According to PPP, 35% of the country thinks either that President Obama was not born in America (23%), and / or that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks (14%). My favorite line in their press release is "a very troubled 2% of the population buys into both of those conspiracy theories." Ha!
On the bipartisan front, 25% of Democrats think that Bush was involved in the 9/11 attacks, while 42% of Republicans think that Obama was not born in the United States.
The idea that the left and the right are both inhabited by a "fringe" is a favority mainsteam trope, which PPP plays off of, though it does note that, "It's hard to call a third of the country a fringe." Nonetheless, the "fringe" characterization is a long-standing one, and it's always a handy way to avoid discussing the substance of any sort of criticism from the left. One simply equates the criticism with crazy ranting from the right, and then smiles a knowing "we're all above such foolishness" smile.
But who's to say that the "center", such as it is, is not similarly beset with ludicrous counter-factual beliefs, even though they may not take the same conspiricist forms? In fact, there is substantial evidence that this is the case, and the centrist counterfactual beliefs are far more injurious to the health and welfare of the republic than either the Birthers or the 9/11 Truthers. Here a sampling of such centrist myths, which, to my knowledge, no one has ever thought to poll.
(A) We can provide universal health care, like all other advanced industrial nations, and cut costs to 12% of GDP or less, like all other advanced industrial nations, while still allowing insurance companies to skim 30% off the top.
(B) We can militarily subdue Afghanistan with enough troops and machismo, even though no one in history has ever done this before.
(C) We can successfully deal with global warming without even trying to reduce atmospheric carbon to 350 ppm, which is what the world's scientists say is required.
(D) We can fix the financial system without actually fixing the financial system, simply by trusting the folks who helped bring us the meltdown in the first place.
(E) Money is speech.
(F) Corporations are people, with all the Constitutional rights that entails.
(G) Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weapon systems that don't work, and/or aren't designed to fight enemies that actual exist means you are "strong on defense," even if you did everything human possible to avoid serving in a war zone when your country called. Questioning the wisdom of doing so makes you "weak on defense", even if you are a war hero.
There are literally dozens and dozen of such crazy beliefs that enjoy strong "centrist" support, at least in Versailles, if not always in America. But does anyone ever thing of them as evidence of some sort of dysfunction? Yet, that surely is precisely what it is--evidence of a deeply dysfunctional political system.
I have no quarrel with TIME magazine devoting a cover to Glenn Beck -- so long as the accompanying story sticks to hard facts and harsh truths. The issue coming tomorrow, online today, sadly fails to do so in an apparent effort to woo the rightwing with a ludicrously "balanced" treatment of equally dangerous and wacko "ranting" coming from left and right.
It starts right away with a first paragraph that claims that only "liberal sources" estimated the protest crowd in D.C. last weekend as about 70,000, while conservatives say up to a million or more. Actually, virtually all mainstream media sources (even some on Fox News) endorse a far lower number. PolitiFact, the nonpartisan fact-checking site, cited an officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department telling a reporter that, unoffically, he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.
If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic.
In this nugget TIME's David Von Drehle revealed his method. The "left" says one thing, the "right" another and, hell, who is to know the truth? He returns to this late in the piece by raising the crowd estimate gap again and explaining it as merely "who do you trust?"
Of course such coverage is anything but responsible. If you're going for "balance" rather than truth, then you only encourage the most unscrupulous to make the most outrageous claims. Then your "balance" will inexorably move the "sensible center" ever further in their fact-free, crazed direction. Any kindergarten teacher can explain this in detail, if necessary.
In sharp contrast to Time's egregious malpractice, Salon ran a deeply significant piece about Beck, exposing the nature of the man who's had the most significant impact on his recent devolution-- Cleon Skousen, described as "a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised." In fact, no less than J. Edgar Hoover and the elders of the Mormon Church regarded him as a dangerous crank. So if Time had wanted to ask the right questions, they could have had Hoover and Mormon elders representing the "left" as "balance" to Beck supporters. This article, "Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life", not only provides a striking contrast with Time's journalist slop, it also provides a valuable complement to Tim Wise's highlighting of Ayn Rand's hero-worship of sociopathic killer, which inspired Part 1 of this diary mini-series.
