On April 19th, on the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, MSNBC will televise live footage of interviews with Timothy McVeigh, the right wing mastermind of the attack. In light of all the turbulence and controversy surrounding the administration of Barack Obama, is this just another case of crass sensationalism or does it serve as a timely, in your face, reminder of what constitutes an extreme threat to public safety?
In my last two articles: Coming Unhinged on the Far Right and Hutaree Militia: Foiled Fantasy of a Citizen's Uprising, I pointed out what I believe to be an undeniable trend towards a violent confrontation between the government and the far right. I experienced some degree of pushback from conservatives who fell back on the argument that the left had committed plenty of violent acts in the sixties, as if that were somehow relevant today. Nowhere in either of these articles did I ignore, condone or endorse left wing violence. In fact I roundly deplored all political violence:" It is time for Progressives to stand up to thugs and fanatics of any stripe, be they far to either the left or right, and to no longer tolerate threats of violence on the part of those who having lost out in the political arena, have chosen to attempt change through extra legal means."
Many conservatives would point to an incident of labor thuggery by SEIU members, the Weathermen Bombings or the Seattle World Trade Organization anarchist riots as being somehow equivalent to the damage done in Oklahoma City or on par with the numerous deaths thus far committed by anti-government extremists since the inauguration of Barak Obama. In doing so, they are deliberately ignoring the facts that currently exist. Some critics went so far as to label the recent reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center as just a bunch of "liberal propaganda" for having pointed out the exponential growth in hate groups and anti-government "patriot" organizations since the Obama election. This argument, that past left-wing terror is somehow relevant to dealing with today's clear and present danger, is a straw man argument being made by people who are fooling themselves with a historically challenged analysis in assessing the present situation. Its either that or they are so heavily invested in an anti-Obama crusade that they have become complacent in accepting this threat as it has yet to produce another Oklahoma City. Thus far it serves to support their anti-government animus so they have implicitly accepted the rhetoric while not actually endorsing violent acts.
I spent the last week with my reserve unit where I am part of an armed maritime security / law enforcement team. One of our team leaders is also a U.S. Marshall and SWAT team member with a background in having dealt with anti-government groups. We got on to the topic of domestic terror and his name and office will remain anonymous. I asked him if he had witnessed a significant rise in the number of anti-government organizations and he answered yes to that question. I asked him if they were predominately right wing and he said while there are some on the left, there were more on the right. Furthermore, I asked him if the findings of the Southern Poverty Law Center constituted legitimate research, again he agreed with me that their findings are consistent with what he was seeing from with inside the Marshall's Service. He went on to say that the Secret Service was working overtime to keep up with all of the potential threats that have emerged in the last six months.
On this Sunday's Chris Matthews Show the topic of domestic terror was front and center and Matthews presented two quotes from right wing extremists to underline his point that this is a serious problem. Michael Savage on his April 9th Savage Nation Show said: What we need is a vigorous right-wing movement in America, not a Tea Party. And you need to face off against those scum on the left and then you'll have a nation. Then there was Mike Vanderboegh of Freedom Radio on March 17 who advocated going for the throats of the country's elites. Finally, Nora O'Donnell pointed out how Sarah Palin starts off so many of her speeches with "Do you love you freedom." implying that the current administration is bent on taking it away. If anyone can claim, that at least the Savage and Vanderboegh quotes are not an incitement to violent behavior that would to me constitute an act of outright self-denial.
If individuals are being complacent in their implicit acceptance of this incendiary rhetoric, what then is the position being taken by the Republican Party? I found it interesting that every one of Matthews' panelists pointed out that to date, the G.O.P. has said very little in the way of condemning those on the far right who have put forth politically violent and vitriolic commentary. A salient point made by the commentators was that Fox News had allowed both Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck to run wild with their comments and that the G.O.P. of today lacks the moderating forces of thirty years ago who would have distanced the Party from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Joe Klein, having looked up the meaning of sedition said, the current language of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin "came up against the seditious." Even Kathleen Parker who is listed on the conservative TownHall.com website of conservative columnists said:" The Republican Party must distance itself from the far right otherwise it will be seen as complicit."
