The radical right will say and do anything in their attempts to discredit, disgrace and dishonor Barack Obama, America’s first African-American president. The ruling Republican leadership does nothing to dispel falsehoods about President Obama but, tacitly endorses these falsehoods in their attempts to “make sure Barack Obama is a one term President!”
The tactics and accusations aren’t new, almost all of them are from previous Republican playbooks and most have been used in Republican primary and general election campaigns for the past 40 years. Some other accusations are vicious racist paranoid rants of a more vocal lunatic fringe that has come to dominate the right as more and more corporate and rich ultra-conservative donor dollars are pumped into any effort that might bear the fruit of the continued destruction of President Obama, the Democratic Party, unions and the American Middle Class.
It’s as though the right has taken all the racist, fascist, and corporatist twisted deep blue stygian depths of paranoid lunacies of past Republican abuses of government and recast President Obama, the Democratic Party, unions and the Middle Class as the “perpa-traitors” instead of the actual Republicans who have already done exactly what the right claims to fear the most.
My personal favorite is “Obama is the anti-christ!” Polls show that 25%, a substantial minority, of Republican voters actually believe that President Barack Obama is the anti-christ. If these folks would stop drinking the Jonestown Kool Aid they could see that their personal insanities about Armageddon and the end-times are not here because an African American was elected President of the United States in 2008. See here, here and here.
Another freakish thread which the Republican leadership gives a silent head-nod to is the claim that “Obama isn’t an American!” The “birthers” claim that President Obama was born in Kenya (not in Hawaii!) and that as a result he is not eligible to serve as President. One of the chief “birthers” has filed several suits on the issue which have been thrown out of court and the lawyer was personally sanctioned to the tune of $20,000 by a federal judge for wasting valuable judicial resources with frivolous claims. See here, here and here.
“Obama is a Muslim!” is the cry notwithstanding the pre-election hue and cry about candidate Obama’s 20 plus year attendance at the Christian church of Reverend Jeremiah Wright in Chicago. It’s perhaps the best canard of the whole panoply of putrid Republican ploys; if Obama is a Christian he’s a racist but, Obama is really a Muslim. Fully 34% of conservative Republicans believe that President Obama is a Muslim; 18% of Americans at large hold such a view. The respondents say they get their views from media reports and President Obama’s “behavior.” See here, here , here, here and here.
Glenn Beck has said it all for the real reason the right hates President Obama; “Obama is a racist!” and has “a deep seated hatred of white people.” It’s great, the racist right calls the President a racist to disguise its own deep seated racist hatred of the President and its hatred of the American democratic republic which elected Barack Obama President. See here, here, here and here.
I was at a family gathering recently and was told that “Obama will take our guns away!” The folks at the NRA are peddling the “guns away” tripe nationally to get rid of Democrats and President Obama, regardless of their beliefs about the Second Amendment. The recent Heller and McDonald decisions by the United States Supreme Court have said what I have said for a long time; that the Second Amendment of the US Constitution gives each citizen the fundamental right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families and their freedom. See here, here and here.
President Obama has specifically denied any intention, and any political or legal authority to “take away” guns. The truth doesn’t matter to those who make their livings telling the Big Lie but, the followers of the liars should remember who invented the Big Lie in the first place.
Perhaps the president has run awry of the NRA because he opposes terrorists getting guns?
Another cry among the pantheon of lies about President Obama is “Obama bailed out the banks and AIG!” See here, here, here and here.
Nope, it was W. See here and here here.
President Obama and Democratic leaders tried to recoup money from banks and to tax banks for any future failures to protect taxpayers. See here and here.
However, US Senate GOP members, most specifically Scott Brown (R-MA), threatened a filibuster and the plan was lost; so went the last vestige of personal integrity of any Republican member of the US Senate. And see here.
The most vile of lies by the paranoid racist right is “Obama has FEMA Camps to put us all away!” See here and here.
Nope. It’s Republicans who want American citizens in their FEMA run concentration camps!
After Congress blocked direct funding of the contras in Nicaragua under President Reagan, conventional wisdom would have us believe that Ollie North took it upon himself to create a shadow government and use off-the-shelf black operations to get funding for the contras which eventually led North to propose to sell Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to the Iranians. Both President Reagan and Vice President Bush claimed no knowledge of North’s arms sales for hostage actions. As part of North’s NSA duties, at the direction of the President and with the knowledge of the Vice President, a plan for the detention of American citizens opposed to a US invasion of Nicaragua and US policy in Central America in FEMA run concentration camps was devised and called “Rex 84.” So, if you opposed the extremes of the Reagan-Bush Republican US foreign policy, you got a free pass to a Republican sponsored FEMA run concentration camp! And see here and here.
The “Secret Government” of President Reagan, Vice President Bush and NSA advisor North, created US policy and “The Enterprise” to illegally mine Nicaraguan harbors, use US citizens to fight an undeclared war against Nicaragua, and illegally use funds to bomb bases in Nicaragua to kill nuns, doctors, nurses, pregnant women and their newborn infants. Take your pick at any of these videos: Here, here, here, here, here, here, here here or here.
There were also other secret illegal White House operations and illegal anti-American activities against opponents of the Republican Nixon administration.
The only recent iteration of any improper use of US troops against American citizens and concentration camps for US citizens was by President Bush II and Vice President Cheney. VP Cheney also strongly urged the use of US troops here in America to arrest US citizens in his personal chicken hawk crusade against alleged terrorists. and see here.
