leave behind childish things and to "see through a glass clearly" and it is a sign of their immaturity that the past seems like it was when they were 5 years old.

[annabanana]

12. +1. . "They have been doing what delusional people do,

. . .working to convince us that their delusion is reality. "

You have refined their psychosis to it's most basic element. Very good.

[OHdem10]

5. The Media appear to have made a strategic decision to support

the views of least knowledgeable and put down or ignore
the educated in our country.

This is baffling. I see the problems and issues our country
is facing as so serious, I want people who are better educated
to help us out. I suppose I grew up at time when education
was respected and something we should work to attain. Now
the Media join in dumbing down of America. Do not take this
wrong, please. I support and my social justice issues lie
with Blue Collar Middle Class. We can get information from
all groups. However, when it comes to solving humongous
financial problems, we need to respect people who are more
expert. There is more to solving problems than cutting taxes
or increasing taxes. We need to consider more than knee jerk
emotional reactions. Example: Just because the Teabaggers
emotionally screqm about Stimulus for Banking Industry
Does mean the TeaBaggers are correct. How many of our
polkiticians actually went on TV to explain why this was
necessary and the principles behind it????? No, it is easier
to push the TeaBaggers.

[get the red out]

7. Education = loss of corporate power

We will reject the status quo fomented by the sick marriage of corporate and religious power if we are educated. Bad news for the media conglomerates.

[havocmom]

9. When news units of tv media were told they had to pay for themselves,

it was clearly the beginning of the end of anything vaguely resembling journalism. The media corps got a two-fer. They got more $$ and got more control by controlling the message. That gave them more power in a hurry.

And America lost.

[Doctor_J]

11. Go, Karlin!

I love his editor's opinions. Doing yeoman work for 9 years.