On the Anniversary of Kennedy's Death, Extremism Lives On

[Algorem]

http://www.esquire.com/features/kennedy-anniversary-112009

A visit to Texas and a lost letter remind one man that the ire aimed at President Obama is something history should have warned us against by now

By Mark Warren


A couple of years ago, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada told me something that shocked me, and that I will never forget. When Reid was a young man, he had worked his way through law school at George Washington University in Washington D.C. as a fulltime Capitol Hill cop, a patronage job accorded him by Nevada's lone member of the House at the time, a boozy old reactionary named Walter Baring. In the evenings, it was Reid's habit to take his break in the Congressman's office, as Baring held forth over his customary cocktail.

On the evening of November 22, 1963, as the nation and world began to absorb the murder that day in Dallas of President Kennedy, Reid sought solace with his congressman. Baring, Reid said, was "one of those guys for whom there was a Communist behind every bush. Fluoride was a Communist plot. And Kennedy, too, had been leading us down the path to Communism, Baring told me. It was probably a good thing that he was murdered."

Reid was stunned into silence, astonished that anyone, much less a sitting member of the United States Congress, would hold such a hideous position as to sanction the murder of anyone, much less the president...

And lately, as the paranoid strain in the American polity has reasserted itself — that strain which ascribes the worst possible motives to one's political opponents, and where lies abound and violence becomes possible, I thought of the story that Senator Reid told me and wondered if a fool such as Baring now held office in the congress. As I am from Texas, home over the years to some of the most wonderful and ridiculous members of congress, sometimes situated in the same person, I thought of my home delegation, and in my mind formed the image of the skinhead reprobate from Tyler, Louie Gohmert. Characterized chiefly by the blankness behind his eyes, Gohmert has the face of a hooligan and the politesse to match. Stinking of contempt, no greater reactionary is to be found in the Congress today. And certainly it is people like him who have abetted the toxic atmosphere that holds in our current politics. He has screamed that the president is a "socialist!" perhaps louder and longer than anyone else in his caucus (which is quite a distinction), he is a birther who believes that Obama is an alien Muslim, and he has said that the president’s health care plan will "absolutely kill senior citizens. They'll put them on lists and force them to die early."...

[NOW tense]

1. And the song remains the same.... n/t

[T Wolf]

2. Those of us who remember - will never forget. It is not merely "history" to us.

That is why we sometimes are a bit "extreme" in stating positions and views.

We have seen the depth to which the enemy will sink.

Again and again and again.

[Raster]

3. There is the "public" seat of power, which lends the appearance of citizen involvement,

and then there is actual power which features no such distractions. Publicly elected officials learn early the parameters of the line they must straddle to keep these two worlds in balance. Some publicly elected officials, for one reason or another, refuse to follow the directive(s). They are usually dealt with in brutal fashion.

[bertman]

4. Nice summation, Raster. You nailed it.

[Raster]

5. Thank you. Unfortunately that is the way of this world.