No noose is good noose

I’m thinking of that delicious exchange as I read the Washington Post story about its own poll on the attitudes of the
most adamant opponents of healthcare reform: the Tea Partiers and their ilk.

They believe the just-passed legislation is symptomatic of an overall decline
in the United States. They are convinced we are in a free-fall, losing our
freedoms to government control.

They mourn the glories of the nation’s past. The Post quotes one poll respondent talking about the happy
days of his youth: “I grew up in the ’50s,” he said. “That was a
wonderful time. Nobody was getting rich, nobody was doing everything big. But
it was ‘Ozzie and Harriet,’ ‘Leave it to Beaver’-type stuff.”

All I can think of is Richard Pryor interrupting with “And lynching.”

It is no accident that the overwhelming majority of the arch-conservatives in
this country are white (full disclosure: So am I). Frankly, they/we have lost
some of the automatic advantage we had a generation ago, before the wars for
equality and fairness had begun.

Speaking of fairness, it should be noted that Pryor is useful to this
conversation, because he literally went up in the flames of drug abuse. So he
also symbolizes the excesses that accompanied the progress we’ve made.

That there has been progress is indisputable, as much as that riles those who
cling to their faulty memories. We have made obvious huge strides in overcoming
racial bigotry; at least many of us have. No longer are women kept prisoner in
the home. They work, are expected to. And maybe soon they can also expect equal
pay as we finally shatter that damnable glass ceiling.

The positive change is obvious and it scares the daylights of those who are
overwhelmed by it and scared out of their half-wits.

To be sure, they have good reason to be angry — we all do — but it’s important
to direct our fury at the right targets. Most of us, whatever color, gender,
lifestyle … MOST of us have the same enemies.

That would be the unscrupulous bandits who have been able to take the money and
resources that are rightfully our own and slip them away from us. Then they use
a little of those gains to hold power over their junior partners in politics
and government to make sure there’s no protection against them.

They get away with preventing common-sense regulation and true reform — as in
healthcare — by sowing confusion and pushing word buttons like
“socialism” and “bureaucrat” that send the gullible
millions scurrying to their ramparts. By doing so, they succeed in dividing us
natural allies against each other.

That’s how they get to keep their ill-gotten gains, our ill-taken losses. We
are confused into fighting among ourselves about the “good old days”
that were, in many ways, really bad old days.

If we are going to finally do something about the bad NEW days, we will need to
overcome the insidious distractions of those who benefit if we stay divided.
It’s time to focus on what we have in common.

Benjamin Franklin’s words from the really old days still hold true: “We
must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Visit Mr. Franken’s website at www.bobfranken.tv.