“200 Years Of Tea Party Paranoia”: From The Civil War Onward, They Always Lose
“It’s easier to fool people,” Mark Twain apparently never said, “than to convince them that they have been fooled.” You can find those words all over the Internet attributed to Twain, but I can locate no credible source.
Too bad, because it’s absolutely correct.
Twain probably did say something similar, because it sounds like an opinion the acerbic author of Huckleberry Finn would have endorsed.
Think of the hilarious episode of The Royal Nonesuch, a mangled Shakespearean farce performed by a pair of riverboat scamps called the King and the Duke for the befuddled citizens of a Mississippi river town.
“The duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakespeare,” Huck says. “What they wanted was low comedy—and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned.”
And low comedy they got. The plan was to pocket the cash and float off downriver before the yokels got wise.
I thought of that scene watching Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sarah Palin outside the White House recently, protesting the very government shutdown they’d fiercely championed—a confederate battle flag fluttering in the background, the emblem of disgruntled losers everywhere.
Is there no scam so transparently farcical that millions of American lunkheads won’t fall for it? Evidently not.
As you read here first, anybody with an eighth grader’s understanding of the U.S. Constitution knew that Cruz’s mad quest to destroy the Affordable Care Act could not possibly succeed. And was politically self-destructive as well, if not for Cruz, then for the Republican Party.
Of course millions of gullible voters lack that understanding. Meanwhile, the Texas Senator and his allies continue to bombard the faithful with emails promising imminent victory and soliciting cash. They’re like the most shameless televangelist faith healers.
Except now the enemies list doesn’t feature only Democrats like President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but prominent Republicans such as Paul Ryan, John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.
Anyway, here’s Huck Finn’s daddy, America’s first Tea Party patriot:
“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had…They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin.”
Sound like anybody you know? The professor, I mean.
Try to put Pap’s racism aside; everybody in the novel, set in slave-owning Missouri around 1840, shares it. Among other virtues, Twain was a great reporter. Besides, liberals calling everybody racist are tedious and smug.
Equally striking are Pap Finn’s social anxiety and envy, his anti-intellectualism and paranoia, attitudes which have always run like a dark stain under the surface of American life.
The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik finds another antecedent to today’s Tea Party in the John Birch Society:
“Reading through the literature on the hysterias of 1963, the continuity of beliefs is plain: Now, as then, there is said to be a conspiracy in the highest places to end American Constitutional rule and replace it with a Marxist dictatorship, evidenced by a plan in which your family doctor will be replaced by a federal bureaucrat—mostly for unnamable purposes, but somehow involving the gleeful killing off of the aged.
“There is also the conviction, in both eras, that only a handful of Congressmen and polemicists (then mostly in newspapers; now on TV) stand between honest Americans and the apocalypse, and that the man presiding over that plan is not just a dupe but personally depraved, an active collaborator with our enemies, a secret something or other, and any necessary means to bring about the end of his reign are justified and appropriate.”
Same as it ever was.
Then it was H.L. Hunt; today it’s the Koch Brothers.
But you know what? From the Civil War onward, they always lose. It’s powerlessness that makes people vulnerable to conspiracy theories.
And maybe I’m getting soft, because I’m actually starting to feel sorry for them—the Limbaugh and Cruz fans that send me emails calling Democrats “evil.” Not simply because they’re the pigeons in a giant con game, but because they’re so frightened, like children scared of monsters under the bed.
It must be a terribly unhappy way to live.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, October 16, 2013
“What’s Different About Today’s Conservatives?”: With The Elites Marginalized, The Extremist’s Are Much More Empowered
When people, usually liberals, compare today’s conservatives unfavorably to conservatives of previous generations, I often get annoyed. Viewing today’s conservatives through the misty water-covered memories of the past, observers today tend to focus on out-of-character liberal policies that some conservatives, because of political expediency, were forced to pursue (Nixon’s environmental record, for example, or Reagan’s negotiations with the Soviets). In short, they cherry-pick relatively rare examples of conservatives supporting liberal policies, and they forget that these took place in a political context where liberalism was much more powerful, while conservatism was far less so.
