One the most puzzling aspects of the tea party phenomenon is how it seemed to start at full velocity instead of a gradual, more logical ramping-up process. For a group of people who claim to detest big government and the trampling of the Constitution, they were conspicuously silent during the Bush administration.
But everything changed when President Obama took office. From the start, they were fervently determined to blame Obama for the mess created by Bush and Cheney, for every defect in our political system and for a litany of other truly bizarre allegations - from secret Muslim, to Kenyan, to Communist, to traitor. They were demanding his impeachment virtually as he was being sworn in. They did not wait and see how Obama would govern or the effect of any legislation enacted during his presidency. They certainly did not allow him any credit for the precipitous condition of the economy he inherited. Instead, they were in lock-step fanatical opposition to him from the get go. All of which tends to somewhat belie the actual legitimacy of their complaints.
The Glenn Beck-inspired tea partiers did not suffer their contempt of the President silently or passively. They acted. By the summer of 2009, some of the tea party contingents had already disrupted or shut down Democratic health care town halls with angry yelling and physical intimidation. (Their idea of protecting the First Amendment rights they claim to cherish was apparently to shout down anyone who disagreed with them.) Law enforcement apparently made no overt effort to squelch them or stuff them into so-called free speech zones, as they had with Bush protesters. And instead of jeering and mocking them as they did the anti-war demonstrators, the media legitimized their thuggish behavior with uncritical wall-to-wall coverage lasting for weeks. Some tea partiers conducted coordinated harassment of elected Democratic officials or advised fellow travelers to stock up on weapons and ammunition in order to "take the country back" - by force, apparently. The hostility was intense and in ridiculous disproportion to any objective view of reality.
There is a difference between dissent and mania, and many tea partiers were clearly on the mania side of the line. These people were not making rational, policy-oriented arguments. They were all over the map with their grievances, but seemed to share a common desire to express their fear of, and hatred for, President Obama, Democrats and liberals. What had begun initially as unruly tax protests morphed almost immediately into borderline sedition, with some tea partiers openly discussing the overthrow of the United States government.
Their Obama-bashing was unrestrained by any bounds of conscience or decency. By their protest signs, it is clear that many of them felt it was accurate to compare President Obama, the mild-mannered community organizer, professor and father of two young girls, to Adolf Hitler, a deranged killer who murdered more than 6 million people. Someone painted a swastika on the office door of Democratic Congressman David Scott shortly after one particularly heated town hall. Threats on the President's life increased 400%. It was a total meltdown. It was full-scale Obama derangement syndrome. The tea partiers had truly gone full Moron.
What makes people act this way? What is the reason for this extreme level of virtually instant, irrational zealotry? What awakened them after their Bush/Cheney hibernation and activated them to go after the Democratic President in this hysterical fashion? The catalyst for all of this was, of course, Glenn Beck. He knew his scree of tea partiers well - the sore losers, the left-behinders, the comfortably dumb and the racists. From his study of totalitarian regimes, including his fascination with The Years of Extermination, he knew how to recognize and exploit the factors that would motivate them.
And many of those factors were clicking in to place just as Beck was joining forces with the enabling Fox News Channel. For starters, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain (and his hastily-chosen vice presidential running mate, the alarmingly ignorant ideologue Sarah Palin) lost the 2008 national election to someone who, in tea party-type conservatives' view, never should have stood a chance - a young, black Democrat. This shocked them. Polling showed the base was becoming limited to a "rump party" of older white men largely located in the South. After the electoral losses in 2006 and 2008, the Republican Party was teetering on collapse. Certainly the perceived threat of a looming permanent Democratic majority was a wake up call for the tea party conservatives, but not enough in itself to explain the full-Moron phenomenon.
George W. Bush, the leader of the Republican party, left office in disgrace after two disastrous wars, a major economic collapse and rampant corruption. Due to his widespread unpopularity, he quickly evaporated as a public presence. He had earned the scorn of the world, and most of his fellow Republicans as well. The same is true for former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had always maintained high disapproval ratings with everyone except the most extreme of the party faithful. Republicans and conservatives were without an ideological leader or any plan to navigate their way out of the political wilderness in which they found themselves at the end of 2008. They were demoralized, defeated and in a state of disarray.
