By SJWNY, a Trail Mix Contributor
Lately events have me thinking about a Special Comment Keith Olbermann gave in late October, 2010, just before the midterm elections. Remember then? The Tea Party had arisen & was fielding candidates.
Going back over Mr Olbermann’s (incredibly) prophetic words I couldn’t help but think how they apply today. The following is taken from “If the Tea Party Wins, America Loses” & appeared on Countdown. Read, heed, remember.
It is as if a group of moderately talented performers has walked on stage at a comedy club on Improv night. Each hears a shout from the audience, consisting of a bizarre but just barely plausible fear or hatred or neurosis or prejudice …
… And the instructions are not to improvise a comedy sketch, but to elect a group of unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told, in exchange for money and power, and march this nation as far backward as they can get, backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the ’30s, or backward to hanging union organizers, or backward to the Trusts and the Robber Barons …
… You are willing to let these people run this country? This is the America you want? This is the America you are willing to permit? These are the kind of cranks, menaces, mercenaries and authoritarians you will turn this country over to?
If you sit there next Tuesday and let this happen, whose fault will that be? Not really theirs. They are taught that freedom is to be seized and rationed. They can sleep at night having advanced themselves and their puppeteers and to hell with everybody else.
They see the greatness of America not in its people but in its corporations. They see the success of America not in hard work but in business swindles. They see the worthiness of America not in its quality of life but in its quality of investing. They see the future of America not in progress, but in revolution to establish a theocracy for white males, with dissent caged and individuality suppressed.
They see America not for what it is, nor what it can be. They see delusions, specters, fantasies; they see communists under every bed and a gun in every hand. They see tax breaks for the rich and delayed retirement for everyone else. They fight the redistribution of wealth not because they oppose redistribution, but because their sole purpose is to protect wealth and keep it where they think it belongs – in the bank accounts of the wealthy.
They want to make the world safe for Bernie Madoff. But you know better. If you sit there next Tuesday – if you sit there tomorrow, and the rest of this week – and you let this cataclysm unfold, you have enabled this.
It is one thing to be attacked by those who would destroy America from without. It is a worse thing to be attacked by those who would destroy America from within.
But it is the worst thing to sit back and let it happen, to not find the time and the means to convince just one other sane voter to put aside the disappointment of the last two years and look to the future and vote …
This is the week in which the Three Card Monte dealers hope to take over the government – the candidates who want their own way, who will say anything to make palatable their real identities as agents of regression, repression and corporate sovereignty. They are here, they have energized the self-serving and the greedy and the proudly ill-informed.
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Those words were written almost seven years ago.
Wow.
The story takes place in 1914-15 France. Paul Verin (Claude Rains) is a writer, specifically about politics. He is a Pacifist. He is also poor & married to Adele (Joan Bennett gone blonde, as wooden & stilted an actress as ever, totally miscast. Her scenes drag. Just talking truth here.) Adele wants to ditch their town & move to Paris. The couple has a daughter, Linette (played by Baby Jane, real name: Juanita Quigley.)