Playing to the Groundlings

The parallels between the Teabaggers and the brownshirts are too numerous, but the commonality remains. (OK, Godwin's Law applies here.) When in doubt, get the simple folk riled and stand back while they do your dirty work.

Recent events remind me of Kristallnacht: shrill rhetoric resulting in mobs of thugs out to vandalize homes and offices of people who support a bill that begins to offer more comprehensive health care to Americans. One might take hope, though, in the great tradition of bullies being more hot air than action. Still, the "ex-soldiers and beer hall brawlers" that made up the Sturmabteilung did make quite a mess.

It's sad that one of the best pieces of political oratory in recent memory came from a fictional character (President Andrew Shepherd in Rob Reiner's film The American President).

America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free". I've known Bob Rumson for years, and I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it.

After a protest at the University of Ottawa resulted in the cancellation of Ann Coulter's speech, one of my acquaintances wrote:

Ann Coulter is right on just about everything, she just says it in a way that is offensive to liberals. The Canadians showed just how important whatever they call their free speech law is by being incapable of listening to an opposing viewpoint. Doesn't surprise me. Some day I suspect we will just send Rhode Island up their to kick the crap out of their Army. I guess I really should give some credit to the Canadian armed forces that have served in Iraq. Supposedly both of them were above marginal soldiers.

(Ironical note here: that author's father was Canadian.)

The way Ms. Coulter, Rush, and Glen talk about "liberals" reminds me too much of the way Jews and other "non-Aryans" were demonized. "Them" is a useful term when playing to the groundlings. In a complex world, simple answers are attractive. Deceptive, but attractive. It worked in 1919 and it works in 2010. Chances are that the plebs were played just like the Teabaggers are these days.

Politically Grumpy

I woke up politically grumpy today, thinking about money and hornets. W took a stick to the nest, Obama lets the agitation continue, and Arizona (and Vermont, and...) have to close rest areas because there's no money. Why is there plenty for anything Defense wants while the bridges are failing? "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." Indeed. This foolishness in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Guantanamo and who knows where the other prisons are) is very expensive business. Osama bin Laden won. The US is bankrupting itself and keeping the Islamic world enraged. It's what he wanted. If it's about revenge, when is it done? On 9/11 about 3,500 people died, and the American armed forces have lost about 4,500 so far. They've killed many times those numbers combined.

Villager: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!
Tevye: Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.

Really, all I want is an explanation. OK, an explanation and for it to stop. Well, actually, an explanation, for it to stop, and for the instigators and facilitators to be prosecuted.

The world went through The Looking Glass on
December 12, 2000 when the Supreme Court set us on this track by giving the keys to the country to Dark Lord Cheney and the poster child for American Defiant Ignorance.

I don't want to take it.