John H. Richardson of Esquire spent some quality time with the Birthers. What he has to say about them is not comforting.
Others argue that the whole thing is getting overblown because it’s August — the “silly season” for news — and because the more reasonable and mainstream Republicans don’t want to take a stand that will further alienate part of their base. This is probably true. But it also obscures a troubling truth: By focusing on the “news hook” about our president’s birth certificate, we are ignoring the broader mixture of paranoid apocalyptic fantasies that feed this troubling — and growing, perhaps into the tens of millions — group of people. People who told me they’re not just looking for the president’s birth certificate. They’re looking for his death certificate.
Richardson describes the phenomenon as the pus exploding from a wound. But everyone I know is struggling to identify the cause of the wound. As better than half of our Establishment journalists continue to believe and report that this is a Center-Right country, it seems to just be dawning on people that the Right has turned rancid. That the economy has been shedding jobs for more than a year must be a contributing factor. That Barack Obama is black and somewhat exotic is a big part of what people are trying to adjust to. What’s confounding is figuring out just how much of this is new, and how much of it is always with us, lurking beneath the surface.
Looking back on the first two years of the Clinton administration, there was a lot more legitimate cause for alarm on the Right. Clinton really did sign the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban. Clinton really did try to allow gays to serve openly in the military. Clinton really did sign NAFTA into law. Federal agents really did kill seventy-six people during the siege of Waco. It wasn’t just HillaryCare that upset the Right during the early years of the Clinton administration. And, in spite of all the vicious rumors that were spread about the Clintons, there were tangible government-led changes for the Right to oppose.
Then, as now, there was a lot of talk about the Democrats wanting to do away with our national sovereignty and lead us towards a world government. We began to hear the black helicopter talk and saw the rise of the militia-movement. But, back then, it was a lot easier to see some evidence that the government in Washington was getting leftward of where the country was politically. The opinions polls showed the country moving towards the Republicans. There was plenty of advanced warning that the Gingrich Revolution was coming.
Today, while Obama’s polling numbers have returned to Earth, the president and his party remain popular, and certainly much more popular than the Republicans. The fringiness we’re seeing is both more mainstream (in that it is embraced by more Republican leaders and has broader purchase in the GOP’s base) and more uncoupled to any hint of reality. But, despite these differences, there is a certain disconcerting commonality. In both cases, a significant portion of the Right responded to the election of a Democratic president with revolutionary and secessionary rhetoric and actions.
Ever since Kennedy replaced Eisenhower, it seems that the default position of the Right (when they do not control the White House) is revolutionary and secessionist. There is a longer pattern here that cannot be explained by Obama’s hue and Muslim-sounding middle name. Yet, the Crazy does seem somewhat amplified by racial anxieties at the moment, and we cannot dismiss this new component.
Looking back at the arc of history, it’s hard to overestimate how lucky we were to have Dwight Eisenhower as president instead of somebody like Joe McCarthy. Eisenhower Republicanism put some restraints on the more virulent and unhinged elements of the Right in this country. But Ike was an accident of history, not a true representative of the Right. Once he left the scene, the conservatives took over the party and we’ve been in mortal danger as a country ever since. After eight years of Bush, the GOP has never been more unified in their conservatism, and more like the party of McCarthy. We’re witnessing the emergence of a Nationalist Front-style party. And all that is standing between us and them taking over is a Democratic Party that has yet to demonstrate the ability to endure in power the way that FDR’s New Deal Coalition was able to.
The next time the Democrats get punished for getting us bogged down in a land war in Asia, there may be no Eisenhower on the Right to steer the ship. Next time, we may get a truly fascistic response. In the meantime, Obama needs this health care bill and he needs a New New Deal to cement the Democrats as the majority party for a generation. Maybe by then the demographic changes will have eliminated the threat we now face.
Monica Crowley mainstreams more fantasies about killing Nancy Pelosi. This has got to stop.
Lou Dobbs fantasizes about killing Howard Dean.
