Back in the days of the Summer of Love, flower power, bellbottoms and the anti-establishment crowd that muddied Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York, our government was notorious for labeling so-called “dangerous” individuals as communists and/or socialists.
Fast forward to 2012 and it’s a different story, of course.
Nowadays, it’s the other way around, with a surprisingly (and depressingly) large percentage of Americans pointing their collective finger at those currently in power – particularly our so-called socialist president – as misguided as those doing the pointing may be.
I’m sorry, but far too many of these individuals are the same people who continue to believe our commander in chief was born overseas, is a Muslim and was put in power by an unnamed, mysterious and malevolent, Big Brother-type conspiracy bent on world control.
You know who you are.
Regardless, I must say I find it amusing that – even as our ability to communicate on a global level, with the click of a mouse – continues to increase, so too does our (at times misplaced) dependence on today’s technological marvels and gadgets. That being the case, however, it’s frustrating just how often your average person tends to unconditionally rely upon the almighty Internet for information, even though they know (or should know) that you can’t always believe what you read.
The same can be said of your typical “news” source in this day and age, as well, considering the biased nature of many (not-so-secretly) politically slanted (and funded), 24-hour cable news networks.
Not that I’m going to name any names here.
John Lennon – of Beatles fame – said it best, I think, when he called our society one that is “run by insane people for insane objectives.”
He went on to state that “we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what insane is all about.”
Such insanity, however, is no longer perpetrated by a paranoid, tight-fisted and tragically un-hip group of politicians, but is generated instead through the use of misinformation and outright lies, often based on racism, bias and – sadly – greed.
All Lennon really wanted was peace, after all, and for that he was considered a danger to the American way of life and labeled a communist. And while such a label seems fairly ridiculous looking back – decades later – it’s important to remember just how far we’ve come (or regressed, depending on your point of view) since the days of the Red Scare and the Vietnam War.
Then again, these days we have our struggling economy (blame Obama!), the threat presented by an ever-growing Chinese superpower (blame Obama!), climate change (blame Obama!), terrorists around the globe (blame Obama!) and – of course – government mandated birth control (blame Obama!).
Said Lennon, “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
Amen to that.

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