I for one am not surprised at the reports surfacing over the last twenty four hours that there have been attacks, threats and vandalism aimed at Democrats who voted in favor of health care reform. As of this morning there are ten such reported cases, including one that suggested Congressmen (D-MI) should drown himself. Congresswoman Giffords (D-AZ) had the windows of her hometown office broken by some unidentified projectile. There has also been a report of an attack on a Congressman’s family member that if accurate, would constitute a federal crime. Having witnessed Congressmen and Senators being spit upon and subject to racial and homosexual slurs by anti-government fanatics this past weekend, why would anyone be surprised by this latest display of incivility?
Shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that an increase in domestic anti-government violence was a distinct possibility. This report was the subject of much derision from the Right at the time but consider what has happened since then. Since the election of Barack Obama we have had a guy in Pittsburg kill policemen because he was angry that the government was now “Run by Jews” and that it would “take his guns away”. We had a guy kill a doctor who performed abortions and then try to frame himself as a patriot in so doing. Sorry but murder is not patriotic. We had a murder at the Holocaust Museum by an individual who when captured said: “This is how you’ll get my guns from me”. Another anti-government zealot crashed his plane into the IRS building in Austin Texas as if that would in some way actually contribute to the abolition of the agency. In reality, all that this action accomplished was the killing of an innocent man. Only the Pentagon subway stop shooting can legitimately be classified as the work of a mentally incapacitated person, regardless of his anti-government rant. All summer long we had to watch the farcical spectacle of Tea Party patriots playing minuteman by bringing loaded weapons to rallies while holding signs that suggested it was time for a second American Revolution. There are many who will read this and try to make an argument that political violence is now somehow justified, alluding to some sort of Revolutionary War fantasy. There has been all manner of infatuation with ideas of an armed “citizens revolt”; a military coup, even talk of an attempt on the life of the President, all of it being nothing more than the pipe dream of people who have now become political dead enders. It is to be noted by all that these far right fanatics have been aided and abetted in their dangerous fantasies by the reckless rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the professional political entertainers on the far right who masquerade as legitimate political commentators.
The Republican Minority Leader, John Boehner (R-OH) has already issued a statement condemning violence on the floor of the House of Representatives. That is surely commendable as no informed observer of American politics would for a moment believe that the G.O.P. is in favor of such a thing. But I would also urge Congressman Boehner to direct his comments to some in his own party, like Michele Bachmann (R-MN) or those like her who have a history of incendiary anti-government rhetoric in their political track record. When an elected official engages in blatantly reckless and inflammatory behavior it only serves to stoke up the sentiments of those on the far right fringe and can serve, in their minds, as a “call to action.” In his assessment of the Republican debacle that has arisen from the passage of health care reform, the veteran conservative commentator David Frum observed: “We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible… So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, its mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, its Waterloo all right: ours.” The degree to which increasing levels of political violence detracts or derails the message of the Republican Party in the future is unknowable at this time. But for an organization that is polling the lowest favorability numbers in its history, it is just one more reason for people to disregard the G.O.P. message on Election Day and one more problem the Republican Party can do without.
There will be those on the Right who will issue the counter argument that all one need do is to look back to the sixties and you will find plenty of violence perpetrated by the left. Some will conjure up the various red scares of the past and say that there has been more than on instance in American history where Communists in labor unions and among university professors sought to overthrow or subvert the American way of life. But you can tally up all of the left wing violence in the history of this country and you won’t put a dent in the death toll from the Oklahoma City Bombing, an act perpetrated by a violently anti-government fanatic. It is for that reason that it is now the patriotic duty of every American to stand up to the fanatics on the far right, be it at political rallies, on the streets, in the blogs, by calling in to talk radio, by text messaging the Glenn Beck show, etc., or by writing to the media organizations that sanction such programming and registering you opposition to this virulent rhetoric that only serves to fuel politically driven violence and intolerance. The next time some right wing crackpot tells you that he and his compatriots are going to “take back their country” ask them from whom, the people who voted in the majority for change. It is time for Progressives to stand up to thugs and fanatics of any stripe, be they far to either the left or right, and to no longer tolerate threats of violence on the part of those who having lost out in the political arena, have chosen to attempt change through extra legal means.
