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The Great Disconnect
By David Glenn Cox
Most radical politics are born of fear, fed on ignorance, which then graduates to intolerance. But key to any radical political movement is the scapegoat. It can’t be any other way. When you try to paint reality with simplistic reasons for all that is wrong with the world, you must then refill it with simplistic villains responsible for all of the world’s evils.
The easiest and most expedient way is to create an enemy out of whole cloth. That way you can attribute to them whatever evils fit the day’s message. They can be anyone, your friends, your neighbors, why even you. During Stalin’s reign the term wrecker and the crime of wrecking were concocted. Maybe your tractor broke down on the collective farm, or maybe you just wanted it to break down. Maybe the harvest was off by 40% because of the rain, or maybe you just wanted the harvest to go down because you were secretly trying to destroy the system from the inside by wrecking it.
The fear and paranoia of the hidden hand creates the greatest tool for radical government ever known to humanity. They can be called the secret villain, the fifth columnist, the November criminals, the gang of four, the liberal intellectual. Since radical politics requires an almost religious belief in its party's philosophy, its natural enemies then become any and all that question its theology. So, its enemies become political, intellectual, racial or religious; then through the magic of sophistry they can become all four at once. Barack Obama is referred to as a Kenyan-born, Muslim Marxist. Is Obama Kenyan-born? No. Is Obama a Muslim? No. Is Obama a Marxist? No, but it is what they didn’t say which is exactly what they are driving at.
In the 1940s there was a teabaggers movement very much like today’s. Financed by anti-FDR, anti-New Deal Republicans, the America First movement's members were the very templates for today’s teabaggers. They were supported by major rightwing newspapers who framed the principles, inflated the numbers and hired the halls for their rallies. The newspapers fanned the flames by headlining all of the New Deals failings, proclaiming it was socialism and FDR was destroying our freedoms.
The group focused on the growing war clouds in Europe and warned that FDR was going to drag us into another war.
“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.
"Behind these groups, but of lesser importance, are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles, and intellectuals who believe that the future of mankind depends upon the domination of the British empire. Add to these the Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.
"I am speaking here only of war agitators, not of those sincere but misguided men and women who, confused by misinformation and frightened by propaganda, follow the lead of the war agitators.
"As I have said, these war agitators comprise only a small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous influence. Against the determination of the American people to stay out of war, they have marshaled the power of their propaganda, their money, their patronage.” -- Charles Lindbergh, America First Rally 1941
Lindbergh failed to control his message, though, and the truth leaked out. It was his racist hatred of the Jews and his political dislike of the New Deal that was formulating his beliefs more than the events in Europe. It was his prejudice that drove his beliefs and he covered them all in that speech, intellectuals, a number of capitalists, even though he qualified that to mean just a few. The irony of Lindbergh including the Communists in his speech is that it put him squarely in the camp of the man who most hated the Communists in Europe, Adolph Hitler.
A pro-America rally becomes linked to pro-Nazi positions, no different from today’s tea baggers, pro-military, pro-war, anti-government. They hate Obama because he is a Kenyan-born, Muslim Marxist, just as Lindbergh hated “war agitators.”
The founding principle of the National Socialist Workers Party is the Fuhrer principle, or leadership principle. If the leader follows the party philosophy to the letter, then the leader is always correct. Hitler argued in "Mein Kampf" that democracy, with its negotiations and voting blocks and endless amendments, weakens the effectiveness of government. The truth of the matter is that he was absolutely correct, but without those negotiations and voting blocks and endless amendments you get the “The Patriot Act” and the resolutions for war; you get enabling acts, rendition, gulags and Guantanamo.
“The Roosevelt administration is the third powerful group which has been carrying this country toward war. Its members have used the war emergency to obtain a third presidential term for the first time in American history. They have used the war to add unlimited billions to a debt which was already the highest we have ever known. And they have just used the war to justify the restriction of congressional power, and the assumption of dictatorial procedures on the part of the president and his appointees.” Charles Lindbergh
“This bill is a trillion-dollar, budget-busting, government takeover of our health care system. It will put bureaucrats between people and their health care. It will lead to rationed care, hurting the most vulnerable amongst us first. It will break the bank, leaving our children to pay the bill with diminished freedoms and dwindling prosperity.” Michele Bachmann
This current crop of pro-American anti-Americans are the refugees of the Bush-Cheney Republican party. The party is in ashes and their only answer to the debacle is to claim that Bush-Cheney weren’t true conservatives after all, or not conservative enough, or two plus two equals two because one of the twos wasn’t really a two at all. They adhere to the Fuhrer principle and if the Fuhrer fails it must be because he did not follow party ideology, which argues that the Fuhrer is always right.
It is a cult mentality and all outside the cult are liars and are not to be trusted. All outside the cult are clearly determined to destroy the cult. The Democrats are afraid of Sarah Palin because they know how popular she is with the American public. Losing was winning in upstate New York. Victories in Virginia and New Jersey were a repudiation of Obama despite both states having a long history of flipping state governments. All three races were signs of an anti-incumbency mood, and as a minority party that is more dangerous to Republicans than two Barack Obamas.
Like all cults their future is a dead-end street, either through the hubris of the leadership or the ideology. When the comet doesn’t come or Jesus doesn’t take them up into heaven they will begin to fade away like Archie Bunker for President tee shirts. There is only one man who can save them and breathe new life into their movement, and that man is Barack Obama himself. Weak leadership or no leadership in the improvement of the economy for the working class is the best recruitment tool the cultists have.
It is politics born of fear, fed on ignorance, which graduates to intolerance, the intolerance of conventional parties which fail the struggling masses. The masses who feed the fear and stoke promises of comfort in the family of the cult. The America Firsters disappeared from the political scene on December 8, 1941. The German public likewise laughed at those nutty brown shirts, but it was the failure of Democracy that filled the ranks of the National Socialist Workers Party. That wasn’t the publics first choice, but their last.
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