Northern Valley Beacon

According to the Post-ABC poll released this morning, President Bush's approval rating is at an all time low with only 45 percent of the respondents approving of the job he is doing.

The problem is that as Bush's approval rating slips, the rightwingnuts start their incessant howling about people who don't approve of his performance being unpatriotic, emboldening the enemy, and, of course, being communists. That last charge was hurled by author John J. Tierney who said, in reference to Cindy Sheehan's protests, that the anti-war movement is orchestrated by communists. Anyone who does not endorse stupidity and venality as the great American virtues is labeled a communist. Anyone who thinks freedom, equality, and justice should apply to everybody and honesty and competency in government are desirable things is a communist.

If anyone is making communism a threat, it is George W. Bush and his rightwing base. They consistently are coming down against civil rights, civil liberties, and individual privacy. They have used 9/11 as the pretext to launch a war on Iraq which is supposed to throw the populace into a patriotic fervor which makes the country easy to control. However, 55 percent of the populace are not buying it at this point.

And so we have people like Tierney out there calling any dissenters communists. Old stupidity never dies, it just gets reborn in the rightwingnut mentality.

You have the wingnuts out there denying hard facts, such as the fact that the poverty level has continued to rise during the past four years and, despite claims of a strong economy, has hit 37 million people. In addition to the screams about communism, you are assailed by people trying to show that the additional 1.1 million people added to the poverty roles last year are lies created by the progressives.

The real danger from communism is that if our country continues to dismiss 37 million people as inconsequential and irrelevant to the wonderful designs of Bush and the rightwingnut base, communism may seem like a viable alternative to the repression and hopelessness that those designs are imposing on an increasing number of Americans. More and more, the basic tenets of fascism are being articulated as the foundations of the "conservative" base.

Calling Cindy Sheehan a communist is an expression of the derangement that possesses the faction in power. The hope is that 55 percent of the population is dissatisfied. It is time for the Democrats--or somebody--to provide a way out of the fascist sinkhole into which the country has been slipping.