Pseudo-conservative Propagandists Are Trying to Ruin America
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Related subjects: Eva Scherson, Media, Opinion, Quid-pro-quo: Corruption, U.S. Elections, U.S. news, U.S. Politics, Vote 2010 Comments Off
Let down your guard for five seconds, and you will likely find some emanation of the pseudo-conservative hostility market explaining that Pres. Obama is deliberately plotting the destruction of the United States of America, that his administration is lazy and incompetent, and that terrorists are about to seize control of the homeland. Those propagandists, who expect you will not notice their absurd claims are in fact lies, are the ones who are, very deliberately, trying to ruin America.
This claim may need some explaining, so I’ll do my best to reason this out, in case anyone out there finds it a shocking thought. First of all, it’s worth noting that true conservative Americans have about as much in common with these cheats as they do with aardvarks. Then, we have to point out that the “conservatives” are heirs to the British “tories”, the relentless defenders of the old regime, the stately decorum of the monarchy, and centralized church diktat… oh, and enemies of the American Revolution.
Wikipedia explains that “The Tory ethos can be summed up with the phrase, God, King and Country“. If we translate that to modern American conservatism, it might sound more like God, Country and One-party-rule… and anyone who disagrees is evil. This sounds radical, I know, but I think any thinking person who is honest knows this portrait is not far from the true spirit of the vitriolic, unreasoned aggressions being pushed by what calls itself “the conservative movement”.
Anti-tax radical Grover Norquist said in 2004 he was part of a “secret plan to seize power”. He also infamously said he wanted to “drown [the American government] in a bathtub“. The Karl Rove / Tom DeLay axis was known for expressing with outrageous hubris that they sought to establish a “permanent Republican majority” in both houses of Congress.
The wild-eyed language of violence and hostility for government agencies, public services, the legal foundations of consumer protections, labor protections, Constitutional protections, civil liberties and even against the basic worth of human beings who do not espouse their radical political philosophy, are all common among the so-called “conservative” media. Their disdain for American principles of government, American government and the majority of the American people is extreme, and undisguised.
But they call themselves patriots, so they must be. We are expected to believe that though virtually every other word out of their mouths are lies, we should trust them on that one, and by extension, out of fear of being considered unlike them and therefore unpatriotic, we should capitulate, abandon our own principles, and just cede the political ground to them and their cronies.
Again, this sounds radical, but I am just stating what any sensible person observes when tuning in to the self-described “conservative” media environment: hatred for government programs, hatred for equality before the law, hatred for foreigners, hatred for minorities, hatred for people who are unfortunate enough to require public assistance.
That fundamental undercurrent of intolerance and contempt is portrayed as “honest”, “forthright”, folksy, and middle of the road, when it is really just like any other hard core of radical extremism. Even the stars and supporters of the pseudo-conservative media machine try to defend themselves against the charge of being radical extremist by suggesting there is an element of “entertainment” in what they do.
It is not entertainment. It is propaganda. It is a deviant assault on common decency. It is an attempt to vilify the leadership of anyone who falls outside a specific established circle of tory-style power seekers, people defending a feudal order, an aristocratic right to accumulate power and influence to the detriment of the average citizen, family, or community.
Barack Obama is one of those people. He is vilified by this anti-humanist echo-chamber, because he works, because he sees, because he is actually trying to do what our Constitution requires a president to do: represent the will of the governed, ensure the laws are followed, and rein in abuses that undermine the freedoms individual citizens are supposed to enjoy.
Remember, our nation was founded in an atmosphere that held up liberty as the highest of virtues. Today’s pseudo-conservatives like to talk about how they prize liberty above all else. But what they mean is they prize their own freedom to do as they please without a government of, by and for, ordinary people interfering with their whims and appetites.
They would not want you to hear this in their message, but this is what they are saying, every chance they get, almost as if they can’t help announcing it, so proud are they of their aims. Our nation was founded on the ideal of liberty, which according to the political philosophy of the times, means equality of each before the law (it would take some time before that phrase was actually entered into the Constitution, by amendment), and yet we are asked to believe it is evil to be “liberal”.
Pseudo-conservatives want you to believe that “liberal” means “unwise”, “thoughtless”, “irresponsible”. It does not mean this, any more than “conservative” means “hates pleasure”. It is the pseudo-conservatives, who protest most of all about their fear of moral “relativism”, who are promoting relativist views: “liberal” can mean anything they want it to mean; what liberals actually mean by it is irrelevant.
