Tag Archives: paranoia

Our Fictional President

Saturday, I opened my IBJ to read a truly paranoid rant from Greg Morris, the publisher, who has a weekly opinion column. Mr. Morris is clearly one of those Second Amendment folks who views his right to bear arms with religious fervor, and his embrace of “one nation, armed to the teeth” was unsettling enough. But what really set the warning bells off was his full-throated embrace of one of the many conspiracy theories that have persisted since the election of Barack Obama: “they’re coming for our guns!”

Mr. Morris was unable to point to a single fact supporting this fantasy. It was the usual “everyone knows” and “someone said” rant–the Obama administration is “just waiting for the second term” and then they’ll confiscate your weapons!

I was shocked to see this garbage in the staid IBJ, a publication focused on the business community, and one of the few media outlets that still fact-checks and reports.But it reminded me of an observation someone made about the Republican primary–that the GOP candidates are running against a fictional President.

The criticisms of Obama from the left–and there have been plenty of them–tend to fault him for specific policy decisions. He has failed to dismantle Bush’s security apparatus; his administration defended the killing of an American citizen working with the terrorists, without a trial or other due process. Agree or not with those criticisms (and I do), they are specific and tangible.

The criticisms from the Right, however, rarely focus on something the President actually did. Other than the hated “Obamacare” (which very few people who want it repealed seem to understand) and pious hand-wringing over the national debt (inconveniently created by George W. Bush), most of the accusations seem to be the products of fevered imaginations: Obama is a “socialist” who wants to make the U.S. into Europe; Obama hates white people; Obama is a Kenyan Muslim fascist; Obama wants to confiscate our guns….

I read “The Audacity of Hope” during the 2008 campaign. I agreed with almost everything in it–because the positions outlined were very much the same positions I held (and continue to hold) when I ran for Congress in 1980 as a moderate Republican. If there is one mistake today’s Left and Right hold in common, its the belief that Obama ran as some sort of raging liberal. He didn’t, he wasn’t, and he isn’t.

The absolute hysteria on the Right can’t be explained by Obama’s actual policies. Unlike the situation with George W. Bush, who didn’t arouse intense animosity until he’d actually done things, the irrational hatred of Obama began the day he was elected.

We seem to have two Presidents, the actual man we elected, and a fictional “boogeyman.” And while race doesn’t explain all of that, it explains a hell of a lot.

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The Monster Under the Bed

Parents of small children are familiar with the phenomenon. A few minutes after turning the lights out, a fearful cry comes from the bedroom: there’s a monster under my bed! That is typically followed by a parental “sweep” of the under-bed real estate and assurances that the room is safe for “night-night.”

But what do you do when the terrified child is—physically, at least—an adult?

As American politics has descended into farcical territory, the role played by fear has become increasingly obvious.

To some extent, of course, all of us are disoriented by the pace of social and economic change. But for some subset of our citizens, complexity and ambiguity are the monsters under the bed. As one of my sons observed a few weeks back, when we were scratching our heads over an especially egregious bit of political buffoonery, very scared people desperately crave certainty in a world that has none. They need a bipolar, black and white world in which good and evil, God and the Devil are clearly labeled and easily identified. The enemy is not so much the “Other” (immigrants, gays, African-Americans) as it is the relativism that their acceptance represents.

Which brings me to the folks currently insisting that public transportation and environmental protection are part of a United Nations “agenda” (not to be confused with the “gay agenda”) to destroy American liberty.

According to a story in today’s New York Times, activists with ties to the Tea Party are rallying against local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. As the Times article put it “They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities. They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.”

The designated Monster-Under-the-Bed in this case is a non-binding 1992 UN resolution encouraging resource conservation. Fox News and various activists have identified that resolution (unfortunate titled “Agenda 21”) as an effort to encourage urban living and density in order to strip away property rights. To denizens of this paranoid universe, public transit, bike lanes and smart meters–devices being installed by utility companies to collect information on energy use—are all part of this nefarious plan.

When the less conspiratorial among us hear these stories, our natural inclination is to shrug and laugh, but these protests are having an effect. The Times reports that they were successful in shutting down Maine’s efforts to reduce congestion on Route 1, and deep-sixing Florida’s high-speed rail plan, among others.

