When we come across a video like the one below, we must expose it. We do not understand why a former Lt. General in the United States Army would make such a scurrilous video…whether he is a racist, or a Right Winger working for the global corporate interests who want to destroy the American way of life, or whether he is simply a little loony. But the fact is that what he says is filled with lies and half-truths designed to shatter the already shaken faith of the American people in their government. All we can do is point out the lies and hope that as many people as possible read the truth and tell others the truth.
First of all, the term Marxism is thrown around today like a football at a frat party. One would think that a former Lt. General in the U.S. Army would know the precise meaning of Marxism. Marxism does not refer to regulations, because regulations in the United States are created and voted into existence with the authority of 435 elected representatives of the People in the House of Representatives and then further passed by a vote of 100 elected Senators and then signed by the President of the United States.
That is the way this country works….that is standard procedure the Administration whose job it is to carry out those regulations is elected by all the people. If you don’t like those regulations, you can vote in a new group of Congressmen and Senators and they can change the legislation. But that is not Marxism. Marxism is a Socialist system where only one party controls all levels of government. That is obviously not the case here.
Gen Boykin says that as a Special Forces Officer, he has seen and studied what he calls “Marxist Insurgencies.” But that is not true. What he studied were insurgencies, period. If he had actually studied Marxism, which Intelligence officers do, for a considerable period of time, he would have understood better what he claims to be knowledgeable about. In short, Gen Boykin is a very bright man, with an agenda. And he is clearly a liar.
He starts off by saying that people like Castro (the head of the “Communist” not “Marxist” country, Cuba. There’s a big distinction which General Boykin apparently does not know.) nationalize the industries, and that is what we are doing here. That is not true. We have not nationalized, nor have we ever considered nationalizing, the utilities industry, the oil and gas industry, the coal industry the airlines, or the railroads. These are the industries most often nationalized by other countries.
The bail outs were not, as Gen Boykin asserts, nationalization. The bail outs were loans made by the Bush administration to the banks, which have all for the most part been paid back at a considerable profit. They were loans made to the automobile industries, some of which have been paid back completely, others of which are to be paid back soon…also at a considerable profit to the government.
Gen. Boykin talks next about the “redistribution of wealth.” This part is a little confusing. On the one hand he talks about the country becoming Marxist and on the other talks about the redistribution of wealth–but since the only readjustment in wealth has been consistently upward, with the top 1% now owning about 70% of all assets other than the equity by personal homeowners, that would be the opposite of Marxism. That would be concentrated capitalism or a plutocracy, not a Marxist society.
Now Mr. Berwick, the President’s choice to head up Medicare and Medicaid, did say that any good health care program would be a redistribution of wealth. But that was a figure of speech that did not mean, as Gen. Boykin has interpreted it, that because we are going to have public health care…as we have for 50 years…we are for some mysterious reason going to suddenly take all the money from the rich and give it to the poor.
The Medicare redistribution of wealth analogy means that the rich pay more in taxes and those taxes are used party for health care for us all, all American citizens, if they become too poor to pay for health care or when they grow too old to work and pay for health care without a subsidy. That’s all it means.
But it tells us something about Gen. Boykin. Remember, he’s not stupid. He’s a retired Lt. General in the Army. It tells us that Gen. Boykin things that Medicare and Medicaid are “Marxist” programs that are dangerous and should be removed from society. Even as income is being “redistributed” through $800 billion tax cuts to the rich and even as corporations are paying no taxes on billions of dollars in earnings.
He mentions a memo that went to Homeland Security talking about the dangers of certain groups, including “returning veterans.” That is true but distorted to suit Gen. Boykin’s purpose, which is party feigned anger.
Here’s what it actually says:
“Rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalise returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills … have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists, including ‘lone wolves or small terrorist cells’, to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.”
Well, the branch of Homeland Security that deals with terrorists and Right Wing militia got this memo and it is good that it did. Timothy McVie was a disgruntled veteran, a Right Winger, who was influenced to blow up over 220 people. We don’t want that to happen again. Gen. Boykin is simply using this to drum up sympathy for himself as an “outraged” ex-military leader.
Next comes censorship. He says that the mainstream media is irrelevant because most of them are Liberal and in favor of this “Marxist plot” that he is dreaming up. The fact is that 90% of all talk show stations program Right Wing talk shows as their principle content. Again…more than nine of every ten AM stations in this country…thousands of them…are Conservative, Right Wing commentators on the political scene. Rush Limbaugh says that he reaches 15 million people a day.
