The Young Turks

To CLING or not to CLING; that is the question... So, Barack Obama is now being slammed by his opponents for saying that because they are bitter that government has failed them, small-town Americans are clinging to guns and religion. Perhaps he could have said that when small-town Americans are standing on the dock watching the ships sail away with their jobs in tow and the containers onboard filled with either agricultural products, raw materials, or just plain empty they tend to cling to whatever they feel most secure with. And, when they reach out to government for help when catastrophe strikes, or for regulatory oversight on labor issues, or pollution control, or climate awareness, or human and international relations, and when those in control of the administration of that government fail them on all those issues leaving them insecure they reach out for other lifelines. And, when that same government implements policy decisions resulting in less then one third of those it governs approving that administration, and when its economic decisons have lead to overwhelming energy costs riding a tsunami of debt that is flooding that dock those small-town American have ever right to feel bitter about that failed administration and will cling mightily to some of the only lifelines left to them that they feel secure with: guns and religion. The guns for personal security, religion for spiritual security.

Cenk Uygur opined last week that the residents of another small town with no functioning government turned to what made them feel secure: guns and religion. The town: Basra; the country: Iraq. Is Hilary Clinton so elite as to not understand that people all over the world react the same when govenment fails them? Americans have every right - having so many reasons - to feel bitter about the abysmal failure of this administration whether that failure be by design, deceipt, or delusion. And, when that failed administration becomes so weak and unappealing that it has to resort to invoking fear and infusing that fear into all its discourse, Americans have the constitutional right to cling to the two constitutionally protected lifelines they are left with to keep from falling into the security void: guns and religion Could it be that the founders were bitter about the failure of the British government from which they had won their independence when they wrote into the Bill of Rights a constitutional protection for religion and firearms? It is not elitist or demeaning to say Americans are bitter about this failed administration, and whether or not they cling to guns or religion; it is their constitutional right.