October 03, 2010
Sunday PM

He’s a nice enough looking fellow, this Joe Miller, and speaks with a rigid enthusiasm about the power he wants you to give him, but what he spews is a vicious ugliness that is completely divergent with the reality in this country today. This is not a recession, folks, this is a depression, and while you don’t see it in Ketchikan, or generally that much in Alaska, this is the hardest, most desperate economic time I have seen. There are old people in their 70s on street corners singing for their supper. Every rest stop is filled with beggars, children two to six, and adults of all ages. “Just Hungry,” the sign reads, and it is not a joke. And just so the racists amongst you get it, most of them are white people.

Children with no place to go to school because their parents do not have permanent residences. In the land of plenty the cornstalks grow taller than a man, the oranges fat and juicy, and the sign reads “JUST HUNGRY.” In a matter of weeks the cold weather begins creeping in, and in Joe Miller’s world it is time for these people to starve.

Let us examine more closely the crassness of those who claim to support this man, these self-centered “I’ve got mine” clowns who decry government allocations of any kind, particularly any that might go directly to you or to me. Al Johnson, for example, is a retiree, and as avid an anti-government person as is out there. Hey, Al, have you sworn off your medicare? How about your government retirements, social security and such; have you forsworn them?

Andy Rauwolf has been loudest of the local loud in singing Joe’s praises. Did you have to buy your permits and your boats, Andy, and at some point did you use government funds to do it, or were your permits simply grandfathered to you by the government? It appears to me you owe quite a bit to the government in terms of your livelihood, no matter how you shake it. You fish by government permit; you owe your whole livelihood to the beneficence of the government. Yet you don’t want the government to spend anything on anything, do you? You’ve got yours, courtesy of the government, and that’s good enough, right? So forswear everything the government provides you, and become a pauper. Then I might take seriously your obsession with Joe Miller.

Then there is Richard Easby, another avid supporter of the filth Joe likes to spew. Mr. Easby wishes pain on all those who disagree with him, with particular emphasis on those he considers liberal. I doubt Mr. Easby understands what the word means; anyone who lives in such a tight box as Easby’s has no opportunity to comprehend very much.

These are the people who scream loudest for Joe Miller. None of them are in any sense traditional Republicans. They are various fringe elements of various fringe groups; Easby is an admitted libertarian, whatever that means in his mind; as is Joe Miller. Rauwolf and Johnson simply find it convenient to deny their indebtedness to government for their livelihood, and are thus hypocrites of the worst sort. Good for them, but not for you.

Richard Easby is a concern of a different sort, for he in fact truly wishes pain, and apparently intends to inflict pain directly or indirectly, upon all those who disagree with him, with particular emphasis on liberals. In the land of the free and the home of the brave intolerance reigns supreme in the utterances of the fascist ilk, purveyors of filth preying on your fear.

This autumn marks the beginning of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, and 150 years out the issues of that era are fundamental and seminal to what is occurring now. States rights is the mantra behind which the slaveholders cloaked their misdeeds, and states rights is the mantra behind which the racists of today cloak theirs. It is an ugly fact that the election of a black man as President has exposed the magnitude of the hidden and pervasive racism that yet exists in this country.

Three central themes evolved then are critical to our time: 1) the establishment by 1890 of a continental peace; 2) a developing tolerance of others that led gradually to a full equality of individual rights; and 3) an economic intolerance of monopolies and accumulated or hereditary wealth.

The 120 years of continental peace is a singular and unique achievement, never before accomplished by man on a continental basis. We have fought wars all over the world, but in all that time never have there been hostile marching armies on this soil. The criminal act that was 9-11 is thus peculiarly effective in terms of its consequences. To date its ultimate consequence is to befuddle our minds and empty our wallets, leaving us exposed in the first instance to feeding viciously upon ourselves. For $500,000 and 19 guys look what these bastards have made us do to ourselves. Victory is not in any sense ours; we are in fact getting our asses kicked. Nor is this in military terms alone. Our rare successes are made irrelevant by the insane cost of the endeavor, while in the meantime we seem prepared to sacrifice every one of our values to some perceived external fear.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” are the words of the political philosopher Thomas Jefferson, “that all men are created equal.” But Jefferson the man did not believe that tripe he wrote. Thomas Jefferson was a country squire whose daily routine at Monticello required more than 125 servants and slaves, including those held for his sexual gratification, and welching on almost all of his debts. It was for others during the 1830s, 40s, and 50s to contemplate the true meaning of these words let out of their pandora’s box. It passed to Lincoln and those who succeeded him, and to the suffragettes, to the civil rights marchers, and the peace marchers of more recent decades. By increments we have extended basic rights to men without property, to men regardless of color or race, and, finally, to women.

