Paul Krugman: Paranoia Strikes Deep

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is “mild.” The signs were “inappropriate,” said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, “conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?

But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.

(snip)
The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. It is scary as hell. We should all be afraid..very afraid..and make sure to VOTE on 2010!!

[debbierlus]

2. These people are INSANE

[ProleNoMore]

5. East Texas - 2000 - Rush Limbaugh Piped Over The Post Office PA System

This stuff has been going on a very long time.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. O. MI. GAWD!!!!

[ProleNoMore]

9. True Story - I Had To Use That Post Office Often

eom

[BrklynLiberal]

10. I guess that should be no more shocking than O'LIElly & Limpballs going onto Armed Forces radio.

[MajorChode]

23. That's a blatant violation of the Hatch Act

The local Postmaster can(and should) very easily get fired for it. Complaints may be filed with the OSC online.
https://www.osc.gov/oscefile/

[HughMoran]

3. All that seems to be missing are the swastikas

This is getting ugly - I almost hope they find a new leader who can tame these wild animals.

[ThePantaloon.com]

4. I love Krugman

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. No not quite unprecedented, just not in any living memory

when was the last time a member of the legislature spoke in these seditious terms?

1859

When was the last time a US Senator was hit senseless due to his politics in DC (Caned to be exact one inch of his life) 1858...

So yes, Bachman telling people that a revolution was good now and again and frankly using subversive language has a precedent... the last soiree was quite the party... blue and gray were all the rage too.

[Hekate]

7. Krugman expands on what I believe to be true: what's happened to the GOP is dangerous to us all.

Mr. Hekate is talking about leaving the US again... Not good.

Hekate

[HillbillyBob]

20. I have thought for a long time about leaving the US.

I have had to cope with them since the Carter Admin.
Being gay I was a target, it got so bad with the harassment, vandalism and attacks on my person and attempt to burn down my house.

Not for nothing, but no one lifted a finger and rarely an encouraging word.

Now it seems the rest of the citizens are getting a taste of what gay folk and people of color or different religions have had to cope with.

I am very concerned since most are armed, dangerous and stupid enough to follow another Hitler type.
I have heard it said that they will be the first to go after their favorite dictator is installed because they are so dangerous.
Recall 'the night of the long knives' when Hitler ordered the purge of the SA.

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

"The Night of the Long Knives (German: De-Nacht_der_langen_Messer.ogg Nacht der langen Messer (help·info)) or "Operation Hummingbird", was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political executions. Most of those killed were members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary Brownshirts."

Hitler moved against the SA and its leader, Ernst Röhm, because he saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his power."

I have heard the stories from holocaust survivors about the lead up to Kristallnacht.
Some were relatives some were my neighbors in SoFla who talked about the agitation, nasty rallies, the talk about 'we are the only real white citzens' type noise.

My partner and I moved out of SoFla because we did fear the break down of society, whether from the nuts or another hurricane, most especially from the coming crash of the economy. We left in 2002 after my partner was outsourced/downsized a dozen times, but the last 2 were less than 6 months abpart and we lost our home and spent our savings to eat.
We now live in a house in a rural wooded area where we can grow food.
We had to be homeless for all practical purposes for about a year.
Then he found another job paying 40% less than his last real job.

We have planned as best we could for a break down, bought guns and ammo and stocked up on heirloom seeds and have neighbors who are doing their best to do the same, and they know we are gay and don't have a problem with it.

I would like it if I were just paranoid, but I have been watchin the nuts and the dominionists since the mid to late 70s. Done a lot of reading and have attend their churches. In fact a lot of folks tried to tell me I was reading my own paranoia into things..I wasn't paranoid at that time nor was I paranoid until I had cops staking my house out and then a raid with a warrant that claimed I had 5 pounds of pot in the place(I wish!) 13 undercover cops and the mayor himself came pouring in my doors throwing some customers of my antique biz on the floor and terrorizing us for several hours..this was in 1982/3. I moved after the cross attempt. I had other reasons too, but they don't apply here.
Faggots are not people in the eyes of the montgomery police department and had no rights. When the church of gawd folks tried to set a cross on fire that was propped against the front wall of my old wood frame house was not my paranoia, nor was the previous months of banging on my door to bring me gawd, or the name calling or or or. We called the police they did not show up for another hour and a half then wrote me a ticket for chasing the cross burners down the street firing off a 12g pump shotgun.
The kkkristers did not bother me again, I told them the first time was rock salt the next time will be buckshot.

A lot of folks on here talk about the South as if all the problems are centered here, I will grant there are problems, but there are just as many virulent nuts up North at least as far as Md and Pa, I grew up near Cumberland Md where the kkk has a fairly large monthly meeting and relatives in WPa who are as bigoted as anyone I have met down here.

My take is that these are the same personalities(defective?) that used to have lynch parties and fag bashes. I could be wrong, but I have a pretty good track record of looking at everything and coming up with correct summations.

