Category Archives: big picture stuff

Patriotism v. Hate Speech

Posted on by

(This is more or less a continuation of the Patriotism v. Nationalism series. See also “Patriotism v. Paranoia” and “Patriotism v. Francis Fukuyama.”)

Very recently Digby published a post called “Haters v. Haters” in which he argues, using very concrete examples, that the Right works a lot harder at cultivating hate than does the Left.

How many hateful liberal books accusing Republicans of treason, slander, being unhinged or ruining the world are there out there? A couple? Probably. But let’s just say that the market for accusing political opposition of capital crimes, indulging in fantasies about their extinction and musing about how someone should be killed as a way of sending a message to others has leaned heavily on the right wing side of the equation for decades.

A rightie responder to this post claims that much of what Digby identified as hate speech is not, in fact, hate speech. For example, when Rush Limbaugh expresses satisfaction and pleasure when Christian peace activists were taken hostage by Muslim terrorists who are threatening to kill them —

I said at the conclusion of previous hours—part of me that likes this. And some of you might say, “Rush, that’s horrible. Peace activists taken hostage.” Well, here’s why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.

— that is not hate speech. “There is nothing hateful about enjoying the suffering of other people when that suffering is due to their own stupidity,” says the rightie.

Digby responds:

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s hateful to enjoy the suffering of others regardless of how “stupid” they are. (Psychologists would call it sociopathic.) Let’s just say that I think it’s cold and inhuman and leave it at that.

Digby is right; the Limbaugh quote is sociopathic. And it sure as hell is hate speech, whether the rightie recognizes it as such or not. Which brings us to another distinction between liberals (patriots) and “conservatives” (nationalists).

There’s an ongoing intrablog argument about whether there’s more hate speech on the Right or Left blogosphere. Each side is certain the other is worse. I say the difference is not in quantity, but in quality. The Left Blogosphere hurls a lot of insults at the Right. I do it myself. I call righties whackjobs and idiots and Kool-Aiders and all manner of other derogatory things. No question, there is ugly rhetoric and demonization being generated on both sides of the blogosphere.

But here’s what I don’t do — I don’t wish the opposition dead. I don’t want them rounded up and shot. I don’t take pleasure in any pain or suffering they experience. And this is true of most of the Left Blogosphere. There are always exceptions. But by and large I don’t see leftie bloggers, especially prominent ones, wishing death, injury or deportation on the Right. I certainly don’t see such rhetoric coming from elected Democratic politicians in Washington or any liberal commentator appearing in commercial print or broadcast media. I can’t say the same about the Right.

(Quibble: One occasionally runs into some fairly ghastly examples of eliminationism coming from the extreme Marxist fringe — marginalized even by most of the Left — and from juvenile anti-Bush protesters with poor judgment and worse impulse control. This is one reason I am leery of public demonstrations; even though most demonstrators are serious-mnded people, there are always a few who don’t understand what is and isn’t appropriate. I’m saying I don’t see eliminationist rhetoric from people who are prominent enough to have some following among liberals, progressives, or Democrats or who hold prominent elected office or positions in the Democratic party. If you are a rightie who wants to disprove my point, you’re going to have to find examples coming from liberal equivalents of Rush Limbaugh, not just something naughty drawn on a sheet by anonymous adolescents and held up at an antiwar rally.)

And the fact that someone who is, I assume, bright enough to tie his shoes doesn’t recognize that what Limbaugh said is hate speech is fairly alarming. Can it be that righties don’t recognize their own hate speech as hate speech? No wonder they think we’re worse than they are. It also makes me wonder if some mild form of sociopathy — a personality disorder marked by an inability to feel empathy or concern for others — is a common trait of hard-core righties.

Dave Neiwert of Orcinus is Da Man when it comes to assessments of rightie v. leftie hate speech. His most recent post, published yesterday, discusses Ann Coulter’s recent address to the Conservative Political Action Committee conference. You know, the speech in which she went on about “ragheads” and oh, how she fantasizes she could assassinate Bill Clinton. The speech that generated some chuckles and a few mild rebukes from righties. Anyway, it’s a good post, and it points to the fact that rightie hate speech is coming from prominent spokespeople for the Right; people who do appear in commercial print and broadcast media and who are invited to speak for the bleeping Conservative Political Action Committee conference.

David has blogged a lot about “eliminationist” rhetoric., which he defines this way:

What, really, is eliminationism?

It’s a fairly self-explanatory term: it describes a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.

… Rhetorically, it takes on some distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as simply beyond the pale, and in the end the embodiment of evil itself — unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus in need of elimination. It often depicts its designated “enemy” as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and loves to incessantly suggest that its targets are themselves disease carriers. A close corollary — but not as nakedly eliminationist — are claims that the opponents are traitors or criminals, or gross liabilities for our national security, and thus inherently fit for elimination or at least incarceration.

And yes, it’s often voiced as crude “jokes”, the humor of which, when analyzed, is inevitably predicated on a venomous hatred.

But what we also know about this rhetoric is that, as surely as night follows day, this kind of talk eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.

The most significant component of eliminationist rhetoric is the desire to inflict harm. David provides examples in several posts: here, here, here, and here, to pick just a few posts at random. As you read, you’ll notice that the examples are not coming from some beyond-the-pale fringe. Many examples are taken from prominent columnists and widely known rightie bloggers.

It is fundamental to rightie orthodoxy that we lefties are the haters, not them. This is how they explain our opposition to Bush; no matter how many concrete reasons we cite for opposing Bush, righties dismiss them with the simple explanation: You’re just Bush haters. Or liberals, or partisans, or variations thereof. And since we hate them, in their minds it is blameless and righteous to hate us back. So righteous, in fact, that taking pleasure in our deaths isn’t actually hate in their minds, as illustrated by the Limbaugh listener discussed above (and here). Fact is, if what Limbaugh spews out day after weary day isn’t hate speech, then nothing is hate speech.

A couple of years ago I experienced a fairly disturbing half-hour cab ride in which the cab radio was tuned to Laura Ingraham’s radio show. The cabbie was a young man so utterly absorbed in Ingraham’s hate speech — she spoke of nothing but her contempt and resentment of liberals — he could barely stand to sit in his seat. He was filled to the brim and quivering with hate. He punctuated Ingraham’s litany of liberal atrocities and her desire to see the tables turned by pouncing his fist on the dashboard and shouting yeah! On close observation it became clear the young man saw himself as some kind of oppressed minority suffering at the hands of a liberal power establishment. The fact that liberals have virtually no real political power in the U.S. today, and that Ingraham’s examples of liberal perfidy came entirely out of her own imagination, mattered little. I’m not saying this guy is typical — one guy does not make a representative sample — but I am saying this is what a steady diet of rightie hate speech can do to a person.

