President Barack Obama had trouble scheduling this weeks address before Congress. The Republicans jerked him around a bit before letting him appear. During the address, they repeatedly snickered, giggled, laughed, and gufawed like school children who were trying to unhinge a teacher they detested. They thought it was very funny that Warren Buffett complained that he paid more taxes than his secretary. This time noone shouted “You lie” but one of them held up a sign demanding drilling in the Gulf. They laughed again when President Obama said he had cut 500 regulations. Maybe they didn't believe his claim or they simplisticly thought all regulations should be cut, especially those involving the coal companies that are so close to Speaker John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell.
These people inhabit a world of unreality filled with myths, boegeymen, and crackpot theories. So many people think as they do that the mainstream media, using its fake evenhandedness tactic, report all the bizarre behavior and claims as perfectly normal.
Demonizing Government and Disrupting Democracy
Ronald Reagan took them to the world where the tin hat was acceptable apparel, and they have retreated more and more from reality since then. Reagan's dictum that “government is the problem” has eventually led Republicans to demonize our very institutions and repeatedly show disrespect for the office of President of the United States. The recently invited Israeli Premier Benjamin Netenyahu to come to the United States, where, in an addrres to Congress, he denounced the policies of the Obama administration to the repeated cheers of those assembled. It was a remarkable breach of tradition; the last time Americans cheered a foreign spokesman who did this was in 1793 when Citizen Edmond Charles Genet came here to denounce the foreign policy of President George Washington. In between these times, it wa understood that foreign leaders did not make such comments and that Americans would not tolerate such bad manners.
Retired Republican Congressional aide Mike Lofgren wrote that several years ago a superior explained to him that it was Republican strategy to obstruct and disrupt government. By damaging the reputation of government, the Republican Party will benefit at the polls because it is programatically against government. A few months ago, he was told that the party would create an artificial debt limit crisis for the same reason, to win votes by making government look bad.
Given this hostility to the United States government, it is no surprise that so many leading Republicans adopt the political theories of John C. Calhoun, which led the South to secession. It also explains why Michelle Bachmann buys so much of the "lost cause" theory and romanticizes about the Confederate States of America.
The Great Communicator Focused on Fear of the "Other"
Some of us are old enough to remember how Ronald Reagan often confused movie rolls with reality. He taught Americans to believe that it could be morning in America if we just wished it to be true. The Gipper taught us it was safe to entertain fantasies. Reagan folks to demonize the poor,labor unions, and abortion supporters--the former had been his allies on California.
Richard Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew pioneered the tactic of teaching people to fear and hate "Others." Reagan refined and vastly improved it by engrafting Margaret Thatcher's idea society was an illision; it did not exist. All there was was the selfish individuals and his desires. Given enough time and this outlook generates the Klanlike behavior we saw at Palin rallies in 2008 or the ugly crowd outburst at the last two Republican debates.
Many learned to close their eyes to hard facts and to cast blame for problems on scapegoats. Few remember that he opened his campaign for president with a gesture expressing solidarity with the opponents of the civil rights movement. Reagan and Republican strategists knew that low-information voters are famous for their mental compartmentalization. They are unable to get at the root of their economic woes and prefer to center their anger on groups that do no harm at all: gays, immigrants, African-Americans, liberals, Muslims, environmentalists, and advocates of biological evolution.
Voodo Economics
Ronald Reagan also instituted a form of economics that even his vice president had derided as “voodo economics,” and it became Republican doctrine, despite the fact that it never worked and required massive borrowing. That borrowing, necessary to pay for tax benefits for the rich, was considered good. Today, talk of borrowing to create jobs for ordinary folks who are out of work is considered bad.
Since the 1980s, more and more Americans believed that Reaganism would solve their problems: deregulate business and finance, give the wealthy big tax breaks, and squeeze the unions. An assertive foreign policy was also called for. All this became our conventional wisdom and it was very comforting for many because it was based on the idea that Americans are very "exceptional."
