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Edited on Thu Sep-09-04 11:18 PM by arendt
If you read to the end, I am actually proposing how to prosecute
the election campaign.
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Perverts, Druggies, and Theocrats
by arendt
...."The true basis of the Volk was the peasant. There could of course
....be workers, but they had to be 'artisans' organized in local guilds...
'....The dominance of the big city', wrote (1850s German Volkish
....theorist Wilhelm Heinrich) Riehl, 'will be the equivalent to the
....dominance of the proletariat'...The Volk movement spawned a crop
....of anti-Semitic 'peasant' novels...showing the peasants turning on
....their opressors from the towns like wolves...'Cities are the tomb
....of Germanism.' 'Berlin is the domain of the Jews.'
- Paul Johnson, "Modern Times" (1983).
--
Recently, as I read Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
and puzzled with him over the delusional worldview of the radical
religious right there, I felt that I had heard all this before - the hatred
of city folks and of the educated; the visions of a cosmopolitan conspiracy
that, of course, had nothing to do with global corporations and everything
to do with liberals; the fear of moral decay, which is always about sex, but
never about business corruption, wanton cruelty, and violence. And then,
I had that reflexive cringe, a habit inculcated by twenty years of right wing
propaganda, the internal voice which said: 'you don't dare call these
people totalitarians. They will just label you a pinko, a commie.
Be smart, like Mr. Frank. Don't ask for trouble.' But this time,
another internal voice spoke as well: 'How much more of this double
standard can I take?'
On the one hand, Rush Limbaugh can call Hillary Clinton a Femi-Nazi.
The Right Wing can sign Clinton's name Klinton, and R. Emmet Tyrell
can denounce the liberal "Kultursmog". The mad-dog Miami Cubans can
call the US Government agents "storm troopers" - a common epithet among
the lunatic right (unless those agents are detaining lawful protestors without
provocation at the RNC.) Bush can Big Lie his way into a war of agression
in Iraq, tear up the Geneva Convention, and blow off the Gitmo and Abu
Ghraib torture scandal, and Fox and Clear Channel practically deify the man.
And so on, and so forth, non-stop 365/24/7.
On the other hand, I have no right to point out what screams from every
pore of these reality-challenged, rent-a-lynch-mob types - that they would
have been perfectly happy rounding up cosmopolitan types for Comrade
Stalin or Chairman Mao or Pol Pot; that they wave their Bibles as mindlessly
as the Red Guards waved Mao's little Red Book. (not comparing the books,
but the behaviors.).
Double standards suck. I think its time to recover the epithets against
totalitarianism from the radical right; and after that, to take back the
American flag, and the Gospels of Jesus. Just as the people of Britain
finally woke up to the false promises at Munich and resigned themselves
to re-fighting a war they had just won a few decades earlier, I think the
across-the-board insolence, sanctimoniousness, and bald hatred and
contempt of the hypocrites running the Culture War in America can only
be answered by resistance. And I think that any progressive person who
thinks you can win these people over with kindness ought to get real:
...."By the 1920s, any political leader in Germany who wished to...
....could assemble his campaign from an enormous selection of
....slogans, ideas, and fantasies, which had accumulated over more
....than a half a century.
...."The Jews tried everything to combat the poison. Some brought
....up their children to be artisans or farmers. They enlisted in the
....army...But each policy raised more difficulties than it removed,
....for anti-Semitism was protean, hydra-headed and impervious
....to logic or evidence. As Jakob Wassermann put it: 'Vain to seek
....obscurity. They say: the coward, he is creeping into hiding, driven
....by his evil conscience. Vain to go among them and offer them
....one's hand. They say: why does he take such liberties with his
....Jewish pushfulness? Vain to keep faith with them as a comrade
....in arms or a fellow-citizen. They say: he is Proteus, he can assume
....any shape or form. Vaiin to help them strip off the chains of slavery.
....They say: no doubt he found it profitable. Vain to counteract the
....poison. "
- Paul Johnson
If you don't understand that an open, democratic government and anyone
who supports it are the new Jews, then you have missed the last ten years
of politics: the exodus of honest politicians in the face of recruited hit-men;
the GOP/media inquisition of Clinton; the handing over of the government
bureaucracy to the corporate lobbyists to devour for their private profit; and,
finally, the wall of secrecy and naked intimidation that has been placed between
everyone, including the opposition party legislators, and the Executive Branch.
Just as the bulk of the 1930s German working class was worked into
a frenzy under the pressure of domestic terrorism (Freikorps thugs
and Communist thugs) and economic collapse (the Great Depression),
so also did the American working class have to be dispossessed of the
American lifestyle and terrorized before it went looking for someone to
lynch with a clear conscience and a hymn upon its lips.
In "Silent Depression: The Fate of the American Dream", Wallace Peterson
points out how awful the last twenty years have been for the old-fashioned
middle class. Here, we distinguish a true middle class (that had job security,
health care, pensions, and non-punitive student loans and college tuitions)
from merely the lower class of a two class rich/poor society. The point is that,
deliberately or not, corporate America has ruined the middle class economy
as thoroughly as the Great Depression.
And as Mr. Frank points out, both the Republicans and the Democrats did their
part. He is painfully correct that the Democrats are no longer perceived to be
strong supporters of the American worker. And he identifies why quite
clearly:
...."The Democratic Leadership Council(DLC)...has long been pushing the
....party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting
....affluent white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues....
