Angry and Afraid

Well, I’m going down to Doomsville, baby  

And I’m taking you along with me

~ The Rainmakers, “Doomsville”

Something I’ve really been seeing in a lot of far right conservatives lately is this sense of pending doom. We’re all gonna DIEEEEE!

[Disclaimer: I do not believe that all conservatives feel this way. I’m sure there are some exceptions.]

How many of these things have you heard in this infant election cycle? Or in the past few years?

“Obama is destroying this country.”

“We’re in big trouble in this country.”

“We can’t keep going this way.”

“ISIS isn’t going to stop until it raises its flag over the White House.”

“Immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans.”

“We want our country back!”

I’ve heard them all, and I’ve heard them multiple times. When you ask for specifics as to exactly HOW this is happening, you get ClusterFox talking points and more vague pronouncements. When you counter with actual facts, you are sometimes flat-out told, “I don’t believe that.” I guess I just have to accept that once someone gets these notions stuck in their head, nothing I can say is going to change their mind. As someone who values rational, logical thought, that is very hard for me to accept.

What I find most dismaying is a strange and pervasive sense of paranoia, anger, and doom from these folks. I think there are a few players on the scene who can reasonably be accused of fostering that sense of doom, and I’m talking to pretty much all of you pod people at ClusterFox! But I suppose that fear drives ratings. I find that sad. Good journalism is hard to find these days.

There is also a sense of fear of the browns. Like we’ve never had immigrants in this country before! You get people like Trump saying that he’s going to deport every immigrant here illegally, despite the incredible cost to our country. (Then the asskissers jump on the Trumpwagon and agree that it’s a reasonable solution.) There is even talk of negating birthright citizenship from some of our Republican candidates, despite the fact that both Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio would have their citizenship revoked. (Do they not pay attention to this stuff before they say something like that?) There are stories from Steve King of Iowa about Mexican drug-smuggling immigrants and their cantaloupe calves and Phil Gingrey of Georgia saying that immigrants are bringing Ebola into our country. Then there is Trump (again), saying that immigrants are bringing “tremendous infectious disease” across the border. All completely untrue, but there is a subset of people who are falling for these claims hook, line, and sinker.

This sort of xenophobia seems very mean-spirited to me. So much for “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” huh? I’m all for immigration reform, but let’s at least be decent human beings about it instead of blaming these people for any and all of our woes and loading them into cattle cars and shipping them out. At the risk of Godwining myself, you all know who else did that, right? We are seeing this irrational fear of The Other that seems to have its basis in the belief of some of these people that this is their country and no one else’s.

You might think that it started when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, but you’d be wrong. It certainly reached a new high upon his election and reelection, but this sort of xenophobia has been going on for a long time. I’m sure I’ve written before about Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” (If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it.) This fear and distrust has been going on for decades, whether it was directed against blacks, Jews, Catholics, the Irish, or Masons. Apparently our stellar American innovation has, for its latest iteration, recycled the same tired trope to target Hispanics in general and Mexicans in particular. Oh, and don’t forget the Muslims!

I don’t buy it. I don’t feel that anyone is “taking over” our country and that we somehow have to “take it back.” It’s nothing more than fear mongering for the sake of ratings and donations, and I have no patience for it. It makes me sad to see so many suckers falling for it, though.

Angry and afraid is no way to go through life.

Something like a phenomenon

Can someone please explain the reason for this strange behavior?

~ Duran Duran “Skin Trade”

I know I’m not the only one who is completely and utterly perplexed by the appeal of Donald Trump to a portion of our electorate. Has a segment of our population lost its collective mind?

I also know I’m not the only one trying to figure it out. I’ve been reading quite a few political articles about it, and have even gone back to watching (lawd help me) “Meet The Press” as the political class tries to come to grips as to how we have gotten to this point.

The best explanations that I have found have come from those who believe that Trump is tapping into a simmering rage that is happening with these people. His supporters seem to applaud him for “speaking the truth” and “telling it like it is.” They love his chest-thumping, America-is-the-greatest rhetoric, and they love that he is ready, willing, and able to offend multiple groups of people, including immigrants and women. They’re sick of political correctness and they’re not going to take it anymore!

It all seems to tap into the idea that their country is being taken away from them, made weak by all of those browns and blahs and wimmins and everyone else who isn’t a white conservative Christian. I can’t help but think of Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” written in 1964, but eerily accurate in today’s atmosphere of toxic politics and this almost inexplicable support for Trump.

