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To paraphrase an old aphorism, now that the Health Care Bill has passed, the battle begins, for those opposed to it made clear that they intend to make it a central issue in the coming elections. What is also clear is that the state’s rights issue I wrote about in the previous essay will be at the center of it.
Only just as Strom Thurmond learned to reframe what had been essentially an anti-segregation campaign into opposition to “big government”–something the states rights crowd picked up from George Wallace–the Republicans will take a page from the Tea Party folks whose relationship to the regular party is still unclear.
My prediction is that as the dust settles and more Americans realize there are some good things in the health care bill, the emphasis will shift to how the deal went down. Out in what I once termed the Fields of Paradox, folks gave up trying to understand the bill a long time ago and instead what you hear in small town bars is about how the bill was forced through (People forget that George Bush and the GOP did it–to most folks that is ancient history and given the disdain held for Bush by both parties is a bit like Nero saying Caligula did it).
You will also hear about what was done to mollify various wavering Democrats. The Nebraska and Florida “gifts” may not have made it into the final bill, but their symbolic significance persists. But the biggest elephant in the room may be abortion. The Executive order will satisfy few. Framed by the “big government” charge, the pro life crowd will say the health care bill was like the proverbial camel’s nose in the tent.
Meanwhile American women will not be happy that again they were the ones who had to sacrifice in order to get the health care bill through. The PUMAs, who many thought as dead as the Tea Party types (remember that silly book written by a former Clinton aide about the end of the Republican right?), will rightfully seize on this issue. You will start to hear talk of a Clinton candidacy again. Hillary Clinton not only made a brilliant move by removing herself from the domestic fray by taking on the position of Secretary of State, but quite frankly right now she is one of the few in this administration who seems to know what she is doing.
But the biggest casualty of the health care debate is that any talk of ending the Era of Bad Feelings has died. People had hoped that the election of Barack Obama would have put an end to the rancor, but these days the rhetoric has become even more heated with open talk of militias and armed resistance and the renaissance of the Wedge King himself Newt Gingrich, who after experimenting with centrist ideas has resumed his former identity.
As I watched my brackets ripped to shreds over the weekend (which for me was a weakend), I spent an enforced three days as a coach potato, reveling in all the upsets (more on that in a future essay). I found myself perusing old newspapers and magazines that were still lying around during the incessant commercials that for those of us watching online revealed a new weapon in the advertiser’s war on the remote–they froze your screen during ads so you couldn’t switch to another game.
In those back issues a few more apparently disparate strands linked in my head which triggered some thoughts about the current state of America. The first was a fascinating story in the New York Times about the psychology of terrorism, the second was a ranting comment on the blog, and the third was a piece on Roger Aisles and Faux News, all of which linked to the ratcheting up of the Era of Bad Feelings that took place during the health care debate.
The psychology of terrorism
The Times piece describes new research into the psychology of suicide bombers, asking the question that is on all our minds, “Why would someone take their own life and those of other innocent people for a cause, an idea?” Several researchers describe different theories of the making of a suicide bomber, but they are all united by a common pattern–the path is a series of steps, each one of which puts the killer on a course where at some point it is impossible to turn back. One researcher even describes it as a stairway which narrows the closer you get to the top until it becomes so narrow you cannot turn around but must just keep going.
The second key ingredient is the group. The Times piece notes that only two so-called terrorists–in their definition someone who justifies murder with ideology–the Unabomber and the Washington Sniper– acted alone. The rest belonged to some radical group, the most notorious example being the 9/11 terrorists and the recent incident of the man who attempted to blow up a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Interestingly they fail to mention two major incidents of domestic terrorism–Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and anti-abortion terrorists Eric Rudolph and Paul Hill.
The Times notes:
Most researchers agree that justification for extremist action, whether through religious or secular doctrine, is either developed or greatly intensified by group dynamics.
