NYMag: The enduring rot in American politics.

[babylonsister]

Who Is Barack Obama?
And why do people say such loopy, ugly things about him? The enduring rot in American politics.

* By Philip Weiss
* Published Sep 20, 2009


All around were satanic representations of President Barack Obama in whiteface, as a Nazi, an African witch doctor, a Marxist, a Muslim, and Che Guevara’s best friend—but Kathy Golya had never felt so good about the new administration as she did right now. It was a day after Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst in Congress, and the South Carolina congressman had given voice to Golya’s inner heart. He hadn’t just said it on the Internet, he had said it to the president himself.

No, it was not the appropriate place, Golya said, but still she glowed with the memory. “It was the first time in my life I felt good, since he got into office. Someone had called him a liar.”

A prim, slender homemaker in her fifties from northeastern Pennsylvania, Golya had come out to a tea party in Scranton with her friend Donna Biscontini to have solidarity with everyone else with strong criticisms of the president. Not really criticisms, actually, but feelings—anger, upset, a sense of dispossession. There had been a kind of revolution in the country with Obama’s election, the women felt. They talked about the president’s “czars.” One of the czars believed that animals should have lawyers to sue their owners. “Animals have more rights than people,” Biscontini said. Another was for forced sterilization. “Who’s that sound like? Hitler,” Golya said. The president was putting himself at a godly level, was her point; he was saying that man controls his destiny, not God. She saw that as arrogance. She mentioned that the president’s wife wore $600 shoes when she was helping the poor.

Golya, who was Kittykat on the Internet, saw her conflict with Obama as a battle of souls. She prayed for the president every day. “For his conversion.”

I asked her if she thought he was a secret Muslim. “Only he knows that; we don’t know that,” she said. “I’m praying for the conversion of his heart.”

That was as charitable a view of Obama as one could find at the rally in Scranton, or in Washington, D.C., two days later. The images were frightening. Obama with a Hitler mustache. Obama morphed to Heath Ledger’s Joker. Obama, Parasite in Chief. Obama the Muslim, Obama the Marxist. Even Obama the Antichrist: Jesus is the Messiah, not Obama.

A burly Pennsylvania correction officer named David McElwee held up a poster of Obama photoshopped as a half-naked African native in a hut with a grass skirt and a bone in his nose. That was Obamacare, “voodoo” health care, McElwee said.

This wasn’t politics, exactly, or at least it didn’t start as politics. It came from deeper down, from a stirring pot of disaffection and resentment that made the president a kind of fantasy villain. They dreamt about him. Obama was, quite literally, their nightmare. “They conjure up all these blood-and-soil feelings about Obama as a stranger, that’s what’s nasty about it,” says David Bromwich, a Yale scholar of literature and political thought.

lots more...

http://nymag.com/news/politics/59265/

[Doctor_J]

1. Hate radio. As soon as it's wiped out, we can start repairing the country

conversely, as long as it's on the air, there will be no hope for America.

[cognoscere]

5. I totally agree,

but I would expand upon your idea and call it hate media. It's been well demonstrated that TV and print outlets are also better acquainted with lies than truth. Granted, a large chunk of their audience are reading challenged, but the papers and magazines still keep on churning out crap. And for those of you who will go on about how restricting their freedom of speech is worse than allowing them to say whatever they feel will do the most harm, no, I'm not going to the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" gambit. A much better counter is to ask yourselves, "What do you do when you have cancer?" Leave it alone and hope it will get better by itself? Unfortunately we can't ask those who embrace that strategy, because almost all of them are dead. The sooner we rid the country of its cancerous hate media the sooner we can start cleaning up all the shit that Bush left behind,and then we can start making progress.

[fasttense]

2. That article is mostly 7 pages describing the vilest type of hatred.

It got boring and redundant. I wonder why the article didn't show all of the misspelled and pre-made, bought and sold signs?

You know what I really believe? I think this astroturf-ed hate is merely stirring up the unexpressed hatred the Republicons have for the bushes.

