A wake-up call for America's conservatives/10 minutes of truth

Foreword
The more I challenge arch-conservative ideology with arch-conservatives, the more faith I lose in the human species. The fact that some people can be so closed-minded, so willfully ignorant of the facts when those facts are staring them in the face, is disheartening. After four years of college, I've only just begun to tap into the wealth of knowledge the world has to offer. And for some reason, people still choose to believe that a college education fills people's heads with "liberal lies like socialism, evolution and global warming."

Now, I'm fully aware not all conservatives think this way. Just like all sane people know that Muslims are not all ruthless terrorists. But what I'm going to say here to conservatives is what I say to all of my Muslim friends- Speak out!

If arch-conservative far-right ideology doesn't represent you, then speak out against the outspoken fringe minorities who give the rest of you a bad name! Now more than ever is when we need to finally overcome extremism; both political and religious in nature. The less you speak out, the more the fringe conservatives believe their ideology is correct and infallible.

We've seen how Republicans convinced themselves, with the help of Sarah Palin, that the way to unite the Republican party was to sequester the rest of civilization in an us vs. them mentality, with fierce, brutish social conservatism leading the way. and they failed miserably, as Republican ideology got collectively slapped down by the fists of the sensible, the reasonable, the logical, and the intelligent, who finally chose to take to the polls for once. Right-wing zealotry suffered a stinging defeat that night, and the party was left in shambles, unsure of how to collect itself.

They chose to do so through the "Tea Party" movement, a pseudo-grassroots effort organized and publicized entirely by the right-wing media, owned by the special interests who contribute to the most arch-conservative politicians. These organizers have, in reality, too much eduction and sensibility to believe any of the outlandish things they say, but they make their money convince the people who can't think for themselves that what they say is gospel. And in doing so, they have effectively divided the country. The country is divided between the outspoken fringe conservatives who represent the most extreme ideologies, and everyone else who doesn't think the way they do.

So this is where I'm making a call for America's moderate conservatives to please, please, stand up and fight against this pestilence of closed-minded anti-intellectualism and religious zealotry. The national dialogue right now is so divided because of this loud minority. In the sake of everything logical and reasonable, it is the responsibility of this nation's moderates to take back the airwaves and let all of us know that these right-wing nutjobs speak on the behalf of a very small, small segment of the right-wing base.

Ten Minutes of Truth
A man who said it better than I ever could is ironically not a journalist or a policy maker. He's a wrestler named James E. Cornette. On one wrestling talk show, Cornett went into a Santelli-style rant where he condemned arch-conservatives on all of their outdated ideology and divisive nature. I'll give you the link so you can listen for yourself. The first ten minutes is some of the most truth I've ever heard condensed into so small a segment. It moved me so much that I'll post the transcript here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
...Joey Stiles is also apparently one of these apparent right-wing conservative wackjobs that just can't accept the fact that we had this little deal last November we had something called an ELECTION, where the republican ideology was slapped down, and we've finally a president who knows that it's 2009 and not 1909, and I guess he's pissed off about it.

Now I can understand four groups who aren't liking the fact that Barack Obama is president; rich white-collar criminals, white christian evangelists, members of the KKK, and maybe white people from West Virginia and Mississippi.

And I don't know which group Stiles belong to, but maybe he just doesn't believe that women should have the right not to ruin their lives with unwanted, unplanned children that they can't afford to take care of, so that they grow up to become criminals because they had no home life, they had no proper parenting.

Or maybe Joey Stiles doesn't believe that gay people should have the right to get married and be happy like everybody else. Or handicapped people should have the right to support stem cell research so one of these days through SCIENCE, science, something the republicans don't recognize, handicapped people or people like them might be able to live a normal life.

Children, shouldn't have the right, I guess, to learn science and evolution and astronomy, or things like that in school that allows them to get good jobs and earn decent money, and not that the earth is 6,000 years old, was created in one day, and human beings popped up one day out of the ground and had no trouble at all, until a talking snake screwed the whole thing up.

Or maybe Joey Stiles doesn't believe that the rest of us in the richest, most advanced country on the PLANET, should have healthcare that doesn't cost as much as a new car every year, or the right not to go bankrupt if we get sick with no insurance.

Or maybe Stiles is related to one of the heads of these big, pharmaceutical companies or oil companies that rape us every time we take a pill or fill up our tanks.

Or maybe Joey Stiles is a multi-billionaire who is paying all of these alleged "sky-high" taxes that Barack Obama is gonna level on us, that are gonna cost him way more than the 50 PERCENT that we lost on our retirements or our stockmarket funds under his good buddies, President Dick Cheney and Vice President George W. Bush (because we all know who was running things).

Maybe Stiles never went to school and didn't learn the lesson of the first Great Depression, when FDR did the same thing that Obama's doing; stimulating the economy by making massive investments in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure, planning to take the country into the future and putting people back to work to do it.