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Glenn Beck is the 9-12 Project and the SBVT is the birther movement. Same crowd, the dressing is slightly adapted.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Glenn Beck, the voice of reason on the Right?
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Obama Reverses Campaign Pledge to Renegotiate NAFTA
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."sigh
I am reminded of Robert Anton Wilson’s saying, “If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.”
From a European perspective this all looks a bit like the Weimar republic c. 1930. A deeply conservative/racist country just looking for a scapegoat and an opportunity to topple the remains of democracy and start a world war to create a “new American Century”. Coincidentally both Nazi Germany and GOP USA are seeking to use military means to secure an imperial domination – in part because their economies were/are increasingly unable to achieve world domination by other means.
There is an awful lot wrong in Europe at the moment, but at least we neither have nor seek the means to start a world war. I hope the US GOPERS learn the lesson that military domination and oppression don’t go anywhere good without having to start and lose a world war first. Have Vietnam and Iraq thought them nothing?
I am also reminded of white South African attitudes prior to the fall of apartheid – the stoopid just kept getting stoopider. Yes, the USA does need a revolution, and Obama is as good a successor to Mandela as you could hope to find. But just how long and devastating a war will it take to change the white supremacist mindset of the GOP? And do Liberals actually have the balls to fight for democracy if its very continuance is threatened? Or will they be like the hand wringing liberals of 1930’s Germany and 1970’s South Africa who opposed Nazism and Apartheid only so long as their own secure and comfortable lives weren’t threatened?
Frank, the US is neither deeply conservative nor deeply racist. There is a minority (apparently about 20%) that may be said to be deeply freaked out and reactionary right wing.
Pardon my polemical over-reach, but White south Africans constituted 10% of the population and the Nazi party never got more than 37% of the vote. 20% with God, Guns and enough fanatical hatred on their side is quite enough to destroy democracy especially if their opponents are too busy trying to be reasonable and bi-partisan.
I suspect an underlying assumption here is that the Palinistas or so incredibly stoopid, they cannot but implode. Sadly history shows that incredibly stoopid people with guns can be incredibly effective…
Frank, that is exactly what I have been seeing for about twenty years now.
To be clear, I am not dismissing the danger posed by extremist minorities with support amongst the powerful. What I am saying is that the United States as a whole is NOT a “deeply racist” country.
It is a fringe. A dangerous fringe, but a fringe. Remember, Obama was elected with broad and deep support. That would not happen in a deeply right wing or racist country.
The American exceptionalism or white supremiscism I fear most isn’t just aimed at US racial minorities, but against everyone who is not a “real American” in their eyes – which can include Liberal Americans, Europeans, and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to a value system which enshrines an unfettered US nationalism as God’s will, and as a natural right to rule all others, by force if necessary. Such supremiscists will deride the UN, decry all international law – including conventions outlawing torture – dismiss all international courts, and generally take the view that being an American gives the a right to do what they want where they want. They oppose trade agreements because they also give rights to non-Americans and support the undermining of Governments abroad which don’t favour US interests. I’m not quite so sure such attitudes are purely fringe.
These broad generalizations are not helpful to get at the problems of our situation imo – did Weimar Germany have 200 years of representative (at least for free white males) government under its belt – and a rejection of monarchy? no. did South Africa become apartheid after a century of Africans having the vote, (despite obstacles to exercising it)? The comparison with South Africa is more accurately with the native americans not african africans (and it will be a long time before the 20% are threatened by a native american president). We must look at the unique features of our situation in order to get a handle on it.
Your thoughts parallel mine.
It taught them that they could control poor Southern whites by appealing to their patriotism while stealing the bread out out of their children’s mouths. It also taught them that war was a dandy way to make lots of money for their corporate friends and for their “blind” brokerage accounts.
That too fits the German model. And could silly ranting Sarah become President? Could a silly ranting Austrian paper-hanger become ReichsKanzler?
How I long for a Willie Start figure from All the Kings’ Men…one cut from the same cloth as these loonies who is not part of the organized corporate disinformation campaign.