Given Trump’s lack of policy specifics, I also have to believe that Trump supporters are low-information voters. When asked about the Affordable Care Act, his response is that it’s terrible, and as president, he will repeal it and replace it with “something terrific.” How can anyone support a candidate who says something like that? It is preposterous. Maybe I’m weird, but I want my candidates to lay out specific policy details, and go into quite a bit of depth as to how they will fund and make it work. Anything less is posturing and bluster.

I don’t like the implications of this for our country. If people are willing to ignore policies because they like a guy who “tells it like it is,” that doesn’t say much for the intelligence or depth of our voting populace.

While this all plays out, my fellow Democrats and I are popping some popcorn and settling down to watch it all play out. Trump is the candidate they have been building towards for the last few decades, so I hope the Republicans are enjoying what they have wrought. You built this!

This is my country, too

As we head into the July 4th holiday, I’m feeling a little feisty.

::sigh:: I know, I know. I just can’t help it.

I was just in a Facebook discussion that arose when a friend posted something about Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 essay about right wing conspiracy theories and paranoia. I’ve written about it before, and if you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it. It’s eerie in its application to what is happening in our country today.

I simply left a comment stating that I love that essay, and someone else commented that Hofstadter was a Communist and hated capitalism, and if I thought that was great, maybe I should move to Russia or China. They wrote that our government is “the people for the people.”

Yeah, it was on. I’ll post my reply here, with slight editing. I’m sick of some people saying that because I’m liberal, I don’t love my country, or I don’t support our troops, or I’m not a true American. First of all, I’d sure love to know what constitutes a true American. Apparently some think that it entails wanting to kick the ass of every country on the rest of the planet, just to show that we can. True leadership—and I still believe that America is a global leader—comes through diplomacy and friendship and a genuine desire to help others and make things better for all. Simply dropping a bomb on someone is not a sign of strength; it is a sign of weakness and bullying. Some seem to feel that a “real American” lives in rural areas, perhaps in the Midwest. I’m guessing that every New Yorker who witnessed the death and destruction on 9/11 would take exception to that definition.

Anyway, here is what I wrote.

Hofstadter's personal beliefs and ideologies have nothing to do with the validity of his essay about the far right and their paranoid behavior. It was valid when he wrote it; it's every bit as valid today.

It continues to amaze me to hear people say that their freedoms are being taken away by this liberal government. Where were you when Bush was tapping your phones? Where were you when he and his cronies advocated throwing people in jail without charging them for any crimes? Where were you when they gave the green light to TORTURE, ignoring the Geneva Convention in order to satisfy their hair-trigger, cowboy, jingoist, sadistic wet dreams?

Why weren't you up in arms when THOSE freedoms were being taken away? And I'd really like to know which, exactly, freedoms you feel are being taken away by this administration.
Just like every other American, I've been affected by taxes, health care, the military, student loans, and housing. I've seen the devastation wrought by an incompetent administration's tax cuts, unjustified wars, and an unwillingness to fix our broken health care system. I've had family members, senior citizens, have to declare bankruptcy because of catastrophic illness and huge medical bills. I've seen our national deficit go through the roof because of the previous administration's wars without the taxes to finance them. I watched as our economy came close to collapsing because of the GOP's lack of regulation on Wall Street, and I watched as the unfettered greed of bankers and mortgage companies took our country to the brink of economic destruction.

"The people for the people?" Are you prepared to pick up the tab for infrastructure maintenance and construction? Do you have a neighborhood group that has potluck dinners once a month so that you can plan how you'll fight the fires that strike one of your neighbors' homes, or YOUR home? Do you like your public library? When you retire, are you planning on opting out of Social Security and Medicare? Are you prepared to foot the bill for your parent's nursing home bills and medical bills? Do you have bake sales where you raise $500 to help pay for the kid next door with leukemia's hospital bills, which are approaching three hundred grand?

I am sick unto death of people talking about the evils of our government. It is OUR government, it helps us stay healthy, it helps with our education, and it helps us with our day-to-day lives.

If YOU hate our government so much, I suggest that you take a slow boat to any country that oppresses its people, restricts their speech, dictates their religion, and requires women to be punished for not being virgins on their wedding day or forces them to bear a child that resulted from rape. Just go enjoy that for a while, and then tell me about how much you hate our liberal government.