Into that power vacuum stepped unprincipled egomaniac Glenn Beck. He seized upon the opportunity to take control of the dispirited masses. But he didn't earn his power the old-fashioned way, by either running for office himself or by earning his credentials as a real journalist. No, he did it the dishonorable way - by going absolutely hog wild with propaganda, fear mongering and hate speech. Beck knew what rhetoric to use to spark the tea party ugliness, and, unlike any person with scruples, he was not afraid to use it. Beck melded Fox's special brand of right-wing opinion-journalism with the nastiest aspects of his morning zoo DJ days.
Conveniently, like-minded partisan Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Fox News Channel, provided him with a protected bunker from which he could pursue his war on Obama and all things progressive in the form of an hour long daily program. Murdoch attempted to graft the legitimacy of a major cable news network onto what is obviously a program fundamentally designed to be a platform for partisan attacks on the President and other Democrats (Beck's token and cursory jabs at Republicans here and there notwithstanding). This word cloud of Beck's chalkboard drawings and the supporting information clearly demonstrate the President Obama is Beck's primary target along with other Democrats and liberal groups.
From this lofty perch, unfettered by the burdens of decency, fairness or any other generally-accepted professional standards, Beck has taken the ball and run with it. Unrestrained in any way, he has been able say what he calculates will enrage and radicalize the tea party . And for this, Beck is obscenely compensated while regularly alienating paying advertisers in a way that is unprecedented on cable television. It would be interesting to know if Beck believes that thirty pieces of silver is per se evidence that what he is doing is right. Or does he think there’s nothing wrong with what he is doing, because if there was someone would have shut him down by now? Hence the “red phone” schtick – if he was wrong surely someone would point it out, he says (completely ignoring MediaMatters and the wealth of other debunking readily available). Beck also recently stated that his bosses at Fox would not allow him to say anything untrue due to liability issues. Beck is confusing himself with a news program - he is supposed to be the "opinion" part of Fox "News"! But that little slip demonstrates that he certainly believes he is news - he is an authority - not opinion. Hey Glenn - news channels do not fact check their opinion shows! You're on you're own.
It would also be interesting to know if the Glenn Beck Program is a loss-leader for the Fox News Channel, as that would seem to be clear-cut evidence of the network pursuing a political agenda. The longer Beck goes on with anemic advertising, the more obvious the answer to that last question becomes.
Beck, with the cooperation of Fox, has created a national platform from where he has no accountability whatsoever - not to his like-minded management, not to advertisers, not for the journalistic community (as Beck presents himself as merely a pundit or entertainer) and not by virtue of holding public office. And lacking any internal accountability in the way of integrity, professionalism or common decency, he has crossed the line again and again with impunity, rabidly indulging his obvious hatred for President Obama, Democrats and progressives. Often displaying smarmy delight, he clearly relishes it. The fact that he is getting away with it has turned him into a hardened propagandist.
No responsible Republican official has stepped up to condemn Beck's Hitler comparisons, his racist attacks, sexist remarks or his dangerous, inciteful demagoguery. They snicker smugly like punk frat boys as Beck launches his attacks from his unassailable position, where Beck purports to be neutral - although virtually all of his vicious attacks are directed at Democrats. (I'm not sure if there even is such a thing as a "responsible Republican official" anymore.) The rest of the media seems to hold Beck in reverent awe. This is what makes Glenn Beck a very dangerous man.
Beck's daily dose of red meat was the sustenance needed to revive the demoralized tea partiers. They didn't want wonky dissertations about returning to the political mainstream or high-minded analyses of what exactly had gone wrong. They wanted revenge. They wanted to crush their adversaries. They wanted the satisfaction of tearing a piece of hide out of the people they feared and hated. They needed a loud-mouthed, unrepentant bully to lead them, and they surely found one in Glenn Beck. The tea partiers are the supremely unenlightened, almost childlike in their simplified, caricatured understanding of the world.
They are the Morons - and Beck is the Whisperer they had been waiting for.
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