Reporting from the 9/12 rally in Washington D.C. this past weekend, Lisa Lebo pries into the unholy alliance of religious fervor and Reaganomics:
It was more than a little disconcerting to be in the heart of this crowd in DC, listening to people speak in the vernacular of Fox News sound bytes about czarism and socialism and fascism and the paranoid religious rants of the impending Armageddon and the One World Order. And then to realize that these people truly believed, passionately, that every word of what they were saying was true.
There are many reasons for this: the astroturf organizations backed by corporate lobbyists who sponsored and organized the event; Glenn Beck and Fox News and the incessant drum beat of their misinformation campaign.
But while this explains the sources of the deception, it doesn’t fully explain the motivation. It doesn’t explain why protesters can argue, for instance, that their Medicare program is somehow a perfect example of free market forces at work, while universal health care is a communist plot to destroy America.
Read the entire article here.