"Ted Cruz: The Mask of Sincerity"

[applegrove]

Ted Cruz: The Mask of Sincerity

Posted by David Denby at the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/10/ted-cruz-the-mask-of-sincerity.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

"SNIP...............................


Cruz speaks crisply. Still, like McCarthy, he evokes a menace that is destroying the nation: Obamacare, which is killing jobs, obliterating businesses, demoralizing everyone. Obamacare is his Communism, a conspiracy that is the main impediment to economic growth. It is a malaise that is particularly hurting “single moms, Hispanics, African-Americans”—a brazen touch on Cruz’s part, since it is exactly those three groups whose interests Republican policies tend to ignore. It takes a certain ingenuity to suggest that an attempt to insure the powerless is rendering them powerless. One of Cruz’s tricks is to turn his enemies’ words back on them so that they stand accused in their own language. Meanwhile, he remains, at least rhetorically, invulnerable behind a mask of sincerity.

Cruz voted no on the bipartisan immigration bill, no on the farm bill, no on the continuing resolution; he voted against the confirmations of John Brennan, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, and Jack Lew. He makes extreme demands, then accuses the other side of being unwilling to compromise, then calls his own party members cowards, and so on. The refusal to extend the debt limit endangered the American government and economy. What does Cruz want? What is he up to? The naïve may believe that all of these obstructionist moves are part of a principled opposition to Obama, the President who, in the past, inspired greater and greater outrage in Republicans in proportion to how conciliatory and mild he became. But Cruz seeks more than the humbling of the President. There are plenty of other Republicans around eager to accomplish that.

He seeks the Presidency, of course. And he appears to be doing it by sowing as much confusion and disorder as possible—playing the joker in a seemingly nihilistic charade whose actual intent is a rational grab for power. Does he have a chance? One wonders about his supporters. Are they in on the joke, aware that his concern is a mask? Or do they take him literally, as a truth-teller and a prophet? Are they cynics or true believers? If they are cynics, he will fail; if they are true believers, he could go very far, expanding his support in a messianic crusade, a quest to purify and redeem the nation.

Prior to the next election, Democrats can’t do much to deter him. They may hope that he continues his rampage, turning off big money and more and more of the electorate. His immediate threat, obviously, is to moderate Republicans. If he continues to blaze, they will be consumed. Then again, there is another side to the Joseph McCarthy story. After going too far—attacking the Army, in 1953 and 1954—McCarthy was censured by the Senate, in December, 1954. (He died less than three years later, of liver problems, at the age of forty-eight.) When the mask of sincerity gets smashed, the man wearing it may break apart, too



..............................SNIP"

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Sincerity is everything. When you can fake that, you have it made. n/t

[enough]

2. k&r (nt)

[hatrack]

3. I'd nominate "The Mask of Sanity" as a better title . . . but wait, it's already taken

It's a study of psychopathic personality disorder written back in, oh, the 1950s, I think.

[gopiscrap]

4. agreed

[gopiscrap]

5. there isn't a genuine bone in that fuckers body