The Last Time Right-Wing Hatred Ran Wild Like This a President Was killed
That being John F. Kennedy, who was gunned down in Dallas, of course.
by Eric Boehlert,
Media Matters for America: September 18, 2009.
It's a demented national jihad, the likes of which this country has not seen
in modern times.
I've been thinking a lot of Kennedy and Dallas as I've watched the
increasingly violent rhetorical attacks on Obama unfurl. As Americans
yank their kids from class in order to save them from being exposed to the
President of the United States who only wanted to urge them to excel in the
classroom. And as unvarnished hate and name-calling passed for health care
'debate' this summer.
The radical right, aided by a GOP Noise Machine that positively dwarfs what
existed in 1963, has turned demonizing Obama--making him into a vile object
of disgust--into a crusade. It's a demented national jihad, the likes of
which this country has not seen in modern times.
But I've been thinking about Dallas in 1963 because I've been recalling the
history and how that city stood as an outpost for the radical right, which
never tried to hide its contempt for the New England Democrat.
Now, in this this month's Vanity Fair, Sam Kashner offers up in rich detail
the hatred that ran wild in Dallas in 1963. To me, the similarity between
Dallas in 1963 and today's unhinged Obama hate is downright chilling.
Kashner's fascinating cover story actually chronicles the professional
struggles of writer William Manchester who was tapped by the Kennedy family,
after the president's assassination, to write the definitive book about the
shooting. The Vanity Fair articles details the power struggles, and epic
lawsuits, that ensued prior to Manchester's publication.
But this unnerving passage from VF caught my eye. In it, Kashner retraces
Manchester's step as he researched his book. It's unsettling because if you
insert "Obama" for every "Kennedy" reference, it reads like 2009:
Manchester also discovered that Dallas "had become the Mecca for
medicine-show evangelists . the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry
Societies, and the headquarters of [ultra-conservative oil billionaire] H.
L. Hunt and his activities."
"In that third year of the Kennedy presidency," Manchester wrote, "a kind
of fever lay over Dallas country. Mad things happened. Huge billboards
screamed, 'Impeach Earl Warren.' Jewish stores were smeared with crude
swastikas..Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools;
Kennedy's name was booed in classrooms; corporate junior executives were
required to attend radical seminars."
A retired major general ran the American flag upside down, deriding it as
"the Democrat flag." A wanted poster with J.F.K.'s face on it was
circulated, announcing "this man is Wanted" for-among other things-"turning
the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations"
and appointing "anti-Christians . aliens and known Communists" to federal
offices.
And a full-page advertisement had appeared the day of the assassination in
The Dallas Morning News accusing Kennedy of making a secret deal with the
Communist Party; when it was shown to the president, he was appalled. He
turned to Jacqueline, who was visibly upset, and said, "Oh, you know, we're
heading into nut country today."
Manchester discovered that in a wealthy Dallas suburb, when told that
President Kennedy had been murdered in their city, the students in a
fourth-grade class burst into applause.
Today, conservatives are expressing outrage that Rep. Nancy Pelosi had the
nerve to raise concerns about the onrush of violent political rhetoric. The
Noise Machine claims it has no idea what Pelosi's talking about. But the
truth is, America's most famous bouts of political violence (i.e. JFK,
Oklahoma City, etc.) have always been accompanied by waves of radical,
right-wing rhetoric. Given that history, the GOP's insistence that the hate
now filling the streets couldn't possibly inspire violence seems woefully
naive.
It is time for Americans of every stripe to insist that the Secret Service
and FBI operate at the highest levels of effectiveness. Sign your name to
this petition so that Napolitano, secretary of homeland security, hears the
message loud and clear. And please pass this message on to your friends and
colleagues. It is a difficult time in America, and we have to stand up and
make sure our president is safe.
***
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/18-3
Selective Deficit Disorder - "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
by David Sirota
Truthdig.com: September 18, 2009
Watching the health care debate unfold these days is a little like watching
scenes from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-the ones showing a collage of
strung-out, deranged or otherwise incapacitated patients rotting away in a
squalid psychiatric ward.
As the insurance industry's Nurse Ratched lurks in the background,
congressional Democrats cower in the corner, fearing the phantom menace of
their own shadows. Standing next to the window, suicidal Republican leaders
rant about "death panels" and threaten to splatter their electoral prospects
onto the pavement below. Nearby, White House officials struggle with
multiple-personality ailments as they mumble contradictory statements about
the public option. Meanwhile, tea party protesters lie on the floor in the
fetal position, soiling their hospital diapers as they throw incoherent
tantrums about everything from socialism to communism to czarism to Nazism.
And, not surprisingly, Washington reporters just stare off into the
distance, having been long ago lobotomized in the wake of their Watergate
heyday.
Clearly, the inmates in America's political sanitarium are each struggling
with a different malady. However, they are all suffering from Selective
Deficit Disorder-an illness whose symptoms can be particularly difficult to
detect.
When we see tea party activists bemoan deficit spending or watch
rank-and-file senators like Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., say, "I'm not going to
vote for a [health care] bill that's not deficit-neutral," it is easy to
think these poor souls are perfectly healthy. When President Barack Obama
promises to "not sign a [health] plan that adds one dime to our deficit" and
then New York Times writers such as David Brooks praise this "dime standard"
as the epitome of "pragmatism" and "fiscal sanity," these victims seem
absolutely sane.
Yet, Selective Deficit Disorder is a sickness of omission. Attacking the
neural synapses that maintain rudimentary logic, it presents itself not in
what its carriers say and do, but in what they refuse to say and do.
Where, for instance, were the conservative protest marchers when President
George W. Bush vastly expanded the deficit with his massive tax cuts for the
wealthy? Where was Sen. Lincoln's concern for "deficit neutrality" when she
voted to give $700 billion to the thieves on Wall Street? Where was Obama's
"dime standard" when he proposed a budget that spends far more on
maintaining bloated Pentagon budgets than on any universal health care
proposal being considered in Congress? Where were demands for "fiscal
sanity" by Brooks and other right-wing pundits when they cheered on the
budget-busting war in Iraq? Where were the calls from these supposed
"deficit hawks" to raise taxes when they backed all this profligate
spending? And where were the journalists asking such painfully simple
questions?
They were nowhere to be seen or heard, because those plagued by Selective
Deficit Disorder (as the name suggests) are only selectively worried about
deficits.
When it comes to spending on priorities like health care reform that would
help ordinary Americans, the illness' victims scream about deficits and
overspending. But when it comes to handing over trillions of dollars to
financial firms, defense contractors and other corporate interests, deficits
suddenly don't matter to the disease-addled politicians, protesters and
journalists underwritten by those interests.
Luckily, while almost every significant voice in politics is stricken with
Selective Deficit Disorder, the majority of the country's citizens are not.
That doesn't mean Americans love unbalanced budgets, of course. It just
means we know there is something very wrong with those who decry deficit
spending on health care for millions of people, but ignore far bigger
deficit expenditures on giveaways to a tiny handful of fat cats.
Now, all we have to do is stop flying over the cuckoo's nest and start
breaking into the asylum...
© 2009 Creators Syndicate
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