No Country for Straw Men

[babylonsister]

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=no_country_for_strawmen

No Country for Straw Men
Liberal fascism isn't at hand, but good luck convincing conservatives of that.


Paul Waldman | May 25, 2010 | web only


snip//

Pick a contentious issue, and there's an imagined Obama being fashioned. For example, in 2008, gun advocates were told that if the senator from Illinois were elected president, he would immediately send out his jackbooted bureaucratic thugs to begin confiscating weaponry. Upon his inauguration, sales of guns and ammunition soared, as Second Amendment fans stocked up for the inevitable bans. Yet nothing happened. Forget about taking away your hunting rifle -- Obama hasn't even followed up on his pledge to work to reinstate the assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004, and his press secretary Robert Gibbs dodges questions about the issue when they come up.

How can we explain this inaction? If you want to keep imagining the government crackdown is at hand, you listen to Sarah Palin, who earlier this month delivered a speech on the subject before the National Rifle Association. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi hadn't yet torn the guns from the hands of the assembled believers, she said confidently, only because they hadn't yet figured out how to navigate the political consequences. "Don't doubt for a minute that if they thought they could get away with it they would ban guns and ban ammunition, and gut the Second Amendment." The alternative -- that Obama's concern about the gun issue is actually minimal, particularly compared to the other things on his plate -- can't be entertained. (One of the hallmarks of this mode of thought is that whatever is most important to you is also most important to your enemies.)

Ascribing the most nefarious of motives to our political opponents is standard fare, of course. But basing your political arguments not on what those opponents have done or have proposed to do but on what they "would" do, frees you from the need to keep a hold on even the slightest tether to reality. Who needs evidence of the other side's evil, when you can just imagine what lies in their hearts?

snip//

I've made this argument before, but it bears repeating: I spilled far too many words documenting the misdeeds of the George W. Bush administration for eight years, but I never thought that if he got his way, America would cease to exist, and I don't know any other progressives who thought that either. Likewise, Obama will serve for four or eight years, succeed in some of his goals, fail in others, and leave a legacy that may be more or less profound. Some of the things he does, like health-care reform, may well persist in their effects for generations (let's hope). Others will be reversed as soon as the next Republican takes office. Obama is extremely progressive in some ways and quite conservative in others, and we can and will disagree about which ones matter more. But to say Obama is the most radical president in American history, you really have to be living in an alternate reality.

Yet conservatives make that kind of claim all the time these days. Just this Sunday, Arthur Brooks, head of the respected American Enterprise Institute, wrote in The Washington Post that if the "breathtaking expansions of state power" Obama has undertaken like financial reform are allowed to continue, "America will cease to be a free enterprise nation." It's no longer just crazy conspiracy theorists who exist in worlds of their own imaginings -- now prominent politicians and think-tank presidents do so as well.

One of the foundational precepts of political deliberation is that when we debate, there is at least the possibility, however slight, that I might convince you that I'm right and you're wrong. That possibility exists only if we agree on the basic facts. Then we can argue about which are more important and what the implications are. But if you've taken up residence in an alternate universe, then we have nothing to talk about.

[Cha]

1. Yeah, "basic facts" have to be

the foundation.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. The Rwingnuts have nocompunction about asinine exaggeration. Anything to promote fear and hatred..

Those are the main part of the weaponry they use...and will continue to use.
I do not think that those who vomit out these words even believe them, but they know that the ignorant and the insecure will believe them.
These lies are merely tools for the repukes. They are like drugdealers who get wealthy selling drugs to everyone, but know better than to ever get hooked themselves. It is all about the business.....power, and keeping power.

THAT is why the President's calls for bipartisanship are so sad. The RWingnuts will NEVER meet him halfway..and only see his desire to compromise as a sign of weakness, and an opportunity to go for his carotid artery with a death bite.

[Jennicut]

3. My own mother is convinced that Nazism is a left wing ideology.

She is a well educated woman. But the years of being a conservative and listening to Beck, Rush, Hannity etc. have her brainwashed.