U.S. vs. U.S.

There are only a few weeks to the midterm elections, and some citizen action groups have divided the country. Americans will go to the polls soon, and the battle has divided the country. In recent weeks, people have taken to the streets to protest against the Muslim community center that has been planned in the heart of 9/11, next to where the Twin Towers were located. Also, this weekend was marked by the rally by Fox News commentator, Glenn Beck, who wanted to present himself as the reincarnation of Martin Luther King.

Meeting in the same place and on the same day that Martin Luther King, the leader of the civil rights struggle, delivered the famous “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago, thousands of supporters accompanied Beck and Sarah Palin to call for what they term the recovery of U.S. honor. Beck and Palin, along with their supporters, have accused Obama of wanting to turn the nation into a socialist country. They have accused the president’s supporters and those who do not join their ultraconservative cause to be enemies of freedom and enemies of religion. Enemies! Enemies! Enemies!

These are the wild screams you hear in the media, the political rhetoric from candidates who won the primaries this week, and from those who lost. The reactions in the media were impressive. The New York Times took a tough stand against Beck, pointing to his irresponsibility in inciting the country. [Columnist] Bob Herbert recalled other chapters in American history when similar moments produced violence in the country. One of these happened two weeks after King’s historic speech in 1963, when a group of Ku Klux Klan members bombed a church in Birmingham, killing four girls. Three months after the march, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

On the opposing side, in the Wall Street Journal, the accusations against the left were just as harsh. At the center of this movement of hate are big billionaires; those who are well known, such as Rupert Murdoch, and those who have just emerged into the public eye, such as the Koch brothers. The influence, lobbying and funding of these brothers — the richest in America after Bill Gates and Warren Buffet — striking against the progressive movement has been documented in an excellent article by Jane Mayer published in the weekly publication the New Yorker — Covert Operation.

The irony is that all these citizens’ movements, starting with the tea party, are being funded by billionaires who have been able to use ordinary people to accuse Obama of being a puppet of the powers that be. In the end, they are the puppets of these moguls. However, the anger does not end there. The big question from those who are not part of these radical extremists is: where is Obama while all this is happening? There is a tremendous anger within the U.S. against the U.S. itself.