Fast-forward to the next morning: I'm watching the news, and the coverage inevitably turns to one of the latest rallies of the so-called "Tea Party" movement ... and to my incredulity, I see at least one crudely fashioned sign comparing President Barack Obama to none other than German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. I know I'd seen these ludicrous signs before, but seeing such a spectacle so closely juxtaposed to an American teenager's (one whose hometown is in relatively close proximity to mine, in fact) unscripted visit to an actual Nazi concentration camp, you can probably understand how acutely it pissed me off this time.
You don't need to be a world-renowned historian to see that there's a majorly big-ass difference between a ruthless, anti-semitic, megalomaniacal dictator who engages in systematic genocide ... and a democratic president who wants to get decent health care to as many of his citizens as possible. I don't know about y'all, but I'm a big fan of using actual well-researched facts and reasonable comparison and contrast to get a point across. I can't help it, I'm just funny that way. These "Tea Party" twits are getting on my nerves big-time, because their ignorance on every level -- from their tendency to make a statement with what is clearly a minimal grasp of the facts, to the "creative" spelling and grammar on the signs they tote around -- are giving the rest of us Americans a bad name. Their sign-making skills are inept, their analogies are inapt, and their rhetoric is just plain annoying.
Maybe it's the way that American pop-culture has cultivated a distorted perspective of "larger-than-life" people, places, things, and events, that has made even the average blue-collar American feel the need to grotesquely sensationalize and exaggerate damn near everything. People are upset with how grossly inefficient the federal government has become ... I totally get that. But to off-handedly equate someone to the mastermind behind The Holocaust -- especially when their "dastardly deeds" pale in comparison -- is to trivialize the suffering that every one of its victims endured. As much of a pacifist as I am, I find myself wishing that people like that, who would toss names like Hitler around as though they were beach balls, could spend two or three days in Dachau or Auschwitz, just to get an idea of what the name Adolf Hitler really means.
Whether or not you agree with any of President Obama's policies, plans, or reforms is beside the point. We just need to stop crying out "Hitler", "Communist", "Fascist", or any of the other miles-off-target snipes, especially if we haven't yet done our homework about said policies and we don't have any better ideas ourselves. It's reckless, and it only adds to the noise instead of fostering constructive argument. I remember hearing somewhere not too long ago (I think it was during the whole controversy regarding the depiction of Mohammed in a political cartoon) that exercising free speech just because we can is an abuse of that privilege. I couldn't agree more.
And while we're at it, let's please stop blaming Obama for all of America's current ills, 'cause doing so is kind-of like blaming the current CEO of Ford for the condition your 1979 Pinto is in after three decades of wear and tear -- it's pointless, illogical, and dumb. It took decades of abuse and neglect for America to get into the mess it's in now, and it's going to take decades of rethinking and retooling to dig us out. Some of the President's decisions might not make sense, and some of them might possibly hurt more than they help (at least at first), but something's gotta be done. We can't "leave well enough alone", because things aren't "well enough" ... not by a longshot.
But instead of getting more and more upset at those knuckleheads at their "Tea Parties", I just have to laugh at them ... especially when they throw the spotlight on their ignorance with dandy hand-crap-ted signs like these ... enjoy!
