Dangerous outcomes from a culture of paranoia

[cal04]

Harold Meyerson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011105685.html

Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his radio show about the prospect of the government seizing his children if he didn't give them flu vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."

Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radio show. "We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government. . . . I dare 'em to try to come to throw me in jail. I dare 'em to. (I'll) pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door."

Do right-wing talk show commentators incite violence against the government? Feel free to draw your own conclusions - but to dwell on the rise of violent rhetoric on the right is to miss an even bigger, though connected, problem. Let's focus, rather, on the first part of Beck's and Erickson's observations: The government wants to take away Glenn Beck's (and by extension, your) kids. The government wants to take a census and will throw Erick Erickson (and by extension, you) in jail if he, and you, don't comply.

(snip)
The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today's America isn't that it incites violence per se. It's that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and conservatism's domestic adversaries.

[OHdem10]

1. Reinforces already in place paranoid fears especially re Government

[MineralMan]

2. The reality is that Glenn Beck would piss himself.

With these talk show blabbers, it's all just that: talk. However, the people who are listening to them may be more prone to use violence for real.

And there's the problem, in a nutshell. For the talkers on the right, it's "Let's you and him fight." They have neither the intention nor the fortitude to actually engage in violence themselves. They know, however, that they can incite others to do it instead. They are evil people.

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. I'm convinced that paranoia is just about the biggest

problem in this country. It's almost as if someone put something in the water.

[scarletwoman]

4. They put FLOURIDE in the water!!!!1!1!

A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids! :scared:

[JohnWxy]

5. Excellent article. Thanks for posting. RECOMMENDED.

from same article (I know, it's hard when you're limited to four paras):

"A fabricated specter of impending governmental totalitarianism haunts the right's dreams. One month after Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Beck hosted a show that gamed out how militias in Southern and Western states might rise up against an oppressive government. The number of self-proclaimed right-wing militias tripled - from 42 to 127, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center - in 2009 (and that doesn't count those that are entirely underground)."