Coming home today on a plane from Chicago, I found myself sitting right behind two wingnuts.
I don't know where they were getting their ideas from; they didn't mention Fox News or Glenn Beck or NewsMax or Free Republic or Tea Parties. But they were mad and fuming and going off (although their tone was what I'd describe as 'amused condescension') in a decidedly Beckite vein.
One of them seemed to be from Alaska, and the other one was from Alabama. When I first started to listen, they were going on about giving away money to banks, and how the little guy couldn't get away with the kind of theft that was going on -- not a nuanced viewpoint, but a completely understandable one. And that's probably the face that the wingnuts would rather show to the outside world: demogogic populist outrage.
But as I continued to listen (not always easy over the internal noises of an aircraft, but easier as time passed and their voices got louder and more strident) I found that that wasn't what was bothering them at all. They were condemning "those guys in Washington", and there was one particular thing that was bothering them about those guys.
Barack Obama, you see, couldn't understand the problems of real Americans (i.e., people like them), because his life experience was so unlike that of most people in the United States. For starters, he was the son of a single mother "who for some reason wanted to go chasing after a darky..."
Uh-oh.
Well, you could guess where this was going.
There was considerably more in the same vein, a combination of half-truths and outright lies, but always pulling again at the strings of racism and xenophobia. Indonesia was mentioned, and Africa, with the implication of it being a taint for an American President to have gone overseas -- not something a real American would do! I didn't hear any outright birtherism -- though later on it was declared that Obama's Presidency was illegitimate and unconstitutional, which may point to something of the sort in an earlier part of the conversation that I hadn't heard. But clearly it was their opinion that having a black President was getting away from the "way things used to be", described rather amorphously and uninformatively as "Mom and Apple Pie." They were convinced that Obama wasn't respected overseas (this just days after he had received the Nobel Prize!).
To give these guys full credit for their hatred, they were equal opportunity racists, bashing Bobby Jindal for talking about Christianity. Not, however, because it was an improper combination of civic and religious affairs; but because "I don't see how anyone can call himself a Christian and vote for an Indian."
They went on to talk about how the government was going to levy a tax on all guns as a preliminary to confiscating them, how the Armed Forces were going to be forced to swear loyalty to the President rather than the Constitution, and a lot more conspiracy talk that I have mercifully forgotten. They didn't much like the Republicans either; "the last guy that I wanted to vote for was Pat Buchanan."
So what was their solution? "The generals oughta get together and overthrow the government, like they do down in South America." "Yeah, I was down in Guatemala when they did like that." This in the same breath with complaining about the supposedly un-American and un-Constitutional nature of the Obama administration.
I really wanted to say something to them about that, but it seemed to me from what I'd heard that they would have no concept of irony whatsoever.
They were admittedly not confident of the chances for success of a military coup, considering the officer corps to be full of careerists who wouldn't rock the boat; on the other hand, they remarked with satisfaction, that since the end of the draft the Army was full of conservative-leaning guys "from Montana and Idaho and Wyoming... not a buncha monkeys from New York."
I knew these kinds of people were out there; but it was a shock to hear it straight from the wingnuts' mouths. There are actually people out there who consider themselves to be super-Americans, and at the same time are agitating for the violent overthrow of the democratically-elected government of the United States -- just because their guy didn't get in -- and its replacement by a military dictatorship. Their attitude reminded me of the mental shellshock of the slaveowners after the civil war -- first the denial ("they'll never allow n-----s to vote") then sarcastic but distant observation, with the wishful thinking that 'this too shall pass' ("a government of n-----s and carpetbaggers'll never last a month"), then planning for violence and ultimately violent reaction (the Ku Klux Klan, burnings and lynchings) with the goal of regaining political supremacy.
I am not frightened of these people, but I do think that the nation needs to be forewarned. I am now completely convinced that the sole issue lying behind the "Tea Party" reactionism and Joe Wilsonism is, in fact, race; and racists are an armed and dangerous lot, and they may well attempt to foment a coup or a military rebellion by finding unprofessional officers and enlisted men who agree with their politics and playing on the race issue, openly or in one disguise or another; and I doubt that everybody in the Republican Party is honorable enough to disavow this kind of treason.