In the final analysis, when you take in to account the totality of the present situation, I think the MSNBC airing of the McVeigh Tapes should serve as a reminder of just how dangerous and incendiary rhetoric can become. That said, it is impossible to deny that there is an element of the sensational in the airing of McVeigh's interviews. But it is also hard to deny that there are those among us who in their deep dislike of Barak Obama and dynamic social change are silently endorsing the very language on the part of leading right-wing politicians and media personalities, which could lead us, God forbid, down the road to another Oklahoma City.
Yesterday, I wrote a diary, "Why does Chris Matthews hate America?", focused on his utter cluelessness regarding basic civics, and the importance of defendant's and suspects rights in US history and the Constitution--something I was taught in grade school, then again in junior high, then again in high school.
I had originally intended to say more about his lack of grasp about separation of powers as well, as a comment by comment by Thomas Twinnings reminded me, but the flow of the diary had a mind of its own, and I let it be. Now I'd like to say just a little bit about that as well. As Thomas rightly notes, military tribunals are part of the executive--as is all of the military. Trying suspected terrorists there is a violation of separation of powers. Separation of powers is the core of the constitution, its basic architecture. Separation of powers is the means by which government power is checked by being divided against itself. It's the structural key to preserving limited government--government with limited powers, as opposed to absolute government, government with absolute powers. Republicans--who claim to love "limited government," but don't even know what it means, and who claim to hate government tyranny--have been undermining separation of powers every which way they can when it suits them, at least sine the time of Richard Nixon. And Obama's willingness to continue blurring the lines himself show just what kind of "constitutional scholar" he is (no kind at all, just a teacher, as someone said in a comment I now can't find--Grrrr! Arrrgh!) But I'll have more to say about Obama on the flip. First, let's turn to David Broder.
This week, Broder wrote yet another career-ending op-ed. He's written more of them than most people have written words. But to have an elite pompous ass like Broder lecturing the rest of us about our pompous elitism for not seeing and appreciating Palin's "pitch perfect populism" on the same day that his own paper is out with a poll showing that "Forty-five percent of conservatives now consider her as qualified for the presidency, down sharply from 66 percent who said so last fall." Well, that's just priceless.
Matthews and Broder are beacons of Beltway Babbitry. They epitomize how things are done, undone and not down in Versailles. Obama supposedly ran to change all that, but instead he's shown himself to be the ultimate champion of it--even as it's strangling him politically. But don't worry too much about Obama getting strangled, worry instead about him strangling us, as with his plans for a deficit catfood commission to cut back Social Security and Medicare. As Dean Baker says:
[Note]: Although I concur completely with the point of Ian's diary from yesterday, "The best article on America's Elite", right now I'm struck by almost the exact opposite point: America's elites are so dumb, they couldn't have graduated from grade school where I grew up.
Because it's impossible to understand with his pea brain. From Digby:
Chris Matthews had former CIA operative and journalist Jack Rice and constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein on today in a failed attempt to educate himself on the basic tenets of the Bill of Rights. He simply doesn't understand why, if we know that Khalid Sheik Mohammed is guilty, we should bother with a trial.
One of the two mentioned it in passing, but I think it's worth noting more explicitly, that the government presumably always "knows" that someone is guilty before they indict him or her for a crime. At least it should. The point of the trial is to make them prove it. They have to put their evidence on the table and convince 12 people that it's enough to take away someone's freedom or, in this case, execute them. And because trials are public, this demonstration of proof creates trust in the justice system and the rule of law among the population at large.
Evidently Chris and many others see absolutely no value in proving to the American people, much less the rest of the world, that KSM actually did the crimes of which he's accused.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have this vague recollection that I learned this in grade school. I vividly remember the Revolutionary War re-enactment--or at least I remember the interminable rehearsals. And I know that we had a pretty good idea why the British were so hated. Part of it had to do with their use of Blackwater mercenaries German Hessians, and part of it had to do with violating the rights that the Colonials (that's us!) felt that they had as British citizens--which is why we ended up with most of the stuff you can find in the Bill of Rights. And a good part of that has to do with protecting your rights if you're charged with a crime--or even suspected of one. So let me summarize: When I was around 8 or 9, everyone in my class had been exposed to the basic civics that Matthews seems utterly oblivious to. I can't remember precisely how it was presented to us. I only know we were taught it assiduously, and then to make it stick, we were organized into a school-wide pageant to act out the military "fun" part.
