Turning to Hate

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie
(How the Republican Party Turned to Hate)

A recent Pew Research Center poll showed that while 88 percent of Democrats approve of President Obama’s job performance, only 27 percent of Republicans share that perception. This 61-point difference of opinion is the largest spread since Pew began conducting its poll in 1969. So what’s going on here? Who’s at fault for not reaching across the aisle to work together. When Obama proposed easing the financial crisis with a stimulus package, Republicans argued for tax cuts. When Obama responded to the launch of a North Korean missile with a call for renewed diplomacy, Republicans wanted military intervention. On issue after issue the GOP stance is, “We’re against anything proposed by the Obama Administration.” Could this all be the result of the lack-of-any-fresh-ideas Republican base yielding itself to talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, and Michael Savage; and Fox News personalities Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly? Could Republican thoughts be dictated by rabble rousing media personalities who care more about ratings than they do about prudent national policy? Could the Republican unifying theme of just say “Nobama” have degenerated into just plain anger? Only rarely do they try to lighten things up a bit with their little jingle, “Obama-Osama.” Since the inauguration, the talk show tone of the anti-Obama discourse has become increasingly strident, casting Obama as having a disdain for American values and being an un-American socialist bent on taking over private industry. Leading this hate propaganda is Fox News where commentators say Obama has a hidden agenda for gun confiscation, clearing the way for a total police state, while stifling their dire warnings with the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, a provision they say would drown their shows with equal time liberal lollygagging. Karl Rove, now a news analyst for Fox News, described Obama as a “fiscal radical” and a “divisive figure.” Recently Fox News’ Glenn Beck concluded “[we have] come to a very dangerous point in our country’s long, storied history.” This incendiary rhetoric is a throwback to the thirties hate-radio that helped to spawn white supremacy. Conservative commentator Father Charles Coughlin used his national radio show to attack Franklin Roosevelt. A virulent Anti-Semite, Coughlin managed to derail initiatives such as support for Jews fleeing the Nazis. Judging from the experience of the thirties, it’s likely that more people will be swayed by the extremism of these talk show doomsdayers (and some into dangerous actions) as the recession drags on. Hate-media will inflame class, race, religious, and ethnic fears as they blame minority groups, particularly undocumented immigrants, for the drag on the economy and Democrats for being the one and only creators of a monstrous debt which can only lead us into anarchy, all the while disregarding the fact that beginning with President Ronald Regan, every Republican President has lifted the national debt to new heights, ending in President Bush II handing a $10.5 trillion national debt to President Obama. As right-wing extremism gathers momentum, so do threats against Obama. In the past the vast majorities of US terrorist attacks were carried out, not by Muslim radicals, but by domestic terrorists. According to the FBI between 2002 and 2005 twenty-four terrorist attacks were carried out by domestic terrorists, with the most notorious case of domestic terrorism being the April 1995 killing of 168 people at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh who justified his actions as retaliation for the wrongs of the Federal Government. Now, Fox News and conservative talk shows are again stirring up the lunatic right, who are more heavily armed than they were in the thirties. Just a few, and that’s all it takes, will go out there and do something despicable with the certainty they are serving the cause of justice for a better democracy. Recent killings have links to hate-radio messages, i.e., “the socialist Obama plans to step up abortions.” Take for example James Von Brunn, considered a shining example of rightwing anti-socialist extremism, who on June 10, 2009 walked into the crowded Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C (less than a mile from the White House) and began shooting, killing one guard; or take for example Scott Roeder who killed an abortion doctor on May 31, 2009 in the middle of a Wichita Kansas church service, no less. But more ominous are these purveyors of hate fanning the fires of insurrection. On March 29th, Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, appearing on Fox News’ Sean Hannity TV show, warned of dangers of tyranny under an Obama Administration and appealed for revolution, while Hannity worked his head in glowing approval. While free speech must come with this type of rhetoric, consider the alternative. So I wouldn’t have it any other way. An educated populous has always been the key to debunking these hate mongers from the likes of anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin to anti-communist Joe McCarthy to neo-Nazi David Duke to now $50-million-a-year neocon Rush Limbaugh who’s got to keep those ratings up with his daily dose of venomous medicine to his 20 million ditto heads (as he likes to call them) but more to reality – “dimwit heads.”