In 2007-2008, the Reaganite economic and financial formulae came a cropper--big time. The financial system was nearly destroyed, and we nearly slid into a deep recession. The conventional wisdom had clearly failed, and the cognitive dissonance was temporarily great enough that the voters put an African American in the White House and gave the Democrats big majorities in Congress.
That was in the short run. But, in the longer run, a majority of Americans were persuaded that the old Reaganite scheme had not failed after all. In 2010, they voted to give them another try. Now most seem to support a Republican call to strip away new financial regulations-- a move that would open the door to an even worse financial meltdown than was seen in 2007-2009.
Today's Scapegoating and a New Version of Voodo Economics
A good deal of fantasy thinking was required. Somehow, Barack Obama and the Democrats were to blame. Health care reform and the stimulus were said to have caused growing unemployment. The facts are that (1) the health care reform was not in force and (2) that the Congressional Budget Offfice pointed out that the stimulus saved and created jobs and probably headed off a recession. There were other odd and unsustainable theories about Obama not being born in America and about being a Muslim and a Socialist.
All these utterly preposterous ideas grew because people a scapegoat and the emotional comfort that came from clinging to what they thought was a tested and true conventional wisdom. There were other scapegoats, scapegoats, scientists, Hispanic immigrants, liberals, Muslims , teachers, public employees, etc. The Birther phenomenon now seems to be put to rest, but that need for scapegoats will mainfest itself in some other way.
The most theatening fantasy today is the theory that cutting spending creates jobs. Had this notion been advanced at a time of high inflation and stagflation, some sort of economic argument could be made for it. At this time, a case cannot be made for it, and even conservative economists stay away from it. The only thing this policy will do is throw people out of work and slow recovery. It is interesting that Republicans in Congress advance this argument because it justifies their efforts to block stimulus or jobs spending. The strategy, of course, is to block recovery so their 2012 victory will be assured.
Senator Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania recently advanced a new fantasy that even flies in the face of what previous Republican presidents have said. Toomey claims that there is no danger of defaulting on our debts and that the government can go on paying interest on the national debt without raising the debt limit. It remains to be seen if other political extremists will start peddling this new fantasy. Toomey is very close to the Club for Growth and other powerful rightist groups. Even after the Republican tactic of taking the debt ceiling hostage resulted in lowering the nation's credit rating, Michelle Bachmann braggered about her role in bringing about the crisis and still insisted that default would have had no adverse consequences.
Bachmann and Perry: Masters of Distortion and Inaccurate Claims
Michelle Bachmann trades on demonizing Obama. REcently she announced that Obama "stole" $550 billion from Medicare. The truth is he signed legislation that provided for that much in savings, while not diminishing benefits. Nearly a year has passed, and this has turned out to be the case. Bachmann and the Republicans had the opportunity to restore that money in the current budget, but they kept the savings Obama and the Democrats generated. The media should be fact-checking this, but it might be just too complicated or unpopular to do so.
At the moment, Texas Governor Rick Perry has a solid lead in the race for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Like Bachmann, he is the master of the exaggeration, tghe just plain lie, and bombast. Both of them have close ties to the Christian ?Dominionists who want to establish a theocracy in the United States.
This man has flirted with secession, nullification, and taking up arms against the federal government. What does the media focus on? They follow Michelle Bachmann in looking at his never implemented executive order requiring little girls to be inoculated against cervical cancer.
Perry has also said that Social Security in a huge fraud and Ponzi scheme and has written that it should be ended. Now he is backing away from ending Social Security, and his opponents simply complain that he should not be scaring old people. The implication is that Republicans have never thougt about ending Social Security as we know it. One would think that there might be one honest mainstream commentator who would put this in context by referring to the many Republican schemes to drastically modify it. Usualloy, their edesire is to privatize Social Security by linking it to the stocl market.
Perry and Bachmann denounce global warming, and the Texas governor incongrously likened his opposition to good science to the heroism of Galileo. The vast majority of Americans join these people in rejecting this scientific finding and also in accepting creationism—something Bachmann started her career crusading for.
