Idiocy and its manipulation

As have many others, I have tried to understand the phenomenon of political rage demonstrated by Republicans. We apparently have millions of presumably mature adults very distressed about issues that have no substance. There are many answers and that is part of the problem. Are they no longer capable of recognizing reality? Do they really believe Obama is a socialist? Do they really believe Sara Palin is presidential material? In that event do they really care what happens to this country? These people appear to be very angry. About what? Loss of jobs or homes? That is due to corporate greed unleashed by the Republicans. They must know this.

I think people are angry because of what has happened to them and the rather bleak prospects for much improvement in the near term. But then why vilify Obama? He did not cause the pain they feel. There was outrage at Clinton presumably for his sexual behavior, but nothing comparable to the noisy, often vicious, protests against Obama. Representatives who voted for Obama's health care bill have had their homes vandalized. Tea Partiers have spat upon and subjected black congress people to racial slurs.

I think there is a two-part answer. Being black and president, Obama is an easy target for predominantly white outrage. While there has been notable improvement in the racial structure of this society the felt racism is still very much alive and available for political manipulation, which brings me to the second part of the answer.

If you trace the origin of the "Tea Party" phenomenon you will find it is a creation of Dick Armey and his FreedomWorks operation. FreedomWorks is funded by corporations such as General Electric, General Motors and AT&T. What, one might ask, do the unhinged thousands that participate in Tea Party events, spit on and utter racist slurs to black congressmen who voted for the health care bill, vandalize the homes of representatives who voted for the bill, and believe that Sara Palin is presidential material, have in common with the heads of major U.S. corporations? From the corporate point of view, these people, frightened by fear and loss, vessels of sublimated racism and members of a middle class that has been shrinking for decades at the hands of corporate outsourcing, being highly emotional, easily manipulated by the likes of Limbaugh and Beck are ideal foils for distracting public antipathy from themselves and focusing it on the government they use for the fall guy. The danger is that this kind of purposeless stress, especially in a society as vacuous as ours, will produce insane responses divorced from any humane workable solution. In Nazi Germany the jobs that we now cry for were provided by a war machine that killed millions. Our current situation fits, with a good deal of accuracy, the early 20th century rise of fascism.

Noam Chomsky recently gave a speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in which he sees the storm clouds of fascism forming in this country. I have appended a report on the speech below. These are very dangerous times beyond the ken of the majority of Americans who believe their justified anger will lead them to an acceptable solution. They are in grave danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. One important task at hand is how to penetrate that anger and direct it to its cause. The corporations are the primary villains and are the proper and productive target for their rage. We must ask ourselves, for example, why we have not long since pilloried Rupert Murdoch for his calloused efforts to create a massively destructive earthquake along the racial and class fault lines of our society. There is no need in reality for the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Their only function is to further Murdoch's greed for both money and power at the expense of our society's sanity, the destruction of our democracy and an increasing risk of fascism. This man is a calloused culprit and should be so branded by all who are concerned to create a workable society in these increasingly strange times in human history.

Bob Newhard
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As have many others, I have tried to understand the phenomenon of political rage demonstrated by Republicans. We apparently have millions of presumably mature adults very distressed about issues that have no substance. There are many answers and that is part of the problem. Are they no longer capable of recognizing reality? Do they really believe Obama is a socialist? Do they really believe Sara Palin is presidential material? In that event do they really care what happens to this country? These people appear to be very angry. About what? Loss of jobs or homes? That is due to corporate greed unleashed by the Republicans. They must know this.

I think people are angry because of what has happened to them and the rather bleak prospects for much improvement in the near term. But then why vilify Obama? He did not cause the pain they feel. There was outrage at Clinton presumably for his sexual behavior, but nothing comparable to the noisy, often vicious, protests against Obama. Representatives who voted for Obama's health care bill have had their homes vandalized. Tea Partiers have spat upon and subjected black congress people to racial slurs.

I think there is a two-part answer. Being black and president, Obama is an easy target for predominantly white outrage. While there has been notable improvement in the racial structure of this society the felt racism is still very much alive and available for political manipulation, which brings me to the second part of the answer.

If you trace the origin of the "Tea Party" phenomenon you will find it is a creation of Dick Armey and his FreedomWorks operation. FreedomWorks is funded by corporations such as General Electric, General Motors and AT&T. What, one might ask, do the unhinged thousands that participate in Tea Party events, spit on and utter racist slurs to black congressmen who voted for the health care bill, vandalize the homes of representatives who voted for the bill, and believe that Sara Palin is presidential material, have in common with the heads of major U.S. corporations? From the corporate point of view, these people, frightened by fear and loss, vessels of sublimated racism and members of a middle class that has been shrinking for decades at the hands of corporate outsourcing, being highly emotional, easily manipulated by the likes of Limbaugh and Beck are ideal foils for distracting public antipathy from themselves and focusing it on the government they use for the fall guy. The danger is that this kind of purposeless stress, especially in a society as vacuous as ours, will produce insane responses divorced from any humane workable solution. In Nazi Germany the jobs that we now cry for were provided by a war machine that killed millions. Our current situation fits, with a good deal of accuracy, the early 20th century rise of fascism.

Noam Chomsky recently gave a speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in which he sees the storm clouds of fascism forming in this country. I have appended a report on the speech below. These are very dangerous times beyond the ken of the majority of Americans who believe their justified anger will lead them to an acceptable solution. They are in grave danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. One important task at hand is how to penetrate that anger and direct it to its cause. The corporations are the primary villains and are the proper and productive target for their rage. We must ask ourselves, for example, why we have not long since pilloried Rupert Murdoch for his calloused efforts to create a massively destructive earthquake along the racial and class fault lines of our society. There is no need in reality for the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. Their only function is to further Murdoch's greed for both money and power at the expense of our society's sanity, the destruction of our democracy and an increasing risk of fascism. This man is a calloused culprit and should be so branded by all who are concerned to create a workable society in these increasingly strange times in human history.

Bob Newhard
*************************
Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America

By Matthew Rothschild, April 12, 2010

Noam Chomsky, the leading leftwing intellectual, warned last week that fascism may be coming to the United States.

“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio,” he said, “and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering” here at home.
Chomsky was speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, where he received the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.

“The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime,” he said.
He cited a statistic from a recent poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters say the average tea party member is closer to them than anyone else.
“Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error,” Chomsky said.
Their attitudes “are understandable,” he said. “For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined. This is in large part the consequence of the decision in the 1970s to financialize the economy.”

There is class resentment, he noted. “The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels,” he said.

And Obama is linked to the bankers, Chomsky explained.
“The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain,” he said. “They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: They were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are “fine guys” and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’
People see that and are not happy about it.
”
He said “the colossal toll of the institutional crimes of state capitalism” is what is fueling “the indignation and rage of those cast aside.”
“People want some answers,” Chomsky said. “They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.”
Chomsky invoked Germany during the Weimar Republic, and drew a parallel between it and the United States. “The Weimar Republic was the peak of Western civilization and was regarded as a model of democracy,” he said.

And he stressed how quickly things deteriorated there.
“In 1928 the Nazis had less than 2 percent of the vote,” he said. “Two years later, millions supported them. The public got tired of the incessant wrangling, and the service to the powerful, and the failure of those in power to deal with their grievances.”

He said the German people were susceptible to appeals about “the greatness of the nation, and defending it against threats, and carrying out the will of eternal providence.” When farmers, the petit bourgeoisie, and Christian organizations joined forces with the Nazis, “the center very quickly collapsed,” Chomsky said.

No analogy is perfect, he said, but the echoes of fascism are “reverberating” today, he said. “These are lessons to keep in mind.”

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.
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