Ageism

For sometime now I’ve been arguing with my Grandmother over the election of Barack Obama as our President. Consequentially she called him “Evil Evil Evil” and calls those who supported him “gullible naïve little children”. Now I am one to argue a point, so long as there is evidence to support that point, but an opinion, such as hers, that is unsupported by information, I cannot seem to grasp let alone argue over.

In our argument she provided a radio program called “The March of Socialism” as evidence to support her claim that Obama is evil. (It can be listened by going here.)

The program is called View Point hosted by Chuck Chris Mayer. This program makes claims that Obama is a lifelong Socialist, and this activity with bailouts and buying up of bank stocks is a result of his election. Chuck says the bail out plan was sold to the US citizens as a means to help the failing banks, but instead supposedly was a means to just purchase bank stock as a whole to gain a new control. “The March of Socialism it is marching in America…the environment is conducive to allow the great elite players to press every American, and every person of the world into one economical mold. It is seductive my friends, spiritually seductive and it will strip your soul of all spiritual integrity.” Is it me, or does this person plainly state that our economic being is the basis of our spiritual being? “Mark my words it will strip your soul if you allow yourself to be seduced by it…”

When it comes to religion and politics I am very weary of even considering the prospect of discussing the matter, let alone producing an article. However, this very program both intrigued me and dismayed me enough to do so. I find that the very ideals that this person portrays in his radio program are deficient in supporting everyone. It is, in a sense, truly anti-socialist. Which may seem obvious, but I think that the person has a poor if not misguided idea as to what Socialism is. We see too often that people, who think of socialism, think back to communism which is an extreme form of socialism, instead of seeing it for what it is. Our country is more of a socialist system than most realize.
Socialism in its self is not bad. It supports the idea that all people should be treated equally and should have equal opportunity, which is a fundamental basis of the “American Dream”. Regardless, the ideals that the program put forth are hardly of equality, and instead instill a perpetuation of segregation and disenfranchisement of people.

Back to my Grandmother; My Grandmother purposefully believes this program, and in the principle of free enterprise and economy. What is worse is she believes that all young people (well people younger than herself) are unworthy and naïve. Disillusioned to the reality in which they live and the Christian ideals and morals that she believes should be the leading factor in all decisions. This very factor of her belief dismays me because it is people that are her age and of her sentiment that run this country and most of the institutions in which we are forced to exist, including our economic system that currently is disintegrating. More over, when people that are of her age disagree with her viewpoint she calls them Atheists that have no god and are thus evil and do not know what they are talking about. Is this really what Christianity and what our country is about?

Unfortunately it would seem that people like Chuck are confusing their religious beliefs for the goals of “god”, substituting the physical realm and its preponderance of humanistic aims as the want and reason of god. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not Christian, I do not follow their beliefs, but I do understand the want to believe that your god wants the same things you want. How can such beliefs that demean and cause hardship on so many people though, how can an economic system that keeps people in the gutter, and keep crooks in the green, be Christian? Chuck on the program references the idea that this path will lead “to the prefaces of disaster”. Chuck reflects on Obama’s pre-election speech that he is poised to change the world. He shows that some people saw Obama as a messiah. He points out that Obama’s idea of “spreading the wealth around” is only a means for the poor to take advantage of the rich. Chuck says “Those who have little money want to get their hands on other people’s money, while those who have worked hard for their money are less prepared to give up that money to others.” Is it really that they think that the poor want to steal from the rich, that there is some Robin Hood complex being perpetuated by Obama? As I see it the idea of spreading the wealth around, as a socialist presumption, is falsely placed upon Obama’s ideal. The taxation presented by Obama is meant to help all of the people in the US, by increasing the tax on people making more than two hundred thousand dollars a year (individually) or two hundred and fifty thousand dollars (as a couple). This tax bracket only includes about fifteen percent of the US population, including Obama himself and most politicians that hold office. We are a country rife with under-employed, poor and impoverished, all because our economic system leaves no room for escape. You are either born into riches or you have to be extremely lucky to get out of the hole.

My Grandmother argues that the taxes will affect her and our corporation (yes my family has a corporation, no I don’t see any money from it ever…), what she fails to realize is that our corporation hasn’t made any surplus to be taxed, nor has she made any money off of it, nor has anyone else in our family that holds stock, which means the taxes won’t affect her at all. Meanwhile students, such as myself and others who are more than likely reading this article, are going to get big boosts to help with living costs and expenses. Chuck presents numbers and percentiles of who supports Obama and Joe the Plumber, and McCain’s ideals. He does not tell us where these numbers come from, he does not provide a source. Yet he presents it as fact and according to these “facts” over 56 percent of the US middle class population support McCain’s ideals. Ideals he claims are not socialist in nature, like that of Obama’s ideals. It would seem that these ideals that Chuck is promoting are that strictly of his idea of what Christianity is, and what is worse, he uses the words of his listeners to condemn the very constitution the US is based on. Freedom of religion, free speech, here we are again, in the same way the Flip Side is battling for its rights, we see that the people who are in charge, who have a 70% chance of believing the same principles that Chuck is reporting, condemn us, and our alternate beliefs. One man that Chuck references as sending a letter in says “I look at America, in light of the bible, and I hear the creaking and cracking, I sense our country is about to fall. I cannot help but to think we are on borrowed time. To be a wealthy nation is not a bad thing, so long as we as a country are in submission to god and keeping his commandments. Greed is great in our own day as it was in the days of the prophets of old, witness Wall Street’s collapse. But how about ministers of god who preach a health and wealth prosperity gospel, it’s abominable. Our nation’s founders talked about our need for out country to be governed by god and the Holy Scripture. We are now going to have a president who has stated America is no longer a nation of Christianity, that Christ is not the only way of salvation, and he further believes there are many ways to heaven” Is this not the kind of president we want, one able to see more view points than that of a Christian conservative? One who is able to see what the country really is, an amassing of people from different cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs? Chuck, and his devout viewers, seems to think that socialism will lead to “all hell breaking loose”. That our country has become blinded by our lacking belief in Christian morals and ideals. I personally believe that this country, though founded by Christians, is not strictly, nor ever was strictly Christian in nature, and the ideals that Christianity supplies are not always correct. This radio program is evidence of the extremism that those who follow Christianity at times go to, to support their own beliefs and denounce the beliefs of others.

My Grandmother refuses to listen to anything I show her that disproves her points or disagrees, even in part, with her beliefs and ideals, sighting that she is “the older wise person that knows more and what is best for the country.” This ageist view, that a person of my age, college age, is too naïve to know or understand the workings of our social system is only all too inherent in our society. But as a great Christian once said “I do not think that those who act upon the preface of Christianity, for the sake of appearance to others, are truly Christian, but instead those who act for the sake of the act, regardless of their beliefs, are Christian in whole.” And though I am not Christian myself, I find the beliefs presented by Chuck in his program, and those morals followed by my Grandmother, that support a value of greed by equating spiritual connectivity to one’s earnings, to be a disgrace upon the very morals that Christianity, in its purest form, presents. Further, the perpetuation of an economic system that devalues life in the face of money, for the support of free enterprise and free trade, only serves to harm the people that support it and must live with in its confines. The anti-socialist views presented by this conservative radio program only shows this confinement, and attempt by those who have power, to maintain that power. I cannot deny that there are those out there who are poor, who do envy the rich and their lifestyle, but those who are rich, cannot deny the reality that too many people, who work hard every day of their lives, still will never reach a point where they are even considered upper-middle class.