The lightning speed with which the Obama White House forced Shirley Sherrod to resign suggests that it is acutely aware of how powerful the surge of political fundamentalism is. At the time, they thought that the story would air on Glenn Beck program; instead Bill O'Reilly used it.
Very few of the people who watch Beck or O'Reilly are swing voters. Such programs and Fox News have gathered many new viewers since we have had an African American in the White House. There are some few who watch those programs who have not made up their minds about November, and the Obama strategists were thinking there was no reason to provide a racial red flag to drive them into the Republican ranks.
Sherrod put her finger on what was going on when she said it was about the size and power of the Republican information machine.
The story broke as an old friend entered my house for a three day visit.
He is a Tea Bagger who clearly does not like blacks or Hispanics. I only learned this recently, when it has again become acceptable to be a racist.
He was happy to hear that someone had dug out her statement of some twenty plus years ago. When the full 43 minute speech was revealed and her comment was placed in context, he was not interested and still saw her as another black racist. Later he complained about too many African American commentators on CNN, worried that the bloacks and Mexicans would re-elect Obama, and suggersted we watch Fox.
When he entered, I had just finished reading another article about how the conservatives are talking about slashing the pensions of already retired public workers, like my visitor and I. I explained what the article said and went through the history of the argument, including Mort Zuckermann's long piece, and all the discussion on the floor of the House after the The Economist suggested that the US states would have to slash pensions. My visitor was not the least bit interested that his pension could be cut. I imagine he just could not believe that Republicans were capable of doing that.
Yesterday, another friend telephoned to say that Fox was airing a film clip that claims that President Obama has ceded part of Arizona back to Mexico. In fact, what had happened was that the Border Patrol posted one area as dangerous because so many drug dealers were using it.
We live in crazy times. The GOP is so sure that all this will help them that it tried to block an extension of unemployment benefits that would effect about 3 million people. Their calculation was probably correct.
Some French thinmkers puzzled over why Jean La Pen, who represents every political virus in that country, can gather so much support. They concluded that there had been such a breakdown of society, culture, and politics, that nothing stood in the way of people simply drifting to the crazy precincts of the far-far right.
There is a sociological factor here. Had mediating or secondary institutions not lost their influence, they would have given scared people a sense of belonging. As it is, they seek this by embracing a movement that wants absolute unity and despises pluralism and ambiguity.
Cognitive scientists might note that the drift to the right was helped by imagery over reality. We do not really have a good grasp of reality and , since the R4eagan years, we have preferred entertainment and manufactured realities to what was really going on. No matter how many lies he told or how often he confused movie roles with experience, we put it aside.
When serious violations of law and constitutional order were revealed, wh did not become very concerned. Many actually came to identify with one of the cullprits and saw him as a folk hero like the Gipper and John Wayne.
The only growing churches seem to be those that wink at selfishness, exclusionism, greed, and imperialism.
Here we have seen the same deterioration, and the respobsible elements in the political system seem to offer nothing compelling. The progressives lack a simple compelling narrative, and people are turned off by their efforts to teach, moralize, or explain things from a managerial stadpoint. What is left of the responsible conservatives cannot be found.
The late Russell Kirk had contempt for both the neo-cons and the hard right.
Now the conservatives have drifted much farther to the right than those people. There seems to be no built in curb on what the Tea Party wing of the GOP can get away with now. Now a candidate for the Senate says it is ok to take up arms if they do not win elections, and few call her to task.
Our descent down the hole into never-never land has been slow, and maybe it cannot be reversed.