Explaining to rational people how crazy people and thugs are about to take over the US Congress

http://www.apj.us/index.php?optionom_content&task=view&id178&Itemid



Friends from Germany and France raise provocative questions about
America's current descent into the crazier-than-usual midterm election
circus. Bernard Weiner's answers in response are not always pleasant,
but they have to be faced. God help us, everyone!

Dear Wolfgang and Jacqueline:

Your recent email, wondering "what the f--- is going on" these days,
questioning whether we Americans have taken "more than your usual
amount of stupid pills," is well deserving of a considered response.

How is it possible, you ask, that the very rightwing party whose
policies helped create the current mess may very well take control of
the House of Representatives and conceivably the Senate as well, in
the upcoming November elections? "Is the U.S.A. experiencing some kind
of death wish? Are we in Europe witnessing the paroxysms of a failing
democracy, and a failing empire? Will the flat-Earth Know Nothings
really take over in America?" Good questions all.

It's not easy to explain to foreigners what's happening here and what
to do about it. I do know that in too many societies, for a relatively
brief period of time, a contagious irrationality seems to spread
dangerous nonsense in the polity; moral moorings and common sense fly
out the window. It's happened in your countries: the French right now
ethnically-cleansing themselves of the Roma/Gypsy peoples, for
example, or the Holocaust in Germany in the 1930-40s. But I'll have a
go at some explanations, and you and your families and friends in
those countries can tell me whether my analyses make any sense.

THE IDEOLOGICAL DIVIDE

To understand our current and dangerous political circus requires a
quick romp through the historical context:

The first thing to understand is that what's happening today in
American politics is not new. One could go back to the major
philosophical splits amongst the Founding Fathers who, because of
ideological fervor, were at each others' throats over how to
distribute power. Or we could go back to the "robber barons" era of
the late 19th century, when capitalist greed and industrial might,
both basically unregulated at the time, ran roughshod over the economy
and country. That unrestricted "free-market" philosophy helped lead
eventually to the Great Depression and the resulting major social
correctives of FDR and the Democrats in the 1930s-1940s.

But for our purposes here, let's pick up the thread in 1964 when
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was the Republican candidate for
president.

EXTREMISM AS A CHERISHED VALUE

For the first time in the modern era, extremism and incitements to
violence were given political cover as they were introduced by a
presidential candidate into American's civic bloodstream. "Extremism
in the defense of liberty is no vice," said Goldwater, to cheering GOP
convention delegates.

The corporate/fundamentalist forces behind the Goldwater candidacy
knew their candidate would not win, could not win, in a country still
deeply appreciative of popular liberal policies coming out of
post-World War II reconstruction in the 1950s.

The aim of these wealthy forces was to purge the GOP of its moderate
voices and create an ideologically pure, HardRight party that through
education, political activism and constant agitprop would eventually
triumph over "decadent liberalism."

Clearly, they were thinking long term, and it paid off: Ronald
Reagan's victory came 16 years later, in 1980. How did they do it?

BUYING THEIR WAY TO VICTORY

In the years after the Goldwater debacle, billionaire conservative
tycoons bought up mass-media outlets -- book-publishing firms,
newspapers, cable news networks, etc. They funded their own think
tanks, with their in-house academic types churning out
intellectual-sounding arguments. They supported with millions of
dollars rightwing student groups on college campuses. They sponsored
how-to-win-election workshops for potential candidates. They donated
huge amounts to centrist news networks, such as PBS (look at who
supports "The News Hour" these days: Chevron, Pacific Life Insurance,
Archer Daniels Midlands, et al.), to help dilute the tenor of
objective journalism.

Liberals, meanwhile, were, as usual, dazed and confused, in denial
about what was happening to them and supremely over-confident that
their fortress of power was unassailable. A native fascism could never
happen in America, they believed, since reason would win out over
demagoguery and extremist, authoritarian, Big-Lie politics.
<i>Right.</i>

The GOP could always count on one third of the electorate -- by and
large, the fundamentalist, anti-science, anti-change, more
authoritarian base -- and were able to lure a goodly number of
independents and libertarians to their cause on certain issues, aided
by an increasingly badly-educated citizenry easily influenced by the
mass-media's emphasis on fluff and nonsense and biased reporting
(read: Fox News).