Since Obama has NOT prosecuted the bushes, there is no place for this hatred to go except at the current office holder. It's like a kid who is mad at his mother for dieing. They can't say it, they can't express it because it would be like saying they don't love their parent.

If Obama would prosecute the criminals, if he would encourage public hearings, if he would show all the immoral, illegal acts by the bushes, hang out the dirty laundry and held them accountable, that hate would have some place to go.

The bushes spat on them, sat on them, used them, conned them, spied on them, stole from them and then dumped them. They are mad because the bushes destroyed their party and they are blaming it on Obama instead.

They desperately need an outlet, until Obama gives them a real outlet, the real cause of their distress and holds the villains accountable these corporation will continue to stir up this misplaced resentment and use it. Obama needs to do more than just explain the problems he is facing and why we need to do what we are doing. He has to to offer villains (hopefully the real culprits) as targets and hold those villains accountable. I believe if Obama did aggressively prosecute the bushes a lot of this hatred would be directed to the people who deserve it.

[pundaint]

3. good thought, fasttense

[babylonsister]

4. Why did so many pubbies vote for idiot son? Twice?

This vile hatred is coming from his supporters. I really don't think that's the explanation.

[Demeter]

8. I doubt that would help. Remember what Dorothy Parker Said?

You can lead a whore to culture, but you cannot make her think.

(Dorothy had been asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence, and came up with this nifty twist on an old proverb).

This kind of person is impervious to fact. If the BFEE was revealed as Satan Incarnate and all his demons, they would still support the fine Christian Dominionists, regardless of every evil thing they did, regardless about whether the Impervious personally suffered losses due to their support of evil.

[wuvuj]

11. They sense the coming demographic changes?

Plus...they likely bought into the Am dream without being at all critical of it?

So...here's a black guy telling them that some of it might be over and maybe there is something wrong with tighty-whitey's over-exploitive view of the world?

Things are changing because they have to...conservatives don't like change.

They also lost the election. They just DON'T have the sense or ability to understand they shot themselves in the foot with Bush...2Xs.


"The bushes spat on them, sat on them, used them, conned them, spied on them, stole from them and then dumped them. They are mad because the bushes destroyed their party and they are blaming it on Obama instead."

[loudsue]

12. So true. It would also go a long way toward correcting some of the

lawlessness that has been let loose on the country, in police departments, "private military contractors", etc.

Good post.

[glitch]

13. I would love to see a 7 page article on all the unknown heroes working hard to save our system of

government. Highlight some of the people trying to clean up the toxic sludge left by the previous administration.
Wouldn't that be nice?

[jberryhill]

6. Hmmm... Nefarious "Obots".....

“A video of Obama being born in Honolulu with Don Ho playing ukulele in the background would not dispel a thing with these people,” says John Berryhill, an Obama supporter who fights the smears online. “Any additional statement or clarification is a ‘contradiction’ or leaves ‘unanswered questions.’ These are very concrete thinkers who are so fixated on a conclusion that you might as well try to figure out a strategy for converting the pope to Islam. It’s just not going to happen.”

The Philadelphia lawyer is an Obot, the name that Obama haters have given to the Obama supporters who jump into their chat rooms with contradictory evidence.

[babylonsister]

7. Would that be you? Too much of a coincidence?

If so, :thumbsup:

[jberryhill]

9. DUers are everywhere.... /nt

[irislake]

10. "Hate media" is a good description of it.

As an outsider I am aghast. We would never tolerate Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and hate-mongers like that in Canada.

I don't know how you will get power to the people when they can dominate the discourse and even intimidate your politicians. They represent a small number of people but they get to walk all over you.

It's fascinating to watch Glenn Beck and other creeps but scary to think of the power the have and the harm they do. Unfortunately a lot of poor dumb people --- literally poor -- will vote against their economic interests because they believe this garbage.

[Aragorn]

14. you'd be surprised

how many people including very poor rural people are smarter than that. Please don't discount the effects of election fraud - we don't.

The more perplexing question is why so many just put up with it.

Learned helplessness.