Maybe Stiles overlooks the fact, or maybe he's just not bright enough to know, that the only reason it took so long, or that it got worse before it got better back THEN was because the obstructionist REPUBLICANS, who haven't changed their TUNE since the Great Depression, badgered and blocked everything that he did, and caused him (FDR, I'm talking about) to back off before the job was done, and we had to get the biggest world war ever waged before they'd get out of his way, and I'm just sick and fed up-I listen to the news every day, I listen to this conservative talk radio in the car because I wanna get MAD, because I'm driving a long way, I want something to keep me awake.

The republicans drove the country in a ditch and they're complaining about the cost of the tow truck.

The republicans scream about the loss of all of these freedoms and liberties and constitutional rights, after 8 years of an administration that subverted and circumvented, outright IGNORED more of the constitution than any other in history; refused to grant all of those groups that I mentioned and MORE of them their civil rights, because it conflicts with what they get told in church on Sunday. (and that the whole church and state thing is covered in the constitution too, by the way)

But maybe Joey Stiles likes the idea that his previous administration responded to the worst attack on the US EVER, (worse than the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for fuck's sake) by going to war with the WRONG country, never getting close to catching and bombing the shit out of the guy that really did it, and spending almost as much money to do that over the past 8 years as Obama wants to spend to save the whole freakin' country's economy!

But maybe Joey Stiles likes the idea that in the republican ideology, that after 2,000 years of this shit, the christians and the muslims are still playing a game of "My god can whip your god," only instead of rocks and spears we're using nuclear weapons and all the rest of us, who have sanity, reason, and logic going for us are gonna be fucked up too when this Dark Ages shit hits the 21st-century fan.

Maybe Joey Stiles doesn't really believe any of this shit...Maybe Stiles is like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or all these people I listen to that, that are, you KNOW they're too smart to really believe any of the shit they say...they're doing it for the mullets who ARE dumb enough, and they get paid big money to do it, but in the process, they're convincing these other mullets that what they're saying is true and they're DIVIDING the country! Just like Cheney, who can't stop talking about "We were right, we were right," and go the fuck home like Bush had the common sense to do and get out of the fuckin' way that they're dividing the fuckin' COUNTRY.

I don't care about Joey Stiles either way...I'm just sick of these assholes who have been squealing like a pig under a gate about everything this guy has been trying to do being "un-American," it's gonna affect their church service, their secret offshore bank account, or just piss 'em off because he's right and they're not.

And what's more un-American than anything is publicly hoping that the president of the United States FAILS! That's like hoping the pilot on the plane fails because you don't like his opinion on global warming! We're all in this together, you fuckin' morons! You hope he fails? If he fails, we're FUCKED! Jesus!

There's enough poor, white, un-educated christians in this country that could be rabble-roused to do something screwy by these nutjob politicians and commentators say these things on national radio and television, and the best thing they can come up with is "Obama uses a teleprompter!" Obama uses a teleprompter because he's got something of SUBSTANCE to say, and wants to convey the message! Bush didn't use one because he probably couldn't READ English much better than he could SPEAK it, and all he had to say was trust me and God Bless America!...The republicans don't like people who take it up the ass, but they've had no problem givin' it to us for the last 8 years!

And one LAST thing! Is there ANYBODY out there, I mean does ANYBODY honestly think that if there was any REAL evidence of scandal or dishonesty or malfeasance in Barack Obama's personal or political life; did he cheat on his wife? Did he take a payoff? Was he really not born in the United States of America? They went there. Do you not think that somebody would have proven it by now before a black guy named BARACK OBAMA got elected in the first place? More people were trying to keep him from being elected than there were people who tried to prosecute Charles Manson for the Sharon Tate murders!

You fuckin' morons! You knuckle-draggin', mouth-breathin' idiots! We have finally got a fuckin' guy that's CLEAN, that they don't like, and they can't stand it, and maybe Joey Stiles and all of the rest of the people who believe that this brilliant, analytical, sensible, reasonable guy who's like a professor we've hired to solve all of our problems, all of you people who believe he's a Socialist or a Marxist, or a radical or whatever, shut the FUCK up, get the FUCK out of his way, and let him try to FIX our shit before it's too late, and in four years you get ANOTHER chance to knock us back into the 19th century!

...This guy is actually talking to us instead of at us, and they won't fucken listen! He's got every brilliant mind that he can gather, that has a vision for the future standing behind him. Every time he does anything, he's assembled an all-star team for every problem. He's trying to fix everything at the same time, and they say he's not doing too much. But if he didn't do anything about something, they'd say he's doing too little!

You can't fuckin' please 'em because they can't stand the fact that this guy is smarter than all of 'em and doesn't agree with any of 'em! FUCK 'em! Stay the fuck outta MY country, you fucking morons!

I'd like to make my fuckin' money back I lost the last two years! I'd like to have bridges that don't fuckin' fall down when I drive over 'em. I'd like to have civil rights for everybody, and not just people who fuckin' buy 'em. I'd like to not have to pay a FORTUNE for my fuckin' healthcare on the theory that one of these days, I'm gonna have a heart attack because of some of the shit they've put me through!

...Now let's talk about some wrestling!