Not withstanding my grade school partial amnesia, I damn sure know that both US history and civics was taught to me in Jr. high & then again in high school. I had it dribbling out of my ears. As far as I could tell, there was no way one could actually graduate from high school without knowing this sort of basic American civics.
And yet, Chris Matthews, a former staffer for House Speaker Tip O'Neil, cannot grasp this. A lack of knowledge so fundamental that he conceivably could have failed 3rd or 4th grade (can't remember which) back when I was in the none-too-remarkable Mooreland School District.
Now, it may well be true that no one in Versailles could have passed the third or fourth grade where I went to school as a kid. (I had no idea the education I was getting was that rigorous!) But I'll tell who does know that stuff--and until quite recently admired the hell out of the US because of it: 1.2 billion Moslems world-wide who are the prime targets of al Qaeda's recruitment efforts in their attempt to mount a holy war against us.
Al Qaeda wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell if Chris Matthews and his Versailles cohorts could graduate from fourth grade. Al Qaeda wouldn't stand a chance if Chris Matthews and the rest of Versailles didn't hate America so much.
What Digby said. She has the transcript of Gov. Dean's appearance on Hardball with Matthews, with Matthews essentially sticking his fingers in his ears and refusing to believe, in the face of polling by Democracy for America and PCCC demonstrating otherwise, that the progressive base was sending a message. Their polling showed that voters in Massachusetts think the health care bill isn't strong enough, and that 73% of Obama voters who switched to Brown believed Obama isn't following through on the change he promised. Check out the entire transcript.
The central point to me is that Villagers have their preconceived notion of what any defeat means: that this is a center-right country and voters were saying that Democrats went too far to the left. Whether or not that matches up with polling or facts is irrelevant. It's why I'm so concerned that the rest of the progressive agenda- immigration reform, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, ENDA, and other "hot-button issues" will be thrown under the bus until after the election, if at all. Our side has to push back quickly and wherever possible against the conventional wisdom parade. That means LGBT leaders have to take to the airwaves and op-ed pages with their own numbers demonstrating how LGBT voters will stay home in 2010 if change isn't delivered, making threats. Same on immigration- I found out the other day that, according to Pew, 50,000 new Latinos turn 18 every single month. This movement forward on stuff like the deficit-reduction commission and Gerry Connolly and Harry Mitchell calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts will only be the start in terms of the shift towards what will and will not be done in 2010 unless there is pushback from our side.
Not that raising tens of millions of dollars and engaging in all kinds of other activism to elect Democrats like Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards and Sen. Merkley counts for anything.
I am seeing potential for a video remix at a Netroots Nation party next year, akin to:
Back in April, conservatives were all up in arms over a report from the Department of Homeland Security warning of the possible rise of rightwing violence in the wake of a worsening recession and the election of the nation's first black President. The word "conservative" never appeared in the report, but conservatives were certain it was aimed at them.
Suddenly, now that the shooting has begun to grab major mindshare, they've changed their minds. The murderer of Dr. George Tiller was a lone nut, not one of them. And Bill O'Reilly's incessant haranguing of "Tiller the baby-killer" had nothing to do with Tiller's murder. What's more, James W. Von Brunn, the Holocaust Museum killer, why, he's a leftist!
Gosh, it seems that the DHS report wasn't about conservatives after all! But are the conservatives now apologizing to Janet Napolitano? Don't hold your breath.
Perhaps the best place to turn to understand what's happening--not just the outbreak of violence, but the intimate relationship it has to the actually existing rightwing movement in America, is David Neiwert's new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. One way or another, David's been on this beat since the 1990s, covering the "Patriot" movement in the Northwest first as journalist, then as author, and writing a number of seminal diary series, including the 2003 Koufax winner, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis (pdf) and the 2004 Koufax winner, "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism" (pdf), both of which contribute substantially to the content of The Eliminationists.
David's the founder of the blog Orcinus, and is currently managing editor at Crooks and Liars, where he had an excellent post yesterday, "How on-target was Homeland Security's right-wing extremism bulletin? Very", which covers a lot of ground (typically for him), including an extensive quotation from The Eliminationistts (mostly finished by last October), from which the following is but a tiny snippet:
Back-to-back programs on Hardball last week provided a strikingly clear demonstration of just why Chris Matthews is a C-student, and how C-student mentality dominates our political discourse at a time when we simply can't afford such mediocrity any more.