Stark was a flawed populist but one who ascended to the political heap by letting his ignorant, redneck brethren know that they were just that, in no uncertain terms, and that they were aligning themselves with those who had been scamming them.
He was one of them to the core and no one would mistake him for one of those fancy-pants, cigar-chompin fatcats from D.C. In quite the same tone and dialect as them he would start a speech berating them for their foolishness but they listened because he sounded like them.
He shook them out of their stupor and sicced them on their manipulators with a vengeance. But progressives are above that, aren’t they?
The Republicans aren’t really anymore downhome than the dems but they do mimic well the same out of hand dismissal and cynicism that maintains in the face of fact and reason that “You’re lying to me!” State of Hawaii authenticates Obamas birth certificate? They’re lying. An in-the-works bill offers end-of-life counseling, not a death panel? They’re lying.
This is nothing but the downtrodden and ignorant needing something simple to rail against because the world has gotten too complicated for them to comprehend. Now those with a corporate agenda have, according to Frank Schaeffer at http://www.frankschaeffer.net, one of the originators of the antiabortion movement, have hijacked that framework and organization for their own ends. Quite adeptly, I might add.
I agree with other comments as to the damage the 20% can do. The Dems better know what they’re up against. These nuts are fighting a class warfare and don’t even know they are doing it but they are fighting for the side they would be better off fighting against. The dems need help from others in the same strata as these people. They gave up on those people when they became corporatists too.
You reap what you sow.
And yet, the Dems are trying to negotiate deals with the patrons of the crazies, the GOP and corporate lobbyists who benefit from the front-line crazies. In essence, the Dems are rewarding the behavior of both the crazies and the GOP that uses the crazy as a negotiating tactic by distancing themselves from them but encouraging them at the same time.
Meanwhile, watch the conservative Dems and Obama aim the big guns right at the heart of their supposed allies, the liberals. The Dems can never seem to muster the courage to fight unless it’s a hippy getting out of line.
If liberals hold out for a public option on a health care bill, for example, and vow to vote against any Obama-supported compromise that doesn’t include a public option, Obama will come out firing and the left will see the righteous outrage that the conservative Dems never seem willing to fire at the crazies on the right. In fact, I bet Obama has gone on Fox to appeal to the crazies on the right far more than he has sat down with liberals and tried to find common ground and agreed to fight with them as allies.
This is a big part of why I supported John Edwards until he self-destructed. His view was that it was insane to sit down to negotiate in good faith with the insurance companies and Big Pharma. And yes, he got both barrels from Clinton and Obama for saying so.
If, as some polls have indicated, nearly three-quarters of the public is in favor of substantial reform, this exercise should be a slam dunk. That it is not — that it is, in fact, an increasingly dubious uphill slog — is a sign of how completely corrupted the government has become.
From the perspective of an abstract analysis of history, this is a terribly interesting time. The slide towards fascism here, for example, seems to be settling the question of whether something like the Treaty of Versailles was a sufficient condition for the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism in Germany: evidently, it was not; in the absence of external pressures, Hitler could have manufactured enough internal crises on his own to seize power. Then as now, the establishment left seems both oblivious and powerless to stop a minority fascist spearhead.
Unfortunately, being stuck in the middle of it, there’s a limit to how much detached abstraction I can afford. I’ve started asking myself if it might be prudent for me to stop shooting off my mouth on liberal blogs and instead lie low to decrease my risk of being detained by a future GOP administration before I can make my escape to Europe. The lessons of history do not bode well for us at this point. Statistically, the odds are that the American left will not be able to stop the rise of fascism, and I will be reading the latest Broder column calling for bipartisanship between Democrats and Fascists when the knock comes at the door.
when does bipartisanship become collaboration? When does “we were only following orders” by torturers become a crime against humanity? Strange as it may seem, Gestapo torturers were subject to stricter regulation and red tape as appears to have occurred under Bush, and they were executed for war crimes.
