1 Boring Old Man

I was kind of joking aroung with that last post, about RINOs, but I think I missed the significance. Limbaugh sort of runs on themes – Operation Chaos, Club Gitmo, now RINOs [Republicans-In-Name-Only]. But then I was waiting for a file conversion that was taking an hour, so I surfed around and ran across this:

I couldn’t stand watching the whole thing, so I don’t know if Beck used the term "RINOs," but the idea was identical. He started off with how people [Republican people] are always claiming to be Reaganites, but many of them aren’t. [next slide] Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham, John McCain are lined up. They’re not "real" Republicans because they have agreed with or voted with Democrats at some point in their lives. I think I got the gist of things in my brief Beck encounter. It was the same thing Limbaugh was saying. I didn’t realize they were so in sync. I guess they are purifying the party, purging the … I guess RINOs.

Our first big trip after I retired was to China. On those overseas trips, there’s always a meal with some local family, or a visit from someone who has a story to tell. We had two visits with ladies who had been taken off to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. One had left her home in Beijing [her small son went to an orphanage] to work on a farm for five years. The other, Ms. Lu, had been a college student studying English.

When the Cultural Revolution came, classes shut down. Every day, they gathered to hear about the "roaders." In the article Mao wrote that got the whole purge started, he’d warned that many were going down the wrong "road" – thus "roaders." Ms. Lu’s professor was accused of being a "roader." The teacher was brought to the meetings and brow beaten day after day. Later, the teacher was beaten with cane poles. Then Ms. Lu was sent to the countryside to be reeducated, since college students were almost by definition, "roaders." She worked in the fields all day, then went to nightly meetings for more of the same. She got out after two years for an odd reason. Nixon visited Chinja, so all the English students got to go back to school, and work then as interpreters. Her brother stayed 10 years. Since returning, he’s never "been right" and she now cares for him.

Watching Beck, I couldn’t help thinking of Ms. Lu. Looks like Rush and Glenn are starting their own Cultural Revolution, attacking Republican "Roaders" [Wasn’t Beck accusing Anita Dunn of being a Maoist just last week?]. But I reckon this is part of their War on Obama, trying to make sure no one goes "bipartisan." Or maybe they actually think that they can fill their Party with heavyweights like Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, and other “non-roaders”…