One of the most common bits of rightie shtick is to take something a prominent Democrat or liberal has said out of context and present it to the faithful Right as hate speech, so that righties feel justified in hating back. A classic example was the smearing of Senator Richard Durbin after he remarked on an FBI report on torture at Guantanamo. Durbin did not say that the U.S. was running concentration camps just like Hitler’s, but that’s what righties were told he said. And the reaction from righties was predictable, and sick, and terrifying. A substantial number of of our fellow citizens are, like the cabbie, primed to hate. All the VRWC has to do is yank their chains, and the eliminationism will commence.

I don’t want to put all conservatives in the same boat here. Traditional conservatives whose ideas are based in conservative political philosophy certainly can, and do, find much to criticize in liberal political philosophy and in many progressive policies enacted in the past (not many progressive policies around at the moment to take potshots at). What must always be understood is that the hard heart of our current political Right is not conservative. Whether one thinks of it as a quasi-religious cult or an old-fashioned political machine, or a little of both, I think it’s important to keep it separated from actual American political conservatism, which is an honorable tradition with a legitimate place at the table of government.

But this makes much “MSM” posturing over “balance” and fairness all the more bizarre. They’re no longer balancing opposing political philosophies. They’re balancing people whose opinions are based on political philosophy against a mindless hate cult. And you know this is true because, increasingly, the traditional conservatives are somehow getting kicked over to our side.

Yesterday Matt Stoller at MyDD posted “Reporters: The Right-Wing Hates You,” in which he argues that while we lefties get frustrated with news media for not doing a better job, righties want to destroy news media as we know it entirely.

They hate reporters, blindly. You as reporters can’t do a good enough job to satisfy them, because they are after obedience and not truth. They hate you. They hate what you stand for. They will rejoice in your downfall. They will lie to you because you don’t matter to them. You have no legitimacy.

It’s taken many years of propaganda about the “liberal media” to get us to this point but … we’ve arrived, folks. We’re here. Wake up. (See also ” ‘Marginalizing’ the Press.”)

If you want to see where we’re heading, just take a look at the Middle East. We’re told Muslims still carry a grudge about the bleeping crusades. We’re told Muslim leaders and Muslim schools have been teaching hate for decades. And recently a few imams used a few cartoons to yank the chains, and large numbers of Muslims go on a rampage.

Righties insist we are not like them, even as they use the Muslim rampage as an excuse to ramp up their own anti-Muslim hate speech. I agree that the majority of our home-grown rightie haters are not likely to riot in the streets. Yet. But give ’em time. My cabbie certainly was ready to join a lynch mob had he bumped into one.

I have argued in the past that righties define liberalism in more hateful and demonic terms than lefties define conservatism (click on the link for examples). Liberals who criticize conservatism tend to be person- or issue-specific, and give reasons — This guy is a jerk because he did thus-and-so. This policy stinks because it’s going to have such-and-such effect. On the Right, however, the word liberal itself is such a pejorative that no qualifiers are required. There are always exceptions, but if you start googling for examples of broad-brush demonization of liberalism by righties and of conservatism by lefties, you find truckfuls more of the former than you do of the latter.

And I think that’s because, for too many righties, hate itself is the point. And hate doesn’t need reasons.

[Next (and probably last) in the series: Righties discover intolerance!]

Update: See Arianna Huffington, “Is Sean Hannity Addicted to Coulter Crack?”

Patriotism v. Francis Fukuyama

Posted on by

This is only tangential to the “patriotism v. nationalism” series I seem to have embarked on, but I’d like to toss it in to the mix now before it gets stale.

Some years ago I read the original “The End of History?” article that Francis Fukuyama wrote in 1989, and out of which grew a book by the same name. This essay persuaded me that, just as youth is wasted on the young, graduate school is wasted on the stupid. I expressed more dismay at Fukuyama and explained why I think he’s an idiot here.

Anyway, Fukuyama wrote a long essay for yesterday’s New York Times Sunday magazine called “After Neoconservatism.” I haven’t read it all the way through yet and will refrain from criticising it directly until I do. But links to the essay took me to this post by Andrew Seal of The Little Green Blog (“All things petty and profound at Dartmouth College – and beyond…”) that’s a gem. Note this paragraph in particular

I would add that neoconservatism is also a reaction to modernization, that the idea, pseudo-Nietzschean as it is, that we can shape history by our will to power (veiled as a will to democracy) is a reaction to a globalized world where awareness of things beyond our power has grown to frightening proportions. It is not that we have less power over our situation than ever before, but that we are more aware of how little power we have always had. I guess Nietzsche himself identified this phenomenon–or symptom, if you prefer–as ressentiment.

This nicely supports what I said of neoconism in the last post, “Patriotism v. Paranoia,” which was a follow up to “Patriotism v. Nationalism“: “I see neoconservatism as proactive isolationism. Foreigners scare us, so we’ll make them be more like us so they’re not so scary.”

Mr. Seal of Dartmouth says it a bit better, though.

Here Mr. Seal quotes Fukuyama and makes a comment —

    The [Iraq] war’s supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform.

In other words, we’ve all clearly been taking things like Locke’s “state of nature” and Rawls’s “original position” a little too literally. Democracy is not, in fact, at the heart of humanity.

This represents some progress on Fukuyama’s part, because in “The End of History?” he assumes that something called “liberal democracy” (which I infer from the essay is neither liberal nor democratic as most of us understand those words) is humanity’s natural state and the final destination of mankind’s political evolution. Once mankind has universally achieved this state, history (meaning wars and other political upheavals) will end, Fukuyama concluded.

I think righties generally have this same view of “democracy”; that whatever it is, it’s immutable, and once you have it you don’t have to be concerned about damaging it or losing it. Subvert it, break it, bend it out of shape, and it’ll just snap back, good as new. Further, once a people have elections, they have democracy, because people will always choose to freedom over totalitarianism. Numerous real-world examples to the contrary will not dissuade righties from this notion.

Also, Mr. Seals says,

Fukuyama is asserting the existence of what Richard Hofstadter called “the illusion of American omnipotence”—that anything seriously bad happening in the world had to be the result of American mismanagement of global affairs. He used the example of the Chinese fall to Communism—many believed that democratic China’s collapse was due to insufficient American involvement and support or even “betrayal.” However, the illusion of American omnipotence has another side as well—we tend to believe that anything good happening in the world is a fruit of beneficial American policies–the embrace of democracy by many of the former Warsaw Pact countries was “due” to our shining example, for instance. (City on the Hill, etc.) Neocons are simply the most ardent believers in the illusion of American omnipotence.

