All of this has happened before…
Howard Dean made a wonderful point today at Netroots Nation that I want to expound upon.
On the “death panel.” “These town hall meetings are not about health care.” People angry for 3 reasons–Rs have been angry for 30 years and the leaders have exploited that–polling for anger points. Second–who is shouting their congresspeople down? Not the generation that elected Obama–these are the people who feel threatened. As they get smaller they get angrier. Third–a president they’re not accustomed to seeing in the WH. Change is hard.
It has been said many places that the right wing of this country does not handle being out of power well, as we have seen during President Clinton’s eight years and as we are seeing now during the first seven months of the Obama presidency. But it is not that they are just sore losers. No, they are just an angry bunch, a fact that has not changed in decades.
Read this right wing pamphlet targeting President Kennedy in 1963:
Sovereignty! Anti-Christian and Anti-American accusations! Lies about Kennedy’s personal life (yeah, he was a womanizer, but he was never married and divorced before Jackie). This could have been written today. It is odd that the conservative playbook has not much changed since then, but then again, they are conservatives and are against change, so why would they change their own smear tactics.
But why are they angry?
First, who is “they?” For I do not want to paint all conservatives with one big brush since all of my best college and law school friends are conservatives. And we have wonderfully civil conservatives here at Delaware Liberal that are reasonable and are willing to debate (Maria Evans, RSmitty, Joanne Christian, to name a few).
“They” are referred to by three names, names which describe three different crackpot conservative “movements” yet the membership of these three movements seem to be all the same people. The “Birthers,” who hate the idea of Obama being President so much that they cling to this lie that the President was somehow not born in this country and that there is a vast decades long illogical conspiracy to cover it up. The “Teabaggers,” a group that suddenly came to the conclusion that a tax structure that was begrudgingly tolerable throughout the last eight years under a Republican President was now, under a black President, the highest form of tyranny. And there are now the “Deathers,” a group ironically so opposed to universal healthcare that they will lie or believe any lie about the proposed healthcare bills in Congress, the chief lie being that President Obama himself will hunt down the elderly and disabled and euthanize them forcibly. (And I say ironically here because most of them just love the government run Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs).
These are not three disparate movements. It is one movement, with the same leaders and the same constituency, all having the same problem: President Obama.
And no, they are not just opposed to his policies, for it would be expected for conservatives to oppose a liberal President. But political disagreement does not explain the sheer violent and ferocious reaction. The death threats. The literal terrorism.
It is something else.
All three groups are nearly exclusively white, predominantly middle aged and elderly, and unambiguously conservative. It is a movement of the enfranchised and enabled, and yet they feel, and say, that they are the disenfranchised and oppressed ones. It is a movement that is not only angry, but celebrates anger as if anger has a point unto itself, without rationale.
When was the last time you had deeply conservative southern governors and states yelling about secession because the federal government was forcing things on them that they couldn’t tolerate, and making belligerent anti-federalism statements over the slightest thing?
Desegregation.
That was the last time America saw, on television, shouting white mobs and the threats against lawmakers, all explicitly intended not at debate, but as efforts of pure intimidation in order to stop the debate from ever taking place. That was when you had mobs of very dumb but very loud people weeping in front of the cameras that the fabric of America was being destroyed, though they couldn’t begin to actually tell you why or how, only that it involved black people rising above their place in the world.
Why are they angry? Why is history repeating itself?
Yes, it is because President Obama is a black man.
That is the only reason you have left after you eliminate policy differences. It is not about taxes, since taxes are going down under Obama (yes, there were massive tax cuts in that evil horrible fascist communist stimulus package), unless of course the right wing now wants their taxes raised and that is why they are so violently upset. It is not about deficit spending, for if it was, where was their anger at President Bush over the last eight years, and conversely, where was their praise of President Clinton for leaving office with a surplus? It is not about government run healthcare or supposed death panels, since conservatives were all about living wills and end of life counseling in 2005 during the Terri Schiavo affair, and indeed, the very same Senators decrying the death panels today were the ones voting for the death panels in 2003 during the prescription medicine debate, which, by the way, was not seen as a horrible evil fascist communist government invasion upon our liberty by the very same conservatives who liken Obama’s healthcare plan as such today. And no amount of facts will dissuade the Birthers.
They are angry because President Obama is black. That is all. Occum’s Razor holds that the simplest explanation, after you have eliminated everything else and no matter how improbable, must be the truth. It explains why the Birther movement is, according to several recent polls, shockingly a southern and conservative phenomena.