So many Americans have simply abandoned reason and learning in these areas that the mainstream media dare not criticize people like Perry and Bachmann on these matters. But they have also abandoned anything that passes for economic science, and it seems that a majority of the American people have followed the Republican leadership there as well. Even former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who –like Romney-- is intelligent and highly educated, now subscribes to economic quackery and simplicities that he could not possible believe. Both Gingrich and Romney seem deeply cynical and dishonest.
Perry's claims about the economy are preposterous by any standard, but he is so limited that he just might believe them. He says that if President Obama goit the $450 billion he wants for his jobs bill that not one job would be created. On the other hand, he denounced Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for Quantitative Easing One and Two and said that if there were a QE3 that it would be treasonous. If one examined what he has said about these policies, it seems his real anger is directed at the possibility that quantitative easing could create some recovery and jobs because he said the problem was that quantitative easing was “political.” Perry, who projects the image of not being too smart, must have grsped that QE1 and QE2 helped the economy, thus frustrating the GOP plan to keep the economy in the doldrums until after the next presidential election.
Michelle Bachmann also vented her rage against QE 1 and QE2, but somehow she got that confused with the way George W. Bush's TARP was administered. Again, no one has picked up on her total confusion.
Mitt Romney is More Skilled at Delivering Misinformation and Distortions
Mitt Romney has complained for months that Obama's 2009 jobs plan did not work and created more unemployment. By Congressional Budget Office standards and by the rekoning of any number of private agencies Obama stimulus was successful. Romney has not been asked for one centilla of empirical data to prove his sweeping claims.
Some of Romney's colleagues may be too dim to realize that all these untruthful statements about Obama's economic policy go a long way toward damaging public confidence, which is the key ingredient in economic recovery. Romney certainly understands this, as does Eric Cantor who peddles the myth that cutting spending and firing people will bring about recovery. Ben Beernanke and Barack Obama cannot defend themselves against these wild, fradulent, and irresponsible claims without creating a public brawl and lending some legitimacy to Romney, Cantor, and others. That would lower confidence still more.
Recently, Romney insisted that Obama threw Israel under the bus. He does not explain what that means. The fact is that that the administration has been forced by Congress and the Israeli political machine here to surrender on the matter of settlements and to even promise to veto Palestinian statehood—a move that will do even more damage to the US in the Arab and Islamic worlds. There is no substance to his claim, but no one asks him to explain himself.
It is hard for the mainstream media to act as fact checkers and truth sayers with respect to all these political fantasies. They are so deeply believed by so many people and become parts of their identities. Any truth-telling can be seen as partisanship, so the MSM has had to treat each fantasy as a position that is just as legitimate as a view rooted in facts and reality. The problem is that so many citizens are information-challenged, and many others deeply believe all sorts of nonsense.
Unemployment is officially 9.1% and real inflation is at about 16%. People have lost much of their savings and many face forclosure. Few think things will get better soon, and most know at some level that the middle class will face more problems in the future. When a country faces multiple crises, it often happens that people embrace political irrationality. They look for simple solutions and even double down on orthodoxies that have clearly failed.
When one realizes that many of our fellow citizens are in a state of panic and denial these recent events make sense:
1. At one Republican debate, the audience cheered loudly in approval of the 234 executions under Governor Perry.
2. At another debate, the crowd again cheered wildly the prospect that someone who could not afford health insurance would die unattended.
3. That same crowd booed when Ron Paul questioned our latest military adventures.
Someone in the media should be linking these three Tea Party/Republican outbursts and be asking what kind of people act this way. The irrational climate is only part of the problem. There seems to be massive information machine that includes radio and cable broadcasting and even some religious organizations that support and propagate the political fantasies.
Today, Democrats seem to have too little to say about most of the fantasies that prevent rational political discourse. These Democrats do not want to be punished for exposing the foolishness of the views that are popular at the moment. They think they might limp through another election by keeping quiet.
Neveretheless, each time someone uses factual information to confront emotionally satisfying but demonstrably false views, some people experience cognitive dissonance, and some of them will reexamine their position. The time will come when more and more people will question Reaganite orthodoxy, but each time the Democrats back off from administering a bit of reality therapy the more distant that time becomes.
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