Exactly so. And now I want to treat you to my favorite rightie, Orrin Judd. He remains my favorite even over Michelle Malkin and Captain Ed (and even Confederate Yankee, who loves me but won’t admit it), because he’s such a pure example of the walking delusional state that is rightiness. Others may occasionally be contaminated by momentary bursts of clarity or reason, but not our Orrin. In reaction to Fukuyama’s essay, he writes,

The problem for Mr. Fukuyama and others counseling a return to Realism is that the neocons aren’t the driving force behind the policy of humanitarian interventionism. It is instead a function of the Judeo-Christian remoralization of Anglo-American foreign policy that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began and that continued unabated under Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, reaching its current heights under our most openly evangelical president, George W, Bush. With Australia, India, Japan, and perhaps now Canada joining the Axis of Good, which requires that regimes be democratic in order to be considered legitimate, there’s not much chance danger of the kind of retreat he’s fretting about. And with John McCain the odds on favorite to be our next president we’re more likely to be increasingly interventionist rather than less.

What can one say to that, but … holy shit.

And be sure to read the comments. As Mary Matalin might say, they are delicious. I think my favorites are “We stepped in and imposed peace. It’s who we are”; and “It’s our fault we’ve let them all depend on us. Democratization is like global welfare reform–get on with your own lives.” The “illusion of American omnipotence” indeed.

Patriotism v. Paranoia

Posted on by

This post is a followup to the last post on Patriotism v. Nationalism, in which I argue that the hard-core Right is not patriotic, but nationalistic.

Saturday at Huffington Post, EJ Eskow posted “Shot Through the Heart and You’re to Blame: Conservatism as Psychopathology.” Eskow disagrees with Glenn Greenwald that our current “conservatism” is a Bush personality cult.

I think the truth is simpler and sicker than that. People don’t slavishly obey and follow every whim of Messrs. Bush (and now Cheney) because they revere them. They do it for a more basic reason: They’ve got the candy.

Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld … they’re Mafia bosses doling out the largesse in return for unquestioned fealty. And today’s so-called “conservatives” respond in kind. Will Roger Ailes get more exclusive interviews if he peddles the daily GOP lies and spins? As you wish, Godfather. Will Arnold Schwarzenegger become Governor if he pumps for Bush at the convention? Thank you, Don Karl. Will “Straight Talkin'” John McCain be rewarded with a chance to run in 2008 if he forgets what they did to his wife and kid? It’ good to kiss the ring again, Mr. President. Let me hug you.

Everything conservatism used to stand for, from fiscal restraint to obeying the law to good manners, is being turned on its head by the Bush Regime. And the faithful love them for it. Eskow writes,

Wrecking the country’s finances. Trashing civil discourse. Law breaking. Ruining the earth itself for our grandchildren. That’s some sick s**t. Now, we have the sight of Mr. Whittington — by all accounts a good and decent man — being forced to crawl on broken glass to stay in the club. Hey, too bad about Harry — but business is business.

But now to the psychopathology — Eskow points out that the recent shooting incident (“Get loaded, shoot a guy in the face, tell the world it’s his fault, then make him crawl.”) is illustrative of antisocial personality disorder as defined by the DSM psychiatric manual. Well, yes; Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the top officials of the Bush Administration could fill the Personality Disorder Hall of Fame. But does “they’ve got the candy” really account for Bush’s following among the people of the U.S.? It might explain why other Republican politicians kowtow to the Bushies, but it doesn’t explain Bush devotion among the hoi polloi.

According to some guys at Berkeley, 50 years of research literature reveal these common psychological factors linked to political conservatism:

* Fear and aggression
* Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
* Uncertainty avoidance
* Need for cognitive closure
* Terror management

Fear, aggression, avoidance, terror. As Glenn Greenwald wrote,

When all else fails, what we end up hearing from Bush supporters, usually in quite strained and urgent tones, is that we have no real choice but to consent to the latest item of controversy on the Bush agenda (which now even includes allowing the President to break the law when he decides that our protection requires that), because if we do not, we will all die violent and horrible deaths at the hands of the powerful Islamic terrorists. Our very survival is at risk — the people who want to kill us all are coming — and given our dire state, anything and everything is justified to stop them.

I think righties are genuinely baffled when they find others who aren’t as afraid as they are and who aren’t being driven by fear. Like, for example, lefties. They assume we are innocents who don’t understand how dangerous the world is. And I think they’re unhinged. Yes, terrorism is frightening. Terrorists can knock down buildings and kill people. But terrorists can’t destroy America. There aren’t enough terrorists with enough weapons in the world to invade and occupy America. Terrorists can’t destroy the Constitution or cancel our civil liberties. Only we can do that. And fear is driving the more unhinged elements of the Right into doing exactly that.

In “Bush and the Cultivation of Fear” I argued that support for George W. Bush is built on fear. Even neocon-ism, which on the surface appears to be all about self-confidence and dominance and spreading American hegemony, is an ideology born of fear. I see neoconservatism as proactive isolationism. Foreigners scare us, so we’ll make them be more like us so they’re not so scary.

Relating this to the last post on nationalism — I see nationalism and fundamentalism and most other right-wing isms as essentially driven by fear. In the past century or so our species, worldwide, has undergone some seismic social shifts. People no longer remain neatly sorted by skin color, language, and cultural history. All over the globe people of diverse ethnic and social backgrounds are having to learn to live together. Once upon a time “foreign” places were far, far away. But air travel has brought them closer in terms of travel time; now every foreign place on the globe is just over the horizon. Soon foreigners will be sitting in our laps.

I think nationalism arose and became dominant in the 20th century largely because of these seismic social shifts. People who can’t handle the shifts retreat into nationalism as a defense.

This is from something I wrote in December 2003:

I’ve observed my whole life how Americans can be frightened into stampeding off cliffs. Fear of Communism gave birth to McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the War in Vietnam. Today the Republicans are using fears of terrorism, foreigners, ethnic minorities, and various aspects of sexuality to keep the serfs in line.

Consider also the Religious Right. In her magnificent book The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism, Karen Armstrong demonstrates that fundamentalism arose in response to modernity, especially to scientific rationalism. “Fear is at the heart of fundamentalism,” she writes. “The fear of losing yourself.” This is true of Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden as well as our homegrown types. Liberals cherish tolerance, democracy, pluralism, and civil liberties; fundamentalists fear these values as weapons of (their) annihilation.

    It is important to recognize that these theologies and ideologies are rooted in fear. The desire to define doctrines, erect barriers, establish borders, and segregate the faithful in a sacred enclave where the law is stringently observed springs from that terror of extinction which has made all fundamentalists, at once time or another, believe that the secularists were about to wipe them out. The modern world, which seems so exciting to a liberal, seems Godless, drained of meaning and even satanic to a fundamentalist. [Armstrong, The Battle for God (Ballantine, 2000), p. 368]

I postulate that existential fear is at the heart of most “isms.” And although there’s no objective measure of angst that I know of, the world may seem scarier to We, the People, than it used to, and not just because of terrorism. Collectively, our props are falling away. Compared to fifty years ago (as far back as I can remember), communities are fragmented, families are scattered, jobs are ephemeral. Across rural and small-town America, communities that were once homogeneous are becoming multiracial and multiethnic. “Givens” about God and Man and Sex and other big issues are being openly challenged.