WHACK AN "ENEMY"

Every movement needs a hated enemy. Having one helps stir the
emotions, which means lots of small donations from millions of scared
citizens, which means a huge mailing/recruitment list to build from.
In the post-World War II period, up until the Communist Party imploded
in the Soviet Union in the late-'80s, the Republicans' favorite
<i>bete noire</i> was "godless communism," both abroad and internally.
"Socialism" was included under the hated rubric "communism," just to
be sure, and then "liberalism" was conflated with "socialism," to
destroy that brand.

In the 1990s, the conservatives' enemies of choice included
homosexuals and blacks and browns; later those "enemies" morphed into
"terrorists," "immigrants" and, for too many, "Muslims." Quick
version: the Other. You can always count on "God, Guns & Gays" to help
you win votes.

What is being played so skillfully by the power-composers of the Right
(with Karl Rove as conductor extraordinaire) is the instrument of
change as something to fear. The calm, comfortable world that most
middle-class whites grew up in is quickly cracking apart. More and
more ethnic and social minorities are moving out of their real and
perceived "ghetto" and proudly moving into the social, political and
cultural mainstream, jockeying for power and influence just like
everybody else. Internationally, similar changes are happening, as
formerly subservient countries and leaders chafe under U.S. hegemony
and begin to push back. American exceptionalism is taking a beating.

OUR ERA'S GREAT DEPRESSION

All this is genuinely unsettling, disturbing, scary to many, some of
whom feel -- thanks to incendiary language and incitement to action by
rightwing bloviators -- encouraged to initiate violence against
leader-identified "enemies." Don't those people and nations know their
"place"?

And then a "perfect storm" of social/political/economic collapse
occurred in the last years of the CheneyBush Administration:

Virtually unregulated, rapacious capitalism led to a meltdown of the
financial system, showing up most visibly in desperate failures of the
huge investment houses, which had been selling unsecured debt
instruments in a massive Ponzi-like scheme. The ramifications of such
giant failures affected economies in countries worldwide, and led to
austerity programs negatively impacting mostly the working and
middle-classes. (Unlike docile Americans, millions of Spaniards and
French and Belgians and Greeks have erupted into open opposition in
the streets.)

The mortgages at the heart of these unsecured debt instruments
("derivatives," "credit default swaps") were peddled by unscrupulous
lenders, and when the economy and real-estate values tanked, the
buyers of homes were left holding the bag. Of course, virtually none
of those in the banks and corporate offices who sold those instruments
were ever punished. In our current plutocratic system, rarely do
leaders in positions of power ever have to pay a real penalty for
their bad, or even illegal, acts. Either they are given a free pass or
they find a "bad-apple" scapegoat.

With the economy in the toilet, and the Republicans resisting any
stimulus or other effective measures to help the working and
middle-class climb out, fewer and fewer Americans had any cash to buy
big-ticket items and many, with no jobs and the safety-net shredded
and their pensions and retirement savings cut in half, had to struggle
just to keep afloat. That meant factories were shuttered, in addition
to those that had been closed because of "outsourcing" of jobs to
China, Mexico, India, et al. during the Clinton and Bush presidencies.
Millions were laid off and, due to the resulting loss of tax revenues,
cities and states were out of monies to finance everything from police
and firefighters to helpful civil servants.

As I write this, an estimated 10-18% of the workforce (roughly 20
million citizens) are unemployed, and having extreme difficulty
finding jobs. More than 35% of American children are living in
poverty. And this current Great Depression is projected to last many
years, maybe a decade or more, as a result of Republican machinations
and Democratic timidity.

MILLIONS OF JOBLESS RECRUITS

Wolfgang, you know better than I do the possible ramifications of
having millions of unemployed young men, many of them under-educated,
feeling like rejected losers. As we know from what happened in Germany
in the 1930s, these angry, frustrated masses of young men and their
parents become perfect fodder for extremist demagogues. What's most
frightening is that these likely recruits, energized by their rage and
emotions, feel comfortable inside a balloon of voluntary ignorance,
eager to support such political nitwits as Sarah Palin, Christine
O'Donnell, Carl Paladino, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Ken Buck and the
rest.

