OPINION PAGE
December 14, 2011
Good Guys and Bad Guys
Steve McCullough
When I was a kid I used to love watching television westerns. Truthfully, I still love watching westerns, especially the old black and white ones like Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Rawhide, Wagon Train, The Virginian, Have Gun Will Travel, Maverick, and many others. One of my favorite channels is the Encore Western channel on cable TV where you can still catch old movies with stars such as Gary Cooper, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Buster Crabbe, Randolph Scott and, of course, John Wayne. I think the thing I like most about westerns is the inevitable battle between good and evil. Not only were the old westerns filmed in black and white, the morality was clearly acted out in black and white terms. The good guys most often wore white hats and the bad guys wore black. No nuances here. No conflicted inner strife with these characters. You clearly understood who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. And the good guys always overcame extreme adversity to triumph in the end. And won the girl as well. Who wouldn’t love these plot lines? They were an illustration of the way life should be, the way we wanted it to be.
I think Barack Obama must have watched some of these westerns when he was a kid. At least, he’s acting as if he’s watched them and is familiar with the characters and the plot lines. He’s now using the “Good Guy vs. Bad Guy” strategy to set up his bid for reelection. He’s clearly identified for the American voters who the “bad guys” are: millionaires and billionaires (the “rich”), corporate jet owners, Wall Street executives, bankers, insurance companies, Tea Party members, and, of course, obstinate Republicans who won’t vote for his “balanced” economic proposals. These guys are so bad that they are all in the 1% that is taking advantage of the 99%. They are responsible for destroying the “middle class” in America and something has to be done about it.
Obama says he is the “good guy”. He is on our side. This is the story line. We are the 99% and we are being kept down and taken advantage of by the 1%. The “bad guys” are ripping us off every day. What we need is the “good guy” with his white hat to ride in on his white horse and put the “bad guys” in their place. Enter Barack Obama. He’s going to right all wrongs, regulate and tax the “bad guys” into submission, redistribute the wealth, and bring economic and social justice back to America. Obama says it’s not his fault that the economy is so bad. It’s the fault of George Bush, the tsunami in Japan, the European debt crisis, banking deregulation, tax cuts for the “rich”, and everyone not paying his “fair share”. Obama now says he never promised it would be easy and that he could right all wrongs in one year or three years or one term. In fact, he said recently that it might take more than one president. He didn’t realize how bad things were. But now his six-shooter is fully loaded. He now promises that if we just give him another term in office that he will beat all the “bad guys” and will ride off into the sunset to the thankful cheers and applause of us all. At least, that’s the way the script reads.
This isn’t the western I remember. It might sound like a good script but I don’t think it sounds like a good future for America.
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"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
Abraham Lincoln