Thus, fearful voters can be incited into voting against their own self-interests by the terrifying specter of gay people getting married.

If you understand the fear issue, then what I call Erin’s Paradox (named for my daughter because she noticed it, not because she has it) becomes more understandable. Erin’s Paradox says that the further away Americans live from any likely terrorist target, the more fearful they are of terrorism. “Likely terrorist targets” are urban, and city dwellers learn to be comfortable with multiculturalism. If you live in some homogeneous little town out on the prairie, however, it’s more likely you are not comfortable with multiculturalism at all. Thus, dusky Islamic terrorists from unfathomable foreign places scare the stuffing out of them, much more so than the potential Timothy McVeigh wannabee next door.

Bottom line: When you are looking at a rightie you are looking at a nationalist; and when you are looking at a nationalist you are looking at someone who has already surrendered to fear. The terrorists have got ’em right where they want ’em — terrorized.

Later I want to tie this in to hate speech from the Right, but I think I’ve gone on long enough for now.

Patriotism v. Nationalism

Posted on by

Do you remember Sydney Harris? He was a syndicated columnist who died in 1986. I used to love his column.

Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “the greatest,” but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. — Sydney J. Harris

I’ve been struggling with ideas about patriotism v. nationalism. And then I looked in Bartlett’s Quotations and rediscovered Sydney Harris.

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

I miss Sydney Harris. But here’s another good quote on patriotism and nationalism, from some other guy:

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks. I fear that nationalism is one of England’s many spurious gifts to the world. — Richard Aldington

“Responsibility” seems to be a common theme:

What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility … a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. — Adlai Stevenson

I’m sure by now you see where I’m going with this: Righties are not patriots, but nationalists. And I’m arguing that one of the basic differences between a patriot and a nationalist is that patriots value responsibility. This includes the citizen’s responsibility to his country, a country’s responsibility to its citizens, and the responsibility of a country and its citizens to the rest of the world.

Nationalists, on the other hand, do not value responsibility. They value loyalty, and their loyalty is a type of tribalism. The loyalty may not necessarily be to one’s fellow citizens, but only to members of their tribe. You know the righties feel absolutely no loyalty to us lefties, for example, even though we are fellow-citizens.

The right Americans are the right Americans because they’re not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans. — Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917), British historian

Further, nationalists feel no sense of responsibility for the actions of their country. No matter what the country does, the nationalist will either justify it or deny it. Just speaking of the wrongdoing of one’s country is “disloyal” to a nationalist.

Cal Thomas is a nationalist, not a patriot. Recently he wrote,

Last Sunday, Gore spoke to the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia. … Gore told his audience, many of whom have been educated at American universities, that after 9/11 Arabs in the United States were “indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.” … Gore also claimed there were “terrible abuses” of the detainees, but he failed to provide any examples, and media calls to his office produced none.

Thomas should have called the U.S. Department of Justice. In June 2003 the Justice Department’s inspector general issued a report of the results of an internal, but independent investigation. The report reveals that the FBI and immigration authorities seized hundreds of Arabs and South Asians after 9/11 and subjected them to severe prison conditions with barely a nod to due process. A summary of the report is here. The complete report, in PDF format, is here.

Amazing what three minutes of googling will turn up, isn’t it? You’d think a “journalist” like Cal Thomas would figure these things out. Anyway, Thomas continues,

For Gore to make his anti-American remarks in Saudi Arabia is at least as bad as what Nazi sympathizers said in this country and abroad leading up to and during World War II.

One definition of “treason” at dictionary.com is: Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. By any objective standard, Gore’s remarks in Saudi Arabia appear to fit the definition.

Does Thomas not realize an audience of U.S-educated Saudis must have known already about the rights violations detailed in the Justice Department report? Or does he think simple brown natives won’t find such things out unless we tell them? (Puh-leeze … )

What really ticked off Thomas was that, in his eyes, Gore’s admission to a pack of foreigners that America had done something wrong was an act of disloyalty. But acknowledging wrongdoing is an act of taking responsibility. Taking responsibility is what patriots do. Denying that one’s country is ever at fault is what nationalists do.

And if you really want to find an American aiding America’s enemies, Cal, take a look at the Oval Office.

Seems to me that the easiest way to tell a patriot from a nationalist is to apply the “responsibility” test. When the U.S. is at fault, a patriot considers it a duty to speak up and say so. But where a patriot sees responsibility, a nationalist just sees disloyalty. The nationalist will say something like “why are you tearing down your country? Why don’t you talk about this bad thing another country did?” I’m sure you’ve heard speeches like that, many times. And the answer is, because I’m not responsible for that other country. I’m responsible for my country. Nationalists don’t get that.

[Update: The Poor Man finds an example.]

This is from the late, great Erich Fromm:

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by “patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare–never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

Fromm puts patriotism in quotation marks; I assume he is using the word in an ironic sense. But speaking of idolatrous worship, last Thursday Dave Neiwert posted about “The Conservative faith” at Orcinus. Responding to Glenn Greenwald’s must-read post “Do Bush followers have a political ideology?” Dave argues that what passes for current “conservatism” is a kind of political religion, a critter defined this way by Wikipedia:

In the terminology of some scholars working in sociology, a political religion is a political ideology with cultural and political power equivalent to those of a religion, and often having many sociological and ideological similarities with religion. Quintessential examples are Marxism and Nazism, but totalitarianism is not a requirement (for example neo-liberalism can be analysed as a political religion).

… The term political religion is a sociological one, drawing on the sociological aspects of religion which can be often be found in certain secular ideologies. A political religion occupies much the same psychological and sociological space as a theistic religion, and as a result it often displaces or coopts existing religious organisations and beliefs; this is described as a “sacralisation” of politics. However, although a political religion may coopt existing religious structures or symbolism, it does not itself have any independent spiritual or theocratic elements – it is essentially secular, using religion only for political purposes, if it does not reject religious faith outright.

Dave Neiwert continues to present, IMO, a solid case that current contemporary “conservatism” is more a nascent political religion than a political philosophy. And this explains much about the righties’ attitude toward American non-righties. We are not just the political opposition; we are apostate. We are blasphemers. We are heretics.