Anger over diversity and integration is nothing new. As I have said, the same was seen during the 1950’s, and that anger has only increased straight through the years. There is just this group of conservatives who long for the traditional days, where we were a white Christian nation instead of a diverse multicultural and multi-religious one. Are these conservatives necessarily racist? We can’t know but they sure sound like it when they use such horrible racial epithets to describe not only Obama, but any politician they oppose. But for years, we have seen their shrieks and we have seen a number of Republican leaders cater to them. From Nixon’s Southern Strategy to Ronald Reagan’s campaign announcement in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs explicitly screaming about immigration and we becoming a non-white nation. Conservatives, by their nature, seek to preserve a status quo they cherish, and resist any change to that status quo. The status quo for them is a white Christian nation, where minorities knew their place, and most definitely where not President of the United States seeking progressive change.
But if that is why they are angry, and if they have been angry for years, then why is it much more violent and shrill this time?
Because this time they have really lost and, while they know it, they can’t accept it.
A black man is President. That is a horrible defeat in and of itself. But he just did not win by a squeaker. He won in a landslide, despite the Palin mobs and conservative efforts to stop him. And seven months in, after their screams of tyranny and lies about his location of birth, President Obama is still popular, garnering approval ratings in the high 50’s to low 60’s. They know they are not going to stop change this time. Hence the vitriol and hate and anger. It is what they do. Conservatives have never been known to be accepting of change.
All of this has happened before…. but will it have to happen again? I have long said intolerance will cease as the intolerant among us die off. Is this the last long final battle that will finally bury the conservative notion of a 1950’s white Christian intolerant America? By their rhetoric, conservatives seem to think it is. Their anger has a “nothing left to lose” quality to it. It is like they know we, as Americans, are at a turning point. It is a turning point I have longed for, and that they have feared, for years.
That was from the NYT magazine in 1961. the difference between 1961 and now is that we had a functioning media back then. (h/t The rude pundit)
That is simply amazing. That paragraph perfectly describes conservatives today. Nothing has changed for them, and that is the way they like it.
Actually, Jason, that paragraph is indicative of the fact that the New York Times has not had a new idea in its pages since 1961.
Oh, and DelDem — those who wrote such stuff about Kennedy were, by and large, proud Democrats.
Oh, and by the way — if a conservative wrote a piece that offered a criticism of a group because it was “nearly exclusively black” or “nearly exclusively Hispanic” or “nearly exclusively Jewish” or “nearly exclusively gay” or any other such democraphic observation, it would be rightly regarded as an appeal to bigotry. So, too, is your post here.
I wish this was like Facebook and we could put a “Like” designation. Because me like this! Good post, DD!
I agree Mike. We need to be able to vote a post up or down in version 4.0. Geek, can you get on that?
RWR… oh wise student of history. Why did Kennedy go to Texas in November 1963? To heal the division between the liberal and conservative factions of the Texas Democratic Party. Who was responsible for that poster? Conservatives. This column was targeted at conservatives, and not necessarily Republicans.
Democratic legislation providing civil rights to blacks caused those same southern conservative Democrats to bolt the party and become Republicans, because their fears and hatred were catered to by the Republicans.
So you seem to think that you have made a little point here, but you have only reinforced mine. Thanks for that.
And you are asking me to be tolerant of the intolerance of these conservatives, and seek to call me a bigot because I point out their intolerance? It takes real gall to call me a bigot because I point out your bigotry.
Oh yeah, RWR, I am white.
The guy is a freaking dipshit DD. Why bother with his nonsense.
Yeah, but your comments still reek of bigotry.
Indeed, a black man who spoke so about his own race exercising their citizenship rights would be called an Uncle Tom or Stepin Fetchit — self-hating and seeking to curry the favor of the powerful. And you might consider looking up the term “kapo” on wikipedia.
RwR Making no sense as usual.
Anyway (speaking to the adults now, you can ignore this part Ryhmey) . Barth continued in the 1961 NYT column: “socialism is an epithet applied indiscriminately to almost any form of collective endeavor. Thus, any governmentally operated insurance program to provide medical care for the elderly is denounced as Socialism.”
Okay then.
I’m going to be a bit of a contrarian here and note that if Hillary had won, they’d be doing the exact same BS. If Joe Biden had won, they’d be doing the exact same BS. Paul Krugman wrote about this a few days ago and noted that all of us who thought that a President Hillary would bring back all of the psychodramas of the Mr. Bill era were deluded — any Democratic President would have brought back the psychodrama. Because the psychodrama is a wingnut creation and would always be arrayed against a Dem President.
