Adam Sieff, Staff Writer
Ideology: Liberal | Writing from: Columbia University
Those who reduce politics to a distinction between friends and enemies insist that every nation have a horrific foe threatening its very existence. Most importantly, the enemy must come from within the state, for the “true patriot” cannot admit that his nation could ever fall to any foreign power.
It was along these lines that the betrayal myth (dolchstosslegende) arose in Germany from the blood and rubble of 1918. Unable to admit defeat by the allied powers, German leaders told returning veterans that “no enemy” had vanquished them. The implication was that the Reichsheer had been betrayed from within—and we all know what happened next.
But somehow, sometime after World War II, the betrayal myth migrated to America. It has since been the sustaining device of modern U.S. nationalism and, more specifically, the instrument of the American right to resuscitate itself and avoid responsibility for its gravest mistakes.
We today witness another chapter in the tale of alleged betrayal. To wash its hands of the Great Recession its policies produced, the right has begun transforming even the moderate center-left into subversive agents of a secret socialist agenda. Totalitarian. Statist. Fascist. The worn and repulsive adjectives of 1939, born anew in 2010.
In truth, the unhinged rage of tea partiers, though ostensibly directed at the President’s “traitorous” embrace of these adjectives, is but a displaced expression of the shame of unemployment. Why else do Republicans block the renewal of unemployment benefits for its suffering constituents when the national unemployment rate is higher than it has been since the 1930s? Tea partiers are like starved animals. Keep them hungry, and they’ll thrash with the force of life when Dick Armey releases them from tour buses onto the National Mall. The leadership on the right knows this, so they impede anything that might alleviate the pain felt by these well-intentioned, if suggestible, patriots.
The tactics are not new, but I fear we are approaching a threshold where the mantra of betrayal goes too far.
When members of a political community viscerally accept the vulgar reduction of domestic politics to existential enmity, the specter of combat, and the possibility of physical killing, becomes real. For combat is the existential elimination of the enemy, and it necessarily follows from conditions of extreme enmity. According to this radical perspective of politics, a nation is defined by its ability to demand human beings to kill and be prepared to die themselves, and a citizen is one who accepts these stipulations.
For years, we have heard about the manufactured division in American politics. For months, we have seen posters about the “blood of patriots.” For weeks, we have heard the poorly shrouded allusions to secession and the more explicit calls for insurrection. Now, with the passage of healthcare reform, we are seeing the violence.
A man can only hear so much in an echo-chamber about being so different from the “enemy” around him before he no longer identifies himself with his neighbors. They become strangers belonging to a strange nation who cannot possibly understand his values because they cannot accept his values. Fueled by the shame of unemployment, he is left with a feeling of superfluity. Even active protest is no longer fulfilling, nor capable of consuming all of his free-time. But he is hungry.
Instead of transforming the victims of market fluctuations and misguided economic policy into a partisan militia, why not help them? This nation needs jobs, not inflammatory partisanship, and it needs them soon. The sinews of our republic are not infallible, but we give in to the worst demons of our nature that threaten our dissolution when we stoke the desperate among us.
In the words of a man more eloquent than I, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passions may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
Let us be friends, let us help each other.
Your premise was refuted nearly 50 years ago. No “economic right” caused the Great Depression. The primary cause was bad monetary policy.
This nation may need jobs, but nobody will invest and/or hire anyone when they are uncertain about the next insane step the government will take. Jobs don’t exist merely because we want them. They happen because someone with more money than you risks huge losses to produce something that consumers will buy. And with the current people in power, you can forget about that happening. Government spending as a share of GDP is massively on the rise. Unless you think that our bankrupt government is going to employ these people, perhaps you should blame someone else.
Yes, three cheers to Tim for his. And the politics of whatever–demonization of the domestic competitor(Rep. vs. Dem., “Whose fault it is, really?”)–I observe that the Dems are pretty good at it, too!
The health care bill is needed: because those damn Repubs that own all those businesses won’t cover ALL of their workers, so we have to. And those damn Repubs that own all of those businesses won’t hire extra people to alleviate unemployment, so we’ve gotta make government jobs to do it. And those damn Repubs got us into a war in Afghan and Iraq we don’t like, so we’ve gotta convince the rest of the world we’re really nice guys, so we hide our head in the sand for a decade until Iran’s got a bomb…
Sound familiar? There, the Dems. do it, too. Not just a rightie weakness.
Actually, the problem that you cite, Adam, only came about because the rest of the world moves inexorably left each decade, leaving the US sputtering for the remains of liberty and opportunity unimpeded. If the Righties look crazed, like they might have to keep the one candle of liberty burning, so that when the rest of the world comes looking for it, we’ve safeguarded it, perhaps you’ll excuse the crazed look in their eyes.
To quote a great American, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” SEn. Barry Goldwater’s most famous utterance, and still true today. No, Adam, you’ll not get us to sit down and play nice: Jefferson, Adams(you pick which one!) Paine, Lincoln, Goldwater, Reagan, Palin, they’ve given us too much good stuff!
Any comments on what I devoted 90% of this article to, or are you just going to comment on the tagline? We are witnessing dolchstoss. Even if you deny the the right’s responsibility in the recession, you can’t deny that the right is rallying those affected by it to rise up, even embrace violence, against their political opponents. So fine call Obama (a compromising moderate in truth) a fascist, but take a look in the goddamn mirror. There were real fascists in this world 80 years ago in Spain, Italy and yeah Germany, and they all pulled this same shit.