Simple example: When asked whether they support Obama's new
health-care approach, many of these newborn rightwing activists rant
about how the government shouldn't be in the business of helping
people via entitlement programs. But they get very angry if there is
any talk about cutting back or eliminating their agriculture subsidies
or Social Security checks or Medicare coverage. When their hypocrisy
is pointed out to them, it becomes clear that they feel they deserve
the government help but the Others, especially minorities and the
poor, do not. Racism and classism are alive and well in the American
polity.

Today, many young, unemployed men (and their parents), devoid of hope,
wind up recruited by militias and political groups of one sort or
another, and are encouraged into action by far-right demagogues like
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin to channel
their anger into the Tea Party movement allied with the Republican
Party. Their "enemies," they are led to believe, are minorities,
journalists, "the government," gays, Muslims, liberals, immigrants,
"moderate" politicians, the supposed SocialistMuslimNaziStalinist in
the White House, et al. In other words, every angry citizen can pick a
convenient enemy to hate and act against.

TIMID & ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

Normally, the party in power would provide energized correctives to
pull the confused, frustrated masses back toward the middle. But the
Democrats, and especially President Obama, have been mostly clueless
as to how to combat this movement, which is based on lies, arrogance,
duplicity and threats of (and actual) violence. In any event, their
halfway-effective responses were always many months too late. Only in
recent days, for example, has Obama even begun to energize his base to
fight back in the midterm election, now two weeks away. He's only
partially successful since he and his spokesmen have belittled the
Democrats' progressive base for nearly two years now, using it as a
convenient punching bag as he tried to lure Republicans and
Independents to his side.

Obama was at least a year late in recognizing what progressives knew
mere weeks after his inauguration: that there was no way he ever would
be able to gain GOP support for any of his programs. The Republicans
had one goal and one goal only: destroying his presidency in order to
regain their political power, and all the perk$ that go with that
power. If, in their desire to overturn all the social advances of the
New Deal and Great Society, our current Great Depression gets worse,
if millions more lose their jobs, if the government goes bankrupt,
well, that is just the "collateral damage" the country will have to
bear in the name of Freedom.

MIRRORING CHENEY-BUSH POLICIES

Obama had run a campaign in 2008 based on major structural change;
transparency in governance; moving away from CheneyBush policies with
regard to respect for the Constitution, civil liberties, disengaging
from the previous administration's bullying approach in
foreign/military policy. But once in the White House, he continued
many of the worst policies begun by his predecessor in amassing
presidential power unchecked by Congress or the courts. For example,
he has assumed the right, with no checks on his authority, to order
the assassinations of Americans suspected of alliances with
terrorists. And he has enlarged, rather than diminished, U.S.
operations in Afghanistan, and found a way to authorize "extraordinary
renditions" to other countries especially skilled in torturing
prisoners.

Obama can rightfully point to a good many solid initiatives that a
President McCain never would have pushed for, but, overall, Obama has
come across as pretty much a conventional Washington Beltway
politician, consistently siding with corporate agendas, jettisoning
his campaign attitude and promises far too quickly along the way. No
wonder his base is only partially in the Democrats' corner for this
election. So many of the Obama stalwarts in 2008 -- students,
African-Americans, progressives -- have abandoned him because they
feel he abandoned them, early and often.

EMERGING FROM THE CRAZY

One can hope that a galvanized Get-Out-the-Vote campaign by the
Democrats will be able to salvage some key races and keep the most
egregiously lunatic candidates from moving into the Senate and House.
But even if the Dems manage to extract some good news in this midterm
election, it seems clear that the shift in momentum and
power-relationship does not bode well for American society in the next
decade.

In short, unless some electoral GOTV miracle occurs on November 2, I
will anticipate getting more letters from you two as America continues
to wallow in its despair, social spasms, energized political
flailings. We are entering the choppy waters of dire straits. We don't
know how many years will go by before Americans might experience
"buyer remorse," before they decide they've had enough and return to
their senses, before the epidemic of crazy runs its course.

In the interim, one can expect that revolutionary attitudes and forces
will be building strength against politics-as-usual in America. While
some of that is devoutly to be wished, we'll all be going on a wild
roller-coaster ride. Buckle up. As Tiny Tim might have said: "God help
us everyone!" #