At the center of this is what George Washington University researcher Jerrold M. Post terms a “virtual community of hatred.” John Horgan, director of Penn State’s International Center for the Study of Terrorism, analyzed accounts of 29 former terrorists, concluding that all of them believed that murder in the service of ideology is not immoral. Ultimately an “end justifies the means” mentality is common to all terrorists.
This justification is nurtured by hatred for the target group. An individual may enter the group for a variety of reasons, but the longer they stay with the terrorists the more they absorb their hatred for the enemy. The hated group becomes not merely immoral but subhuman. That is something terrorists share with the perpetrators of genocide whether the Holocaust or Rwanda or Ethiopia.
The Wingnuts
All of us who blog have received letters from wingnuts, a few have even received threats. Wingnuts are those on the left or right whose hatred for their ideological opposites is so intense that their comments become rambling, sometimes profane rants.
Many believe that this kind of nastiness occurs on the Internet because it is easy–the person is anonymous, even faceless, so they feel free to say things they would never say in public. In the minds of others, the wingnuts are not really for real but just like to rant for the fun of it.
Whatever the motivation, right wingnuts usually like to condemn “liberals” without defining what is a liberal. Left wingnuts like to rant about fundamentalists, also without defining the term. For each the other side represents the Devil. In addition wingnuts believe they represent the true America just as Al Qaeda believes it stands for all Muslims. The wingnuts would like to rid America of anyone who is not like them.
The group
If the researchers believe that it is the group that reinforces suicide bombers, a similar psychology is at work with wingnuts. Talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and TV ranters like Glenn Beck see their role as fanning the flames. Some of these commentators see themselves merely as entertainers, just playing a role.
Either way their ratings depend on how much they can get people riled up. People do not watch Bill O’Reilly or listen to Limbaugh to hear rational discussions; they tune in to hear the host rant. In today’s world after a rough day cooped up in a cubicle or busting your back at some tough job, a drive home that puts even the sanest motorist within a hair trigger of road rage, you arrive home with more stress staring you in the face. The ranters give voice to these frustrations and give it a name.
But what really enforces the group is the Internet. Just look at blogging. There are liberal and conservative blogs and neither reads the other except to file an occasional ranting comment. God forbid we would actually try to understand the other side. But the blogs themselves tell the real story–they rant as much as talk radio only online they can use four letter words and anything else they want.
I used to write for a couple of liberal blogs, but they started featuring posts by writers that painted those on the right in terms a lot more nasty than anything Rush Limbaugh has said. When those on the right say, “STOP blaming Bush for everything,” they are on to something, because that is exactly what some of these people sound like.
This blog has experienced pressure from the left as much as from the right, perhaps because those on the right won’t even bother to read a blog with “liberal” in the title. I still get nasty notes about my writing about Bill Clinton’s role in helping to cause the mortgage crisis.
The Internet’s role in reinforcing groupthink may be its most insidious feature. Much is written about social networking, but it is really social reinforcement. One of the scariest things that came out of the early utopian thinking about the Internet came from the MIT Media Lab, where one researcher thought the neatest thing they could create would be a program that would grab off the Net stories that reinforced my ideology and tastes rather than challenge them. What we really need is a reversal of that idea–a program that would hunt out good essays from the other side.
The irony of this social networking is that for many it does not build new connections, instead it builds walls. When it serves to reinforce our individual prejudices it does little to expand our horizons. It locks us in a mental prison of our own design.
Faux News and fairness
My use of the term, which others have now picked up, was intended to suggest that what Faux broadcasts is not news at all, at least the news I grew up with. We have now had an entire generation that has come of age since the end of the Fairness Doctrine, so few people remember that once the news was supposed to try to give equal voice to all sides.
The most famous Supreme Court case involving media fairness is Red Lion. Red Lion came about because Billy James Hargis, who was the Rush Limbaugh of his day, called someone a communist over the air. The person sued and the Court ruled against Hargis. What is interesting is that the name of the case comes form the broadcasting company that was part of the suit. It causes you to think a bit about the whining coming from Internet providers who say they are not responsible for publishing child porn or neo-Nazi perversions.