First, on Monday, May 18, there was a segment discussing the GQ story on Rumsfeld's use of Bible quotes in top-secret briefings. During the segment, Pat Buchanan said:
BUCHANAN: This is a cover memo on an intelligence memo to the president of the United States. Have you ever read the Second Inaugural of Abraham Lincoln, talking about-if we have one drop of blood drawn by the lash has to be drawn by the sword, then God is a rightful judge-
And a little later, Matthews responded:
MATTHEWS: He's encouraging a war. Let me ask you this, there's one thing about Lincoln; he did give the best speech ever given in American history in his Second Inaugural. He tried to explain to the American people that just saw 600,000 people killed in a Civil War, brother against brother, that somehow this was expiation for slavery. He tried to find in the horror of the war some understanding, human understanding of the war through our background and our belief in the Bible.
He didn't try to sell the war. He tried to give some sense to it.
That's different.
That's a "B" answer.
The next day, Tuesday, May 19, there was a segment discussing global warming, in which Dana Rohrabacher tossed out a slew of long-discredited "scientific" arguments against global warming, and Matthews hadn't the foggiest idea what was wrong with them. Then, without first establishing what a load of hokum Rohrabacher was peddling, Matthews came back with this:
MATTHEWS: Is there a cultural divide between the two parties that goes beyond this issue, where one party is more traditional in its values and it relies more on faith than on science? For example, we've had people on this program-I'm sure they're all over the country-who don't believe in evolution. They don't believe in biology the way it's taught. They don't accept the way that we...
That's a "D" answer, at best. More like an "F". Combine them, and you've got a grade of C, C-. And that's where America is stuck, in a time when we can ill afford such befuddlement. A more in-depth examination of this poor performance on the flip.
Part of smart politics is understanding the audience you're trying to persuade. During election season, the main audience is clearly voters.
What about in recount season?
The Bush 2000 team targeted the refs -- those counting the ballots -- and chose their intimidation tactics accordingly.
This week, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (which I co-founded) and Democracy for America launched a campaign with an audience that Chris Matthews summed up perfectly last night:
They’re asking Democrats for a dollar every day Norm Coleman doesn’t concede the race to Democrat Al Franken. They’re going to use the money to fund progressive challengers in 2010.
That’s right, they want to give the Republicans an incentive to give up that fight in Minnesota.
Exactly! By connecting Coleman's obstinance to a day-by-day building of a warchest to help progressive candidates win, we're moving DC Republicans to a place where they'll want Coleman to concede.
(At the time of the New York Times article Matthews based his comments on, we'd raised $15,000. Now, it's over $27,500 -- nearly doubling our leverage -- and that grows by the hour. You can join the fun by visiting NormDollar.com.)
But who is Norm Coleman targting with his messaging?? From the New York Times:
The fledgling campaign is intended as a way to influence other Republicans to help pressure Mr. Coleman to quit his protracted fight to regain his seat.
In response to the new fund-raising drive, Tom Erickson, a spokesman for Mr. Coleman, returned to an accusation that Mr. Franken owes back taxes and suggested that the proceeds from the dollar campaign might be used to settle that tab.
Really? Stupid, petty, old messaging? Who is the audience??
It's a serious question. The Minnesota Supreme Court? No. Voters in 2014, assuming both a Coleman miracle win now and a Coleman-Franken rematch? Kinda dumb. DC Republicans? Doesn't seem like trumped up tax allegations against Franken will reverse DC insiders' political calculations one bit.
I suppose it's good news for us that the Team Coleman is from the Republican JV league.
That said, if you've had enough of watching these JV players on the field for 5 months after the game was supposed to be over, help cut this game short by adding to the Dollar a Day.
At the Texas Capitol on Thursday, Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, joined by several fellow Texas House Democrats, said some people associate talk of secession with racial division and the Civil War and that Perry should disavow any notion of seceding.
"Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It can be nothing else. It is the ultimate anti-American statement," Dunnam said at a news conference.
