The Tea Party and the F-word

Sinclair Lewis wrote that when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

Writing in the Kentucky State Journal, Sara Robinson describes the stages of fascist movements:

In the first stage, a mature industrial state facing some kind of crisis breeds a new, rural movement that's based on nationalist renewal. This movement invariably rejects reason and glorifies raw emotion, promises to restore lost national pride, co-opts the nation's traditional myths for its own purposes, and insists that the country must be purged of the toxic influence of outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.

(Sound familiar yet?)

In the second stage, the movement takes root, turns into a real political party, and seizes a seat at the table....

(Paging the Party of No....)

In the face of this deadlock, the corporate elites forge an alliance with rural nationalists, creating an unholy marriage that, if it continues, will soon breed a fascist state. And, of course, this is precisely what's happening now between the Koch Brothers, the oil companies, Americans for Prosperity, and the Tea Party.

The majority of history's would-be fascist movements have died right at this stage -- almost always because of the basic authoritarian ineptitude of their leadership, which ensured that they'd never gain anything more than a small and temporary handful of seats at the political table. The successful fascisms, on the other hand, were the ones that held together and to gained enough political leverage that capturing their governments became inevitable....

...there are three quick questions that let you know you've crossed that fail-safe line beyond which an emerging fascist regime has too much power to be stopped:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?
2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?
3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

If the answer to all three is "yes," you're probably on for the rest of the ride, which can run for at least a decade or two before it burns through.

Sound hysterical? Of course it does. We're far too sensible for that. Yet... recall the lunacies of would-be Senators Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell. The ravings of Rep. Michelle Bachmann. Death panels and birthers and demagoguery. Global warming denial and "liberal treason" and the nonsense of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. The apparent inability of the Republican leadership to control their tea partiers, and a party with no interest in governing, but only in power. A media that plays to its own preconceptions, for example hiding liberal victories and highlighting liberal defeats. A government that tortures its own citizens.

There is a nasty tendency towards the mob in this country, and a deep seated distrust of the educated. It's long past time for us to seize the narrative in a way that can connect with the mob, and not just our own elite echo chamber. But I have no idea how to get there, since the values espoused by the mob are so very, very different than mine. We might as well be talking different languages.

And in the violence and hyperbole, an undeniable whiff of the 1930s.

The face of hate (updated)

Glenn Greenwald points out the virulent anti-Muslim hate growing in this country, and shows us a video from a protest last month in Orange County, CA where vicious comments were hurled at the Muslim community attending a charity event. Some of the remarks came from a sitting Congressman. Greenwald writes,

I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn't give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents. People like that are so overflowing with hatred and resentments that the place where their humanity -- their soul -- is supposed to be has been drowned.

Look familiar? Make no mistake: we've seen it before, in different guises.







Should this vile speech be blocked? No! But it's important that we see it, that we know who engages in it (a sitting Congressman????!!!!) and we react accordingly. Only if we know about it can we counter the ignorance, fear, bigotry, and hatred that it represents.

UpdateIt continues: two elderly Sikhs shot in Elk Grove CA.

Police said Saturday that they don't know why someone gunned down two men – frail from heart attacks and advancing years – as they slowly ambled through a quiet Elk Grove neighborhood during their daily afternoon walk.

Surinder Singh, 67, died Friday afternoon on the sidewalk along East Stockton Boulevard near Geneva Pointe Drive. Gurmej Atwal, his 78-year-old friend, was shot twice in the chest. His family said he was in critical but stable condition.

In a statement released late Saturday, Elk Grove Police Chief Robert Lehner called on witnesses to come forward and said, "We have no evidence to indicate there was a hate or bias motivation for this crime; however, the obvious Sikh appearance of the men, including the traditional Dastar headwear and lack of any other apparent motive, increasingly raise that possibility.

Earthquake treasure: Time capsules in New Zealand

In the plinth of a shattered statue, in the shadow of ChristChurch Cathedral in New Zealand, a treasure was found.

As New Zealanders observed two minutes' silence in memory of those killed in last week's Christchurch earthquake, rescue workers made a remarkable discovery among the rubble: two time capsules from up to 144 years ago.

A metal cylinder and a bottle containing rolled-up parchment were found beneath the plinth of a statue of Christchurch's Irish founder, John Robert Godley, which toppled during the magnitude 6.3 quake.

The city's Mayor, Bob Parker, said the parchment appeared to bear a message expressing the vision of Godley and his contemporaries for the city....

The time capsules – believed to have been buried either in 1867, when the statue was put up, or in 1933, when it was returned to its original site after being removed in 1918 – are being examined before being opened in a humidity-controlled environment. Two words – "by" and "erected" – are visible on the document inside the partly smashed bottle.

