By L. D. Modell

There is a small and angry group of people in this country who think they represent the "real" America.

They know that the real America they want back was somehow stolen from them by all the rest of the people who live here -- the ones who don't look like them, or talk like them, or dress like them, or go to the same church as they do.

Not one in 50 of these "real" Americans likely has a great-grandparent who was born on this continent, but they know that immigrants are not real Americans, nor are the children of immigrants.

They know that all those other people got a foreign-born black man elected president, and if they can get rid of him, they can "get their country back."

The real America that they want is the one they remember from their childhood: the "Little House on the Prarrie," "Walton's Mountain," "Mayberry RFD" America that must have existed just before they were born or just over the next state line. They want the America from Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" commercials. They want the America that was invented for them by Hollywood and the "lame-stream media" they hate so much. It's no wonder they hate that media: It showed them an America they want but can never have.

They yearn to go back to a world that never existed outside of a sound stage. They band together, waving their "Don't Tread on Me" flags, and they join rallies created for them by media consultants. They live inside an insulated world, listening only to their own voices echoed by pandering and self-serving talk shows on radio and television. They are sure they are right because that is all they ever hear. They only believe what they hear from each other, and know they can't trust anyone else.

I suspect that many of these "real" Americans know that they are being exploited but, like singing hymns in church, it just feels good. May God protect their souls.

If the tea party ever got it's agenda passed into law, the "real" Americans would have lost their only hope of living in their own American dream.

L.D. Modell lives in Tigard.