“This country sure as hell been goin’ down the drain/ We know what we need/ We know who to blame/ United Socialist States of America/ How do ya like that name?/ I’ll keep the USA and y’all can keep the change.”
In the words of Hank Williams Jr.’s new song, “Keep the Change,” Obama is an awful lot like Hitler if Boehner is a lot like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And before someone freaks out and says, “It was only an analogy. Chill out!” I’m going to retort that I fully understand the definition of an analogy and how it compares two things that are otherwise dissimilar. What I don’t understand is how someone so well-accustomed to constant transparency concerning the things that he says can be so stupid when it comes to being accountable for his actions.
We all have free speech, but if I represent ESPN and compare the president of the U.S. to the most hated man in all of history, I should expect to quickly lose my affiliation: How could anyone with such a controversial opinion not see that one coming?
Songs and analogies like these reinforce a bizarre kind of ignorance in America and it’s worrisome to me that so many opinions are driven by blatantly misinformed resources. Look at the birth certificate incident and the fact that a vast majority of the Tea Party believes global warming is untrue. These are things that we will look back on when we’re 30 and will have to explain to our children through paradigms of ignorance that no longer exist. I hope that the disbelief in global warming and a Democratic president’s domestic birth are shocking to my kids. I hope that they’re as floored as the Catholic Church was when it found out that the world is round. I don’t see why people have to reinforce (often misinformed) stereotypes of U.S. presidents such as Bill Clinton the player, George W. Bush the imbecile or Obama the Kenyan socialist Muslim.
We’re like sheep being guided by the loudest, but not the most informed, shepherd. We have no interest in facts and it seems that no one in America is willing to be held accountable for his actions. Bush can’t concede the economic squeeze he’s put on us, Obama can’t concede the fact that he’s dropped many of his promises and apparently Hank Williams Jr. can’t concede what he should have thought before he compared the president to Hitler. That’s one of the biggest problems in our country: No one takes responsibility for their actions.
Everything quickly becomes “a black problem” or “a Muslim problem” or “a problem because of Republicans,” and absolutely zero progress is made. But we have an American problem, and when we go about singing our poorly written country songs blaring “The United Socialist States of America,” it’s embarrassing, very embarrassing.
And Hank Williams Jr. can use whatever analogies he’d like, but it’s important to remember that some of his analogies, though he may think they are clever, make him seem just a little bit stupid to everyone else. So he shouldn’t freak out and say the media twisted his words when, in fact, ESPN may just not want to be represented by such poor taste.
Pointless arguments about false assumptions — whether a president’s country of birth or his true political intentions — are only exacerbated when people like Williams create an analogy in poor taste and write a song about it. How much more ignorant can you be?
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