Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [130]
Of course, we cannot and should not try to interfere with whom people speak to or what they watch, read, and listen to, but we can undercut these affirmation strategies by clearly and adamantly contradicting and condemning the right wing’s paranoid beliefs—through mockery, condemnation, boycotts, and other challenges. Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck are so sensitive to criticism because they and their listeners really do care what the rest of the country thinks. External criticism threatens to upend the carefully laid table of persecution politics just as the guests are sitting down to gorge. Criticism tugs at believers’ suppressed awareness that their paranoid beliefs are only fantasy and that their heroes are feeding them lies. Thus, criticism can expose the charlatanry and prod the paranoia back into the dark corner of society where it once lurked.
“Every Good Christian”
That makes it sound easy. For those on the left, criticism is easy enough. Many liberals have already pilloried the Tea Parties, Fox News, and talk radio. But liberals aren’t the ones who really matter. They’re the enemy. The right wing can easily fold their attacks into their paranoid dreams by dismissing these efforts as liberal attempts to suppress their freedom of speech.
Moreover, one segment of society cannot on its own establish social stigmas that the whole community will respect. If the majority of conservatives refuse to condemn the tactics of the right wing, censure from the left will not produce any nationwide stigma.
Thus, for criticism from liberals to be effective, it must influence at least some conservatives, and accomplishing that is extremely difficult. For starters, liberals first need to strip partisan overtones from their criticism. We must try to separate conservative political positions from the ugly tactics of persecution politics and to distinguish the worst of the demagogues from the average Republican voter. There are plenty of reasonable Republicans who oppose abortion or support fiscal discipline yet disdain the paranoia of the right wing. If we lump them all together as Christian fanatics or Republican bad guys—“Repuglicans” in the left-wing vernacular—then we alienate potential allies.
The paranoid right likes to pretend that “real Americans” are on their side—that every plumber, farmer, and small business owner between Washington, DC, and Berkeley is an indignant victim of the liberal elites. This story is as mythical as every other paranoid fantasy. Far from being “real Americans,” Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin represent a politically powerful minority whose paranoid and divisive beliefs are antithetical to America’s proud culture and the visions of the founding fathers. We need the real real Americans, regardless of their religious faiths and political temperaments, to repudiate the men and women who howl hateful ideas in their names. As Barry Goldwater once said in his later years, “Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”28
One liberal leader who has not exercised his influence to combat the growth of persecution politics is the man who has the most to lose from its success—President Barack Obama. In the fall of 2009, the White House made a show of announcing a new “aggressive” response strategy to combat negative media coverage, particularly from Fox News. The aggressive response strategy mostly consisted of a series of disparaging comments by White House communications director Anita Dunn about how Fox News is a “wing of the Republican Party.” The news media responded to the aggressive response strategy by endlessly analyzing whether it was a prudent political move or might instead make Obama look petty—as if they’d never heard a politician criticize the media before. Fox News responded to the aggressive response strategy by trying to explain the difference between its news reporters