One of the most maddening traits of righties is that they cannot wrap their heads around the simple truth that those of us who oppose the Bush Administration have lots of reasons for doing so. How many times has a critic of Bush policy been dismissed as “just a Bush hater”? It doesn’t matter what facts or documentation the critic presents. It’s all swept away with the simple explanation — Bush hater. Or liberal. Which takes us back to Glenn Greenwald’s observation that anyone who criticises the Bush Regime becomes a “liberal” in the minds of righties, no matter if that individual is as politically conservative as cheesy eagle art. Glenn writes,

People who self-identify as “conservatives” and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That’s because “conservatism” is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as “liberal” is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.

If you understand Bush cultism as a religious faith, then the behavior of Bush supporters becomes, if not understandable, at least recognizable. In their minds, whatever we say is blasphemy; through us, Satan himself speaks. The righteous must plug their ears and refuse to listen.

Religion and nationalism do tend to get mixed up together into the same toxic, warmongering soup. This is precisely what is going on in the Muslim world; Islam as nationalism. You can find examples of enmity sorting itself into religious/ethnic camps in many parts of Africa, Asia, and around the globe. Perhaps as nation-states become more multiethnic and religiously pluralistic, the urge to form enemies and make war is being driven out of the hands of governments and into the hands of charismatic religious/ethnic leaders, like Osama bin Laden. We should note that even though encyclopedias still define the word nationalism as “loyalty to a nation-state,” which would certainly apply to most 20th-century nationalist movements, nationalists can defy existing political boundaries and organize themselves around an ideal of “nation” that excludes existing borders and governments. But that’s a topic a bit too ambitious for Sunday morning.

Let’s go back to Cal Thomas for a moment. Last week Citizen K of DKos wrote a post called “Cal Thomas: the republican call for Leninism and blasphemy” in which the Citizen argued that righties like Thomas “illustrates the takeover of American discourse by Leninist ideology.” Citizen K quotes Lenin saying that anyone who vacillates from the positions worked out by Soviet political leaders “objectively can have only one result … helping the imperialists to provoke the Russian Soviet Republic into a battle that will obviously be to its disadvantage ….” And Citizen K compares this to Thomas’s “By any objective standard, Al Gore’s remarks in Saudi Arabia appear to fit the definition [of treason].” Citizen K concludes,

Because Lenin (and Cal Thomas) are omniscient, anyone who disagrees with them is “objectively” treasonous. The use of this language by Thomas is no coincidence – the neo-cons are a movement of Leninists. The essence of Leninism is Power. Lenin was happy to switch back and forth from capitalism (NEP) to communism, from elections to bullets, from a strong war policy to surrender as long as he retained and built power. The US leninists have the same flexibility. For them, political positions are simply valuable propaganda or not. Balanced budget/unbalanced budgets, gun control/gun banning, anti-choice/”moderation”, gay marriage bans/hiring Cheney’s daughter for gay/lesbian outreach and so on. The suckers who kept trying to find high minded socialism in Lenin were no more or less gullible than the “conservatives” who look for some “conservatism” in Bush/Cheney’s policies. The only consistency is Power.

In the Soviet Union, loyalty to the Communist Party and its leaders largely replaced religion. We aren’t anywhere close to that point here, of course. I do think it can be argued that, in America, the conservative political religion has largely co-opted (and corrupted) Christianity for its own purposes. And I think it can be argued that much of what passes for “Christianity” in America is a political-religious mythos that is Christian on the surface but something else entirely in its heart. But that’s another topic a bit too ambitious for Sunday morning.

Later, today or tomorrow, I plan to post something about politics and psychopathology that ties into this post. But I’ve gone on long enough for now.

Let’s close with some more quotes:

Nationalism is militant hatred. It is not love of our countrymen: that, which denotes good citizenship,
philanthropy, practical religion, should go by the name of patriotism. Nationalism is passionate xenophobia. It is
fanatical, as all forms of idol-worship are bound to be. And fanaticism…obliterates or reverses the distinction
between good and evil. Patriotism, the desire to work for the common weal, can be, must be, reasonable: “My
country, may she be right!” Nationalism spurns reason: “Right or wrong, my country.” –Albert L. Guerard

Nationalism … is the worship of the collective power of a local human community. Unlike the faith in progress through science, nationalism is not a new religion; it is a revival of an old one. This was the religion of the city-states of the pre-Christian Greco-Roman world. It was resuscitated in the West at the Renaissance, and this resuscitation of the Greco-Roman political religion has been far more effective than the resuscitation of the Greco-Roman style of literature, visual art, and architecture. Modern Western nationalism, inspired by Greco-Roman political ideals and institutions, has inherited the dynamism and fanaticism of Christianity. Translated into practice in the American and French Revolutions, it proved to be highly infectious. Today, fanatical nationalism is perhaps 90 percent of the religion of perhaps 90 percent of mankind. — A.J. Toynbee

Finally,

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. — George Orwell

Update: See Digby, “Political Religion.“

Quote du Jour

Posted on by

Via Crooks and Liars — Arthur Silber addresses rightie reaction to the Muslim cartoon controversy —

To be absolutely clear: you unquestionably have “the freedom to foster hatred,” if that is what you choose to do. But if that is indeed your choice, don’t dress it up as a noble and valiant fight for freedom of speech and for “Western values” — unless, of course, you think that accurately represents “Western values.”

Read Arthur’s whole post. Good stuff.

Dog Whistle Racism

Posted on by

More commentary on the rightie reaction to Coretta Scott King’s funeral:

Jane Hamsher:

It’s nice to know that whenever MSNBC needs something said that is so ugly, so fulminatingly rancid and dog-whistle racist that even Bill Bennett will not show up and do the honors that a vile, bilious hatchet-faced nag like Kate O’Beirne is always at the ready (see video at C&L).

Why didn’t she just come out and say “negroes don’t know how to act at funerals?” Because that’s exactly what she meant.

Steve Gilliard:

What so disturbed me about Kate O’ Beirne’s filthy comments is that is part of a conservative shell game to claim the legacy of Martin Luther King, by denuding every bit of the radical nature of his message and tying it to some bland form of equality. …

… Now, why does the GOP so desperately want to hijack the memory and legacy of King, with old segs like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell now tormenting gays as they once tormented blacks. Why do they embrace the damaged and offer them up as leaders? Former criminals and self-hating blacks, people unworthy to represent a dog pound.

Because being the white people’s party is a losing proposition. Ken Mehlman knows his party must look like America or die. And it look like anything but.

Amanda Marcotte:

… does this mean Peggy Noonan is going to write an editorial in the voice of Coretta Scott King where she imagines the civil rights icon wagging her finger at the still-living and telling us that it’s very rude and wrong to care about the poor and the oppressed?

Steve M:

November 23, 2002: Coretta Scott King argues against war on Iraq …

… So if the Reverend Joseph Lowery wants to talk about Iraq at Mrs. King’s funeral —

    We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. [Standing Ovation] But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.

