[Vision2020] Say What?

[Andreas Schou]

> Thank you for putting the comment in a more complete context. While I might
> not have used those exact words, there is much in the comments I do agree
> with. I do not think that Rush or anyone else thinks that democrats or
> anyone else is happy about what went down in Tucson but, now that it has
> there most assuredly are some who will attempt to take advantage of it.

That's exactly my problem with the rhetoric coming out of the right,
Gary. You don't believe exactly what Rush said. No one does. Not even
he does. And yet, in order to disagree with it, I have to assign some
sort of meaning from it; to parse down a clearly unhinged screed until
it conforms (uncomfortably) to some reasonable version of reality.
Your interpretation reduces a clearly insane statement ("Democrats
support a mass-murderer who grievously injured one of their own") to a
banal accusation of political cynicism.

I don't object to statements like that because they might provoke
violence amongst reasonable people. They won't. It's that that sort of
language actually even expected by its proponents to be taken
seriously by reasonable people. If Democrats were really incipient
tyrants, promoters of violent Islamism, craven supporters of mass
murderers, and Stalinists, violence would be reasonable. But they're
not. They're an American center-left party; one which is significantly
to the right (at least economically) of European center-right parties,
such as the British Tories, Merkel's Christian Democrats, and Israel's
Kadima.

All of that is fine. It's not fine that cynical right-wing mouthpieces
are characterizing a  leftward pendulum shift as being a political
catastrophe which would provoke a reasonable electorate to civil war.
Only cynicism -- the fact that it's not meant to be taken at face
value -- stops it short of sedition. (1) It's not just me that thinks
this. Politicians and wonks on the right -- and I don't mean centrists
-- want to engage with the left on issues of substance. But they can't
do it when they're held captive by the shouting, cynical morons and
paranoid "rodeo clowns" of the right. They're only free to talk about
it when they're free of their increasingly inwardly-turned and
paranoid base. Take this interview, for instance:

JOHN DONOVAN:  Finally, you got away, John.  And they liked your
rhetoric, which included on this topic a  reference to the Obama
reform program as Soviet style gulag healthcare.  I want to say, come
now.  Hey.  Do you stand by that?

JOHN SHADEGG: No.  I think that it is a -- it is a part of the
dialogue that you try to get attention.  And that  was an attempt to
gather some attention.

Fed by self-validating rhetoric, and the right's increasing reliance
on it, I've seen the quality of debate decrease substantially. It's
gotten to the point where you -- a bright guy -- no longer trust the
New York Times to tell you the sky is blue. In order to make a
convincing argument to anyone on the right, I've got to ignore all
sorts of perfectly reasonable articles from the New York Times and
white papers from the Brookings Institute, and resort to picking over
primary documents and Republican commentators for support. I shouldn't
have to do that. There are plenty of baseline facts we should be able
to agree on, even in the presence of deep ideological disagreement.

I'm fine with disagreeing, in good faith, with people who think that
our country (and the world) should operate differently than it does.
But I increasingly feel like the unhinged and cynical rhetoric of the
right's most prominent advocates have left Republicans living in an
alternate universe, partially constructed out of real facts and
partially out of real facts' ideological substitutes. Smart,
politically-active, cynical Republicans have managed to ride that
tiger to electoral victory more than once. But the new generation of
Tea Party politicians, raised on media cynically produced to garner
votes, seem to actually believe that Obama is a Manchurian communist
hell-bent to reducing our country to a Soviet gulag. I think that's
dangerous to the management of our country, if not to our democracy.

-- ACS

(1) You do, in fact, see the same sort of rhetoric coming out of some
quarters of the left; however, since the 1960 and 1970s, the
connection between the politically empowered left and its radicals has
been nearly entirely severed. (Bobby Rush and Raul Grijalva's
constituents notwithstanding.) Which is why you'll hear calls for
revolution from some of Pacifica's more radical guests and not on NPR;
you'll hear the same language coming from the mouths of Congressmen
and multi-millionaire talk radio hosts on the right.