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I’m told that many Americans long to return to the idyllic days of yesteryear, to the small-town wholesomeness of the 1950s, when everyone valued freedom, truth, church, community, baseball, and Walt Disney.
Never mind that such a fantastic time and place didn’t actually exist, the important thing is that there is someone today – a unique visionary – who plans to build just such a utopia for all who yearn to have a life of harmony and happiness: Glenn Beck.
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Yes, the walking-talking ego of the far, far, far-out right! Beck has built his lucrative career on fostering fear, disparaging whole segments of our society, promotion plutocratic elitism, and spreading divisive lies and conspiracy theories – but lately he’s been humming Kumbaya and offering himself as the recreator and guru of the elusive “yesteryear.” In early January, he revealed that his dream is to build a place that is some hybrid of a small town, a theme park, an entrepreneurial incubator, a re-education center to instill right-wing “truth” in young people, and – in his words – “a retreat from the world.” He wants to call it: Independence, USA.
It will have everything – a residential area where rich and poor will live as neighbors; a marketplace with “real businesses and stores;” a media center for himself and others (including a school “where aspiring journalists would learn to be great reporters” ); a ranch where residents will grow food and where visitors “can learn how to farm;” a theme park, possibly based on Ayn Rand’s “creators”-versus-“moochers” dichotomy; and a church that, oddly, would be “modeled after the Alamo.”
What a place, huh? All he needs, Beck says, is a couple of billion dollars to build it. Of course, the downside to living in Glenn’s DreamWorld is that… he’d be there, too. That’d definitely spoil the perfection.
“Glenn Beck announces plans for Independence, USA,” www.yahoo.com, January 14, 2013.
“Glenn unveils his most ambitious and visionary dream: Independence,” www.glennbeck.com, January 10, 2013.