The Meanest Generation, Part One

How We Got to This Point

Beginning with the Moral Majority and other groups during the Reagan years, Evangelical and Charismatic Christian groups became important voting blocks and advocacy groups for pet issues from anti-abortion, anti-gay, "family issues," and a return to a fundamental Christian interpretation of the Bible. They found a powerful home in the Republican Party, and created a strong grassroots campaign to take over school boards, local politics, state legislatures, and to find, promote, and pressure conservative members of Congress in an effort to increase their view of America's identity. They suffered a setback during the Clinton first term, but found new friends and energy following Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America."

Now that the conservative wing of the Republican Party controls the executive branch, and both houses of Congress, not to mention inroads into the makeup of our federal judiciary, the pet issues of these folks are being pushed into the public eye in spite of many more demanding issues, from domestic economic problems, personal freedoms, and foreign policy decisions. They believe this is their time to call in all of their favors.

Compound this powerful force with the decade and a half struggle of the NeoCon and PNAC's agenda for preemptive war and a Grand Gamble to impose democracy, American style, across the world, and we find a hornet's nest of divisive domestic battles and reckless foreign policy run more by the Defense Department than the State Department. In effect, we have squandered all of the good will of the world following September 11th in favor of pre-conceived notions born long before that tragedy. As the world watched on in horror, this fusion of Charismatics and NeoCons rammed their beliefs down the public's throat, calling anyone who disagreed unpatriotic, even anti-American, and succeeded in branding anyone who disagreed with them as liberal, almost communist traitors to their own country. While this branding took hold via cable snewz channels and conservative newspapers, the mainstream media seemed to lay down, repeating the propaganda they'd been spoonfed by these folks, lazily regurgitating the unfounded claims of radical right attitudes to our country and the world in general.

So much of what we were told before the Iraq War has been found to be untrue, outright lies, deception, and the abuse of our armed services for purposes of fulfilling untested concepts by the same people (Cheney, Powell, and others) who had all the experience of the first Gulf War, that the depth of betrayal by these folks in power is both unprecedented and reckless to the point of abuse we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.

And the saddest thing about it all?

WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER
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What lessons were unlearned?

Vietnam

Watergate

CIA Abuses revealed in the 1970's

Garnering the union vote, then squashing PATCO

The Savings & Loan collapse

The massive foreclosure of family farms

Outdated, impossible, bloated defense programs

Undoing the surplus of the Clinton years

Corporate and Investment Bank abuse unseen since the early 20th century

Cutting taxes on the rich during wartime, a first in the history of civilization

Going to war with Iraq in the face of its weakness, division into three parts, with no-fly zones and sanctions.
A country with no air force. A country obviously not in a position to invade neighboring countries. A secular dictatorship, yet a sovereign nation. Why not North Korea? Oops - they've got nukes and a huge army. Why not Iran? Gosh, they'd been demonstrating that young people were desperate for reform, but their mullahs and battle-tested army posed a problem.

The list goes on and on, but the bottom line is that today's leaders lived through all of these lessons, and yet decided not to take them into consideration, opting instead to ram their agenda through, squashing any debate, calling the UN irrelevant, calling France and Germany "Old Europe," and alienating tens of millions around the world who had uniquely demonstrated against the war BEFORE the war ever got off the ground. They should've known better, but it seems they couldn't care less.

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What can be done to stop these folks from doing any more damage? To slow their imperial desires and begin to rebuild our diplomatic corps, working through the next generation to repair America's reputation across the world? That's the subject of part two of "The Meanest Generation." Please watch for an email alert when part two has been completed. Until then, keep your fingers crossed and your eyes open. Perhaps it's not too late to begin unraveling this insane steamroller we're all blamed for creating (as far as the world is concerned), and work towards building our next generation of leaders inspired to bring America back into the community of nations as an honest broker, involved in improving the lot of lesser nations, believing in the interdependence of all countries, and sensitive to the needs of others. I believe it's our only hope for any positive, mutual existence with this diverse yet polarized world we've created in three short years of arrogant, short-sighted, cold war cloning thanks to BoyGeorge, The Dick, and all their buddies seemingly unconcerned with the thoughtful opinions of anyone who dares disagree with their view of the "New American Century."