There are, of course, genuine issues raised by the movement of more Americans to cities. Urban dwellers are by necessity confronted with trade-offs that rarely confront more rural folks.  We need to make accommodations for the needs of our neighbors, and we need to make policies that serve whole communities—policies that will inevitably irritate some and satisfy others. Those realities do constrain us. I live in a historic district, for example, where I have to obtain approval to paint my house a different color. Does that limit my property rights? Sure.

There is not only nothing wrong with discussing and debating the trade-offs that come with living in modern industrialized societies, it is a conversation that is absolutely critical. But like all such debates, it needs to be conducted by adults and informed by reason and evidence.

The world is scary enough without inventing monsters to fear.

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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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Road Trip

It’s been one of those days.

I got up early this morning because I had to drive 75 miles to give the “Good Government Day” speech I posted here a few days ago. Before I left, I tried accessing my email only to discover that my computer no longer recognized me, and wouldn’t allow me to log on. It was pouring down rain and I was out of gas; by the time I’d filled the tank, I looked like a sad, drowned rat. I got lost twice on my way to the small town where the high school was located. And it rained. And rained.

Good Government Day is a big deal at this high school, and everyone evidently attends: the Mayor and Deputy Mayor (a delightful woman I had previously met), members of the City Council, and a variety of elected and appointed officers. I was introduced to the Clerk-Treasurer, who seemed like a very nice woman–until she launched into her description of what was wrong with America and her explanation of why we are losing our “way of life.” I’m not entirely sure who she was alluding to when she referenced “people who are intentionally destroying our system,” but it was hard to miss her distaste for “people from South America” who have evidently had the nerve to invade even her small town. To say that I was taken aback would be an understatement.

I don’t believe this particular officeholder was typical of that small town. I chatted with several others–teachers, candidates for the City Council–who seemed far more representative of the virtues we like to attribute to small-town American life: they were welcoming, thoughtful and gracious. But I couldn’t help wondering, as I drove back through the driving rain, how many people share that woman’s worldview. How many see difference as a threat, rather than an opportunity to experience new perspectives? How many are secretly convinced that “they” are trying to destroy America?

And who do you suppose “they” are?

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Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

You are probably surprised to hear from me since, being Jewish, I haven’t written before. But things are really getting dicey here in the good old U.S. of A., and I was wondering if I might ask for one teeny-weeny gift this year.

I’d like some sanity, if you have any on hand. (I know it’s been getting harder to find.)

I wouldn’t bother you if we were just dealing with the usual hypocrisy. You know, congressmen screaming about how we need to keep the government from getting between you and your doctor while simultaneously voting to get between a pregnant woman and her doctor. Or those Republican Senators who screamed bloody murder during the Bush Administration about how the filibuster is wrong and undemocratic (small d), and who are now filibustering everything in sight, or the Democratic (big D) Senators who were doing the filibustering then and are screaming bloody murder about it now.

We’re used to that sort of thing.

What’s got me worried is the “Nero fiddling while Rome burns” behavior. It isn’t just politicians, either. As you know, Santa,  America is facing big problems. The cost of medical care is threatening to bankrupt the country. We are fighting two unpopular wars, at least one of which was unnecessary. The economy is in shambles. So our media fixates on Tiger Woods’ infidelity and Sarah Palin’s book tour. Really? And don’t get me started about the deranged  “birthers” who insist that President Obama is a Muslim-communist-Nazi socialist.

Speaking of fiddling and burning, despite overwhelming scientific consensus that the world  faces calamity if we don’t do something about global climate change, we have people—including several in congress—sticking their fingers in their ears and going “la la la—I can’t and won’t hear you!”

But what really got me, Santa, was reaction to a bill to regulate Wall Street. As you know, big bank shenanigans made possible by lax regulation were a major cause of the recession. (I know it has affected you and the elves, too; families have less money so you’ll have fewer toys to deliver.) Opponents of this bill are calling it “socialism.”

Santa, I understand arguing that a particular regulation is good or bad, but to argue that making banks play by some rules amounts to a “government takeover” is crazy; it’s like saying that giving an umpire authority to call outs is “socializing” baseball.

It’s paranoid.

I know it isn’t new. Back in 1964, Richard Hofstader wrote “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” and gave examples of various lunacies through American history. (Remember when Robert Welch insisted that President Eisenhower was ‘a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy’?) When the problems we face seem enormous and their solutions impossibly complex, people do tend to “leave the reservation” as the saying goes. We’ve lived through the anti-Masons and the Nativists and the Klan. We’ll probably survive the current paranoia.

But just in case, Santa—can you bring us some sanity?