The Democrats are proposing a House resolution expressing "complete and total disagreement with any fringe element advocating the 'secession' of Texas or any other state from our one and indivisible Union."
....Other Democrats weighed in with criticism of Perry's remark.
"Talk of secession would be laughable if it weren't mentioned in a serious way," said former ambassador Tom Schieffer, considering running for governor in 2010.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat, said some issues should not be made legitimate in any way.
"By not rejecting out of hand the possibility of secession, Governor Perry is taking a step down a very dangerous and divisive path encouraged by the fringe of Texas politics," Ellis said.
But others--such as Tom DeLay on Softball--only multiply the lies and confusion so much that not only Matthews, but even Josh Marshall can't sort it all out.. Here's the clip:
A quick point-by-point rundown of what's wrong with it on the flip
First off, Greenwald noted (in his diary title, no less), "There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer," first noting how Cramer had obediently served as a stenographer for the rich and powerful, only to be lied to repeatedly, then pointing out:
But there's absolutely nothing about Cramer that is unique when it comes to our press corps. The behavior that Jon Stewart so expertly dissected last night is exactly what our press corps in general does -- and, when compelled to do so, they say so and are proud of it.
Second, Glenn pointed out that Cramer was actually better than most. At least he felt some sense of responsibility--no little thing in contrast to most:
At least give credit to Cramer for facing his critics and addressing (and even acknowledging the validity of) the criticisms. By stark contrast, most of our major media stars simply ignore all criticisms of their corrupt behavior and literally suppress it (even if the criticisms appear as major, lengthy front-page exposés in The New York Times).
Greenwald pointed at length to the record on the Iraq War, and here Matthews has his own shameful past to live down, which he tries to obscure by saying he opposed the war--notwithstanding his worshipful adulation of Codpiece's flight suit moment. Yet, here we are, 6 years down the road, and he still can't get his arms around what happened then, as he give Ari Fleischer the floor for one more round of Bush revisionism--this time it's for the ages!--all the while posing as the tough-guy interrogator, not quite realizing he's actually the patsy.
The fight for 2012 is here. Beltway media insiders rejoice!
Who's it going to be? Spunky Sarah? Moneyed Mitt? Holy Huckabee? Some dark-horse candidate flying under the radar? One thing is for sure: While the media clamors for every tiny detail in the looming battle for the Republican presidential nomination, the real fight for 2012 is taking place right before their very eyes.
Has anyone noticed that Chris Matthews has moved a bit off the center in the last year or so? He used to be reliably centrist in his yelling but at some point during the second term of the Torture Administration he developed a bit of a conscience. At least sometimes. Today he went off on Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) for using the phrase "Democrat Party." The Issa comments is at 4:43 and the Matthews upbraiding at about 5:05 in the video below:
If you can't play the video Matthews ignores Issa's point and instead points out his use of "Democrat" and asks "Why do we have to do this every night?" He also calls it "Mickey Mouse" and says "let's just call people what they call themselves."
We in the netroots spend a great deal of time bashing the Villagers for the profound disconnect with reality, and the disconnect has rarely been more glaring than over the Stimulus bill and the lack of bi-partisanship in passing it. One of the themes I really admire in Glenn Greenwald's writing is the times he reveals prominent journalists implicitly presuming their own opinions must reflect the broad American polity not merely in the absence of empirical proof, but in direct contradiction to it as polling on that very question had been done.
So I'm watching pre-debate coverage, and Chris Matthews keeps prodding the Democratic guests on whether Obama has to do 'something big' or say 'something important' tonight, go after Congress or something like that or else Obama will risk becoming complacent in the last days of the campaign. And it's obvious that what Matthews means is that he's bored and he wants Obama to do something entertaining instead of answer policy questions.
Matthews is paid around $4 million a year. I'm sure that someone in America who finds policy interesting would do a cable news show and make it entertaining for that kind of money. Well, actually, there's already Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, but that's only two hours a day.
Anyway, onward to the debate. I'm expecting nothing political interesting, but I will be listening for policy answers from Obama to get hints of how he'll govern.
I am not going to be very articulate - I've been browsing all the favorite sites to see what people thought, after having my own celebration of this historic event in my own quiet way. I thought the speech itself was amazing - practical, down to earth, but with a hint of that soaring inspiration that everyone showed up to get.
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