Red Lion is famous for the phrase “the marketplace of ideas.” What it meant by that was that by holding broadcasting licenses networks like Fox had to serve as a marketplace for all ideas. The networks had to run a free market not a “socialized” one, but that is exactly what Fox is doing. Red Lion stated:
It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, aesthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC.
Today it is routine to call someone a lot worse than a communist in the media and get away with it. But more insidious has been the erosion of truth. Glenn Beck has been criticized by everyone but his own partisans for literally making up things to back up some point. I wrote about the Governor of Virginia misquoting Thomas Jefferson and few seemed to think the governor’s distortion was a big sin.
The Internet has exaggerated that even further. Emails fly back and forth on both the left and right that are full of falsehoods. Right now those on the right are circulating a supposed quote by Thomas Jefferson warning of the evils of government. There is only one problem: no one can find anywhere where Jefferson said what is in the quote. But because people see it in black and white (or some other color) on the Net they assume it is true.
That is one reason why I try to back up essays with quotes from primary sources. My choice for best political blog are sites like Media Matters, VoteSmart or Open Secrets. What you read on those sites is documented. That is also why most of my Internet reading is of the studies that appear often in this blog such as the one in recent essay about the bias in Bowl Championship Voting.
S0 why the optimism?
Liberals, and even some of my friends, chastise me for having faith in the American people. My reply has always been that if you do not have faith in the people, you do not have faith in democracy. That may be the biggest casualty of the Era of Bad Feelings in these times of ranting talk radio, Faux News, nasty emails and assorted other examples. My fear is that Americans are losing faith in each other.
Forget what you think about Barack Obama or George Bush, do you have faith in you neighbors? More importantly do you have faith in those on the other side? I must admit I have little faith in Rush Limbaugh, at best he is running a game and worst he is a demagogue, but what about his audience?
So even though it is well past the time when we traditionally make resolutions to do better about things, I have decided that one of my objectives this year will be to personally seek to bridge the gap that has opened during the Era of Bad Feelings. As a systems person, I believe part of the reason for the gap may be the name-calling going on at both extremes. It results in what is termed a reinforcing loop in which each nasty exchange only ramps up the ante for the next one like grade school kids trading insults on the playground. I must confess, readers can find examples from this blog.
The Times’ story should be a warning to us all about the consequences of ideological hate. It can lead only in one direction and that is not a good one. I hope America is beginning to tire of this and seeking out calmer voices. Periodically, then, I am going to seek out blogs, articles or essays from thinking conservatives and try to see what we have in common not what we differ about, to seek out the “we” and not the “them.”
Does that mean I will not continue to remain true to my own values? As all of you know, I am a first generation American whose family was driven from Nazi Germany. Some of those who did not get out died in the camps. Although I am not Jewish, my uncle was, and he was the only member of his family who got out alive. I have to remain true to what they died for.
So let’s start with a comment by a reader named Deb, who thinks I am one of those nasty liberals who is screwing up the country. I had originally written her a feisty reply which I pulled after a day, because after I had written it I realized it was inappropriate. In between the rants she says:
Yes, FREEDOM. Get it? That’s what makes this country so great.
So let’s start by agreeing on that and see where this takes us.
Coda
Most of this essay was written before the recent outbreak of violence that has come with the passage of the Health Care Bill, but never has an essay been so timely. The details of attacks on various Democrats have been reported in detail by the mainstream media, but this morning Virginia Republican Eric Cantor, the second ranking GOP House member, said a bullet had been shot through the window of his district office.
That the violence is “bipartisan” should come as no surprise in the Era of ad Feelings. But being an optimist, my hope is that this will inspire some sober reflection about where raucous voices on both sides can take us.
From my grandfather’s personal experiences with political violence (one day his house was machine-gunned by Communists; the next day by Nazis), I know that the best thing that can happen is condemnation of the tactics in no uncertain terms and quickly bringing to justice the guilty parties.
Meanwhile, whatever you think of this essay I hope all of us can begin to seek common ground.
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