In an interview following the attack on her office, Congresswoman Giffords said that America was a beacon around the world because we create change via the ballot box and not through political violence and intimidation. In thinking back upon much of the rhetoric from the right that has surrounded the advent of the Obama Administration, I can not help but to recall the warning that Sinclair Lewis made back in the 1930s: “If Fascism ever comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the flag and borne upon a crucifix”. In spite of the fact that the country was in a far more perilous position then than it is now, Lewis’ words were as relevant today as they were in the midst of the Great Depression and they should be on the minds of every true American patriot.
Steven J. Gulitti
March 25, 2010
I’m sure many on this forum recognize that most leaders and power brokers in the Republican party have no sense of fair play or care for the public good in their quest for power. One only has to look at the deliberate effort to obstruct the Obama administration for the sake of obstruction. Never mind the “birther” and “death panel” nonsense. It is telling that David Frum, whom you quote, was recently forced out from his position at American Enterprise Institute, presumably for straying from the now-radical party line.
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p>Unfortunately most of the media is either intimidated or owned by these thugs. We should go after the outlets when they mis-inform, either by design, negligence, or out of fear of appearing “biased” when the truth hurts. Complain to the editors, write, and especially complain to the sponsors. If you can, discontinue to support the sponsors and tell then why you are doing that.
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p>When a mainstream outlet gets the news very wrong, we need to point this out over and over, both to personal acquaintances and on blogs. A good recent example is the orchestrated smear against ACORN, where the even the NY Times allowed itself to be scammed and then slow-walked a correction when it learned the truth. As I said before, contrast this with the discrediting of Dan Rather.
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p>I’m skeptical about calling in to right wing talk shows. I have heard that they typically screen their callers to weed out anyone who might disagree with them or present unwelcome facts. If you do slip through, they shout you down or turn off your mike. This is not an experience most people want to put themselves through.
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p>We need to financially support responsible alternative news outlets, especially those on the internet. There are many smart courageous people who want to pursue careers as real journalists, not corporate shills. Their opportunities in mainstream media are very limited. We can’t match the money poured into conservative TV and radio, but we can provide enough in small donations to keep the alternative outlets alive.
Unless you’re in the GOP today. Then it’s nothing in moderation, including moderation.
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p>I’d like to think there are a lot of Republicans out there who can actually be reasonable. Unfortunately, the GOP got in bed with the lunatic fringe decades ago and the current GOP is the love child.
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p>Hell hath no fury like a conservative scorned and Barry Goldwater, that conservative scorned, started the affair with the wingnuts. Nixon exploited it with the Southern strategy. Reagan brought the little bastard into the family to eat at the dinner table, and he’s grown from a once unloved child to the kind of unpredictable, wild, uncontrollable SOB you hope somehow doesn’t show up for Christmas dinner.
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p>Today’s GOP is beholden to lunatic fringe for money, for enthusiasm, and a dwindling percentage of white voters. It’s the party of pissed off white men, conservatives, and Southerners. It’s taken an oath of stupidity and ideologically incoherence. But as some pol is once apocryphally said, “There go the tea partiers. We must follow them for we are their leaders.”
…I want to blame Barry Goldwater for the current GOP. At least later in life he scorned the fringe right. He’d be drummed out like David Frum today. Conservative back then meant being anti-Communist, but not engaging in wingnut theories. Even Nixon was in many ways our last liberal President. Joe McCarthy might be a better example of a progenitor of this strain of conservatism.
… the intellectual father of the current wave of fact-free agitation.
…pioneered by Roy Cohn on behalf of Joe McCarthy.
He systematized it into an SOP. He mainstreamed dirty tricks for the GOP. Cohn was merely a demagogue. Atwater created a monster.
A legend of sorts has grown up over Atwater, particularly regarding the 1988 Bush-Dukakis race.
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p>None of Atwater’s stuff was all that vicious by 20th century political standards. (Consider what James Carville did to Bill Scranton in the 1990 Pennsylvania governor’s race.)
