How can these email attacks on someone's patriotism evolve so quickly into Associated Press reports covered by all or most of the MSM?
Is it possible that these charges are not a simple push-poll slander or campaign smear, but rather a more calculated response by certain elements of our society to the underlying threat posed by a renewed democracy?
Could these charges (as well as those certain yet to come) be a response by those that would prefer not to govern, but to rule?
The attack on Barack Obama’s patriotism was originally chain-mailed into our email in-boxes. There it was either deleted without being read or was viewed with corresponding disdain and lack of interest. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the digital world, it was repeatedly forwarded along with the equally ludicrous charges about Obama's religious practices and beliefs.
It is a lesson too often learned but more often forgotten that such attempted stains on a person's character do not stop spreading until you wipe them up or wipe them out.
So, over time, these same cartoon-like charges were recently distributed by the Associated Press and many organs of the television media - elevating them from the junk mail box to the evening news.
But when this kind of easily debunked charges wriggle out from under the rocks of email chain letters and find their way into the "news", you have to wonder who they slept with to get that job.
The Nature and Intent of These Attacks
The conclusion I have reached, which will no doubt earn me a new set of tin-foil garlands, is that these attacks are nothing less than what Liard Wilcox describes as Ritual Defamation, and their intent is to turn back the threatening wave of democracy created in part by Obama's candidacy.
It is not the optimistic tone of Obama or even his rallying of the masses around ‘hope’ that I believe triggers this response.
I believe it is his anchoring of these messages in the extraordinary potential of our own democracy that causes such fear. It is the growing concern that after long years of sleep-like apathy and futility, small but significant portions of our citizenry might finally wake up to discover and wield their own real power.
The Danger of Hoping
Even before these attacks, the reluctance to see hope or optimism in American politics as anything but a slender reed has been huge. We all feel that there is danger in hoping because if we pin our hopes on someone or something, they will likely not turn out to be all that we imagine they would be or someone else or something else might steal that hope away.
And in our public lives, in our relationship with our society and in our expectations of our government, we have schooled ourselves deeply into a hardened shell of skepticism, cynicism and disbelief.
In his book For Common Things, Jedediah Purdy spoke of this when he said:
Our society, especially our media culture, is filled with skepticism of any deeply or strongly held values and principles.
We have heard statements professing "values and principles" so often proclaimed by people who so obviously do not believe them that it has become difficult to believe anyone does.
We are wary of hope, because we see little that can support it. Believing in nothing much, especially not in people, is a point of vague pride, and conviction can be seen as embarrassingly naïve. So we increasingly take high principle to be a source of unnecessary discomfort or unearned self-importance, rather than an acknowledgment that we are called to be better than we are.
But Purdy goes on to say:
We believe when we let ourselves, that there are things we can trust, people we can care for, and words we can say in earnest.
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So the question is not whether to hope, but whether to acknowledge our hope, to make it our own. And hope and responsibility are the same here. In both, we tie our success or failure to the state of something outside us, which we cannot entirely control. We can refuse responsibility, but we cannot decide against its existence.
The Threat of Hope
So we choose to hope, even though there are dangers in hoping.
While most look at hope itself as a somewhat risky thing, some few look at its product with even greater apprehension.
Those that see hope as a threat are those that have sought to teach us the futility of our dreams and in regard to our hopes for the common good it is those that have counseled us to settle for something less, advising us to indulge our selfishness and devil take the hindmost.
Purdy speaks of this as well:
One of the greatest dangers we face as a country and as a culture is that being relatively prosperous and relatively free, we may fall into the illusion that each person holds his fate in his own hands and be tempted to withdraw into wholly private concerns, that we will forget how to govern ourselves, forget how to be free.
And yet he urges:
I believe that there is too much at stake in the reality of these thoughts to keep them hidden. They matter too much for us to say of them, by our behavior, that we have outgrown them or never believed them at all. So far as they are true, they are not fragile unless we neglect them. The only way to test their truth, and the best way to sustain them, is to bring them into the world, to think through them, and to act on them.
The Threat of Obama
Comes now Barack Hussein Obama, with his stiring call for hope, his glorification of our country and his idealistic challenge to ordinary Americans to reach down and pick up the instruments of their democracy. (BTW: It's time we owed all three names.)
The nervous watchers behind their shuttered windows know better than we the power of that call. If the people accept and believe the simple truth that their own individual involvement in politics and in government can help produce the changes we have sought for so long, the potential for change is truly unlimited.
And that’s why some in our country have become afraid. All of a sudden, their exceptionalism becomes common stock owned by us all.
In the last few years, these charter members of the 'ownership society' have sought to avoid this devaluation by investing their way out of the spectacular collapse of the Bush administration, showering money on any likely and acceptable successor - buying short in a declining market.
But in politics, like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, results may vary and there truly is no sure thing.
So these same forces now face what in their own world they might describe as a self-reinforcing downward spiral. Every success of Obama - fueled by the enthusiasm of ordinary citizens - breeds new enthusiasm of ordinary citizens in this extraordinary democracy - and the cylce begins again. And with each new success these ordinary citizens become increasingly confident that in spite of the many significant barriers, their common effort towards the common good could lead to improvement for us all.
To cut this circuit, some now seek to disconnect the citizenry from the power that gives it strength. This power is the idea that their democracy is real enough and strong enough to serve as the instrument for millions of ordinary citizens to exercise the sovereign power of a self-governing people.
The weapon of this attack is powerful in part because it appears so banal, so common and expected that we underestimate its power and misapprehend its true target.
The weapon is what Liard Wilcox refers to as Ritual Defamation.
Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and "insensitivity" or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.
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This weapon rises above the mere slander or smear in both its intent and in its implementation.
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Ritual Defamation is not ritualistic because it follows any prescribed religious or mystical doctrine, nor is it embraced in any particular document or scripture. Rather, it is ritualistic because it follows a predictable, stereotyped pattern which embraces a number of elements, as in a ritual.
(For those that wish to compare the attacks being perpetrated on Obama (and no doubt planned for Clinton) and the elements of Ritual Defamation, the similarities are startlingly clear. http://www.lairdwilcox.com/...
It’s important to recognize and identify the patterns of a ritual defamation. Like all propaganda and disinformation campaigns it is accomplished primarily through the manipulation of words and symbols. It is not used to persuade, but to punish. Although it may have cognitive elements, its thrust is primarily emotional. Ritual Defamation is used to hurt, to intimidate, to destroy, and to persecute, and to avoid the dialogue, debate and discussion upon which a free society depends. On those grounds it must be opposed no matter who tries to justify its use.
But as numerous commentators have already observed, these attacks on Obama have so far been successfully parried by Obama, in part because yet another group has underestimated both his will and his skill.
The weakness of ritual defamation lies in its tendency toward overkill and in its obvious maliciousness. Occasionally a ritual defamation will fail because of poor planning and failure to correctly judge the vulnerability of the victim or because its viciousness inadvertently generates sympathy.
But let no one mistake this fact. It is not Obama’s hope and patriotism that is the true target of these attacks. It is not his hope or his faith in this country.
It is our own.