It’s probably too negative to suggest that all is lost when it comes to the November elections. But right-wing media is rife with hate speech, lunatic theories abound and misinformation is the coin of the realm for a distressingly large segment of the electorate.
The rants of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and a host of other radical miscreants continue to surface as if they were serious news. But often ridiculing them just seems to make supporters distrustful of the very news sources that strive to observe journalistic principles. Glenn Beck warns of a possible “Reichstag moment” when events would precipitate a fascist takeover of the country. In better times such claptrap would be dismissed as the ravings of a troubled mind, but these are not better times, and people, far too many of them, are mesmerized by the false prophets of doom who fill the airwaves and newsprint with hysterical nonsense disguised as concern for the nation’s well-being.
The truth is that many Tea Party rallies are far more like the unruly crowds that voted Hitler into power than any group in the current Washington establishment. Obsessed with gun rights and ‘free’ markets and hoisting signs that question the president’s birth-right and his credentials, the movement’s participants are the vanguard of an unhealthy assault on our form of government. Their allegiance to what they insist were structures designed by the founding fathers and embodied in the Constitution is an exercise in ignorance - - suggesting for example that religion should be woven into the fabric of our government is profoundly at odds with the original intent of those first freedom fighters.
As bizarre as some of the far right’s positions are, what might still be considered the mainstream Republican Party has responded by becoming more conservative, gravitating toward its extremist flank. Candidates like John McCain tacked further right in his primary battle with J.D. Hayworth in Arizona, and conservative Lisa Murkowski lost to ultra-conservative Joe Miller in Alaska. In a strange sort of oxymoron the bitter diatribes of right-wing groups are hard-nosed fluff that denotes the emptiness of the far-right agenda. Issues like spending and bailouts are dumped in the White House lap although the bank rescues were initiated during the Bush presidency and spending accelerated as a result of two Bush wars, an unfunded drug-entitlement plan and the Bush tax-cuts, all of which helped create enormous debt.
But in the twilight zone of much so-called ‘middle-American’ thinking a confluence of dissimilarities seems logical. Tea Partiers who screamed ‘hands off my Medicare’ call President Obama a Socialist for promoting a health-care program and a fascist for trying to reform the financial industry. Supporters seem unaware of the contradiction in their outcries to restrain the federal government while retaining favorite entitlements. And the beyond-stupid crowd, fresh from their Fox News habitat and the clarion cry of right-wing politicians, call programs like Washington Journal and blithely advocate for the elimination of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Department of Education. One recent caller proclaimed that Obama took our banks, our cars and sent our jobs to other countries despite the fact that nothing of the sort is true. Time to get back to some “common sense” such callers say, like when George Bush was in the White House. a
Meanwhile Fox News and other GOP advocates continually say that the “stimulus” hasn’t worked and that we have a community-organizer for a president instead of a qualified leader. Never mind Obama’s law degree, his teaching stint at the University of Chicago, his three terms in the Illinois Senate and his election to the U. S. Senate. It just seems to work for conservatives to repeat any foolishness that entices angry partisans.
In her invariably vituperative style, Michele Malkin on Fox one morning said that the right had refrained from blaming Al Gore for the gunman at the Discover Channel who claimed to be inspired by Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” while the “other side” was quick to blame Fox and Republicans for violence like the slashing of a Muslim cabbie in New York. As silly as her comparison was, it seemed to be taken for granted that an environmental treatise and the venomous discussions at Fox about the Muslim Center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York were somehow analogous. Incidentally, Fox ran a continuous bottom-line loop declaring the source of the gunman’s inspiration.
Make no mistake, in addition to the bleak jobs picture, voters who are inspired by absolutely nutty propaganda pose a major problem for Democrats this fall.