But I would argue that there is one important way in which today’s conservatives differ from conservatives of the past. It’s this: today’s conservative movement is much more genuinely populist, in the sense that it is much less dominated by elites. A good example of what I mean is illustrated by this essay by Michael Lind, which appeared this week in Salon.com. Lind recounts an important episode in the history of American conservatism: the story of how, in the 1950s, the wildly popular libertarian novelist Ayn Rand was basically read out of the conservative movement. The most famous smackdown occurred in 1957 in the pages of William F. Buckley’s National Review, when conservative icon Whittaker Chambers wrote a scathing review of Rand’s magnum opus. Lind describes the episode, but leaves out the most famous sentence in Chambers’ review, which is this: “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’”
Following that review, Rand, although she presided over a fervent cult (literally — read this fascinating book for more), was marginalized within the conservative movement. And Rand wasn’t the only extremist Buckley and the National Review crowd kicked out. They also denounced the John Birch Society, anti-Semites, and eventually (by the 1970s, anyway), extremist racists*. This is not to say, of course, that Buckley and the National Review didn’t continue to support many noxious, far-right ideas and policies. In one infamous example, Buckley took to the pages of the New York Times to advocate tattooing AIDS victims “on the buttocks.” But for the most part he did kick out the radical fringe.
The main difference between the conservative movement then and now is that elites like Buckley have lost the ability to define the movement. Today, conservatism is less hierarchical, and more diffuse. It’s not that conservative elites don’t wield considerable power in the movement, of course. But within conservatism, there is no longer anyone of Buckley’s stature who has the power to define the boundaries of the respectable right, and to purge certain individuals or tendencies. The closest thing to a leader today’s conservative movement has is Rush Limbaugh, who delights in voicing extremist opinions and trafficking in the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that many voters find repellent.
As a result, extremists within conservatism are much more empowered. This has had mixed results for conservatives. On the one hand, the conservative base, because it is far less interested in currying favor with the political establishment, has had some success in pursuing a much more aggressively partisan agenda. Conservatives in the House and Senate are far more obstructionist than previously, and have not shied away from opposing strongly popular measures (like background checks for gun owners), or to taking widely unpopular actions (like impeaching Bill Clinton).
In other ways, though, the extremist populist base has hurt the party. Today, the Senate would probably be in Republican hands if the conservative base had not insisted in nominating extremist candidates like Todd Akin and Christine O’Donnell.
Eventually, as America continues to experience demographic changes that tend to favor Democrats, conservatives may come to regret the extent to which extremists have taken over their movement. Whatever short-term gains this strategy has won for conservatism, it will likely turn out to be harmful to the movement’s long-term interests. Tomorrow’s conservatives may wish they’d had a Buckley-type figure who had drawn a line in the sand between “respectable” conservatives and the fringe. But the way many of today’s aging conservatives see it is probably akin to that charming Wall Street acronym, IBGYBG: “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone.”
*Note: in the 1950s and through much of the 1960s, the National Review was openly racist and pro-segregationist. Once civil rights won the day, the NR toned down the racism. It’s not that they were ever particularly supportive civil rights or racial equality, but they tended to use code words and dog whistles rather than explicit appeals to white supremacy.
By: Kathleen Geier, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 10, 2013
“Paul The Younger”: Standing In The Quicksand Of Rand Paul’s Broader Ideology
You have to hand it to Rand Paul. With an investment of 13 hours of his time earlier this week, the junior Senator from Kentucky (a) became the national hero of the conservative movement; (b) helped detoxify his position on national security and civil liberties issues, his (and his father’s) weak point with more conventional Republicans; (c) intimidated most other GOPers, including the senior senator from Kentucky, the ostensible leader of all Senate Republicans, into following his lead; and (d) made a strong initial bid to emulate John McCain’s old ability to stimulate admiration from people on the other side of the partisan and ideological spectrum. That McCain was largely isolated, along with his amiguito Lindsey Graham, in criticizing Paul made the whole thing even sweeter for the guy who came to the Senate bearing the family reputation for incorrigible crankiness.
By the end of his filibuster, Paul had the RNC chairman and McConnell himself (see this interesting backstory on that phenomenon from National Journal‘s Shane Goldmacher and Beth Reindard) eating out of his hand. And lefty admiration of Paul became so robust that Adele Stan felt compelled to remind progressives of everything horrific about the man and his motives.
On top of everything else, as I fretted yesterday, Paul had rekindled the Romance of the Filibuster, precisely at the time we needed to get rid of it. Not a bad day’s work for a guy so fresh from the fever swamps that you could probably smell the sulphur on him right there on the Senate floor.
David Frum, for whom Paul’s sudden hyper-respectability is very bad news, summed up the Rand-o-Fest pretty well:
Paul’s filibuster ostensibly dealt only with a very remote hypothetical contingency: targeted killings on American soil of Americans who present no imminent threat to national security. Paul insisted that all the harder questions be taken off the table. He had (he said) no issue with a targeted killing on American soil of an American who did present an imminent threat. He avoided the issue of the targeted killings of Americans outside the United States – i.e., the actual real-world problem at hand.
