In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting ConditionBirthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage
Rick Perlstein, Washington Post: So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are 'either' the genuine grass roots, or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube?... They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests....
So, crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny... The various elements -- the liberal earnestly confused when rational dialogue won't hold sway; the anti-liberal rage at a world self-evidently out of joint; and, most of all, their mutual incomprehension -- sound as fresh as yesterday's news...
The orchestration of incivility happens, too, and it is evil. Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror -- powerful elites -- find reason to stoke and exploit that fear...
Liberals are right to be vigilant about manufactured outrage, and particularly about how the mainstream media can too easily become that outrage's entry into the political debate... Conservatives have become adept at playing the media for suckers, getting inside the heads of editors and reporters... The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now it's being watered by misguided reporting and [it's] taking over the forest.
National Post: When a protester showed up outside Barack Obama's health care town hall meeting this week in New Hampshire with a pistol strapped to his thigh, the unsettling image seemed almost inevitable. For weeks, Democratic politicians consulting their constituents about the President's health-reform push have faced angry, shoving crowds complaining that a plan to bring about universal medical coverage was tantamount to communism, or fascism, or even racism...
Experts say many Americans reject the notion they have a moral obligation to ensure that everyone gets decent care without going bankrupt. Some participants in focus groups conducted by the School of Public Affairs at the University of California at Los Angeles balked at the idea of paying more themselves so others less fortunate could enjoy better health care, said Frank Gilliam, the school's dean... 'The American myth is that any of us can be among the wealthy... and if you were, you sure wouldn't want the government taking your money and giving it to someone else.'... Even strong advocates of reform say the administration must appeal more to self-interest -- how change can aid the already insured middle class -- than altruism to sell the idea...
White fears about an increasingly diverse America may also be driving the opposition to reform. Some believe the proposed health overhaul would redistribute wealth from white to disproportionately poor blacks. Indeed, Glenn Beck, the controversial Fox News commentator, alleged recently that health-care reform and other policies are 'transforming America, and they're all driven by President Obama's thinking on one idea: reparations.'