— he doesn’t need the permission of Matt Drudge, Michelle Malkin, Kate O’Beirne, or any of the other spiritual descendants of the people who attacked the civil rights movement in its heyday, thank you very much.

Steve Soto:

This is what happens when you step outside of your bubble and away from the carefully screened Stepford crowds, in front of an audience of people who:

•Saw your level of concern for African Americans less than six months ago in New Orleans;

•Saw your commitment to civil and voting rights by disenfranchising them in both of your “victories”;

•See what lengths your Department of Justice will go to undo the Voting Rights Act in red states; and

•Have already shown a greater commitment to their fellow man that you will ever do in ten of your pathetic lifetimes.

Tbogg:

If it will make the folks on the right feel any better about people not acting WASPY enough at funerals, I will gladly volunteer to appear at any one of their funerals to stand up and applaud. I’ll even pay my own way.

I think this is very white of me.

Oliver Willis:

For the first time, Bush met the people on the front lines of post-Katrina America. It was not a pleasant encounter for the 43rd president.

Good.


Greg Saunders:

Face it conservatives, Coretta Scott King was a liberal. While civil rights heroes like the Kings were leading a non-violent struggle for equality, your political heroes were finding new ways to court southern racists away from the Democratic party. The Republican journey to victory was fueled by the votes of bigots, so it’s a little late in the game to start acting like you have the right to speak for the leaders of a movement you fought against.

Dr. Atrios:

When I die, please let it be known that my family and friends are entitled to conduct my funeral in any manner they see fit, including but not limited to talking about the things which were important to me in life.

SusanG:

Not only do these hypocritical conservatives want to step in and tell me and my family that I can be kept alive for years against my wishes, a petri dish harboring their precious “culture of life,” now they want to control the “message” at my funeral. Well … I’ve got news for them. It’s time they shut their yaps, this GOP party of control freaks extraordinaire. …

… Here we have a woman who spent her lifetime speaking out, marching, lending her name to causes and fighting injustice with integrity in every breath she took. Her husband died for speaking out and she continued to do the same. Am I really to assume she would “tut tut” at the heartfelt and sometimes raucous, sometimes tear-inducing funeral we witnessed today? Am I really expected to presume that Michelle Malkin and the other winger crybabies know better than her family what would have pleased her at her last official ceremony?

Please, these people need – and I say this with all the respect it’s due – to shut up. Go have a second 10-day proto-patriotic binge about Ronald Reagan. Progressives won’t begrudge it, we promise, as long as we’re not forced to watch or attend. The music will suck and have a lousy beat, and the speeches will put everyone in a godawful coma, but … hey, whatever floats your flag-wrapped, compassionate conservative boat.

Just get out of our lives. And our deaths. And our funerals. And the way we honor our heroes, damn it.

PSoTD:

Oh, please. Let go of your guilt, people, see the light, set yourselves free. So the disenfranchised and the unempowered and the disagreeing and even the powerful took the opportunity to make a few, slight, clever, quiet and accurate comments that alluded to the current Presidency at the funeral of a national political and cultural figure. Imagine that. How often does Reverend Lowery get George Bush’s ear? How about Jimmy Carter, for that matter? I’ll be the first to say it was inappropriate if Coretta Scott King’s family comes out and says they were unhappy about it. But that’s the point – it is their call. Who the hell is Kate O’Beirne to say? How does she think she owns this event? Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but it’s amazing how O’Beirne is entitled to blare her sniffling guilt-racked ignorance on national television.

Kevin Hayden:

Coretta Scott King and her husband stood with unionized labor, antiwar activists in the last big war of aggression the US was wrong to escalate, the poor, the downtrodden, the victims of injustice marginalized by the majority and the government.

Reverend Lowery and President Carter merely overturned the merchants’ carts in the temple yesterday, following a tradition the Kings lived, and the King of the Jews did before them. The Right can express their outrage till they’re red in the face, but they can’t overcome the facts of the very real lynchings men like King and Christ experienced for standing with the weakest with the greatest weapon of all: the truth.

I just hope Coretta Scott King’s spirit enjoyed hearing it once again, and may she rest in peace.

To view a collection bucket of rightie drool, see Dave at Seeing the Forest and Pam at Pandagon. At MDD, Matt Stoller deconstructs rightie racism.

Updates:

Scott Lemieux:

Given the way that many people will attempt to “Wellstone” the funeral of Coretta Scott King, it’s worth nothing that the Wellstone meme itself is based on on a series of lies. The objectionable “politicization” of the Wellstone funeral was the way in which many people who despised everything Wellstone stood for distorted it for nakedly political ends.

Kevin of Lean Left:

Just a quick question for Senaotr McCain and Kate O’Brien [O’Beirne! She’s no kin o’ mine!– maha] and anyone else the right wing trots out in what appears t be a sure to grow smear campaign: where the hell do you get off telling the family and friends of Coretta Scott King what they can and cannot say at her funeral? What kind of soulless ghoul takes it upon themselves to tell the family of a dead woman how they should and should conduct themselves at her funeral?

ReddHedd:

.. the condescending tone used by critics of Rev. Lowery, a man who helped to found the SCLC with Dr. King and others, who fought on the front lines of the civil rights movement beside Dr. and Mrs. King and so many others, and who has dedicated his life to the principles of equality and liberty and peace — to say that he had no right to speak as he did ignores the whole history of the civil rights movement.

    “She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar,” Lowery said. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor.”

And it just goes to show how used to hand-picked audiences and shutting out any and all criticism this Administration and its supporters have become. Cowards, hiding behind their wall of secret service agents and GOP gate-keepers.

Darts and Dolts

Posted on by

I hate to quibble with Anatole Kaletsky, who wrote this in the London Times:

For the past five years, America has been led by a president who is clearly not up to the job — a man who is not just inarticulate, but lacking in judgment, intelligence, integrity, charisma or staying power.

Who (with a brain) could argue with that? But then Kaletsky writes,

While America has been run by one of the most doltishly ineffectual governments in history, it has forged ever further ahead of Europe in terms of wealth, science, technology, artistic creativity and cultural dominance.

Why does America’s prosperity and self-confidence seem to bear so little relationship to the competence of its government? The obvious answer is that America, founded on a libertarian theory of minimal government, has always had low expectations of politicians. In America, it is not just business that thrives independently of government, perhaps even in spite of government. The same is also true of other areas of excellence which in Britain are considered quintessentially in the public domain — higher education, leading-edge science, culture and academic research. Because Americans expect so little of their government, they are rarely disappointed. They do not slump into German-style angst when their governments fail to find solutions to the nation’s problems.

Kaletsky then tosses in some anti-Gubmint proverb from St. Ronald Reagan. But the attitude he describes has not been common throughout American history. Through most of our 225 or so years we have expected the government to work for us. And most of the time, it has. It’s only been in the post-Vietnam era that conventional wisdom said government can’t be expected to walk and chew gum at the same time, so to speak.