Together, these two stories, about Rand and Skousen, are not simply stories about the advancement of conservative ideas. Indeed, they are actually the exact opposite-they are about the destruction of conservative ideas by the rightwing lunatic fringe.
Two extremely interesting articles were published this week that shine a light on current wave of conservative lunacy. First, at Salon, Alexander Zaitchik has a fascinating article, "Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life", with the sub-head, "Cleon Skousen was a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised. Then Beck discovered him". The subhead is actually misleading. It wasn't conservatives who despised Skousen--it was ultra-conservatives like J. Edgar Hoover and the elders of the Mormon Church. More on Skousen and Beck in Part 2. But first, I want to ruminate on some new-to-most-of-us information about Ayn Rand, whose books have been selling like hotcakes since Obama came to power.
On Tuesday, author Tim Wise--a leading authority on deconstructing white supremacy and white privilege, from the blatant to the subtle--posted a fascinating diary at DKos, Sociopathy on the Right: Ayn Rand and the Triumph of Conservative Cultism, the most shocking aspect of which was the revelation that an early heroic model for Rand was a notorious sociopathic child-kidnapper and killer, William Edward Hickman. This is actually not a new revelation. Wise cites an online essay by Michael Prescott written in 2005, "Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman", which goes into considerable detail. (Prescott, btw, is a conservative crime novelist, so there's no way this can be construed as a leftwing attack on Rand. See, for example, his 2005 blog post "Welcome back, CNN", in which he announces his abandonment of Fox, because it's become a tabloid sewer--not because they lie like dogs.)
Among other things, Prescott wrote:
In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)
Ayn Rand, a murder groupie. Who knew? OTOH, who's surprised, once you stop and think about it?. But this bizarre revelation--which ought to surprise no one--is only one aspect of the profoundly confused and contradiction-riddled state of the American right today. Wise begins his piece with Rush Limbaugh's rant condemning President Obama for speaking about community service on September 11. Community service is for losers, Limbaugh insisted:
"Let prisoners do it, let prisoners pick up the trash. Let prisoners mow some highway grass. This -- this community service, folks, it's insidious. It is nothing more than a well-sounding compassionate label. But it means something entirely different. It means turning you into a robot."
Of course, community service was also a key part of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism," too. In fact, it was supposed to be an alternative to "big government." This was the entire original thesis behind Marvin Olasky's coining the term in the first place, before Bush picked it up and ran (for President) with it.
Details, details.
Wise segues from Limbaugh's attack on service to his discussion of Rand, which is a natural on one level. But on another, not so much:
Ayn Rand, Murder Groupie--And Other Questionable Delights
Two extremely interesting articles were published this week that shine a light on current wave of conservative lunacy. First, at Salon, Alexander Zaitchik has a fascinating article, "Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life", with the sub-head, "Cleon Skousen was a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised. Then Beck discovered him". The subhead is actually a bit misleading. It wasn't conservatives who despised Skousen-it was ultra-conservatives like J. Edgar Hoover and the elders of the Mormon Church. More on Skousen in Part 2 of this diary mini-series. But first, I want to ruminate on some new-to-most-of-us information about Ayn Rand, whose books have been selling like hotcakes since Obama came to power.
On Tuesday, author Tim Wise-a leading authority on deconstructing white supremacy and white privilege, from the blatant to the subtle-posted a fascinating diary at DKos, Sociopathy on the Right: Ayn Rand and the Triumph of Conservative Cultism, the most shocking aspect of which was the revelation that an early heroic model for Rand was a notorious sociopathic child-kidnapper and killer, William Edward Hickman. This is actually not a new revelation. Wise cites an online essay by Michael Prescott written in 2005, "Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman", which goes into considerable detail. (Prescott, btw, is a conservative crime novelist, so there's no way this can be construed as a leftwing attack on Rand. See, for example, his 2005 blog post "Welcome back, CNN", in which he announces his abandonment of Fox, because it's become a tabloid sewer-not because they lie like dogs.)
