Max Blumenthal, of DailyBeast.com, and author of the recently released psycho-historical analysis of the American Religious Right and the damage it has inflicted on the Republican Party, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party was the guest of Fire Dog Lake’s Book Salon yesterday.
Go read the entire discussion for a great thread of wonderful insights and political observations. Below are some of what I consider the most important points. At the end, I include what I think is probably the best comment on this past week’s passing of neo-conservative kingpin Irving Kristol, a remarkable anecdote which is a powerful metaphor for what American conservatism actually is – the basis for reducing American democratic republicanism to oligarchy and aristocracy.
As noted in the introduction, Blumenthal ‘s book
is more than an exposé of the salacious, outrageous scandals of the "Family Values" party; it is a withering dissertation on the underlying psychological and ideological dysfunction that serves as the emotional foundation for the Mike Huckabees, Sarah Palins and Ted Haggards of this world.
Blumenthal began by noting
After visiting James Dobson’s mountain kingdom in Colorado Springs in 2006 it became clear to me there was a culture of personal crisis lurking behind the right’s histrionics and resentment. But it took me a few another year before I discovered Eric Fromm’s analysis, which articulated what I had witnessed among the Christian right.
Further,
Authoritarian movements and societies function best when followers self-censor. Usually actual censorship of opinion and cracking down on dissent is not necessary until the movement begins coming apart. So naturally racists will deflect any accusation of their racism by shouting "You lie!" It was amazing to see so many signs at 9.12 defensively and preemptively declaring "It’s not about race!"
Noting that the American wrong-wing presents a rather historically unique bizarre combination of anti-government libertarianism with moral and social authoritarianism, Blumenthal discusses one of the founders of modern American conservatism, R.J. Rushdoony, ending with a very disturbing anecdote:
Rushdoony gave the Christian right its blueprint from "reconstruction" secular society along ultra-right Christian guidelines. He influenced everything from the homeschooling movement to Bush’s faith based initiative (which continues under Obama) to the anti-gay movement. Of course, under Rushdoony’s interpretation of biblical law, gays would be executed — call it the Christian right’s trigger option. . . .
Rushdoony was good friends with Robert Welch, the John Birch Society founder, and was mightily inspired by his organizational methods. I also write about how the Birchers (forerunners of the deathers and birthers) pasted signs of JFK with cross hairs around his head all over Dallas the week before he arrived in town. As Eric Boehlert pointed out, the last time we saw displays like the histrionics of 9/12, a president was killed.
Blumenthal (and other participants in the discussion) have some very entertaining zingers:
I think I demonstrate quite clearly in my book and reporting that the modern GOP has no capacity for bipartisan compromise. Those who fantasized about Obama overcoming the partisan divide were delusional and never understood the nature of the threat. After Chuck Grassley entertained death panel rumors, I think Obama should have come to the same conclusion I did after I first started covering the right — they have a pre-existing condition and should be denied coverage.
SNIP
I also like what Rod Dreher said: conservatism is not dead, it is undead. It is a zombie staggering towards Obama mumbling, "Brains! Brains!"
Blumenthal reminds us of some effective counterpoints to wrong-wing bullshit:
Why hasn’t anyone pointed out amidst all the right’s cries for freedom and getting the government out of their lives that just a few years ago, one of its most revered media personalities, Michele Malkin, advocated concentration camps for Americans?
SNIP
I write about the Schiavo affair as the moment when mainstream America finally rejected the Christian right after witnessing its authoritarianism explode into the open. And the irony of Tom DeLay, who authorized having his father, Charlie Ray, being removed from life support after a major accident, could not be overlooked.
SNIP
. . . the treatment of Eliot Spitzer’s affair compared to David Vitter’s was unbelievable, but it was encouraged by a fundamental difference between the parties. The power-mad GOP welcomed Vitter back into the Senate with a standing ovation with Spitzer was ousted by fellow Democrats. Later Roger Stone, the admitted swinger and famous Republican operative, revealed that Spitzer was the victim of a Wall Street-funded sting operation that he was a part of. Stone first learned of Spitzer’s affair through his own contacts in the Miami sexual underworld, so this Democratic scandal began through Republican connections to the world of swingers and leather dungeons.
Blumenthal discusses the present condition of the Republican Party, and its inability to rid itself of the wrong wing extremists.
The histrionics of 9.12 was a PR disaster for the GOP. Anyone not white, conservative and extremely irritable was turned off by what they saw. But Glenn Beck and Dick Armey don’t care about the GOP very much. They have their own agenda. And as I show in my book, the modern right-wing follower doesn’t care how he appears to mainstream secular society. He lusts for the euphoria of fervent political activity and needs the security of a community of like minded people from a similar cultural background.
SNIP
Will the GOP go the way of the Whigs? I was talking to Tucker Carlson a few months ago and he told me he’s no fan of the Christian right but there is no one else the GOP can rely on for votes. So they must rely on this radical movement that has driven the party outside the mainstream and prevented it from winning outside the South. Barring any major crisis (ie a terror attack) the GOP is heading for a catastrophic internal conflict.
And what new hi-jinks are the wrong-wingers working on to spring on us in the near future?
I hear Frank Luntz, the Republican propaganda consultant, is working on a new campaign for "restoring the American dream." The Party will use the "American dream" as a code word for nostalgia for the white-dominated, patriarchal Christian America that exists in the right-wing imagination, and will identify Obama as the destroyer of that dream.
Finally, a comment in the thread pointed to this great anecdote about Irving Kristol and his son, Bill Kristol, originally from the Rocky Mountain News, also recently deceased.
Which brings me to this charming vignette, courtesy of blog commenter Harry Hopkins:
"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.
"The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
"With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.' "
The comments in the FDL TBogg thread are worth reading, also.