I just received an email from a source inside the tea party. This one is doing the rounds today. It's a shocking read--although decide for yourselves.
The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.” -- Author Unknown
It's so easy to be hysterical these days that I hesitate to phrase things in the following terms, but it is nevertheless basically true that the far right, abetted by enormously powerful media and corporate allies, will destroy American democracy if it is ultimately successful. These guys are dangerous. We are STUPID if we stay home and sulk and don't vote and GOTV. Because they are not ultimately interested in the right to vote. While we still have it we should use it to keep them out of power
On rereading this piece of limpid prose a couple of further comments do spring to mind.
- What exactly has President Obama done that is so dangerous? He is basically a centrist Democrat--so much so that he irritates the left of his party on a fairly regular basis. Bear in mind too that he would be regarded by the rest of the democratic world as rather right. To be "centrist" in the US is still atypical in global terms.
- This is an attack on democracy. The majority who have elected President Obama are "a vast confederacy of fools." Of course majorities have acted foolishly in the past, but you get a chance to rectify the damage in a few years' time. That's how it works. We sucked it up during the Bush era and now we get our shot. These words, however, from Obama's detractors, are one step away from civil war. And given the proclivity of many Americans to settle things by force, I worry for this country.
- Why does a media and corporate empire support one political party to such an extent--peddling incessant hate, rage, and untruth--that it would break down the entire political compact within which that party functions and makes sense? Presumably it does this for its own selfish interests--influence and profit. But corporate profiteering seems here then to reveal its fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-American dimension. So let's call it anti-American, because that's what it is.
- Once "a confederacy of fools" is calling everyone else "a confederacy of fools" you're really past the point of talking rationally. Just beat them at the polls or pay the price. They won't be listening to you. (I am not suggesting that we stop trying to talk to these poor frightened folk, in effect, befriending them to try to disabuse them of some of their paranoia, but I am suggesting that in our political and public discourse we stop trying to persuade and reason and call this what it is--civil war by other means. Sad, but there it is.)
They know they're in a fight, but do we? Let's win it and so avoid having the fight that otherwise seems to await us.