Moscow on the Potomac? Really?

by Judith Gayle | Political Waves

We should have pinned every problem of the last decade squarely on George Bush and his allies. Dubya was still eating pretzels in the White House when the revisionism began. It came along as McCain’s folly. Yes, before there was a Tea Party, there was a Palin. She was our first glimpse of repressive, regressive anti-intellectualism in this new century, and she represents a demographic that thinks her kind of naïve nativism is the will of the Founders, hence, real Americanism.

Although we’ve tried for over a year to ignore them, the Baggers won’t go away. They’re the train wreck we can’t turn away from, now that they’ve jumped the track into serious politics. Entrenched in a kind of existential despair, they represent nothing new, but the demographics of a changing nation and the economics of a failing empire make them newly worrisome. Why? Because they offer a natural home to everyone with a grievance, and they’re very well funded.

The shine is off the wing-nuts these days. Don’t get me wrong, I know everyone loves a circus, and if I were a humorist, this topic would still provide rich fare, or used to. Did you hear the one about the MoveOn activist that was thrown to the curb at a Rand Paul rally? No punch line here, just a Paul supporter stepping on her head. No joke and no apology until a day later, grudgingly, even as she was taken to the hospital. For these folks, politics is war, and the MoveOn member was in the wrong camp. One righty pundit complained that it was she who should apologize for provoking violence at the event, and now the stomper is demanding an apology from “the professional left.” If you can follow that line of reasoning, there’s a Tea Party calling your name.

Those on the far-right express self-righteous indignation over America’s decline and consider themselves the canary in the coal mine of a socialistic government takeover. Oh, would that it were so simplistic, but, of course, it isn’t even close. Bloated with their own self-importance, emboldened by their anger and limited by their unyielding belief systems, these folks don’t have a clue that they’re being shaped and used by larger, darker powers. It would be laughable, as we used to say in the Bush years, if the ramifications weren’t so painful and, might I suggest, dangerous. This movement cradles its legitimacy in the Second Amendment and is pandered to by an ever-eager press.

As Adele M. Stan wrote in her highly recommended article Tea Party Inc., “The armies of angry white people with their ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags, the actual grassroots activists, are not the agents of the Tea Party revolt, but its end users ….” This movement is the product of a conservative meltdown, an internal struggle for supremacy. With its intellectual leaders all but gone, the Republican brand is up for auction. The highest bidders, Libertarian billionaires David and Charles Koch, have united with Rupert Murdoch, hiding in plain sight under his FOX News banner and providing a 24/7 megaphone for hate-speak, hoping to control the future.

Since a number of regressives are in line to become lawmakers, it should be pointed out that they do not constitute a populist movement. Even if you could excuse their paranoia and delusion, their drive to dismantle government and impose fundamentalist values defines them. Christine O’Donnell’s inability to find the separation of church and state in the First Amendment should be clear warning of the extremism she represents. She is not alone in this supposition. Colorado’s Republican Senate candidate, Ken Buck, agrees with her, as do most other Baggers. She represents the ‘tenthers,’ who want to dial law back to the Constitution’s original writing.

O’Donnell is joined by conservative regressives, fed on the isolation of Libertarianism and the exceptionalism of Christianity. And don’t forget, to paraphrase a recent quote, all Republicans may not be racist, but we can rest assured that all racists are Republicans. Their corporate masters will attempt to herd them, useful fools that they are, using Limbaugh and Beck as drovers, but they aren’t the same docile critters that Bush kept in line. These wannabes stand close to the Tim McVeighs and Eric Rudolphs of the world, urging them on, and if it all goes badly, no problem for their corporate sponsors. There’s profit to be made even in chaos.

Listen to the extremists and please note who they are. Stephen Broden, Republican candidate from Texas, for example, says that he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections do not produce a change in leadership. Here are some quotes and more here from a speaker at the Rand Paul rally, barely reported in the blogosphere. Imagine the shock wave that would rock the political world if someone at a Democratic rally had this to say:

It is the Soviet socialists that have occupied our Capitol. It might as well be Moscow on the Potomac. The question is: do we have the courage and the spirit of our forefathers? Our people do. Today we want to tell the Marxist control freaks out there, don’t dare cross that bridge. But we know they will. We the militia, and hopefully with your support, stand ready with no apologies, ’cause what we have forced upon us is not from a legitimate government, or the American values of self reliance and independence…

The Declaration of Independence says that when a government is no longer beneficial or responsive to the people, it is our right and duty to change it…  Regardless, the founders made sure we had plan B (holds up his gun). You know what that is…

The treasonous left wing socialist politicians, and their lapdogs in the press, have gotten a wedgie here recently in their underpants over the tea parties. And a little broken glass (wink, wink)…

History it seems is ready to repeat itself. After a long and costly civil war that is imminent, and sure to be forced upon us, we are taking note of those who are responsible for the treason, and they will be held accountable. I advise the press to start getting it right from this moment on, and stop aiding and abetting un-American activities. Like the Tories of old, the worst shall be hung, most will be exiled …

This is completely over the top. Even in the Bush years, this kind of hate-speech wasn’t tolerated. Reading this screed, I’m reminded of a friend who never mentioned Dubya’s name without adding, “and his Brown Shirts.” If the Tea Baggers win, this mentality is made legitimate. As it is, when I hear the press decry the extremism on both sides, I want to spit. If anything proves the right delusional to me, it’s their insistence that liberals are seething with communist/socialist inclinations. Hell, we aren’t even seething with progressive inclinations any more, having been shoved to the right for so long that we won’t even embrace our liberal label proudly. Perhaps we need this kind of goad to come awake again.

The Uranus-Pluto smack down in the coming months will give us rebellion of some sort, shot through with adrenalin. If this is the anti-60s and the regressives are going to have their day in the sun, how sadly ironic that the ‘Greatest Generation’ died by the tens of thousands to beat back fascism in their youth so that they could fall prey to its seduction  in their old age. When liberal kids pitted themselves against militarism and government authority in that decade, we saw political chaos that ultimately produced social expansion. Will the antithesis produce political chaos and social contraction? Is that even possible after all these years? Or will the Millennials, just now coming into play, make the conversation moot by picking up the pieces of the coming explosion with a generational shift to the left?

Are we looking at a revolution or an evolution?

I only know this for sure: our two political narratives have little in common, and only one is loving. We’re choosing our future at a critical moment in history. Vote your heart this week and and let the evolution begin.