The Week in Conservative Craziness (and its Underlying Sanity)

I thought I would highlight some of the latest examples of conservative craziness just in the past week below (thanks to this Salon article). But before doing so, I thought it important to note that this is part of what I shall henceforth call conservative triangulation. The conservative revolution that Reagan commenced has counted on three distinct, but often overlapping, discourses to feed their powerful rightward push.

The first discoursed targets those who simply wish to act in a more self-interested, greedy manner without feeling bad about it. These include CEOs, corporate boards, business executives, Wall Street traders and analysts and, most importantly, many in the middle class. The arguments here are simply legitimation for lower taxes, freedom to screw workers, consumers and customers without government intervention and freedom to amass as much wealth as humanly possible. It is an attack on the New Deal and the idea that government can play a key role in maintaining full employment and soften the blow of the business cycle (ala Keynesianism). Really it is an attack on the FDR’s three R’s: recovery (through government spending and stimulus), relief (to those who were suffering through social security, welfare, unemployment and the like) and regulation (to ensure business doesn’t undermine the social contract). We can see the opposite in Reagan and Clinton, who both pushed for small government, cuts to the welfare state and deregulation.

The second discourse revolves around the perceived failure of LBJ’s Great Society and the belief government could solve the dual social problems of poverty and racial inequality. While his reforms actually worked to some extent, the silent majority of Nixon was never happy giving back to the lazy poor and undeserving blacks. And so Reagan initiated a very effective attack on affirmative action, feminism and what he might label the “moral degradation” of America. By blaming the victims of inequality for their plight, he fed on latent racism and white working class resentment at their falling quality of life (locating the source of their pain in the Civil Rights movement rather than fundamental changes in the economy – like moving production overseas (and thus shifting us from a Fordist to Post-Fordist economy (or from manufacturing to service-based), the explosion of globalization and thus labor and capital competition and the dramatic reduction in unionization that quickly followed). The race resentment has since become a key component of conservative discourse, backing the economic arguments with white male resentment at perceived racial progress. This discourse has since become conventional wisdom of far too much of the population, with the notion of reverse racism more often discussed in many political spheres including the media.

Finally, are the famous “wedge issues” that now pull otherwise liberal-minded Americans to the right. Abortion was the hot button issue in the 90s that cost democrats many Catholic and Evangelical Protestant voters, but this is only one among many – that include gay rights and marriage (helping an unpopular Bush II to a second term), gun control (even in the wake of so many senseless deaths in the past few years), “illegal” immigration (which helped Schwarzenegger win the CA governor’s office, among many others) and religion inside and outside schools.

The three strategies together helped Republicans get many voters who would clearly be better served by Democrats and their slightly more liberal policies. The media tends to focus on the latter two, and the third in particular, while ignoring the most important element of the strategy – namely the first. This allows the rightward economic policies to continue their march toward corporate-fascism without sufficient scrutiny or substantive critique. How else can we explain the lack of real action in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis? Whenever economic crisis has emerged in the past, people demanded government action to provide relief, recovery and regulation of the perceived perpetrators of said crisis. But this time around there was little support for more than the rhetorical Obama promise of unelaborated “change.” Once Americans saw what that change was, the old ideological commitments kicked in and the triangulation strategy employed on all fronts. The Tea Party is nothing more than a Plutocratically constructed “populist” movement that fed all three of the abovementioned strategies simultaneously. And it continues to work. So I’ll reiterate some of the craziness this week, but recognize that it is part of a much larger and more sinister plot to undermine the role of government, democracy and freedom itself:

§  Sarah Palin is at it again, writing an entire book on the war on Christmas, Good Tidings and Great Joy, decrying how liberal the new Pope is (for actually reading what Jesus stood for and believing in some of it – and Pat Buchanan said essentially the same thing, though more articulately) and then conflating foreign debt and social services with slavery in the following brilliant argument, “Our free stuff today is being paid for today by taking money from our children and borrowing money from China,” she said. “When that note comes due — and this isn’t racist so try it anyway, this isn’t racist — but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due, right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.”

§  TV Pundit and conservative hatemonger extraordinaire Pat Robertson told a caller worried about her gay son to ask him if he has ever been “molested,” as that is apparently the only way one would ever make that terrible choice. Then he suggested that she send him to one of those conversion therapists ala But I’m a Cheerleader.

§  Sandy Rios of the American Family Association claimed that the gay Kansas City waiter who didn’t receive a tip from a Christian family a couple of weeks ago because they claimed they and god didn’t approve of his lifestyle (in a note) was a ruse – without any proof to support the claim. In fact, it appears this occurred with a lesbian, ex-Marine waitress as well; though it involved mistreatment as well. Makes sense in America, I suppose – any excuse to avoid helping others (even when they are serving you).

§  Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, claimed this week that atheism leads to sexual abuse of children: “Here is the logic he laid out to the assembled gun-toting crazies: “If there is nothing, if there is no God, then we are ruled by our instincts. Atheism leads to moral anarchy … Do we know any politicians that have done that?” he asked the crowd. “Hitler!” answered Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America. “Oh, we don’t have to go that far, Larry, just go to Washington. Just go to the White House.” From there, it’s a short hop to sexual immorality, perversion and sexual abuse, Cruz concluded. Of course, we could say the same of the average Catholic Church a few years ago, couldn’t we?

§  Both plagiarizer Rand Paul and donut-friendly Rush Limbaugh made rather outrageous claims about Obamacare this week. Paul claimed Obama is coming after “our donuts” with the new trans fats banning and that we should line up the FDA agents to see how much they weigh. Limbaugh went a bit further, claiming Obamacare is not only advocating safer sex, but promiscuity with this peach of an argument, “If you like your risky, promiscuous lifestyle, you can keep it. That’s what Obama is promising.” Many might say this sounds pretty good, but Rush isn’t done yet, taking the argument to its logical conclusion, at least in right-wing, conspiracy-happy, nut farm land: “If you like being a prostitute, then have at it!”

§  Finally, Lindel Toups of Lafourche Parish City Council in LA, argued that they should close libraries and replace them with jails given this rather alarming use by Mexicans and hippies: ““They’re teaching Mexicans to speak English,” Toups said “Let that son of a bitch go back to Mexico … There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with… Them junkies and hippies and food stamps [recipients] and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps [on the Internet]. I see them do it.” Well, why didn’t you say so? Close those libraries immediately! Actually, while we’re at it, we should probably close that damned “internet” thing as well!