Fuck yeah.

Still paranoid

I'm reading last week's issue of Time, the one with Glenn Beck on the cover. I swear, I have to turn the magazine face down, because I can't stand having that mug looking up at me. The article itself wasn't all that substantive (but then, neither is Beck), but what I loved was the editor's opening letter to readers. He referenced a paper written by Richard Hofstadter, who was a historian and history professor at Columbia. The paper, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, was published in 1964, but it is incredibly relevant to today's situation and to our larger history.

I won't tell you that you have to read the full article, because I'm all about you reading what you want to read, but I can tell you that I found it completely fascinating.

Hofstadter's essay is about the prevalence and persistence of conspiracy theories in American politics. They have existed since we, as a country, have existed, going back to the late 1700's, with various campaigns against the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Communism, the UN, even Catholicism. They persist today in vague theories of the threat of the Bilderberg Group, as well as with the Birthers, and most recently, the Deathers. Hofstadter attributes this to a pervasive paranoia among a small segment of society. In reading the article, I've distilled it to several pertinent points and characteristics of this sort of belief system.

Dispossession

Those who are quick to believe that there is some sort of secret society intent on destroying our country feel that their "way of life" is in danger from outside forces. There is a resistance to change, including changes in social mores and societal attitudes; in order to combat this nebulous threat, they find a conspiracy or group of "others" on which to place the blame for what they see as our moral decay.

Infiltration

The government, the "international banks," the media...all are run or influenced by the above subversive agents. It is incredibly difficult for the paranoid to fight such all-encompassing conspiracy, and there is a feeling of futility in getting others to believe him/her.

Elimination

There is a sense of absolute good vs. absolute evil. There can be no compromise through normal channels of political discourse, so the enemy must be totally eradicated, either physically or politically.

As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

The embrace of "renegades"

Those who escape the clutches and tell the secrets of these "hidden societies" are automatically believed. Whether a former Freemason telling tales of discipline or a former nun speaking of widespread sexual abuse at the hands of priests as if it is all an expected aspect of ritual, anyone who reinforces the paranoid's beliefs which are already in place is welcomed and believed. This also serves to show the paranoid that the secret organizations are not omnipotent; they can be overcome, and redemption is possible for those who have been subjected to the group’s evil ways.

Extensive "evidence"

These paranoids will compile lengthy lists of facts that support their theories. This is not necessarily to convince those who disagree—after all, the paranoid is visionary and can see things that others cannot—but to bolster and protect their own beliefs.

Resistance to enlightenment

Because of their extreme views, these people are often left behind and ignored when it is time to make decisions. They create a self-fulfilling prophecy, in effect. With their strongly-held beliefs and unwillingness to listen to opposing views, as well as their denial of irrefutable facts, they place themselves on the periphery of the discussion...and then point to their ostracism as evidence of the wide reach of the group which they oppose.

Perhaps the central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten him—and in any case he resists enlightenment.

Hofstadter asserts that such paranoid behavior is not unique to any party, or even to this country. At the time of his article was published, the Communist threat was still very much a part of our lives and our policies as a nation, so it primarily addresses right wing conspiracy theorists. Of course, we've seen it happen on the left as well, with those "Truthers" who believe that 9/11 was a Bush-driven plot to get us into war. I'm sure this happens in other countries, too, but our nation is somewhat unique in its rugged sense of individuality along with its ethnic and religious conflicts. I see this as much riper soil for the rampant growth of conspiracy theories. Hofstadter concludes:

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

I found myself oddly—and you would think paradoxically—comforted by Hofstadter’s essay. I've been very uneasy and quite disturbed by the current tone of the political debate. I find it hateful and counterproductive. This piece showed me that we are experiencing nothing new. This sort of behavior has been a part of American politics since our country has been in existence. I don't agree with it, and I don't understand it, but at least I've recognized it. Despite the turmoil and despite the hatred of a small, vocal few, I believe that we will weather this storm, and I hope we'll come out stronger. We are strengthened by discussion, but diminished by blind opposition and senseless arguments.

This article was published 45 years ago, but speaks truth to power today. I have to wonder...at what point does healthy skepticism turn to complete distrust? There is a big difference between disagreeing with policies and believing in a secret plot to take over the country...if not the world. Let's stay rooted in reality, and address the problems at hand, rather than trying to banish non-existent bogeymen or quixotically tilt at windmills.