When you are dealing with big things, like a huge and prosperous nation, it takes a long time for momentum to stop. If the people of the world are still lining up for American movies and blue jeans, this is the result of many decades of momentum. Since Reagan, the Right has been trying to undo generations of progressive reform, and by now they’ve dismantled quite a bit of it. But a lot of us are still benefiting from The Way America Used to Be Before Reagan. Boomers like me are still benefiting from the fact that our fathers got free educations on the GI Bill and our newlywed parents got cheap housing and cut-rate mortgages from other government programs, for example. Our parents’ prosperity got us off to a good start and put us on the road to security, equity, and stock portfolios. In a very real sense, many of us today are living better lives because government in the 1940s and 1950s effectively responded to the needs of citizens.

Each generation of middle-class, working Americans on the whole has been more educated and more affluent than the generation before. Even though we boomers bellyached a lot that our parents had it better than us, in the end we kept the momentum going. I wonder if the same thing will be true for my kids’ generation, though. The 20-somethings of today really are having it harder, I believe. Jobs are less secure, wages are stagnant, benefits are being cut, pensions are things of the past. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic, but seems to me the momentum may be about to stop.

Put another way, the full effects of having a dolt in the White House now may not be felt for another 20 years. I wonder what commentary the London Times will publish then?

Believe

Posted on by

This is a post about where we go next, but first I want to talk about where we were, and are.

Yesterday’s failure to sustain a filibuster is causing the punditocracy — defined as “people who make a living telling the rest of us what mood we were in 18 months ago” — to run with the story about how Dem leadership caved in to the unhinged, whackjob leftie fringe.

Dana Milbank, hardly the worst of them, characterized the grassroots effort to stop Alito as a “Democratic food fight.” “Elected Democrats and their liberal base are in one of their periodic splits between pragmatism and symbolism,” Milbank writes.

But there’s Left, and then there’s Left. Milbank’s article describes an “impeach Bush” rally in which no one wanted to hear that it ain’t gonna happen as long as the House is controlled by Republicans.

When one of the impeachment forum’s sponsors posted an item on its Web site about news coverage of the event, a reader responded that, without conservative support, “this becomes a cartoon image of the old pinko commie left, and fair game for the wingnuts at Fox.”

The lineup of speakers indeed could have been a Bill O’Reilly fantasy: Saddam Hussein’s lawyer ([Ramsey] Clark), Hugo Chavez’s friend ([Cindy] Sheehan) and the man who denied Al Gore the presidency in Florida in 2000 (Ralph Nader).

Nader, as it happens, couldn’t make it because of a death in the family. But Fox News was there — and the other speakers did not disappoint.

I respect Ramsey Clark’s decision to represent Saddam Hussein at trial, but IMO he and Nader are not part of today’s mainstream Left, and they played no part in the Netroots Uprising. And I’m afraid Sheehan has taken a wrong turn and is aligning herself with the old fringe that’s stuck in a 1970s time warp of identity politics and street theater projects and handing out fliers for the next cause du jour rally.

Frankly, I’m sick to death of that Left.

There is another Left, one that is more serious about good government than it is about making posters. And that Left is serious about winning elections. It’s also serious about building progressive coalitions that can have a real impact on making and enacting policy.

The Left Blogosphere, more than anyone else, speaks for the mainstream Left. And we are the descendants of the Progressive Era and the New Deal. The GOP wants to make us out to be the same old New Left of the 1960s, and there are plenty of people (International ANSWER, Ralph Nader, etc.) who are ready to oblige and play the role of the cartoon “pinko commie left” in front of news cameras. But IMO that’s not who we are. Not most of us, anyway.

I anticipate getting comments about how we should support other lefties instead of Bush. But though its corpse is still twitching the New Left is dead. And its baggage is holding us back. Cut it loose, I say.

It’s not 1968 any more. But note what Digby says — it’s not October 2002 any more, either.

You remember October 2002 and the Iraq war resolution. We made phone calls, sent emails, wrote letters — and the “smart” Dems, the ambitious Dems, ignored us and voted for the bleeping resolution. “The entire leadership of the party,” says Digby. The entire leadership voted for the resolution.

Yesterday was different. “Every one of them went the other way this time,” Digby writes.

Maybe it’s still calculation, but the equation has changed. John Kerry, for one, must realize that his vote in October 2002 hurt him badly in 2004. One could argue that it cost him the election. Kerry must realize that if he has any hope of another presidential nomination, he can’t do it without us. And he must realize that if he has any hope of getting elected, he can’t do it without us — the mainstream Left.

Like I said, maybe it’s calculation. But maybe the long-slumbering Winter Soldier is waking up and remembering why it was he got into politics to begin with. Jane writes,

It was a groundswell that swept me and other bloggers up and called out for direction, and somehow John Kerry heard that and he stepped into a leadership position and he gave it to us. He gave our frustrations a focus, he offered us a chance to stand up and fight regardless of the likelihood of success, and that was all we asked. He validated our efforts and he let people know that their voices were being heard in spite of the timidity gripping many of his peers.

I frankly think the passion of the netroots community surprised him. For those who want to criticize him for not acting earlier or better, I do not think he had any reason to believe that this kind of support was extant or that we would have his back. He put his neck on the line over at Kos and the Huffington Post, not knowing what was going to come back. The outpouring of gratitude that came back to him for his efforts was extremely moving.

I’m not saying I want Kerry to be the nominee, but I’m not ruling him out. Now and in the next few months we’ll find out who our real leaders are.

Digby continues,

I believe that there is finally a recognition that the Party has hit the wall. We have moved as far to the right as we can go and we have been as accommodating as we can be without thoroughly compromising our fundamental principles. Most of us are not “far left” if that means extreme policy positions. Indeed, many of us would have been seen as middle of the road not all that long ago. We are partisans and that’s a different thing all together. The leadership is recognising this.

Now, people, is the time to believe in ourselves, and to work harder. We are having an impact.

Bush and the Cultivation of Fear

Posted on by

An editorial in today’s Washington Post:

THE BUSH administration’s distortion, for political purposes, of the Democratic position on warrantless surveillance is loathsome. Despite the best efforts of Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, to make it seem otherwise, Democrats are not opposed to vigorous, effective surveillance that could uncover terrorist activity. Nor are the concerns that they are expressing unique to their party. Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Sam Brownback (Kan.) have expressed legal doubts about the surveillance program. Do they, too, have a “pre-9/11 worldview,” as Mr. Rove said of the Democrats?

Believing there should be constraints on unchecked executive power is not the same as being weak-kneed about the war against terrorism. Critics are suggesting that President Bush should have gone through normal procedures for conducting such surveillance or asked Congress to provide clear legal authority for the National Security Agency activity. They are not contending that such surveillance shouldn’t be conducted at all. No leading Democrat has argued for barring this kind of potentially useful technique.

