Clinging to something besides guns and religion

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama talked about Americans in small town Pennsylvania who cling to guns and religion. How much have things changed in the past four years? Todd Starnes reports at Fox News:

A Pennsylvania high school marching band is raising eyebrows with a halftime performance that commemorates the Russian revolution, complete with red flags, olive military-style uniforms, and giant hammers and sickles. 

“St. Petersburg: 1917” is the theme for the New Oxford High School Marching Band. Ironically, the school’s athletic teams are called the Colonials and their colors are red, white and blue. The band’s website features a picture of the group with students holding a hammer and sickle.

Let's review Mr. Obama's 2008 comments:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. 

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

So, what gives at New Oxford High? Could it be the bitterness and clinginess is entering a new phase? Maybe the Marxist influences of Occupy struck a bigger chord with the kids than most people thought.

Then again, this may also be a sign President Obama is fulfilling one of his chief promises back in 2008. After all, he did promise a fundamental transformation of America. And halftime shows featuring hammers, sickles and themes of Lenin and Trotsky's revolution seem like a pretty strong indicator of fundamental change.

For the record, a school official says Oxford's half time show was not an endorsement of communism. But anyone with half a brain has to wonder why this particular historical theme was picked, or how those who planned the performance thought it would be received.

Russian artwork depicting the early revolutionary period