William Astore as a great article over at TomsDispatch a I recommend that you read it: American Kleptocracy:How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft
Astore uses the MacGuffin analogy to describe "riveting distractions" used by Conservatives. The "MacGuffin" is what filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock used in his movies as "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention". The use of the term "MacGuffin" hit home personally this weekend - allow me to explain.
This past Sunday our family held a combined Birthday Party for my nephews wife (niece in-law?) and myself. We were having a great time til the conversation turned to politics. It turns out that my nieces mother is a "birther". This women is highly educated and a strong Hillary supporter, but we were dumbstruck when she informed us that Obama was part of the "Chicago Machine" and lived a privileged childhood attending private schools in Hawaii. My family is originally from Chicago and no matter what we said could convince her that Obama was no way a part of Chicago machine politics. And, in Hawaii lived in an apartment flat with his grandparents who lived on Social Security and a small working class pension.
No amount of logic could convince her. My sister who's a retired Army nurse (Lt Colonel) tried to explain that during her 21 years of service required many different FBI checks in-order to receive top secret clearances. A couple of times she had the opportunity to purview her FBI clearance and was amazed how thorough, detailed and complete that they had checked her out. No way Obama could have cleared an FBI check. No way the Clinton campaign or the McCain campaign would have missed something that obvious and easily checked.
No amount of logic could convince her. Finally my niece had had enough and demanded no more politics! I think she was embarrassed that we had exposed her Mother. Yes I do believe we also might have revealed some deep seated racism, but I choose not to go there and I hope in your comments that you don't go there either. The distraction, the MacGuffin is the issue here.
Afterwords I could help but think of ways to convince a "birther" the errors in their logic. Especially one who's a Democrat with strong Democratic values. I thought one could step by step create a check list, reform health care - check, equal pay for equal work - check and so and so on. But then it hit me - The ghost of Richard Nixon lives! I suggest everybody read Rick Pearlstein's Nixonland. If someone agreed with you on every issue, what tactic could you use to divide?
It's really pretty simple: Create some phony baloney straw-man or a "MacGuffin" to distract us away from what's important, away from what really matters in our lives.
What Republican "MacGuffin" stirs your soul/sole?