Yes, this is serious. Deadly. The left(exerting itself to pass the health care abortion)with its handmaiden the media, have taunted their opposition, demeaningly characterized as “Teabaggers”(evidence, that ridiculous parade outside to the capitol with outsized gavel in hand) and goaded them to fisticuffs or worse, and so far we’re not taking the bait. They’d like it if we would.
If a hockey fight starts, who started it pretty much becomes a matter of how many sympathizers there are for each side.
The Reichstag was burned by Hitler’s Nazi brownshirts, but blamed, very effectively, on their communist rivals.
We should be very, very alert to the provocations, but sophisticated as to motives.
BTW Adam: We know you’ve been aroused out of your pedantry when you descend to “go—–” and “s—”!
Sieff did not actually blame “the economic right” for the recession, but noted that they are trying to “wash their hands” of it. Well, gee, of course they are. Isn’t everyone? The writer is commenting on the caustic acrimony, violence, and death threats which have followed the economic disaster—and criticizing those who belligerently play the blame game. [If one were to affix blame, it would perhaps best fit a political target, like the de-regulators of all ilks who dismantled a functional financial system which actually served our part of the world quite well for 70 years.]
Those who know a lot about Lincoln or Goldwater also know that they would squirm in agony to see their names in the same paragraph as former Gov. Palin. When Goldwater did advocate “extremism” 50 years ago, the word absolutely did not suggest “reloading” or “gun-sighting “ his adversaries. Interestingly, the Arizonan’s vision of extremism did, in fact, come to pass—we now call it, not the Civil War, but the Reagan Revolution
Dear Casey: I’d like to point out some of your phraseology:
1) “dismantled a functional financial system” yes, the regulators actually poisoned that very financial system, while I watched by the way, and that was the Community Reinvestment Act at work in America’s cities, diluting underwriting standards in order to pass your next Fed Res. review and not get written up, and why worry?– you could sell the bad paper upstream to Wall Street, and we know where that went: it was the regulators’ fault, with Dodds and Frank and the rest of the crowd forcing depositors’ money into bad loans like it was more welfare. You know it’s true: they knew they could blame the banks in the end, and it would be a political blame game they could either win of tie,
2)”former Gov. Palin” why the “former” slipped in there: You dissin’ my girl!? If you do that, you gotta “former President Clinton” and “former” Chairman of House Ways and Means Harvey Wrangle! Are you OK with that?
3) What (I can guess, but you tell me) is “reloading’ and ‘gunsighting’? Is it literal or figurative? Extremism, then as now, is a relative term that means, well, extremism. What are your two, exactly, and how would I know if they are, or aren’t extremist?
4) and you’re wrong, the Reagan revolution wasn’t extremist in the least, it was the elegant and fulsome outgrowth of the will of the people, the silent majority of the Nixon years together with the moral majority of Jerry Falwell, which spent eight years, eight of the most prosperous years of the 20 th century both here and around the world, and slayed the Red Menace, the Soviet Union, which so many wonks from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and the New York Times, said couldn’t be done.
Right there in the history books. Which ones you readin’?
Footnote: Alger Hiss WAS a spy for the Soviets, and William Duranty had his Pulitzer taken away posthumously
Nicely done. Rather than get sucked into a debate here, I present to you a piece I wrote for my school paper that fits into this general discussion (though it’s admittedly not a rosy “let’s be friends” piece).
http://collegian.com/index.php/article/2010/03/top_conservatives_rhetoric_inciting_rightwing_terrorism
O & D and I should not be enemies—we agree on so much he seems to supports my points.
1. He is absolutely correct in that the post-1980’s federal regulators in fact “poisoned” the system–they were appointed to regulatory positions with marching orders to free industry, not protect consumers. They were de facto deregulators.
2. I address former President Clinton as “Mr. President”, but most journalists add the word “former” to their descriptive news stories. No disrespect from them or me to the Alaskan. She does quite well on her own.
3. The extremism of 1964 did become mainstream in 1981–that is where Goldwater left it—he knew where Russia was, and was neither a quitter nor a user of violent, inciteful, or incendiary metaphors to describe those who disagreed with him. “I would,” said BG, “rather be right than be president”.
4. Goldwater’s call for extremism in ‘64 never envisioned tea partiers calling a black president a racist and his policies totalitarian and communist. Rationale observers hope gun sights drawn–and published–on political district maps never become mainstream. And calls to “reload”? She did not mean her ink cartridge. Reloading refers to guns—we know what she meant— but that was not the quite obvious image. Goldwater did not talk or think that way. Reagan also chose a mainstream and rational vice president who during his own leadership knew how and when to plan and end an honest war, and labored in vain to rein in his own son when the time came. The son was too extreme even for the father, let alone BG. Goldwater’s definition of extremism was nothing like the Tea Party’s.
Interesting tale, like those images you see taken with a camera obscura, that one’s mind, and understanding, must turn upside down and backwards, to fully grasp. Thanks for telling it. Goldwater was an extremist, and we loved him for it; George H.W. Bush was not enough of one, so we gave him only one term, and Sarah Palin, sadly, is a dancing bear, no extremist, and will get no term because she doesn’t mean any of it.
But I looked back and you took my grouping of those names(no Mt. Rushmore, certainly)too much to heart. Just a string or righties who’ve said arousing things that get quoted by and to righties. When it’s lefties, you hear Roosevelt, Truman, MLK, and JFK.