One of the things that makes this psychodrama unique is that our President is black — meaning that the folks stoking the fear and loathing still get to rely on the codes and tactics of the Southern Strategy. Since all of that is race-based, it certainly looks racist and some of it certainly is. But the fact that this is a part of their playbook since Kennedy would argue that this group’s own nativist insecurities are the problem — and their leadership is much better at exploiting those insecurities for their own gain than they are in leading these folks to a place where their insecurities might not be getting in their way.
It is always a fraud and a fraud perpetrated most on the folks they constantly lie to and rile up. Ironic too — since they think that they are fighting against a government pulling the wool over their eyes when in fact, their leaders and their propaganda outlets make mountains of money by pulling the wool over their eyes.
I don’t doubt that Cass, but the intensity of the hate would be less. If any Democrat won, the hatred would be there simply because Democrats represent the change to their supposed world view. That is why they opposed Clinton so inexplicably at first.
And if Hillary had won, I think you would have had the same Clinton BS from the 90’s, mixed in with the fact Hillary would have been the first woman President, a significant change from their world view where women, like minorities, should know their place.
But with Obama, whose mere existence and election proves they have lost the fight, the hatred we see is much more than what we would have experienced with a President Hillary Clinton or a President Joe Biden.
The one piece of the emotional puzzle I want to add in is fear. I feel this is one of the driving forces behind the right-wing mentality. Mostly, it’s fear that the world they know and love is changing. In a way, it is quite understandable. But when the change is from a bad status quo (like healthcare) to a better one, or an inevitable change (like the un-whitening of America), fighting the change is a losing battle, and they know it.
They may not admit to it (even to themselves), but they know the change will come. My fear is the knowledge that frightened people who think they are defending their entire world can be driven to do things (violent things) they otherwise wouldn’t.
Are you sure a CBS reporter didn’t come up with this pamphlet…in any case there are whackos on both sides.
Wow, that pamphlet reads just like Hatfield’s “Fortunate Son”!
Your lot laid a few turds in the last eight years. Don’t whine about stepping in them when you have to walk the same path.
“Oh, and DelDem — those who wrote such stuff about Kennedy were, by and large, proud Democrats.”
We’ve been over this before. Who cares what they used to be called? Today they call themselves Republicans.
“if a conservative wrote a piece … it would be rightly regarded as an appeal to bigotry. So, too, is your post here.”
We’ve been over this before, too. Despite your constant attempts at equivalency, everybody else understands the difference between a minority that feels oppressed and a majority that claims to be oppressed. Your inability to understand this concept is the problem here.
By today’s definition, everyone but fruits were conservative in the 1960s. Didn’t matter democrat or republican.
Dill Doe, are you an idiot? If everyone was conservative back then then how did the New Deal get passed? Was FDR a conservative?
God, are you conservatives naturally this stupid or do you work at it?
Thanks for pointing out the fruits!
Oh ho ho! I can see the fraternity boys are up early today!
But with Obama, whose mere existence and election proves they have lost the fight, the hatred we see is much more than what we would have experienced with a President Hillary Clinton or a President Joe Biden.
I think that we are more sensitized to the racialist language coming from the wingnuts, if anything because this is pretty much the irresponsible BS they did at the Palin rallys. But I think we forget Clinton Derangement Syndrome:
And all of this mess and more was treated with the usual he say/she say seriousness of the media.
Toni Morrison famously wrote about Bill Clinton being our first black president. Her quote is always badly used — no one remembers that she is a top rank fiction writer who is comfortable with metaphor — but the meaning of her metaphor there was to note that Bill Clinton was being treated as illegitimately as a black man would have been in the same position.
My point is that the wingnut right was simply never prepared to treat any Dem as a legitimate holder of the office. The ginned up drama is the playbook to deligitimize this President or any Dem President. The racialist stuff is just icing on the cake and one more tool towards that end.
I think you are being too generous. Very few Republicans view any Democrat as a legitimate office holder. If the Bush years teach us anything, it is that the national Republicans Party has given up on the notion that we can have policy differences, but are all in this together. How much longer do we have to hear the message blaring from their radio and TV stations that the general welfare means nothing to Republicans until we believe it?
There are some decent Republicans of course, but the national GOP does not give a flying fuck about the America of Jefferson and Adams and that is an undeniable truth.
“God, are you conservatives naturally this stupid or do you work at it?”
It takes generations, you can’t do it in one lifetime.
“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
Adlai E. Stevenson