Now the right wing in this country wants to take it all back. Liberal is bad, liberal is evil, just listen to the harbingers of hate on radio and TV who tell you that; listen to their spew, the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, Hannitys, and O’Reillys, right wing inheritors of the propaganda machinery of that great right winger, Joseph Goebbels. Richard Easby wishes only pain on all those with whom he disagrees; he is a good, reactionary conservative. And Joe Miller wants to be a country squire, the bully boy who controls all the money, deprives you of everything, then, and only then, will tell you what to do, peasant.

Joe Miller is but a single short step from jackboots, brownshirts, and storm troopers. He preys on your weaknesses and your fears, makes you believe that freedom of religion is good for you, but not for them; makes you believe that freedom of speech and of association is good for you, but not for them. He appeals to your intolerance, compels you thereby to deny your own birthright. “These damned ragheads need to go!” yet even Lincoln emphasized making room for them. You either believe it or you don’t. If your minister has become a right wing political moron, telling you each service who to vote for, well, that good old right wing propaganda machine is probably filling your ears with crap pretty much 24 hours a day, to the point you probably believe now there is only one way.

But if there is only one way, your way, it always ultimately boils down to that, there is no need, is there, for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or any of the rest of it? We are all just cookie cutter cut-outs of you, just another drone reacting and responding to everything, just like you. There is nothing patriotic in your one way; nothing whatsoever American in your attitude. You are totalitarian intolerants in whose hands power will become the power to kill everyone who disagrees with you. The right wing, despite its attitude, does not have a right to rule, but it damn sure thinks it does.

Both political parties are completely broken and need to be replaced by new coalitions and combinations. Right wing extremism is not the answer, and all of you will learn soon enough if Gyppo Joe Miller is elected, what a bad mistake you made. A better idea is not to make that mistake at all; we don’t need to send our version of an ayatollah to the U.S. Senate. We don’t need a Senator who wants to so casually and callously starve our fellow citizens, just because he has a certain political point of view. But that is what Gyppo Joe Miller will do.

Inherited or accumulated wealth is what estate taxes are actually intended to prevent. Coined as “death” taxes by the right wing, the true intent is to keep these aspiring right wing “patrones” from establishing such large landed estates that they can get away with calling each other “dukes” and “earls” in public, rather than just behind the closed doors of their private clubs. McMansionville, this bizarre spreading of Jeffersonian mansions on five acre to 500 acre spreads, now runs down through New England, loops past D.C., then south “up” the length of the Shenandoah Valley, before meandering west about half-way across Tennessee on Highways 40 & 64. Somehow a lot of you think these lard asses not paying taxes is somehow going to help you. Would you explain that to yourself first, and then, if successful, please explain it to me. I will not hold my breath waiting.

These are the people Joe Miller really works for, the only people he really wants to represent. He does not give a damned about you. You are just a middle class schmuck, and all he needs from you is your vote. Then he is going to cut you off at the knees. He has already told you that. No social security, no unemployment, no food stamps, no funding for economic development, nothing.

Ted Stevens got your attention by getting you money to do things; Joe’s con is for you to vote for him in order to cut off all your funding , and all of your prospects, so that he can give all the money to his buddies and to himself.Joe thinks he is one of the chosen, but he does not include you in that category.

The simple truth is that Joe Miller’s candidacy is so nuts that by virtue of that very fact the whole political game has changed. This guy’s reactionary BS is so dangerous both to the welfare of this state and to the welfare of this country that the unthinkable has not merely to be thought, but to be acted upon. Cut a deal, and make this a winnable race for someone other than Joe.

David G. Hanger
Ketchikan, AK

Received September 02, 2010 - Published October 03, 2010

Viewpoints - Opinion Letters:

Webmail Your Opinion Letter to the Editor

SitNews ©2010
Stories In The News
Ketchikan, Alaska