Other illegal acts against US citizens have been done even more recently in Wisconsin where Wisconsin Governor Walker (R) has twice illegally closed down, in violation of two court orders, the Wisconsin capitol to keep protestors to his political chicanery out and had police tackle one Democratic Assemblyman as he tried to enter the building.
So, as the crazed fringe of the far right spews forth its continued bile and lies to organize politically it should be afraid, very afraid that the Republican Party will forge itself into the perennial dominant power in American politics; that’s when all the wing-batty deep blue black helicopter paranoid rants and fears of the right will become a Republican sponsored reality!
Wow. Where did this post come from? I thought the point of this blog was for well-reasoned factually-based pursuit of truth, not partisan hackery? As I always do, I substituted "republican" for "democrat" and "Obama" for "Bush", and the post came out just as wacky and under-served by any reasonable train of logic.
The second word in the post should have been my first clue: "radical". Guess what? There are radicals out there. Guess what? This thing called the intarwebs will let radicals post any sort of kooky nonsense that pops into their skulls. Guess what? Opposition political parties will tacitly ignore such radicals if it serves their larger purpose of throwing out the current administration and installing their own.
Really? Does Dangerous Intersection want to flirt with becoming some sort of point-counterpoint to such radical partisan diatribes from either side? Who is served by such texts? Certainly not the readers here– I suspect most of them are liberal intellectuals who already write off the Republican party all the time and the Democratic party most of the time. Does such text serve new readers? Only in the sense that it throws taint on the rest of the posts with the whiff of partisanship. Does such text serve republicans or conservatives? I doubt it, as it would only make them dig in their heels more, or go somewhere else to read something else.
Tim: I know it feels good to write this sorts of post, but is it written in such a way that it could possibly change anyone's mind? Who is your intended audience for this post? It can't possibly be the people who disagree with you, because this type of writing will only anger them. It will not persuade them. I agree with Dave that this is an all-too-common form of partisan political writing and you happen to have staked out the left side of the spectrum. You've also picked out straw men on the right–truly, not all republicans are represented by those characters who driver you (and me too) crazy. Even though I agree with many of your concerns, I want (and I would think that you would want) to change people's minds.
I would challenge you to write your next article so that it actually persuades someone from the political right, by convincing them that you have something interesting to say, something that they might be able to relate to.
Facts are what one might discover through specific observable phenomena.
My post cites facts, which "Dave" sees as partisan and Erich wonders the purpose of reporting.
I don't see anyone saying that what I report is not true or not from a reliable source as most of the citations are accompanied by specific quotes and most often by video from those about which the facts are reported.
My rhetoric is one of outrage because those which would profit by the reported profligacy of lies claim to have the best interests of America and its citizens at heart when nothing could be further from the truth.
The folks in the Republican party are doing whatever it takes to rule, not govern. Republican party rule would be one of the fascist corporatists, by the facsist coreporatist and for the fascist corporatists. There may be those whose heartfelt opinions align them with the Republicans because of the prfligacy of their lies but, they as the Republicans, have a right to their opinions but, no right to be wrong on the facts!
So, Dave and Erich, where are your facts to dismiss my outrage as not well founded and not supported by specifically verifiable observation of ocurrences which should give even the farthest of the fringe cause for concern should the facsist corporatist Republicans again set up their satrapy in Washington and continue to do so in the various states?
I saw tuo quo que and ad hominem fallacial attacks but, no facts. Put up or shut up!
While writing, I frequently reference this post at a site I regularly visit.
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logical…
The fallacy of composition is not specifically mentioned—that of saying a part has a trait so it must be true of the whole, nor is the fallacy mentioned where on might assign a trait to a general population and assign an individual with such trait because of their inclusion in such a population grouping.
If we are rigorous in our writing, we may report and argue with integrity and power regardless of the alignment of others.
Tim,
I fear you might be missing my point: I don't doubt the facts you lay out in a historical sense nor their likely impact on the discourse of American politics. It's not my intent to debate facts at all. It was only my criticism of the rhetorical style and flourishes that you intersperse with those facts toward– as you say yourself– a 'rhetoric of outrage'.
It's all too easy to string facts together and come up with some master plan, then color that plan with invectives and adjectives that further the string toward some grand conclusion, but the inescapable nature of politics are that partisanship exists, and when one builds such a colored case as you did (invoking Nixon? Really? The man is dead and buried.), the partisanship comes through so loudly that it ruins the signal-to-noise ratio to the point of drowning out any viable logical train of thought.
Again, I'm not critiquing your politics, I'm critiquing your method of discourse, which i think is flawed: you're not going to convince anyone that way, and if anything, you'll just start a flamewar. If I wanted to engage in that, I'd go to fark.com, where the responses are much more entertaining. I'm not dismissing your outrage; I'm sure it's very real and very tangible for you. I hope it gets you somewhere, but it's not changing my outlook one way or another. Your rage could be pointed at Obama or Merkel or Fidel or Jack Kennedy, and I would respond the same way.
Bonus points for using the words "fascist corporatist" in a sentence, then accusing someone of 'ad hominem' attacks in the very next sentence, though. Bold.
Apparently in addition to being unswayed by facts over a period of 40 years of political chicanery, some do not understand irony or the meaning of "deja vu."