The Character of American Right

Many right-wingers saw Obama's rescuing American car manufacturers as a government attempt to take over the economy. They were lying as usual. Chrysler is back from bankruptcy and is again offering its shares on Wall Street. And both Ford and General Motors are posting strong gains.

The issue does not however end there. There is a much bigger issue involved, and that is as follows: The character of American Right. They are continuously making up fraudulent claims and passing them off as the word of God or as American patriotism. Instead they have shown themselves to be the most deceitful, opportunistic and malicious interest in the country. And it is outrageous that people like that should claim themselves to possess values or character or to be true Americans.

In the first four years of the Obama administration, the Senate Republicans have used the filibuster over 400 times. The filibuster is a Senate rule that allows a minority of 40 Senators to block legislation. These people have no agenda except this: To nullify this administration. When the same people are threatening a government shutdown, they are practicing nothing less than treason; and their actions have to be known and understood as such.

These of course are the same people who were behind the Bush administration. The Obama administration ran large deficits in its first term because they had to rescue the economy from a freefall; but the Bush administration had no such excuse. They destroyed the fiscal sanity achieved painstakingly under the Clinton administration and ladened the government with debt before there was any need for it and when there was not any. The boomers were not retiring under the Bush administration; they are retiring now. And the substance of Bush policies has been to bankrupt the government when there was no need for substantial government spending and before there was a need for it.

One ridiculous claim to have come from American Right is that Bush and the Congress when he was president were really liberals because they ran large deficits. Um, no; Bush was a conservative Republican, and he had a Republican Congress for most of his administration. The big deficits started with Reagan, continued under Bush Sr., and were only addressed seriously by the Clinton administration. Which administration, lest it be forgotten, gave America its greatest time of peace and prosperity.

Another ridiculous claim to have come from American Right is that global warming is a conspiracy or a hoax. Global warming was known to both American and Soviet scientists as early as 1950s. There is no possibility of this being a conspiracy or a hoax, because America and the Soviet Union were enemies, and enemies do not conspire with each other. This year (2013) may not register an increase in temperature because of the temperature-reducing effects of the Fukoshima nuclear disaster; but the hottest years in known history were in the last decade, and this will continue to happen as the effects of the nuclear disaster wear off.

Then there's the claim that Obamacare is an attempt to destroy American economy. That is absolutely not the case. This legislation has been put into effect because American people - including the middle class and even some of the wealthier people - can no longer afford the runaway costs of medicine. There were all sorts of Republican proposals to counter Obamacare; but the question to ask is, Where were those proposals before? For decades Republicans insisted that there was no problem with America's medical system. Then Obamacare passes, and there are all these counter-proposals. Where were they before? Nowhere. That is because the Republicans do not care about American people and care only about their own political gain.

Clinton is quite popular now in America, and there is a reason for it. American people remember how good economy was at the time, and they also recognize him as a leader who was effective at negotiating workable policies and making things work across all levels of society. Bush replaced this accomplishment with the cowboy ways of doing things that failed miserably at all levels. And Obama has had to pick up the pieces and make do in a very - and needlessly - miserable time.

There is an ongoing improvement in American economy; and as this goes on the deficit will abate. But it is important to understand why it was there in the first place. Bush bankrupted both the government and the economy; and it took a vast amount of outlays to fix the damage. This damage should not have been done in the first place; but it was. And only now are we seeing America beginning to recover from that damage.

What have Republicans been doing all this time? As usual, spouting lies and conspiracy theories. That is their specialty; that is what one stands to expect from them. But let us not be deceived enough to buy into their central claims. They claim to have character and values, when they are practicing conmanship, deception, paranoia and conspiracy theory fabrication. They claim to have America's interests at heart even as they bankrupt America. They claim to be American patriots even as they put America in its worst position since Great Depression - and as they are now threatening to shut down the elected government in order to keep the American people from having access to affordable medicine.

Whoever the good people in America are, they are not its right-wingers. Whoever the honest people in America are, they are not its right-wingers either. And whoever has values and character in America, is most certainly not the American Right. There are some good people on the American Right who are simply deceived; and to them I have this to say: Exercise better discretion.

If they do that, they will be less likely to fall for conmen and more likely to elect leaders that actually practice the values they claim to have.