At 11 p.m., the night of November 5, 2008, John McCain, representing the pro-business, conservative America, conceded defeat in his bid for the presidency of the United States. The country was suddenly transformed, especially conservative and right wing America that believed that it would never have happened. Their candidates and their philosophy were soundly rejected by the electorate, and they too were transformed. Their mass paranoid hysteria had begun. Authors John Amato and David Neiwert, of the blog "Crooks and Liars," explain how it started, and how it took on a life of its own.
The authors explain how a racist America accelerated quickly into overdrive. Blacks were beaten and killed because of an elected black man. There was a spike in hits on white supremicist websites and right wing blogs. Three police officers were killed in Pittsburgh by a man who believed that Obama would take away his guns.
The Republican reaction could have been an honest analysis of why they lost, but denial was a more soothing way to think. It wasn't that conservatism was bad or weak, it was because conservatives had lost their way. They turned on one of the most conservative administrations in history and its leader, George W. Bush for not having been conservative enough. It spawned a right wing movement called the Tea Party whom the Republicans thought they could use and control. However, it turned out the the Tea Partiers started pulling party strings instead by their support of ultra conservative candidates.
The College or Right Wing Pundits offered courses in hysteria, paranoia, guilt-by-association, disinformation and falsehoods as they spawned an irrational hatred for the president that went far beyond his actions, real or perceived: He wasn't an American citizen; he was a secret Muslim, a terrorist sympathizer, a Marxist, and a communist with a small "c." We were going to be attacked by terrorists. He apologized for the United States; he was ignoring the will of the people, and he was taking away the citizens' constitutional rights. This was the pablum that fed an extremist fringe that had to find rationalizations for a lack of popular support. Glenn Beck, Dick Morris, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Aaron Klein, Michele Malkin, Fox Television, and others are churning out books and stories daily on "taking back America."
In spite of this mass and mainstream media blitz, the right wing and white supremicists blame the "lamestream media" for giving Obama a pass and for not having investigated his "shady background and associations," even though it was Fox News, the fair and balanced network, making news rather than reporting it when it came to Tea Party coverage and outright advocacy by stirring the crowds. Amato and Neiwert hold a special place for Fox News when they show time and again how their news coverage cropped speeches and events to misinform the public, and advocated for the Tea Pary platform. Fox also took special vengeance on those who critized their network. Relentlessly employing the term "socialists" and "czars," they made van Jones, Cass Sunstein and Anita Dunn frequent targets, as well as others. The authors were pointing out that they weren't attacking these people as much as they were attacking Obama. Even a once respected Lou Dobbs of CNN began stirring the paranoid pot by demanding that Obama produce a birth certificate that had been validated many times over.
This right wing has also perfected what the authors called "waving the bloody shirt" response, in which the truth is inverted where the bully becomes the victim and vice versa. A charge of racism becomes an attack on their integrity, and agitation toward racial warfare. How dare you make the charge even though their signs show Obama in "black face" like the Klan would have done.
And in Sarah Palin they find their true hero. Ignorant, sexy, acultural and full of self-pity, her anti-intellectualism is a celebration of her integrity and credibility. She's the soccer mom, and the joe six-pack, with lipstick. (?) Well, something like that.
Palin embodies her lies and divisiveness in what is called sucker populism, or producerism, which is a ploy of the wealthy to keep the middle and poorer class believing that their industry and invention alone will help them win the lottery of joining the exclusive club at Millionaire Acres, that their enemies are the "lazy entitlement oafs at the bottom, and the superwealthy such as George Soros. The wealthy are the staunchest advocates of this brand of populism as they become its chief beneficiary while the ordinary working stiff bears the heavier tax load and tells himself, like Thumper, "if I only work harder." The right wing are the "thumpers" who have the most to lose, yet are the staunchest advocates of losing out-- true sucker populism.
This book was an easy read. Amato and Neiwert amassed hundreds of documents and dozens of hours of news coverage, cropped and whole, to show the disparity of accurate news reporting and the distortions and disinformation that has been coming from the Drudge Report and Conservative News Daily. The authors "blame" the progressives for attempting to rebuild what a previous administration took eight years to ruin, instead of remaining vigilant and reactive to the rise of right wing fantasies that fill the airwaves and the Internet. This is a new generation of Father Coughlins and Joe McCarthys who are instilling hate, fear and paranoia. The error is considering these people so far from reality that their message will not succeed, but the Nazi Party started in the same small way.
This account will also help you remember all the occasions of news reporting slight-of-hand, and propaganda that is being fed to a public that firmly believes that concentration camps, black helicopters, martial law, and socialist style government awaits their fate. The same people who claimed that administration critics of two short years ago were committing treason, are now advocating armed insurrection and sedition.
This book should not be taken lightly; it should only be taken home and read, and taken seriously.
The right wing continues as you read this.
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