groundhog day

“It’s Groundhog Day, The Movie” all over again. It’s as if the past meant nothing and the future is as far away as the sun, and the present is recoiled, recalled, replayed and no one wants to be reminded.

This country suffered the pangs and pointless ranting of Senator Joseph McCarthy as he “found a red under every bed”. Innocents who felt that America provided for free speech, dissent in thought, sharing of opinions were asked instead, “…are you now or have you ever been a communist”? And under the guise of protecting America Senator McCarthy and his horde of “red hunters” scoured the corners of this nation to notify those who didn’t sing America the Beautiful in the same chord, did not recite the Pledge of Allegiance with the correct intonation, did not adhere to the correct version of the Constitution were enemies of the state.

Now we have a new commie, socialist, anti patriotic gamesman, who has begun to define his America, develop his Mormon check list, his categories of bad guys/gals, and his blackboard filled with fabrications, fallacies and fable, Glenn Beck.

New enemies of the state are now identified with dubious distinction filled with innuendo, gaseous gaps of truth, and tedious tirades of filtered facts, and out of sync lyrics which never seem to fit the movement of the mouth. And they happen for the most part to not look like Glenn Beck, live near Glenn Beck and almost always never read or try to decipher what is real from what is what they hope is real.

Once again those who have an altering opinion who speak for minorities, the poor, the biased are pronounced to be destroyers of the democracy.

Eight years of Republican control in the Congress with a dictatorship duo of Bush and Cheney making the rich richer, the nation an enemy state of its allies, budget deficits loom large, no financial oversight, the end of habeas corpus, a widening wedge of trust between its citizenry, took this country to a frail and frazzled frontier.

Now, America seems to be delighted to retread the Republicans from failures past to rekindle America. They want to bring back the boys who invented “Contract with America”, who promoted Wall Street to go untethered, who pointed out immoral and unethical behaviors of others (while partaking in their own insidious disregard for value, character or conscience actions) and permit them to repeat their double standard hypocritical politics.

‘Newtie’ Gingrich is back in the saddle running for potential presidential aspirations. Dick Armey has returned to promote his version of self serving demagoguery, and Karl Rove is back rewriting history using text from Tales of the Darkside and The Twilight Zone.

The boys from the OK Corral are taking back the streets as they did in the days of the Wild West with their new world view of might is right. The militias of the Revolutionary War era are demanding that we hold another tea party uprising, this time not against the King of England but against an ‘uppity black man’, the American Nazi Party is reliving the grand days of Adolph Hitler and World War II atrocities by going after those pesky illegal’s and wanting to eliminate them from a country created for white folk by white folk, who also happen to be true Christian white folk. And Americans are celebrating individuals who represent the dumbing down of America like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Rick Perry who remind them of the guy they voted for President (George Bush) thinking having a beer with Bush is a great way to elect a leader.

Change is good, and as Americans we need to continue change but in making change why just exchange the past for the present? When do merits, reason, rational become the priority instead of emotion, mirrored images, and immoral display of behavior? Why is this one country where history is permitted to repeat itself?

Groundhog Day is gift that doesn’t give; it just delays the good and replaces it with the same old same old. Stop the madness, please. Let's celebrate a new holiday, one that promotes promise and pride. Please.