From Bob Herbert writing in today's New York Times.
From www.nytimes.com
The wackiness is increasing, not diminishing, and it has a great potential for destruction. There is a real need for people who know better to speak out in a concerted effort to curb the appeal of the apostles of the absurd.
But there is another type of disturbing behavior, coming from our political leaders and the public at large, that is also symptomatic of a society at loose ends. We seem unable to face up to many of the hard truths confronting the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century.
The serious wackos, the obsessive-compulsive absurdists, may be beyond therapy. But the rest of us could use some serious adult counseling. We’ve forgotten many of the fundamentals: how to live within our means, the benefits of shared sacrifice, the responsibilities that go with citizenship, the importance of a well-rounded education and tolerance.
I don't think that there is in the history of the last thirty or so years in America the one defining moment when the rhetoric of the Right overwhelmed and supplanted the Republican party. Maybe we need to go back the Nixon era when the "Southern strategy" became the basis for all future political campaigns and elections. But it seems to me that we cannot narrowly define the Right's radicalization as simply the appeal to the racism and bigotry that is not solely the province of the southern parts of our country.
That may have begun with such an appeal but it has metastasized into a much larger and multi-celled organism that makes use of all of our basest instincts and prejudices to coalesce ultimately into the unified malignancy that now threatens the very life of the nation. If as John Dean famously remarked to Richard Nixon regarding Watergate that it was "a cancer growing on the presidency" then the radicalized and fanaticized Right is a cancer growing on America itself.
This political version of a deadly experiment that has gotten out of control has gone from being an epidemic to a pandemic. And has grown to such proportions that its creators are powerless to slow the growth let alone destroy it completely. It feeds upon the fears and anxieties of the weakest among us. Weakest in financial security, education, and hope for a better life. It preys upon those already thus weakened and susceptible.
Yet while its creators bear the ultimate responsibility for its creation, it is those who spread the disease not out of any ideological belief but for money and fame who are ultimately responsible and culpable for its "success". And they are the Becks and O'Reillys and Hannitys and Limbaughs of our world who along with the corporate interests are the enablers and nurturers and disseminaters. They are not dissimilar to the rats that spread the plague across Europe in the Middle Ages.
As I said, we cannot pinpoint singular moment when this thing was created. But we can easily identify the moment when it reached critical mass. The election of the first black president last November. And not only has the cancer spread more rapidly but it has taken on a more diseased and deadly form. Witness the outbreaks of increased gun sales; the "birther" movement; the "Teabaggers"; the tenfold increase of threats to the life of the president; the irrational responses to all things Obama; the Texas secessionists; Obama as seducer of our children's minds; and on and on and on.
Right now, the country is gearing up to fight a possibly devastating and fatal outbreak of the so-called "Swine flu". We are about to inoculate millions to protect them from becoming infected. And at the same time we are ramping up the production of drugs to deal with those who contract the disease. But what do we do to inoculate ourselves from this other threat we are facing.? What cures do we have in our political pharmacopoeia to cure those already exposed?