I’d say it unambiguously became collaboration when the Abu Ghraib situation became public. It was probably collaboration for a small number of congressional committees some time before that.
How is waterboarding someone over 100 times not torture plain and simple – rather than trying to extract vital information to prevent a disaster a la 24 Hours?
“Oh I knew we had already water-boarded him 99 times, but we forgot to ask him a vital question so we had to do it again”…
Not to defend them, but it appears to have been based in a theory of learned helplessness rather than in pure sadism.
The Nazis had a theory about Jews as well. They had quite a few “scientists” signed up to theories of Aryan Superiority. If there’s money or power in it for people, you will find the theories and “evidence” and academic respectability will soon follow.
No. Given that you are right about the nature of this situation (and I think you are), this is the time to speak up louder. We need to make it more clear to more people that the modern American right-wing grassroots is quickly becoming anti-democratic.
If it looks like the time is coming that they may actually seize power, that is the time to flee.
For so many deeply religious, second-coming waiting people, they are certainly afraid of anything that is outside of their own world view. You’d think they would find comfort in faith rather than guns and threats.
The thing that worries me today is precisely the parallels today to what was happening in the early days of the Clinton administration. Then the right wing’s clainms were treated as funny and unserious in the mainstream political discourse. They ended up impeaching the President over (IMHO) nothing at all.
Today’s right wing is actively being encouraged by multiple actors in the national political media, and they are starting out crazier.
It really doesn’t seem that anyone of consequesnce is going to call these people out for their dangerous lunacy. This is almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better.
Today’s right wing is actively being encouraged by multiple actors in the national political media, and they are starting out crazier.
The Right Wing Echo Chamber was just ramping up in the Clinton years. In the Clinton years the echo chamber was limited to radio (mostly Limbaugh), newsletters and direct marketing campaigns sent via mail.
So it’s not that they’re starting out crazier, it’s that the structures for broadcasting their craziness are much more entrenched and better able to amplify their craziness. Between Fox News and various right-wing websites, along with the entrenched mailing lists of crazy newsletters and the talk radio nutters – the Echo Chamber is pretty damn robust. Add to that the fact that during the 90s the press slipped into this rather stupid drive for faux “balance” by forcing every story into a mold of “Democrats say … but Republicans counter …” and you end up with an Echo Chamber that is much more powerful now than it ever was during the Clinton years – at least among the True Believers.
Robert Taft was the one who married the Know-Nothings and Dixiecrats. Nixon was the sleazebag who cynically and successfully exploited the union.
Ike was typical of the candidates the party establishment threw at FDR. Business conservative with an internationalist and civil rights platform that cut against the impulses of the base. His biography and Korea got him into office.
I can’t diagnose, but keep trying to empathize and understand how people feel. Not corporate “persons” – I understand those all too well. “People” need money to survive, but it’s not the bottom line for them.
Looking at those poor people we like to call stupid, I keep thinking of the pictures of the remains of Jonestown in Guyana.
The colors are different, but the basic humanity is there. Those people wanted to live in an idealized, integrated and self-sufficient community, but were frightened by threats of the government taking it away from them. Most of them were never taught to think for themselves.
I don’t know much about history, but for some reason was blessed with an opportunity and an education. Let’s try not to fear and despair. This is the time to work the changes.
i don’t know why any of this is a shock. the history of this country is built upon White Supremacy, and those most invested in it don’t like that it might be turned upside down. I don’t know a Black person who is SHOCKED by what they see..disappointed – yes. SHOCKED – no. the undercurrents of this have existed in this country for as long as there have been Black folk in this country. and we know that they want his death certificate, which is why I don’t find cute the playing around with and humoring these fucking terrorists by the mainstream media. a mofo brings a loaded gun in plain sight of an event that will be attended by THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES….and he winds up on fucking HARDBALL.
I asked the question over at JJP – what would happen if a BLACK MAN brought a loaded gun in plain sight of an event attended by THE PRESIDENT. the answers were on point.