That is relativism; that is spin; that is poison for fair-minded public discourse. It’s a brainwashing technique. It’s a strategy meant to make people angry about the very ideas they would most benefit from, a strategy that makes sense for Tory monarchists trying to promote their goals in a democratic society, where Tory values are anathema to the revolutionary culture.
Liberal means connected to liberation, freedom, in favor of a process of expanding freedom and working against the encroaching interests of accumulated power and tyranny. The word is virtually synonymous with the foundation of the Republic, the revolutionary spirit. “Give me liberty or give me death!” and “Don’t tread on me!” were not conservative ideas. They were liberal. We are a free country, a liberal country.
But beyond the verbal distortion of the pseudo-conservative echo-chamber, there is the rank hypocrisy, the corruption, the lust for power and the open assaults on the Constitutional order. There are the ties between pseudo-conservative PACs and the worst offenders in Washington corruption in recent memory. There are cult-like organizations that front as “churches”, preach the pursuit of power as a spiritual virtue and move illicit funds to influence members of Congress. Or so the allegations read.
Does it matter that Grover Norquist’s organization was linked to not only Jack Abramoff, but to his money? That allegations of corruption were never fully investigated? Does this in any way affect the validity of the ideas being promoted by the we are moral you are degenerate crowd? No. Because there is no moral principle in what they are pushing, only an us-versus-them bait and switch, a vicious obsession with character assassination, a perverse lust for power gained in ways that erode democracy.
I don’t think we need to understand the psychology of this in order to know that it’s wrong. I don’t think we need to ask ourselves if we can forgive the wrongdoers or reconcile with them. I don’t think we need to examine whether common sense is enough to understand that bipartisan does not mean only one party’s radicals have good ideas. I think we need to own up, stand tall, and speak truth.
Hate is not acceptable. Systematic marginalization of minorities and other groups is not acceptable. The radical pseudo-conservative hatred for immigrants is not acceptable. The use of language that calls for violence against the president is not acceptable. The relentless fabrication of charges of a “liberal” quest to destroy the country is not acceptable.
That whole program is nothing but the aggressive allegiance to a politics of raw power that defends a concentrated elite and openly and deliberately attacks the people as a whole, their interests and the interests of future generations. Again, the agents of that attack take pains to say at every turn this is not what they are doing; they say the speak for the little guy, but then they speak against him.
Don’t we all already know this in our hearts? Is there anyone out there who really believes that multi-millionaire pseudo-conservative shock-jocks like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity are speaking for the little guy? They are not. They revile every government program that benefits the little guy, or the average American household; they revile spending on public education, or using government money to make sure poor children can be treated and hospitals can stay open.
They revile the notion that people working 40 to 80 hours a week at low-paying jobs, hard-working middle-class families, should not have to pay a higher percentage of their gross income in taxes than millionaires like themselves. They revile the concept of economic fairness, of true competition in the marketplace (favoring the freedom of big businesses to run roughshod over the small or local is NOT favoring a free market of competitive productive enterprises).
But we are asked to not only tolerate their relentless misuse of broadcast airtime to spread lies and innuendo, to distract Americans from the truths of the political sphere, to cause the people to mistrust the most reliable public servants, to use disinformation as a bludgeon with which to whip up a fever of public protest against the very programs that will most likely protect the freedom and prosperity of individual Americans.
“Liberal” Americans don’t need to search their souls on this question, because they know they stand for freedom from oppression and discrimination, for a society free of hate and violence, for a democratic order founded on the rule of law, and the right of every man, woman and child, to cultivate their own abilities and gain by their merit, not by handouts.
It is the pseudo-conservative political propaganda machine that seeks a perversion of those democratic ideals, that wants ordinary people to believe that 0% tax rates for multinational conglomerates is somehow “fair”, that the wealthiest paying 1/3 as much of their income, by percentage, as the average family is “balanced”, that the concentration of power in one ideologically “pure” party is preferable to the contest of ideas that allows citizens to choose their nation’s future course.
It is conservatives of all kinds who must look inward, challenge their own sense of connection to the media that seek to aggrandize them, but really degrade them and their principles, and decide: do you want to be part of something that has as its central aim the undermining of responsible civic discourse and citizen engagement, or do you want to play a productive role in shaping a future in which your children and your children’s children can live in peace and freedom, in a nation that respects their rights and in which public servants are there to serve?
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