News Corp, a Right Wing news organization, owns the over-the-air Fox Broadcasting Corporation with stations or affiliates in every major city. Fox News Channel, owned by the same people, have the highest rated news and opinion cable network…exclusively devoted to Right Wing Republican propaganda. It is run by the former Chairman of the Republican Party. Fox owns the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and hundreds of other newspapers, all slanted in the same way as Fox Broadcasting and the Fox News Channel.
As for the regular networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, they all have strict policies of trying to remain neutral. Consequently, when the Republicans say, “…we won’t extend unemployment for two million people, who are lazy loafers because they have been out of work for two year, unless you give tax breaks to billionaires…” the media has no opinion on whether that is right or wrong, good or bad…even though it is clearly morally wrong and bad both for those citizens but also for the economy. MSNBC, a supposedly deliberately Liberal network recently fired it’s chief Liberal commentator, Keith Olbermann and has as its morning anchor, a outspoken conservative who is a former Republican congressman.
So the General lies again. (He knows the truth. He’s not stupid. He’s a bald-faced, bald-headed liar.) Then he says that hate-crime legislation was somehow aimed at pastors so that they could not speak out against gays. Does anyone, anywhere have any reason to know more about how stupid a statement that is? OK. Then he goes on to say that in those Marxist societies, they control guns.
We have virtually NO GUN CONTROL at all when you compare us to other civilized countries. And the most powerful lobbying organization in the United States is probably the National Rifle Association. So, again…a lie. Guns should be controlled. They are not. Gen. Boykin says that because we signed a U.N. treaty that this will control how we all buy and sell weapons. Not true, nor is it true that…as an extension of that idea….there will be changes to our laws on gun control. (Unfortunately, given the number of deaths from Right Wing groups who naturally want guns. Gabby Giffords…the Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the heat while several others who were also shot and killed by a Right Wing nutcase…would probably agree.)
Finally, the biggest lie of all, one that has been repeated by others, Republican Congressmen who have no shame and no brains, and which has been completely demolished and discredited by people like FactCheck.org, is that President Obama says that he is going to create a National Security Force, a domestic army the size of the U.S. Army. This is what Castro and Stalin and others have done…other Marxists (Stalin was not a Marxist. Stalin was a Communist and a Dictator. Dictators are not part of the system envisioned by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels.
Here’s what candidate Obama actually said, in 2008: (You’ll notice that the only private armies to this day are the Right Wing militias that hang out in the woods, and Xe, formerly Blackwater, Dick Cheney’s private army.)
Obama, July 2, Colorado Springs, CO: “[As] president I will expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots [from 75,000] and make that increased service a vehicle to meet national goals, like providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world, so that citizens see their effort connected to a common purpose.
People of all ages, stations and skills will be asked to serve.
Because when it comes to the challenges we face, the American people are not the problem – they are the answer. So we are going to send more college graduates to teach and mentor our young people. We’ll call on Americans to join an energy corps, to conduct renewable energy and environmental clean-up projects in their neighborhoods all across the country.
We will enlist our veterans to find jobs and support for other vets, and to be there for our military families. And we’re going to grow our Foreign Service, open consulates that have been shuttered and double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy. We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set.
We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. We need to use technology to connect people to service. We’ll expand USA Freedom Corps to create online networks where American can browse opportunities to volunteer. You’ll be able to search by category, time commitment and skill sets. You’ll be able to rate service opportunities, build service networks, and create your own service pages to track your hours and activities.
This will empower more Americans to craft their own service agenda and make their own change from the bottom up.”
Well, this “brownshirt” army to be designed and implemented by Marxist President Obama, would simulate, for some unknown reason, the Nazi, not Communist” Hitler brownshirts of the late 1920s and 1930s. It is of course preposterous.
Who is this clown, this radical nut, “Jerry” Boykin. Boykin is a self-proclaimed expert on all the things we have just shown he knows nothing about. He is aligned with the Texas religious organization called the Oak Initiative. And what is the Oak Initiative? Here’s what they say they are, on their own website: “The Oak Initiative is a grassroots movement to Unite, Mobilize, Equip, and Activate Christians to be the salt and light they are called to be by engaging in the great issues of our time from a sound biblical worldview.”
In a sound, biblical worldview? Where have we heard that before? Boykin and the Oak Initiative are clearly strong advocates of bible studies, Texas style. No smoking, swearing, drinking, fornication, adultery or sodomy. Unless, of course, it is one of your own group who does it. Then they look the other way. Gross hypocrites. And in politics they clearly, as you can read above, have no scruples about lying to make the point that they want to make.
One more thing. And this is a good thing to remember. Their candidate is Rick Perry. This gives you a pretty good hint at what a Perry presidential administration would be like. “By their friends, ye shall know them….”