I take them seriously. Everyone else should too. Which is why their asses should watched and if they twitch wrong- arrested.
I dunno. To me, it seems like Palin and Palinism kind of erupted out of some stupid vector that I didn’t know was there and spawned a delusional movement. Racism doesn’t surprise me. But all the other stuff that is getting attached to racism is a little…well…I didn’t predict it.
Am I the only one who things the racism is being deliberately stirred to provide cover to an eventual assassination plot that will have nothing to do with racism, whatever its outward face?
Btw – it was CIA lackey Ron Kessler raising the warning that the Secret Service was underfunded. Kessler couldn’t care less about Obama, so why did he write that? More cover stories being laid down in advance, so if Obama is killed, we’ll say oh, the secret service “couldn’t” protect him, rather than oh, the secret service DIDN’T protect him.
If they twitch then they should be treated like an armed person of color within shooting range of Dubya…
In a way it’s fortuante that the gun laws were relaxed because I’d say it’s even money whether the police will protect non-white lefties from a gun-toting rightwing mob.
Anyhow, I’d point out that Nixon was similar. That is, Nixon used the revanchist lunatics, but he knew very well that they were to be kept in their cages and he’d internalized the New Deal style to the extent that a conservative could. Nixon though of course was a step down because he DID use the riled up folks as a matter of course.
Seventy-six people might have been killed, but is it slam-dunk clear that federal agents killed them, other than by being there and responding?
Besides, this bunch dates back to Ruby Ridge, which was in the Poppy Bush administration, another era of economic hard times.
Just like Obama, Clinton upset the Right by winning. By ending what they thought of as perpetual government by right.
The threat is not demographic, it is economic. It’s just that a bunch of hurting or fearful folks have been sold snake oil for 40 years. The tyranny that this movement is railing against is the economic tyranny of a government that is controlled by big corporation and taking their tax money. But they can’t call out corporations, so they project it onto the undeserving, whoever that minority might be at the moment. And in that context, they feel (and it is gut-level) that Obama is undeserving of being president.
And the National Front mythology, which existed during the New Deal as well (Google “Silver Shirts”) was submerged in the horror of Hitler’s practice of genocide. The shock of that in the immediate postwar years is what drove the National Front types underground. As that shock wears off, references to Hitler become more common and more confused. We are seeing for some people a certain nostalgia that bears as much resemblance to the Third Reich in another country as “Gone With the Wind” bore to the Civil War South. It’s a peculiar romanticism. Matched on the left with the romanticism of taking to the streets in revolution.
Eisenhower was the only way that Republicans could regain the presidency after twenty years. And paradoxically only he had the stature to call for an end to the Korean War without being tarred as a traitor. (Not that the John Birch Society didn’t try.)
And FDR’s New Deal coalition didn’t appear magically in 1993. It was an agonizing process moving legislation through and building alliances.
“A “Death To Obama” Sign At Cardin’s Town-Hall”
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/08/recess_watch_a_death_to_obama_sign_at_cardins_town-hall.php
You say that Obama has given the Right nothing substantive to be upset about, and they are in a frenzy without any cause. I would challenge that assessment.
The Right fears socialism when Democrats take over, in much the same way that the left fears fascism when Republicans are in power. In six months, the Right has seen what looks to them like a quasi-nationalization of the banking system, a quasi-nationalization of the auto industry, and now — in their view — an attempt to nationalize the health care industry. Of course, they are alarmed.
I’m not sure how the whole birther piece fits into it. Maybe when you reach a certain level of anger, you lose your grip and everything that feeds the anger seems plausible.
I don’t think that the situation is the most alarming in post-WWII America. In the 1950s, groups like the Birchers and the Klan had real power. The unhinged belief that Communists had infiltrated the policy making levels of government was not a fringe phenomenon. It was a central part of the Republican congressional agenda. Even if the Republicans still controlled the House, I can’t imagine them holding hearings on the validity of Obama’s birth records.