I am not trigger happy, I am a progressive dem, but I WILL not be run over I will do everything in my personal power to take care of my home and family.
I volunteered for Navy service(was discharged for being gay) My partner was Army.
We took the oath to uphold the Constitution etc and still do our best to do so even though our 'elected' government does not serve us, as far as it goes they are puppets of the corpses.

Some times the fight comes to you and you have to fight back, violently if necessary. I would rather live in peace, but it seems these folks are out to tear down the few freedoms we have left and install a theocratic/corporatist/fascist ruler, forget leader ship, do as I Say not as I Do type.

[Hekate]

22. I'm so sorry for all that you and your partner have had to endure. Our pain has been 8 years of Bush

... destroying the Constitutional framework of our country, which I don't need to go into since you know it well.

There's so much more backstory, but I'll not go into it now. You take care.

Hekate

[BeHereNow]

24. Righteous post! Thank you for sharing your story with us.

I want to get the fuck out of this country, but if I can't
I want to live like you and your loved one are.
Plant and grow with a shot gun at the door.

These people are DANGEROUS.

We need to prepare for the worst from them.

BHN

[MajorChode]

11. I love Krugman too, but I can't completely agree on this one

He is spot on in that there is a significant change going on, but I just don't see it as the teabaggers have taken over. The teabaggers are still nothing more than loosely organized grabastic pieces of shit. The will remain as such until some cult of personality rises up to lead them. Just because you can get a lot of them to show up on the same day at the same place, doesn't mean they are organized. They still lack a central voice to speak for them. Certainly you have the Boss Limbaugh and the Glenn Beck types, but they are more like cheerleaders on the fringes who are simply profiteering from their weak minded audience. They will never negotiate on their behalf with the powers that be. So yes they have filled the void created by the implosion of the social conservatives and neocons, but until they anoint someone like a Pat Robertson or an Irving Kristol type person to negotiate on their behalf, they aren't going to take over anything and eventually they will fizzle out just like the other wingnut grabastic piece of shit movements like the minutemen, the militias, and so many others. In the mean time the GOPhers are more than happy to employ them as their current crop of useful idiots.

[snagglepuss]

12. Interesting observation. nt

[snagglepuss]

13. What is the meaning of "America starting to be Californiafied"?

Never heard the term californiafied.

[lunatica]

14. Where the minority Republican party rules by doing nothing

By actively undermining and obstructing any all attempts to create a budget or legislation to address the budgetary problems. By allowing the fringe to come in to the state to get Prop 8 passed. By forcing the state to shut down social programs and force it to make it's workers take furlough days. That's my guess.

They are the party of do nothing useful or pragmatic. The party of 'if we can't win then fuck everyone else'.

[snagglepuss]

25. Thanks for that. I was thinking it had something to do with Californication.

:crazy:

[JHB]

19. It's dedicated obstructionism: not enough power to rule, but enough to prevent anyone else, either.

It's this part:

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

[snagglepuss]

26. Thanks. I appreciate your response. nt

[quaker bill]

15. This is why we need to govern

We need to move legistlation, even if the bills are not perfect. We need to do alot of it and we need to do it quickly. If it takes parliamentary tricks, we need to use them. The time to form a coherent ruling majority is now. If more stimulus is needed, pass it, over all and any republican objections. It is use it or lose it time.

Krugman is absolutely correct about one thing. These tea bag folks have no interest in governing and will be most happy if government ceases to work at all for any purpose. Some of them will without doubt win elected office in 2010. How many will depend on what we do now. A small handful of them is not a problem, a bus load is.

The thing I think Krugman overstates is adverse economic conditions. My estimate is that we will begin seeing some improvement well before the election. How much improvement is unclear and whether it will be large enough or soon enough is also unclear. If the dems have something up their sleeves to boost economic performance, now is time to use it.

The way to end this movement is to defeat it soundly at the polls, and perhaps more than once. It would be best if none of them won, but given the political landscape in some places, some of their candidates probably will win. As long as all they are doing is replacing existing republicans with conservative reactionaries, little difference will be made. If we can pick up a couple of seats like NY23 through the dischord, fine. Losing control or substantial command of either house to them is big trouble.

[sendero]

17. I'm pretty sure..

... he, like most everyone in the MSM, is seriously understating the poor condition of the economy.

We'll see.

[mmonk]

16. Recommended.

[nashville_brook]

18. here's the original essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter

http://nationalism.org/patranoia/hofstadter-paranoid-style.htm


The Paranoid Style in American Politics
Richard Hofstadter

It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it—and its targets have ranged from “the international bankers” to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers.

American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wind. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.

Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.

(snip)

Why They Feel Dispossessed
If, after our historically discontinuous examples of the paranoid style, we now take the long jump to the contemporary right wing, we find some rather important differences from the nineteenth-century movements. The spokesmen of those earlier movements felt that they stood for causes and personal types that were still in possession of their country—that they were fending off threats to a still established way of life. But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.



(rest of essay at link)

[Odin2005]

21. The lunatics are running the asylum.