Among other things, Prescott wrote:
In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)
Ayn Rand, a murder groupie. Who knew? OTOH, who's surprised, once you stop and think about it?. But this bizarre revelation-which ought to surprise no one-is only one aspect of the profoundly confused and contradiction-riddled state of the American right today. Wise begins his piece with Rush Limbaugh's rant condemning President Obama for speaking about community service on September 11. Community service is for losers, Limbaugh insisted:
"Let prisoners do it, let prisoners pick up the trash. Let prisoners mow some highway grass. This -- this community service, folks, it's insidious. It is nothing more than a well-sounding compassionate label. But it means something entirely different. It means turning you into a robot."
Of course, community service was also a key part of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism," too. In fact, it was supposed to be an alternative to "big government." This was the entire original thesis behind Marvin Olasky's coining the term in the first place, before Bush picked it up and ran (for President) with it.
Details, details.
Wise segues from Limbaugh's attack on service to his discussion of Rand, which is a natural on one level. But on another, not so much:
In trying to paint Drum as a bigot, Lind was engaged in the age-old Southern strategem of misrepresenting northern disgust with Southern bigotry as itself constituting a kind of bigotry. Necessarily overlooked in this "clever" inversion is the fact that Southern bigotry is based on skin color and alleged group attributes that no individual can change. Northern criticism is based on Southern political culture, and individual behavior, which millions of White Southerns in fact have changed.
Bit of a difference there.
In fact, Lind has a multitude of problems thinking straight about individual and group attitudes, as revealed in his column--a characteristic that's quite typical of effects of white supremacy. This is not to say that Lind is a white supremacist. I don't believe that for millisecond. But as historical works such Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory have clearly demonstrated, whenever anyone tries to accommodate themselves to Southern white supremacist ideologies--whether actively or passively--the end result is inevitably a tangle of contradictions, and wholesale abandonment of reality. However innocently one begins--such as Walt Whitman's ministering to those wounded in battle--the end result of the attitudes and narratives that emerge are inevitably pernicious in the extreme, and they are as pernicious to logic and truth as they are to human dignity.
This is what we behold at work in Lind's arguably well-meaning attempt to focus on the need for building cross-racial, cross-regional solidarity for an economic populist agenda. My previous diary, "Michael Lind Secedes From Reality: Mixing Up Race, Class, And Party ID In The South", showed that Lind was mistaken in his very premise--the Birthers are not primarily representative of the White Southern working class base he wants us to reach out to. They primarily represent better-off White Southerners who want to buttress their higher socio-economic position with a veener of moral superiority as well. And Lind's "hands-off" admonitions would only help them in this quest.
But there are a multitude of other confusions as well, as indicated by the preceding diary on Lind's misrepresentation of Kevin Drum. In comments, Gray quickly pointed something I was saving for this diary as a sort of jumping-off point: Lind generalized wildly to "liberals" in general based on a single post by a single blogger. Even if he hadn't misrepresented Drum, that's a mighty small data set. But it's perfectly consistent with the imperative to defend "Southern honor." More fun and games along these lines on the flip.
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that GOP attacks on ACORN were true. Let's suppose that:
The fraudelent registrations turned in by ACORN workers (who ACORN subsequently fired) and that were flagged by ACORN as suspicious were actually produced intentionally by ACORN, for the purposes of producing bogus registrations that would then be used to cast illegal votes; and
ACORN actually had an organized scheme to get folks registered under the names of famous athletes (rather than totally obscure semi-pro players, or even Little Leaguers), and to get four or five people all registered under the same name, rather than under four or five different names, as a clever way of not calling attention to its nefarious plans to corrupt the election process; and
ACORN also had arranged to get a few thousand people nationwide to risk felony convictions for voting illegally, even though this had never been done before in the history of America. Say they managed to get 5,000 people to cast illegal ballots--roughly two to three orders of magnitude more than the total number of illegal acts of voting prosecuted since 2000.
Let us further suppose that this was all thoroughly investigated, but none of this became public knowledge through the media. Which would the GOP rather have?
(A) All the 5,000 illegal ballots were thrown out.
(B) All the 1.3 million legal, low- and moderate-income voters--60-70% minority--who ACORN registered were thrown out.
So, (A) 5,000 votes, or (B) 1,300,000 votes. Which is the GOP really concerned about?
And conversely, why in the world would ACORN try to get a few thousand people to vote illegaly, and undermine all the hard work it did to register 1.3 million new voters?
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