Fred Phelps, Hate Speech, and the First Amendment

Right-wing loony Fred Phelps and his followers have a revolting habit of picketing the funerals of dead servicemen and claiming that it's all the fault of the gays. Whether or not he can be stopped from this resulted in a case that went to the Supreme Court:

The case decided Wednesday arose from a protest at the funeral of a Marine who had died in Iraq, Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder. As they had at hundreds of other funerals, members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., appeared with signs bearing messages like “America is Doomed” and “God Hates Fags.”

The church contends that God is punishing the United States for its tolerance of homosexuality.

The father of the fallen Marine, Albert Snyder, sued the protesters for, among other things, the intentional infliction of emotional distress, and won a substantial jury award that was later overturned by an appeals court.

The Supreme Court found that for all his hatred and vileness, Phelps has a right to do that.

“Speech is powerful,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain.”

But under the First Amendment, he went on, “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.” Instead, the national commitment to free speech, he said, requires protection of “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

I believe this was the right decision. We do not, in this country, block even vile speech. Yes, it means Phelps can use vicious words. But blocking speech the majority finds difficult would also mean that pro-women's rights or pro-gay voices could be silenced. As Adam Serwer writes,

By 8-1, the Supreme Court voted no. It's one of those rulings that reminds you that at least on some very basic understandings of what "free speech," means, both conservative and moderate jurists on the court are on the same page: You don't forfeit your First Amendment rights just by being an asshole.

The real measure of whether you actually do believe in the Constitution, is whether you believe it really does apply to everyone, not just those whose views the majority finds palatable. It's the argument that makes it abhorrent to block marriage for gay Americans, or to deny Muslim Americans the right to build a mosque. If you really believe in free speech, then you have to support even those whose speech is offensive.

What do you think?

Why is the economy a disaster?

From Robert Reich:

The truth is that while the proximate cause of America’s economic plunge was Wall Street’s excesses leading up to the crash of 2008, its underlying cause — and the reason the economy continues to be lousy for most Americans — is so much income and wealth have been going to the very top that the vast majority no longer has the purchasing power to lift the economy out of its doldrums....

The truth is if the super-rich paid their fair share of taxes, government wouldn’t be broke. If Governor Scott Walker hadn’t handed out tax breaks to corporations and the well-off, Wisconsin wouldn’t be in a budget crisis. If Washington hadn’t extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, eviscerated the estate tax, and created loopholes for private-equity and hedge-fund managers, the federal budget wouldn’t look nearly as bad.

...The final truth is as income and wealth have risen to the top, so has political power. The reason all of this is proving so difficult to get across is the super-rich, such as the Koch brothers, have been using their billions to corrupt politics, hoodwink the public, and enlarge and entrench their outsized fortunes. They’re bankrolling Republicans who are mounting showdowns and threatening shutdowns, and who want the public to believe government spending is the problem.

From Forbes (yes, FORBES, a pro-business magazine; my emphasis):

When measuring for income inequality, the U.S. now falls within the ranks of Uruguay and Cameroon, according to the CIA World Factbook. Evidence from the Levy report suggests that middle class incomes have stagnated and as a result, households are increasingly relying on debt to finance normal consumption expenditures. The middle class may be in for yet another pinch. As my colleague Robert Lenzner writes here, rising inflation is expected to put a further strain on indebted and unemployed households. “It’s only a matter of time before a political figure decides to exploit this. Why Obama hasn’t, I’ll never know,” says Gladwell. Social stability is threatened when a society becomes too stratified. “If we want to continue to grow, we have to equalize a little bit,” he says.

Meanwhile...check this out. Speaks for itself, doesn't it?

On the roots of the Tea Party

George Lakoff asks where the Tea Party comes from and what we can do about it.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on….

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

Lakoff argues that empathy, in the mutual social contract between citizens, is the foundation of our democracy.

From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one's fellow citizens.

The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Using a structure he has presented before, Lakoff argues that conservatives want a strong man, the strict father figure he calls The Decider. This is an authoritarian figure who "knows best".

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

...And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally…..

So much for empathy. But it's not just the rigid semi-libertarianism: it's a world view linked to a certain submission to power.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. … To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil's own means can be used again conservatism's immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture, or even death, say, for women's doctors. Freedom is defined as being your own strict father - with individual not social responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will of course need a gun.

Sound familiar?

Lakoff goes on to describe how the Democrats have become enablers of this behavior, unable to fight back against the lock-step of the thugs and accepting their frame of events and politics. And he tells us that what is happening in Wisconsin needs to happen elsewhere.He finds hope in the actions in Wisconsin. It's not just the Middle East that is seeking justice. But a real question is whether we've gone too far.

Apparently a lot of Wisconsinites have "buyer's remorse" about their governor. But couldn't they have seen this coming?