Ben Carson and Donald Trump requested, and received, taxpayer-funded secret service protection during their campaigns. Like the rest of the Republican presidential field, bashing “big government” comes easy — as easy as taking taxpayer dollars when they don’t want to dig into their own fat wallets to take care of themselves, and as easy as it is to eek unfathomable amounts of taxpayer dollars to fight wars that make campaign donors like Blackwater, General Electric, Koch Industries, and their shareholders even fatter cats.
A swathe of the American public embraces conservative double-talk and fear-mongering like second skin — not surprising on a diet of Fox News and right-wing radio. After all, the goal and coup of corporate-owned media is providing bellicose infotainment 24/7 that incites fear, because, as history shows, a fearful public is a malleable one. That neither science nor the real world substantiates those delusions appears to be meaningless.
A growing number of Americans are hyper afraid of any number of boogie men. They believe that the comfortable lives they lead are so fraught with danger they need multiple AK 47s in their closet to be safe – afraid that without them, they won’t be “free.” They’re so afraid they forget to think about who’s telling them how to think and why, or to imagine how much better their world might be if they let go of that anger and fear.
They forget that freedom means more than owning guns. They forget that their parents and grandparents, or maybe even themselves, were immigrants, many of whom were persecuted or reviled, depending upon the decade (i.e., native American, Japanese, Jewish, Mexican …). They’re afraid enough that they’ll give up their deepest freedoms of privacy, speech, public education, press, and more in hopes that a billionaire-controlled, militarized government will give a hoot about their lives.
But conservatives aren’t afraid of everything. Many aren’t afraid of their guns accidentally killing their children or making it easier for a loved one to take their own life (or their dog to accidentally shoot them in foot. True story.); or of global warming; or of having their “one person, one vote” government bought by billionaires and corporations; or of “trickle-down” economics that President George H.W. Bush called “voodoo;” or of losing Social Security and other time-honored safety nets to privatized, corporate schemes; or of spending the lion’s share of our nation’s wealth on weaponry instead of top-knotch public education and universal health care.
If anyone is “stealing” this country, it’s corporations and other mega-bucks special interests who are buying candidates of both parties and convincing Americans that there’s nothing an individual can do to turn things around or strengthen our democracy; that God only loves people of one faith; that women are inferior and shouldn’t have control over their bodies and health; that public parks aren’t worth the land they’re sitting on; that a government-supported health program that’s providing stability for fellow citizens, including mom and pop small businesses, isn’t working; and that your voice and vote don’t count.
Though I don’t always agree with him, our president is intelligent, measured in his response to the ills of our world, and able to relate to the challenges of everyday lives while navigating huge, sometimes insurmountable, political realities — a leader who clearly wants to pr otect his and all children from dying in useless wars or the ravages of climate change. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates fuel dangerous fires with their hyperbolic rhetoric and hair-brain schemes.
If you, like the majority of Americans, don’t buy into the extreme right’s twisted logic, you must act now to defend the truth and whatever else you see as being critical to a free, democratic society. Instead of joking or moaning about how crazy it is that Trump could become president, register to vote (online at http://elections.hawaii.gov/). Volunteer to register others. Vote in the upcoming primary and general elections. Volunteer to work on a campaign. Call your Congressional representatives to tell them to protect the Affordable Health Care Act, Clean Air and Endangered Species Acts, and Social Security — all currently under corporate, right-wing threat. Tell them to support lowering student debt, aiding refugees, ending homelessness and economic disparity, keeping our nation safe without war, improving public schools, and, maybe most important of all, overturning Citizens United (aka removing special interest money from elections) at http://endcitizensunited.org/.
Just like the human body, democracy needs excercise. Use it, or lose it.
Janice Palma-Glennie is a resident of Kailua-Kona
My Turn opinions are those of the writer and not of West Hawaii Today