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p>Atwater wasn’t Little Mary Sunshine by any means, but he wasn’t Satan Incarnate either.
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p>I really didn’t consider Willie Horton et al. to be much in the way of hardball; the problem was twofold: the lack of responses from the Dukakis campaign; and the presumption of contemporary Democratic goo-goos that “negative campaigning” in and of itself would cause a backlash, which reinforced operational passivity, and made the Horton stuff stick.
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p>For the uninitiated: Competent negative campaigning ALWAYS works, if unanswered.
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p>And for what it’s worth, the paid media that croaked Dukakis were (in order) the Boston Harbor spots and Dukakis in the M1 tank, not the Horton ad.
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p>Cohn, on the other hand created a monster that I’ve seen in consistent reincarnations throughout my life. It reminds me more of Wallace 1968 (and the 1976 Massachusetts variant) than anything I ever saw in 1988.
…between those like Atwater and later Karl Rove who engaged in nasty tactics, and those like Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin who make stuff up and see a conspiracy everywhere. The former played hardball to help their candidates win, but I don’t see them as “tea partiers”.
Tough guys vs. Mean Girls?
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p>Hitler said you tell a lie enough times, people think it is the truth.
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p>There are still people out there who believe if something is on TV, a newspaper, or the internet it must be true.
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p>Scary.
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p>No fact checking, just “If they say it, it must be true.” Add tribal identification + fame, and you get Palin and Bachman.
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p>And the sheer “meanness” modus operandi is real, too. It is very like the bullying phenomena in, say, Junior High where a mob or pack mentality takes off.
… Willie Horton to be hardball now. But it was considered hardball then. In this way the nastiness now is just a logical progression from the nastiness then. Now is a moment in a continuum that reaches back to Atwater.
… that Atwater’s most significant contribution was mainstreaming the nastiness, thus the current nastiness-regime is encouraged to go even farther.
One of the most remarkable things about the little-noticed Jekyll Island gathering, which in some ways resembled another meeting that helped launch the militia movement of the 1990s, is how it brought together disparate elements of the radical right. It included radical tax protesters, militiamen, nativist extremists, anti-Obama “birthers,” hard-line libertarians, conspiracy-minded Patriots with theories about secret government concentration camps, even a raging anti-Semite named Edgar Steele. Others, representing gun-rights absolutists and the far-right “unregistered churches” movement, were invited but sent their regrets.
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p>According to the Jekyll Island Project website, there were many newer members of the radical right present as well. They included Robert Crooks, leader of the virulent California nativist group Mountain Minuteman, who in 2007 concocted a faked video enthusiastically depicting the killing by snipers of undocumented immigrants crossing the border. (“This video shows how to keep a Home Depot parking lot empty,” Crooks wrote in a mass E-mail attached to the video.) Lt. Cmdr. Eric Cunningham was there from Oath Keepers, a Patriot group formed last year, composed of military and law enforcement officers, and given to antigovernment conspiracy theories. Also present was Edgar Steele, who represented the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in a 2000 lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has since become an ardent anti-Semite himself. (In 2002, in an essay entitled “It’s the Jews, Stupid!!!”, Steele wrote, “Jews are the problem. Jews have been the problem since before they saw to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.”) And there was an official of Restore the Republic, the Patriot group that released a film last fall alleging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing a network of concentration camps meant for patriotic Americans.
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p>Since the Congress
The ranks of We the People have burgeoned since the November congress, and they now include dozens of prominent radical-right figures. Among them are Orly Taitz, the California dentist on a personal jihad to prove that Obama is not a citizen; Cory Burnell, a former leader of the white supremacist League of the South and later founder of Christian Exodus, which seeks a theocratic takeover of the state of South Carolina; John Hassey, former leader of the Central Alabama Militia; Walter Burien, co-founder in the 1990s of the Arizona Sons and Daughters of Liberty militia; and Jo Ann Dingley, once a contact for the Santa Rosa County Militia and a delegate to the Third Continental Congress, a Patriot formation.
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p>http://www.splcenter.org/get-i…