....Such Democrats explicitly rule out "class warfare"...As for the working-
....class voters who were until recently the party's very backbone, the DLC
....figures they have nowhere else to go...by dropping the class language
....that once distinguished them sharply from Republicans they have left
....themselves open to cultural wedge issues..."
- Thomas Frank, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
Then he goes on to explain the loony logic of the Culture War:
...."the great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the
....first step in doing so...is to deny the economic basis of social class. After
....all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's elite...if you acknowledge
....the existence of the corporate world...
...."It is only possible to think the news is slanted to the left if you don't take
....into account who owns the news organizations and if you never turn your
....critical powers on the section of the media devoted to business news...
....You can believe that conservatives are powerless victims only if you exclude
....conservatism's basic historical constitutency, the business community, from
....your analysis."
- Thomas Frank
But he shies away from the obvious conclusion - that this kind of delusional
denial of the patently obvious fact of right wing dominance, and the maintenance
of an ever-escalating paranoia and fear is the hallmark of totalitarian thought
control:
...."Before they seize power and establish a world according to
....their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world
....of consistency which is more adequate to the need of the human
....mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination,
....uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-
....ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to
....human beings and their expectations."
"...propaganda can outrageously insult common sense only where
....common sense has lost its validity. Before the alternative of facing
....the...total arbitrariness of decay or bowing down before the most rigid,
....fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology, the masses probably
....will always choose the latter and be ready to pay for it with individual
....sacrifices - and this not because they are stupid or wicked, but because
....in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self-
....respect."
...."...the history of the Bolshevik party offers an...illustration of the
....essentially fictitious character of totalitarianism, precisely because
....the fictitious global conspiracies against and according to which
....the Bolshevik conspiracy is supposedly organized have not been
....ideologically fixed. They have changed - from the Trotskyites to
....the 300 families, then to various "imperialisms" and recently to
...."rootless cosmopolitanism" - and were adjusted to passing needs;
....yet at no moment a under none of the most various circumstances
....has it been possible for Bolshevism to do without some such fiction."
- Hannan Arendt
Origins of Totalitarianism (OoT)
----
Based on the historical precedents so ably reviewed by Ms. Arendt, I submit
that the hermetically-sealed world view of the religious totalitarian right in the
US cannot be reasoned with logically; it can only be confronted. If they intend
to scare the "undecided" voters into putting liberals in concentration camps,
we are going to have to scare the undecideds into getting rid of the Texas
Taliban before they accomplish their mission.
I further submit that the only issue on which the DLC-standard-bearers, Kerry
and Edwards can make a pitch that will not be undercut by their previous
votes and lukewarm support for traditionally Democratic programs is the
issue of religious totalitarianism, or theocracy.
How can the GOP spin being called a threat to the Republic? The Democrats
have nothing to lose - Cheney just did the same thing to Kerry and theocrats are
already working night and day against them. Furthermore, the undecideds might
actually respond to someone getting these intrusive, sanctimonious hypocrites'
noses out of their private lives and their hands out of the government's wallet.
Someone ought to start quoting the Dispensationalist version of an economy:
unlimited enforcement of contract, slavery, capital punishment for broadly-defined
theft. Let the GOP have to deny it.
I'd love to see the Democrats just start quoting all the crapola that has been
spouted since 911. Like "911 was a punishment for America's moral failings"
from Jerry Falwell, or the bigotry of Franklin Graham, the patently illegal
behavior of General Boykin, the dereliction of duty of John Ashcroft.
I'd love to see the Democrats list all the sex scandals in the Republican
party: Outed gay Republican congressmen. (The SA Brownshirts had a
gay problem. Funny how repressed whackos always come out sideways;
how they're always "manly men".) The mayor of Bridgewater, in the Federal
pen for having an ex-prostitute procure child sex. Jack Ryan and the sex clubs.
That hypocritical clown Asa Huntington divorcing his wife for an intern he
was banging even as he tried to impeach Clinton. Newt for his third divorce.
Bob (speaker for a day) Livingston, Henry Hyde, and Rudi Guiliani for their affairs.
I'd love to see the Democrats list all the immoral crap that gets a free pass
from the so-called Christian moralists: Rush Limbaugh's drug arrest and
his third divorce (no kids, the world wonders why), William Bennett's gambling
Jones, Arnold's groping and doping, Nicole Bush's repeat drug offenses,
Bush and Cheney's long list of DWIs.
I'd love to see the Democrats talk about the Center for National Policy, the
el-creepo, super-secret group that "vets" Republican presidential candidates,
and to which Bush made a secret speech in 1999. What did he promise them?
----
Can't you see the beauty of this whole approach? The voter doesn't have to
get all the economic facts or the rationale behind the US Constitution or the
nature of the corporate takeover or the neocon hijacking of the GOP- none of
that hard to explain stuff.
Just start screaming: the GOP is the party of druggies, perverts, and theocrats,
and show them the evidence from just the last ten years. Its not "acid, abortion,
and amnesty"; but its close enough.
You say its cynical and destructive? First, I don't think telling the truth is cynical;
but, I will let Ms. Arendt have the final word on cynicism:
...."In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached
....the point where they would, at the same time believe everything and
....nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true...
....Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times
....to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly
....object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie
....anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the
....correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could
....make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust
....that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood,
....would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who
....had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that
....the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior
....tactical cleverness."
- Hannah Arendt
This is the audience that you are playing to. They are in deep trance. You
won't shake them out of it with polite words. Hit em across the head with
a two by four. What have you got to lose that they won't take from you if
they win?
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