America The Divided

Like a lot of you , I knew about the two rallies in Washington, DC on Saturday... I even watched a little of both on webcasts. I saw Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's rally, heard them invoke the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and heard them talk about patriotism and how we need to support our men and women in uniform. I also saw Rev. Al Sharpton's counter march and heard him tell supporters, "Don't drink the tea!" (One of those phrases I wish I had coined!), and just held my head in sorrow.

One march, mostly made up of White people and a few Blacks, who's real agenda is to thwart this president; and another march with mostly Blacks and a few Whites, who probably support the president, but are definitely against the people in the other march. I was struck with a wave of sadness because all of these people... all of these American citizens... all opposed to the other American citizens for ideological and racial reasons... when there is so much work to be done to straighten out America! Yes, it saddens me.

You've got the 6% or less of the population that has all of the wealth, that truly owns everything there is, and their political mouthpeice that wants to suck this country dry of all of it's resources. And then, thereis the 94% of us... regardless of race, national origin, gender, or what have you... that have to work for a living. The sad thing is, the wealthy 6% have been able to sucessfully convince quite a few people... people, mind you, who aren't part of that 6%... that they have a common ground. This in-and-of itself is a stroke of genius.

It's done by using racism, classism, sexism, and any ol' kinda "ism" that divides people. Us against them... Black against White, straight against gay, man against woman, true ''Americans"against immigrants... and anything else that can be used to divide people is being used. It never fails... hasn't failed yet! If all of these people... the Tea Party folks, a lot of whom have little more than me (if not less), could see beyond their blind racism and xenophobia, they'd understand that they are being played.

I heard a couple of them talk about how they didn't have health care, but they didn't want the "government" telling them what kind of health care to get. Could anything be more stupid? They've accused the president of "wasteful spending"... but had he not bailed out the auto industry and Banks, can you imagine how bad things would be right now? I mean things are still bad, but they would most certainly be worse. When he initiated financial reform to stop banks and credit cards from ripping off the consumers, didn't that effect them too?

How stupid are these people? Do they really think that our little adventure in Iraq actually made America or anyone else safer? This is the fantasy that the mouthpeices of the wealthy feed certain gullible people in our populace... and a number of them, fueled by racism, etc., always buy it hook, line, and sinker. If we all could pause a minute and really take a look at things the way they are, how different America could be. What frightens the 6% the most is the thought of all of the people coming together... that's the last thing they would ever want. An aware, educated, and informed American public.

That's why they feed you with so many so-called "reality shows" and other non-sense that didn't used to make the front page of responsible newspapers and magazines. They want this country to be divided. Actually, this country has always been divided. It's always been them against us and us against them. I guess it's just human nature. On a day when we should have been honoring something Dr. King did 47 years ago, the American people... all of the American people... made a damn mockery of it! And for that, I'm very sad.