Instead, Paul invoked a nightmare out of a dystopian future: an evil future president shooting a missile at an American having coffee in a neighborhood cafe, merely on suspicion, without any due process of law….
Paul emerges from a milieu in which far-fetched scenarios don’t seem far-fetched at all. Paul specifically mentioned the possibility of a democratically elected Adolph Hitler like figure coming to power in the United States. Looming federal tyranny – against which the only protection is an armed citizenry – is a staple item in the Rand Paul inventory of urgent concerns.
Most Republican senators don’t share this nightmarish vision of their country, thank goodness. But they do answer to an activist base that shares a nightmarish vision of President Obama. Rand Paul stipulated that he did not intend his remarks about a Hitler-like president to apply to the present president. But he must have a pretty fair idea of what his core constituency hears when he talks about looming tyranny – and so of course must the Republican senators who joined him at the rostrum.
They saw Rand Paul’s Twitter following jump. Perhaps they sensed a great fundraising bonanza at hand. Where Rand Paul led, other Republicans followed: some out of conviction, some out of opportunism, and some out of fear.
And thus conservatives followed Paul the Younger onto the quicksand of his broader ideology, which for the most part is in the mainstream of the John Birch Society. This is not what the GOP needs right now.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 8, 2013
“Conservative Paranoid Fantasies”: The Return Of Right-Wing Insurrectionism, This Time Featuring Hitler
What is it about President Obama’s inaugurations that bring out the craziest of the right-wing crazies?
Four years ago, Obama’s historic swearing-in sparked months’ worth of teeth-chattering paranoia, trumpeted by the conservative media, about how the new Democratic president posed a mortal threat to America and that drastic action might need to be taken.
In 2009, a far-right Newsmax columnist determined that a “military coup “to resolve the ‘Obama problem'” was not “unrealistic.” That’s about the same time Glenn Beck used his then-new program on Fox News to game out bloody scenarios for the coming civil war against the Obama-led tyranny. Note that the armed rebellion rhetoric was uncorked just weeks after Obama’s first cabinet had been confirmed.
Now, four years later as Obama’s second swearing-in approaches, the same misguided insurrectionist pageantry is back on display. (The fringe John Birch Society is probing the likelihood of “armed resistance” against the government — “an unlikely prospect, for now at least.”) And this time, Adolf Hitler stars in a leading role.
In fact, there’s a disturbing collision now underway featuring two signature, conservative paranoid fantasies. One holds that Obama is like Hitler; that he’s a tyrant ready to undo democracy at home. The other is that Americans need access to an unregulated supply of assault weapons in order to fight their looming insurrectionist war with the government.
In the last week we’ve heard more and more conservatives try to tie the two wild tales together: Obama’s allegedly pending gun grab will prove he’s just like Hitler, which will demonstrate the need for citizens to declare war on the government.
Ignoring nearly 250 years of our democratic history, conservative voices across the media landscape have been nodding their heads in agreement suggesting it’s only a matter of time before the United States resembles a tyrannical dictatorship that will be either fascistic or Stalinist in nature (or both, if the rhetorician feels no obligation to historical accuracy).
So much for the notion of American exceptionalism — “the conviction that our country holds a unique place and role in human history” — that conservatives love to preach.
The latest round of right-wing Obama panic was prompted by the Newtown, CT, school massacre. In its wake, Obama is reportedly ready to initiate efforts to curb gun violence, including possibly using executive orders. Simply the idea of instituting common sense gun reform, among other public policy issues, has sparked violent rhetoric about war and sedition early in the new year.
Fox’s Todd Starnes warned there would “a revolution” if the government tries to “confiscate our guns.” Fox News contributor Arthur Herman declared the U.S. is “one step closer” to a looming “civil war,” while fellow contributor Pat Caddell claimed the country was in a “pre-revolutionary condition,” and “on the verge of an explosion.”
And on his syndicated radio show last week, Sean Hannity speculated that states will move to secede should the “radicalized, abusive federal government” continue on its current path, and that they’d be justified in doing so.
Who’s to blame? Obama and Hilter.
Fox News’ Dr. Keith Ablow insisted history‘s filled with examples of leaders who confiscated guns as a precursor to “catastrophic abuses” of power: “One need look no further than Nazi Germany.” Fox’s Judge Andrew Napolitano made the same connection, while a Kentucky radio host compared firearm regulations to Nazi “yellow star” laws.
That’s the hook for the latest insurrectionist rants: If Obama’s going to act like Hitler, then of course right-wing gun owners are going to wage war.