But you wouldn’t know that to listen to the GOP spin. “Let me be as clear as I can be — President Bush believes if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why,” Mr. Rove said at the Republican National Committee winter meeting last week. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.” Mr. Mehlman named names. “Do Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean really think that when the NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, they need to hang up when those terrorists dial their sleeper cells inside the United States?” he asked.

This editorial isn’t as bold as might seem at first glance. I realized it doesn’t blame President Bush himself for any of this fear mongering, even though he’s been playing the same games. On the other hand, for once, WaPo doesn’t claim Dems are just as guilty. It’s a start.

Also in Wapo, Eugene Robinson — who deserves more attention from us liberals, btw — writes,

Once upon a time we had a great wartime president who told Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Now we have George W. Bush, who uses fear as a tool of executive power and as a political weapon against his opponents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt tried his best to allay his nation’s fears in the midst of an epic struggle against fascism. Bush, as he leads the country in a war whose nature he is constantly redefining, keeps fear alive because it has been so useful. His political grand vizier, Karl Rove, was perfectly transparent the other day when he emerged from wherever he’s been hiding the past few months — consulting omens, reading entrails — and gave the Republican National Committee its positioning statement for the fall elections: Vote for us or die.

[Update: Several people have noted that FDR spoke the “nothing we have to fear” line in 1933, about the Great Depression. But FDR spoke about fear and freedom from fear in many other speeches, such as in the “four freedoms” speech from 1941. Since he didn’t use quotation marks I don’t believe Robinson was claiming FDR delivered that exact line about facism, but was just recalling it as a theme FDR used in speeches throughout his presidency.]

Recently a kind person forwarded to me a social psychology paper called “American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election.” The authors are Florette Cohen and Daniel M. Ogilvie of Rutgers University; Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College; Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona; and Tom Pyszczynski of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. This paper is not online, but if you want a copy call Blackwell Publishing at (781) 388-8448.

The authors argue that in the 2004 election, the late October taped appearance of Osama bin Laden had the effect of swinging votes to Bush.

… a week before the election Senator John Kerry was reported to have a slight edge. On Friday, October 29, Osama Bin Laden’s videotaped threat reminded Americans of the death and destruction of 9/11. Americans once again became anxious as the Terror Alert was raised and the Bush administration relentlessly raised the specter of death should John Kerry be elected President. On November 3 Bush was declared the winner of the election by a margin of 3.5 million popular votes. From a terror management perspective, the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction. Bush’s rise in popularity after September 11, 2001 and eventual victory in the 2004 presidential election seems highly likely to have been influenced by the appeal of his leadership style (i.e., proclaiming himself divinely ordained to rid the world of evil) to an electorate that was continually reminded of the trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

(I love the part about how “the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction.” There’s something about soc-psych jargon that just makes my heart go pitty-pat.)

The study involves lots of chi-squares and p values, and N = diverse numbers. But to explain very plainly and crudely, Cohen et al. found that test subjects were more likely to support Bush after being reminded they might die in a terrorist attack. The authors also cited other studies that showed people gravitate to charismatic leaders when they are afraid. And they wrote,

Allegiance to charismatic leaders may be one particularly effective mode of terror management. In Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm (1941) proposed that loyalty to charismatic leaders results from a defensive need to feel a part of a larger whole, and surrendering one’s freedom to a larger-than-life leader can serve as a source of self-worth and meaning in life. Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) posited that when mainstream worldviews are not serving people’s need for psychological security, concerns about mortality impel people to devote their psychological resources to following charismatic leaders who bolster their selfworth by making them feel that they are valued participants in a great mission to heroically triumph over evil.

Sound familiar?

This paragraph inspired me to google for Fromm. I dimly remember Fromm from college required reading lists, but I’m sorry to say I don’t retain a lot from those days. I remember going to college, but exactly what I did there is a bit hazy. It’s been a lot of years.

In any event, the googling brought me to this. To condense, Fromm argued that freedom causes anxiety and a sense of aloneness in some people. Coping mechanisms for this condition include automaton conformity, authoritarianism, destructiveness, and individuation. Taking these one at a time —

Automaton conformity: Fearful people can gain a sense of power by acting like everyone else, holding the same beliefs and values, purchasing the same products, and believing in the same morals. They give up much of their individuality, but they feel more secure.

Along these lines, have you ever noticed how righties believe with an absolute, pure faith that their beliefs and values are the beliefs and values of the majority, even when polls say otherwise? I noticed a long time ago that being one of the herd is terribly important to righties. If you argue them into a corner, they nearly always fall back on “most people agree with me, not you looney lefties.”

Authoritarianism contains a paradox — by giving up power to the powerful, the powerless feel more powerful. Put another way, we submit to a leader by submerging our individual identity with the identity of the leader, and thus become powerful like the leader. The more slavishly devoted to the leader we are, the more powerful we think we become. Or at least that’s what it feels like.

Destructiveness refers to destroying people we think keep power away from us. Thus the Right’s obsession with a powerful “liberal elite” that controls society in spite of the fact that it doesn’t exist.

This is the pathology that is contemporary American “conservatism” — great masses of Americans are afraid — of the world, of modernity, of diversity — and to cope with their fears they have submerged themselves in a cult of personality organized around George W. Bush. Righties want to see themselves as part of a powerful army of righteousness that stands united against perceived enemies, such as Islamic terrorists or liberals. And the more fearful they become, the deeper they submerge themselves into the cult. Until, at last, anything approximating “objective reality” is a distant memory.

Oh, that last thing Fromm talked about, individuation, is the ability to be yourself and enjoy true freedom. People at this stage don’t need a personality cult.

Let’s go back to Eugene Robinson. “While Bush gives off none of Rove’s Sith-lord menace,” Robinson writes, “he has made the cultivation of fear a hallmark of his governance.”

You got that right, Eugene. And fear is what rallies the faithful. How else to explain so many people blind to such staggering incompetence?

When the most recent Osama bin Laden tape emerged, I watched some cable TV bobbleheads schmooze about how this would help Bush’s popularity ratings. And why would that be? Why wouldn’t the appearance of the guy Bush vowed to get “dead or alive” more than four years ago remind us of what a flopping incompetent Bush is? Could it be that we are a nation of sheep? Is rallying to Bush some kind of conditioned fear response? Must be, because it sure as hell isn’t rational.

“A great wartime leader rallies his citizens by informing them and inspiring them,” writes Robinson. “He certainly doesn’t use threats to our national security for political gain. He doesn’t just point at a map and say ‘Boo.'”

That’s right. But a great wartime leader ain’t what we got. What we got, is Bush. And what we need, to be freed from his incompetence and his culties, is the mother of all interventions.