Taking Back Our Country

So I run into my neighbor Marcel Proost who is driving down Buckshot Creek Road in his old Toyota truck. I see he’s got two new bumper stickers on the back fender. One says “Take Back Our Country.” The other is “Climate Skeptic.”

Marcel sometimes likes to do things just to get a rise out of folks, especially me, whom he considers a fuzzy-minded Berkeley liberal. I never know whether he’s serious or just trying to provoke someone into a long, contorted argument in which he can sport his libertarian opinions.

“Marcel,” I say, “I’m happy to see you want to take back your country. Can I ask from whom you want to take it back? Who took it away from you?”

“They did, John.”

“And who is “they?”

“All the people who are ruining our country, particularly the government.”

I think I’ve heard this accusation quite a bit lately, but I am puzzled by its reasoning. Marcel is a smart guy, despite never having finished high school. I find it hard to believe he’s become a Tea Bagger.

“Marcel, you’re no fool. Do you really think that the “government” is some sinister entity out there to do you harm?”

“The government is outta control, John. All they want to do is take away our guns and then use them to raise our taxes and give the money to illegal aliens. It’s time to send a message to Washington that we’ve had enough.”

“Marcel,” I protest, “let me ask you something. Yesterday at dinnertime I could hear the sound of you shooting off that obnoxious assault rifle from a half mile away. It made a horrific, ear-splitting noise for nearly a half hour. It upset my animals, and I’m sure the only thing you accomplished was to destroy some poor tree in your back yard. Really, what do you need some weapon like that for? To shoot deer?”

“I’m exercising my Second Amendment right, John. As for deer, I use a sniper rifle. The AK 47’s make too much of a mess outta the poor critters. But seriously, every red-blooded American ought to have an automatic weapon in the house. You never know when you might be involved in a “close quarters” dispute, and these babies can get off 800 rounds in a minute. Believe you me, you come onto my property without a birth certificate or proof you were born in the US, and you’re gonna have to face some heavy fire.”

“That’s if your pit bulls don’t chew someone up before you get out your weapon…So, Marcel, sounds like you would theoretically use that thing on the President, right? I know you’re an adamant Birther.”

“Obama? He’s never been able to prove that he’s really an American. And even if he could cough one up, Hawaii doesn’t really count as a state—-not like Idaho or Arizona.”

“So, you seriously think that the country would be better off without government? Are you crazy? You just want to let everyone do his thing? Didn’t we just see only a little more than a year ago that the unregulated financial industry nearly brought us to the brink? It was George Bush himself pleading for ‘the government’ to step in and and bail us out?”

“The bailout?” Marcel makes a sarcastic grimace and launches a precision brown gob of spittle onto the dry surface of the road. “That TARP thing was a total fiction. It was a secret consipiracy to grab even more tax money from citizens. Now, John, you take Doctor Rand Paul. Excellent man. Stands up for the family, Second Amendment, lower taxes and he thinks the jury’s still out on whether segregation is such an evil thing. His website says he opposes all federal bailouts of private industry. And—I’m quoting here exactly, John—“America is the land of opportunity, to succeed and to fail.”

“Um…hmm…great sentence. I presume he means one has the opportunity to succeed or to fail but that the government should just stay out of the way, right? So Dr. Rand Paul in 2008 would have just let the entire financial industry tank rather than have the government step in and save it, right? Didn’t we come within a hare’s breath of a total economic collapse at the end of Bush administration? Wasn’t Paulson on his knees begging for the Congress to step in?”

“Nonsense, John. Read what Sarah says.”

“Well, in fact I read her speech at the Inaugural Tea Party Convention. Honestly, I really wanted to find the meat of her argument. But mostly it was stuff like “I am so proud to be American. Thank you. Gosh, thank you.”

“Well, she said she’s going to take us out from under the big thumb of government, and she’s going to hold politicians accountable.”

“Good thing she resigned midway through her term as governor of Alaska so that she could devote herself to holding politicians accountable, huh? And one other thing…. that keynote address was for the Tea Party convention in Nashville. I’m just curious whether folks in the audience were allowed to wear concealed weapons for that.”

Marcel makes a pained face. “John, that kind of cynicism will get us nowhere. One of the things Sarah was so upset about in her keynote speech was how Obama has been writing letters of apology to hostile regimes. Next thing you know he’s going to want us to apologize for slavery. You do that and everyone will be demanding an apology, even Goldman Sachs.”

“So,” I say, “The Tea Party folks—and Sarah and Dr. Rand Paul—want the government to take a totally hands-off policy toward private enterprise. Just get rid of all regulation and focus only on national security and sealing our borders. But, Marcel, you got your British Petroleum out there making a horrific, catastrophic mess in the Gulf of Mexico, and now the right wing are blaming Obama for not being more forceful, for not getting involved more aggressively. Isn’t that a call for government involvement?”

“Ah, it’s BRITISH Petroleum…what do you expect? You’d never have that problem with an American company.”

“Marcel, I’m going to tell you something really from the heart, and you can laugh at me or ridicule me or whatever. But I think “take back our country” is a shibboleth for anxious white Americans who know that there is an irreversible shift happening here—-that the old Euro-Caucasian, Christian majority is a thing of the past. These zealots are terrified by Barack Obama because he represents something they can’t cope with. He’s intelligent and thoughtful and understands that simple, easy-to-remember slogans are not going to answer anything. And, probably the most disturbing thing about him is that he’s a mutt, a racial mix—you know, he’s only 50% white, which makes him, in their mind, 100% black. That’s terrifying them, and so they want to reach for their guns and mouth their simple, paranoid slogans and dream of a kind of Steven Spielberg Arcadia where everyone is white, looks like Sarah and Rand Paul and has a goofy but lovable uncle like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly.”

“Naw, John. You’re just blathering more of your liberal rhetoric. I’m telling you, we’re making a comeback. We’re gonna have that wuzz outta office real soon. We’ll get one of our own in the White House and then we can get down to the business of taking back our country…stuff like armed citizens’ posses rounding up the illegals and lots of home schooling. I’m volunteering to be on the front lines. It’s my duty, John”