Appearing on Piers Morgan Tonight last week, and after admitting he didn’t know that Ronald Reagan had supported an assault weapons ban, Breitbart.com editor Ben Shapiro stuck to his claim that the gun debate in this country is really about “the left and the right” because the right understands Americans have to arm themselves with assault weapons to defend against the United States government [emphasis added]:
SHAPIRO: I told you, why the general population of America, law-abiding citizens, need AR-15s.
MORGAN: Why do they need those weapons?SHAPIRO: They need them for the prospective possibility for the resistance of tyranny. Which is not a concern today, it may not be a concern tomorrow.
MORGAN: Where do you expect tyranny to come from?
SHAPIRO: It could come from the United States, because governments have gone tyrannical before, Piers.
MORGAN: So the reason we cannot remove assault weapons is because of the threat of your own government turning on you in a tyrannical way.
SHAPIRO: Yes.
The right is stockpiling weapons because the U.S. government might go Nazi and declare war on a portion of its own people. And when the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines unleash their unmatched firepower on citizens, “the right” intends to be fully armed with AR-15s to fight a war within the U.S. borders.
That is the reason the Second Amendment exists? It’s not for everyday self-defense, or to protect the rights of hunters and gun enthusiasts, but to enable citizens to go to war with the U.S. government? To fend off a “tyrannical” turn at home. At least according to Shapiro’s keen take on history.
That’s what was “debated” on CNN last week. Not once but twice.
From conspiracy professional Alex Jones and his CNN harangue on January 7:
Hitler took the guns, Stalin took the guns, Mao took the guns, Fidel Castro took the guns, Hugo Chavez took the guns!” Jones ranted. “And I am here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!
We already knew from 2009 that far-right voices were fretting about the need for a citizen’s militia to stop Obama’s destructive ways. Now four years later, with gun control initiatives pending, the frantic rants have escalated and Obama’s fiercest critics are rationalizing their insurrectionist chants by comparing the presidents actions to those of Hitler. The comparison isn’t just offensive, it’s also inaccurate: the Nazis actually loosened restrictions on private gun ownership (except for Jews and other persecuted groups).
That kind of ugliness not only pollutes our public dialogue, it also gives comfort to gun radicals who embrace the rhetoric. In early 2009, fearing what a friend described as “the Obama gun ban that’s on the way,” conspiracy nut (and Alex Jones fan) Richard Poplawski lured three Pittsburgh policemen to his apartment, then shot and killed them at his front door.
All the right-wing chatter today about how Obama’s following Hitler’s lead by allegedly voiding the Second Amendment only adds fuel to an unwanted fire.
By: Eric Boehlert, The Huffington Post, January 14, 2013
“Republicans At Risk”: Tea Party And John Birch Society Are One And The Same
When James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, looks at the Tea Party today, he flashes back to 1964 and sees the John Birch Society.
“The Tea Party, these right wingers are basically the modern-day John Birch Society,” he told U.S. News. “They are being extremists.”
The John Birch Society gained traction in the early 60s with its vehemently anti-communist rhetoric and distrust in government.
Hoffa says just like in the early 60s when the John Birch Society pushed for Barry Goldwater, who was the more conservative candidate, to be the Republican presidential nominee, the Tea Party has forced the GOP further to the right.
“It’s just like in 1964 when Goldwater ran against Johnson and the John Birch society was calling the shots.”
Hoffa says the strong voice of the Tea Party in Congress has forced the Republican leadership to ignore party centrists, which ultimately could put Republicans at risk among the general electorate this November.
“These people are so far to the right that they are putting themselves off of the field,” Hoffa says.”The Republican party and the Romney, Ryan combo have veered so far to the right that they have lost their credibility on almost any issue.”
But while Hoffa insists their ideas are too radical for the country, the one advantage that the Republicans have these days, Hoffa says is a financial one.
Hoffa argues the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, which allowed people to donate unlimited amounts of campaign cash in the name of free speech, gave Republicans an edge and left the party vulnerable to being held hostage to radical far-right interests.
“We cannot have one person underwriting an entire campaign,” Hoffa says.
Republicans have countered the argument by accusing the Teamsters of dumping millions into elections on behalf of Democrats.
According to the Sunlight Foundation, a group that tracks election spending, public sector unions alone have spent $139 million in the election so far.
While the Teamsters are big donors, Hoffa says it’s an unfair comparison.
“There is no million dollar guy on the Teamsters giving money,” he says. “Everyone puts in $50 or $20 and they find a way to get the job done.”
By: Lauren Fox, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, September 4, 2012
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