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Persistent Paranoia

Our daughter called me the other day, horrified. She’d somehow gotten on the mailing list of one of the crazy organizations that seem to thrive in our country–a group called “Freedom Watch,” headed by one “Larry Klayman, Attorney.” The letter was, as she said, vile; among other things in its overheated diatribe, it accused President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton–“the mullah-in-chief” and the “corrupt communist”–of treason.

Most sane citizens, whether they agree with this administration’s policies or not, find such paranoid rantings incomprehensible. But there have always been fringe groups of mentally unhinged folks who project their own frustrations onto the Presidency. FDR was accused of having foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor and allowing it to happen as part of a plot to lead America into war. The notorious hater Father Coughlin accused him of being in league with “the Jews and communists.”

As one historian has noted, this paranoia came from both ends of the political spectrum:  “The Communist leader Earl Browder said that FDR was “carrying out more thoroughly and brutally than even Hoover the capitalist attack against the masses,” and the domestic fascist William Dudley Pelley called the President the “lowest form of human worm – according to Gentile standards.” One critic accused him of “blathering platitudes like a parson on vacation.” and another wrote to him savagely, “If you were a good honest man, Jesus Christ would not have crippled you.” It was in a formal address to the Chicago Bar Association, not in a harangue to an extremist rally, that a United States Senator from Minnesota did not hesitate to liken Roosevelt to the beast of the Apocalypse,” “who set his slimy mark on everything.””

Harry Truman was accused of employing a top Nazi from the Hitler regime as a covert advisor–not to mention his purported role in directing the cover-up of the crash of a UFO in Roswell, N.M.  The John Birch Society insisted it had proof that Dwight Eisenhower was a member of the communist party. George H.W. Bush was accused of being a member of a “Trilateral Commission” that was widely believed to be intent upon one-world government and an assault on American sovereignty.

In the rant from Freedom Watch, such paranoia is on flamboyant parade–complete with accusations of  “death panels,” “planting Marxists throughout government” and “canceling the National Day of Prayer in favor of Ramadan” among others. Klayman says that Obama “manipulated a deep economic depression” in order to fool Americans into voting for him. And he assures readers that he is working with Tea Party members of Congress–Michelle Bachmann, Allen West and Steve King are named–to submit articles of Impeachment against the President he calls a “treasonous tyrant.”

A quick Google check for “Larry Klayman”  brought up a legal decision disciplining him for violation of the canons of ethics, and a report that the status of his law license in Pennsylvania was “on suspension,” as well as information about an earlier organization called “Judicial Watch” and assorted charges and countercharges between him and other fringe characters.

What do we make of this strand of unhinged hysteria in our body politic?

On the one hand, as even a superficial stroll down history lane attests, America has always had a generous portion of “the crazy.” On the other hand, it only takes a few of these demented souls to disrupt public meetings, intimidate lawmakers, mislead well-meaning but uniformed folks, or even trigger assassination attempts.

In a free country, even the most delusional citizens have the right to spew their venom. But it might be a good idea to put more resources into mental health services.

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The Older I Get, the Less I Understand….

Final week is over, grades are in, and I’ve had more time to read the news. That’s obviously a mixed blessing.

There are so many things I just don’t understand.

There’s a toaster that embosses the face of Jesus on each piece of bread as it toasts. It is evidently selling briskly.

There’s Newt Gingrich.

And then there’s the House GOP. Even the Senate GOP is scratching its collective head over them. After the Senate passed one of the few genuinely bipartisan measures that has emerged this year, extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax reduction for two more months, the House Republicans are refusing to go along. No coherent reason why has yet emerged, although John Boehner has seemed particularly teary.

Think about this: Christmas is coming. So the House GOP wants to raise taxes on America’s dwindling middle class and its working poor, while continuing to insist that the historically low taxes on the rich cannot move up an inch. Ignore, for the moment, the moral poverty and economic danger of that position. Think about the political obtuseness of the message they’re sending.

