Glenn Beck

If anyone had any doubt about whether or not the GOP has become anti-American, all doubt should now be laid to rest. Rush Limbaugh, the titular head of the Republican Party, slipped into an altered state of bliss after hearing the news that the United States lost its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The man was completely beside himself with glee. God only knows what would have happened if we’d also been attacked —his body fluids would’ve had to be cleaned off the studio floor. I watched the video of Limbaugh’s antics over and over again in total disbelief. It’s literally unbelievable what’s happened to the Republican Party.

While viewing America’s solemn commemoration of the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, I began to reflect upon its many ironies. The very first thing that came to mind was Dick Cheney’s claim that the Bush administration’s policies in response to 9/11 has kept America safe but how can that be? When one looks upon the trauma anger, and pain still etched upon the face of America eight years after the loss of 3,000 of its citizens, one can only imagine what the Iraqi people are feeling after the documented murder by name of over 101,552 innocent men, women, and Iraqi children.

It’s become increasingly obvious that simply taking away control of Congress from the GOP wasn’t quite good enough to disengage the corpo-congressional alliance. Self-service has now become an entrenched way of life for politicians of both parties, so the only way the American people are going to ever get the kind of representation we deserve is to do a complete housecleaning of the old congressional guard, both Democrat and Republican, in both houses of Congress.

I dreamed that I opened my eyes one morning and all of America was wide awake. I could hear the echoes of the Bush/Cheney consortium desperately proclaiming their innocence from deep within the Hague, but the world had long since stopped listening. I dreamed that Rush, O’Reilly, and FOX News had imploded into a metaphor for latter-day McCarthyism, and the phrase corpo-congressional alliance was a new vulgarity that had become a part of the American lexicon.

The old guard in the U.S. is represented by such people as Former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The current situation in Iran is perfectly analogous to what’s going on here in the United States. The vast majority of the people want a common-sense approach to domestic and world politics, while the old guard, stuck in the blind animosities of the past, are determined to promote and exploit those animosities for their own end, and at any cost—including the misery and death of their own people. In Iran the old guard is represented by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; in the U.S., Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. In Iran, they are called jihadist, while in the U.S. we refer to them as the Republican Party.

Dick Cheney argues that America should be willing to forgo our ideals, the dignity of others, and the freedom of personal privacy to remain safe from terrorism.

In less than two generations we’ve gone from citizens who were politically engaged and socially aware, to zombies who simply accept what we’re being told by our favorite demagogues. We’ve gone from citizens who hold our politicians’ feet to the fire, to a group of cattle who allow our politicians to dictate what is, and what isn’t, off the table—in spite of our instinctive clamor the simple adherence to the law. We’ve allowed politicians to go from representatives with the single mandate of do our biding, to so-called leaders who dictate to us what’s in our best interest.