Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [12]
Persecution Politics
Over the course of this book, I will argue that the extreme ideas expressed by conservative media stars, Tea Party organizers, and some Republican leaders are not random cases of paranoid insanity. They are part of a growing political movement to cast white, Christian, gun-owning conservatives as the victims of a vicious alliance between liberal elites, blacks, illegal immigrants, homosexuals, and other assorted villains. I call this movement and the tactics employed by its leaders persecution politics. Persecution politics did not begin with the Tea Parties. It did not even begin with Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Its roots go back to the 1970s, when the election of a black president seemed like an impossible dream.
The realization of that dream in November 2008 did not substantially change the rhetoric or the tactics of the persecution politics movement. Obama’s election simply accelerated its passage from a fringe pathology to a nationwide epidemic that has infected millions and is now tearing the country apart at its seams. Between demonizing liberals and purging conservatives who compromise with them, right-wing paranoia is ravaging what was left of reasonable discourse in the fractured world of modern American politics. The conspiracy theories may attract audiences and galvanize voters, but they spoil mutual trust, scuttle the possibility of compromise, and found ideology on fabrication. The many “town hall meetings” that politicians hosted during the health care battle—where people screamed their favorite conspiracy theories, carried assault weapons for show, and brawled like drunken soccer hooligans—are microcosms of our scarred political landscape. When Obama spoke to the nation to defend the Democrats’ health care plan, he was forced to publically deny evident falsehoods that could be easily confirmed by anyone who bothered to read the plan, and this act of stating the obvious was widely applauded as a vigorous response as if obvious facts were some kind of rhetorical weapon . . . and nonetheless called a lie by those who spread the falsehood in the first place. As Yeats wrote, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The growth of persecution politics should concern Democrats of course, but it should also concern Republicans. Moderate Republicans, who once dominated the GOP, are on the verge of extinction, and Tea Party supporters are now purging conservative Republicans for not being conservative enough. Republican Party chairman Michael Steele’s attempt to marginalize Rush Limbaugh as an “entertainer” was crushed by party conservatives, and he humbly apologized. In the 2008 primaries, the nation witnessed Republican candidates kowtow to immigrant bashers and declare their fidelity to creationism. The next Republican presidential nominee will likely be someone with at least one foot stuck in the mud of persecution politics.
Worrisomely, the tidal wave of paranoid hysteria shows no sign of slacking. The growth of cable news, talk radio, and blogs have produced a right-wing echo chamber in which conservative commentators shout ever louder to make themselves heard over the shrill cries of their colleagues, and television audiences measure the plausibility of each new conspiracy theory against a swiftly falling standard. We are witnessing a race to the bottom of a bottomless pit.
While the frenzied growth of right-wing paranoia has become difficult to ignore, few leaders offer any ideas for countering it. Many on the left, including President Obama, have blamed the trend on the economic recession and seem to assume