Even they must recognize that this is not the way to popular acclaim. The New York Times reported this morning that “rather than have a straight up-or-down vote, the House will implement a procedural maneuver in which they will “reject” the Senate bill while requesting to go to conference with members of that chamber in a single measure, protecting House members from having to actually vote against extending a payroll tax cut. During the conference meeting among Republican members, some members expressed concern about effectively voting for a tax increase on the eve of an election year, said some who attended.”

Ya think?

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Luck of the Draw

A friend of mine used to have a saying to the effect that he’d rather be lucky than smart. While I think President Obama is pretty darn smart, if current trends continue, he may also prove to be very, very lucky.

Conventional wisdom–which is conventional because it tends to be right fairly often–is that Presidents presiding over poor economies have a hard time getting re-elected. Ordinarily, then, even a President who didn’t have a lot of people who already hated him for the color of his skin would be in trouble in 2012. But the Republicans, bless them, are helping him out.

The GOP field–filled with embarrassingly retrograde candidates–is one thing. These are mostly people who would have trouble running for City Council in normal times, and they have even some reliable Republican voters wincing. Those voters may not switch in November–but they also may not vote.

But if Obama is REALLY lucky, here’s the scenario: Gingrich wins the nomination, and Ron Paul runs as an independent. As conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has pointed out, no one thinks Gingrich can win the general election. He’s an unstable megalomaniac, without the discipline to run a sustained campaign. And Ron Paul–who will not run again for his House seat–has sent signals that suggest he’s contemplating a third-party run. He’s done it before, and he has the donors and volunteers to sustain such a candidacy. None other but George Will speculated that Paul would pull 80% of his votes from the eventual GOP candidate.

Paul could be a spoiler if the candidate is Mitt. If the candidate is Gingrich, Obama will have quite a mandate.

Hard to believe that anyone could be THAT lucky, but you never know.

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Reich Hits the Nail on the Head

I don’t always agree with Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, but in this post, he hits the proverbial nail squarely on the head.

What contemporary Republicans are selling is reheated and reconstituted Social Darwinism. (And just for the record, Darwin never used the phrase “survival of the fittest.” Herbert Spencer coined it; Sumner used it.) Social Darwinists twisted Darwin’s theory of evolution to justify wide disparities of wealth and well-being, melding it with a superficial Calvinism to conclude that those who prospered did so because they were a talented and hardworking elect, and those who were poor suffered because they were morally defective.

Not that they put it that way. Instead, the rich were lauded as creative entrepreneurs, while the poor were scorned for lack of diligence and work ethic. In effect, they were told to “take a bath and get a job.”

Sound familiar?

Read Reich’s post. 

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It’s All About the Framing

A recent report in Salon quotes Frank Luntz as being “very scared” of Occupy Wall Street. Luntz, for those who don’t know, is the GOP “messaging” genius who came up with terms like “death tax” to rebrand the estate tax, and who urges Republicans to abandon use of the word capitalism in favor of terms like “economic freedom.” His concern about OWS is obvious: the movement threatens to re-frame the debate–to shift the focus to the undeniable hardships created by lax regulation coupled with unbridled greed.

As George Lakoff demonstrated in “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” framing is a powerful tool. We all have mental “frames,” culturally transmitted worldviews that act as lenses through which we view reality. Those of us who teach try to expand those mental paradigms, enlarge the lens, so that students can see and consider facts they might not otherwise encounter. Understood as an inevitable consequence of human socialization, the act of framing is descriptive of our mental processes–and morally neutral.

What isn’t morally neutral is the use of framing to distort reality, to push people’s “buttons,” to obscure relevant information and harden, rather than relax, our worldviews. The hired guns who do this for the political parties are not concerned with reality–they are concerned with winning. So social programs become “giveaways,” feminists are always “strident,” and concerns about social justice are “socialism.”

I think it was Tallyrand who said that “words are given to man to conceal his thoughts.”  The ability to name things is an essential tool of communication. The ability to mis-name things is a weapon employed by the amoral.

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